William Hazlett Upson was born at Glen Ridge, N.J., on September 20,
1891, the son of a lawyer practicing in New York City. After
graduating from the agricultural college at Cornell University he
tried farming for three years and was glad to quit to become a
soldier. He was a private in the field artillery and saw service in
the latter half of the Marne-Aisne offensive and in the St. Mihiel
and Argonne operations. After the Armistice he spent the winter in
Germany as one of the Army of Occupation.
He returned from abroad to pick up a job as a service mechanic with a
tractor company and in the next few years he learned all about
tractors and a good deal about how to sell them.
A long convalescence from illness set him to writing. William Almon
Wolff showed him how to revise a story that was getting rejections
and then sold it for him. Upson was very busy marrying, and writing
more stories, which also sold. He went back to work for the tractor
company and for almost a year did that job in the daytime and wrote
at night. He has been writing since 1922 and said good-by to
tractors, except in his stories, a long while ago.
Upson has written nearly all his stories from material that he
accumulated in his years as a farmer, his months as a soldier, and
his time with the tractor industry. Often a humorist, it is
improbable that he will ever write a funnier story than "I'm in a
Hurry," which has generally been adjudged one of the most perfect
humorous stories in recent years. "I'm in a Hurry" was first
published in _Collier's_ for May 2, 1925.