Biography by o henry

O. Henry (1862-1910) was born William Sydney Porter in Greenboro, North Carolina. His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his parental grandmother and paternal aunt. William was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen he left school, and then worked in a drug store and on a Texas ranch. He continued to Houston, where he had a number of jobs, including that of bank clerk. After moving in 1882 to Texas, he worked on a ranch in LaSalle County for two years. In 1887 he married Athol Estes Roach; they had one daughter and one son.

In 1894 Porter started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. It was at this time that he began heavy drinking. When the weekly failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. In 1894 cash was found to have gone missing from the First National Bank in Austin, where Porter had worked as a bank teller. When he was called back to Austin to stand trial, Porter fled to Honduras to avoid trial. Little is known about Porter’s stay in Central America. It is said, that he met one Al Jennings, and rambled in South America and Mexico on the proceeds of Jenning’s robbery. After hearing news that his wife was dying, he returned in 1897 to Austin. In 1897 he was convicted of embezzling money, although there has been much debate over his actual guilt. Porter entered in 1898 a penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.

While in prison, Porter started to write short stories to earn money to support his daughter Margaret. His first work, ‘Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking’ (1899), appeared in McClure’s Magazine. The stories of adventure in the U. S. Southwest and in Central America gained an immediately success among readers. After doing three years of the five years sentence, Porter emerged from the prison in 1901 and changed his name to O. Henry. According to some sources, he acquired the pseudonym from a warder called Orrin Henry.

It also could be an abbreviation of the name of a French pharmacist, Eteinne-Ossian Henry, found in the U. S. Dispensatory, a reference work Porter used when he was in the prison pharmacy.

O. Henry moved to New York City in 1902 and from December 1903 to January 1906 he wrote a story a week for the New York World, also publishing in other magazines. Henry’s first collection, CABBAGES AND KINGS, appeared in 1904. The second, THE FOUR MILLION, was published two years later and included his well-known stories ‘The Gift of the Magi’ and ‘The Furnished Room’. THE TRIMMED LAMP (1907) explored the lives of New Yorkers and included ‘The Last Leaf’ – the city itself Henry liked to call ‘Bagdad-on the-Subway.’ In one of his stories, ‘One Dollar’s Worth’, O. Henry deals with the judicial system. Judge Derwent receives a letter from an ex-convict, in which the writer, ‘Rattlesnake’ threatens his daughter and the district attorney, Littlefield. A young Mexican, Rafael Ortiz, is accused of passing a counterfeit silver dollar, made principally of lead. Rafael’s girl, Joya Treviñas, tells Littlefield that he is innocent – she was sick, and needed medicine, and that was the reason why Rafael used the dollar. Littlefield refuses to help, and Joya says that “it the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael Ortiz.” When he drives out of the town with Nancy Derwent, they meet Mexico Sam, the writer of the letter. He starts to shoot them from distance with his rifle. Littlefield can’t hurt him with his own gun which has only tiny pellets.