O. Henry Encore
9781465641236
281 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
O. Henry’s real name was William Sidney (Sydney) Porter. He was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, 1862, of mixed Quaker (Connecticut) and Southern (Virginia) ancestry. His mother, a woman of remarkable strength of character and some literary talent, died in 1865, and O. Henry’s rearing was entrusted to his paternal grandmother. His father was a physician, but apparently a business failure at everything he attempted. What schooling O. Henry had was received in the little private school of an aunt, Miss Lina Porter. From early boyhood he worked in the drug store of an uncle, and long before he was twenty he was a registered pharmacist. In 1882 O. Henry left for Texas to seek a dryer climate. It was feared that he was developing consumption. He settled on the Hall ranch in La Salle County, almost half way between San Antonio and the Mexican border. He spent two years on the ranch and in 1884 went to Austin. During his first three years there, he lived as practically an adopted son in the home of Mr. Joe Harrell, who was also a native of Greensboro. He worked at various “jobs”—cigar-store clerk, pharmacist, etc. In 1887 O. Henry secured a position in the State Land Office as assistant compiling draftsman. Here he remained for four years—the happiest ones, it seems, in his life. The position meant to him prosperity; and five months after he had begun his work, he was married to Miss Athol Estes, the daughter of Mrs. G. P. Roach. There was a romantic elopement, a family reconciliation, and what O. Henry called “a settling down to a comedy of happiness ever afterwards.” It was shortly after he took up his work in the Land Office that O. Henry first marketed his writings. The amount received for a “string of jokes and sketches” accepted by the Detroit Free Press was small, but it was to increase steadily, even during the most troublous period of his life. As a boy in Greensboro he was known for his drawings and cartoons, and while on the ranch in Texas he drew some pictures and also wrote to his relatives and friends in North Carolina letters indicative of his later literary style. A change in the State administration in 1891 meant that O. Henry’s position in the Land Office was lost. He became connected with the First National Bank of Austin as paying and receiving teller, where he was to work until December, 1894. Before giving up his position in the bank, he had undertaken the publication of a humorous, semi-political weekly, The Rolling Stone, published at Austin and later simultaneously in Austin and San Antonio. After he left the bank, he had to depend on The Rolling Stone for all his income, but without capital he could not make of it a financial success. It existed only a year, from April 28, 1894, to April 27, 1895. Almost six months passed before O. Henry left Austin to become a staff contributor to the Houston Daily Post. His first work appeared in the Post on October 19, 1895.
