O. Henry is the famous non de plume of William Sydney Porter, but why he chose such a pen
name is a mystery, the most likely explanation being that it was done as a joke. Born in North
Carolina in 1867. In 1884 at the age of 17 he moved to Texas where he worked on a ranch, but
it was not long before he was on the staff of a newspaper. A year later O. Henry bought and ran
his own newspaper, but his venture into commerce was not a success, so he went to South
America and remainded there for some years. When he returned to Texas he worked in a drug
store, but this type of work did not suit his creative bent and he soon found himself in New
Orleans. In 1896, while he was employed as the teller of an Austin bank, a shortage in the cash
accounts was attributed to him, and he was sentenced to a term in jail. It was during his
imprisonment that he assumed the name of O. Henry and began work in earnest as a writer of
short stories.
Upon his release he went to New York, living there until he died of a wasting disease at the age
of 43 in 1910. Within 14 years, the success of his stories was so great that he was contributing
one every week to the "World" and many more to the leading magazines of the country. He
wrote over 270 stories, but not one novel.
It has been said that O. Henry wrote funny stories, but this is only applicable in its widest sense
for his stories always seemed to contain a moral which was not always portrayed in a funny
way. He was a master of the anecdotal plot and the surprise ending, often in the last paragraph.
Many of his stories are meretricious, with an excessive trickiness in the plotting and a flashy
glitter in the style. At his best, however—as in the volume, The Four Million—the emotion is real
and the humour and pathos ring true. He loved to write about New York—which he
affectionately called Bagdad-on-the-Subway—about its small clerks, its aspiring young actors
and artists, and all the horde of little people and failures who also lived in the great city where
the egregious Ward McAllister could find only "four hundred" who were worthy of notice and
consideration.
If we look for the man behind the stories we see a whimsical, shy unassuming, yet generous
man who shunned the limelight. It is said that when he was dying his wit was still with him for,
he is reputed to have said, "Don't turn down the light," then suddenly remembering the words of
a popular song he added, "I'm afraid to go home in the dark."
One Short Story
