O’Henry

By Valerie Lawrence

Credit: David Houston

Like a number of great writers, O’Henry died young at age 47 from alcohol related illnesses, but he packed a lot of living into his short life. He started, at age nineteen, with a career as a licensed pharmacist and talented sketch artist. Because of a persistent cough though, he moved to Texas where he worked as a ranch hand, journalist and bank teller, all the while writing short stories and developing character lines.  In 1897, he was found guilty of embezzlement from a bank where he had been employed. Although he vehemently denied the charges, he was sentenced to five years in jail.

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While in jail he worked as a pharmacist and was given his own private room.  With little else to do he produced fourteen short stories under the pseudonym O’Henry. 

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By the time William Sydney Porter was released from jail (early, for good behavior), he had secured a writing career under the name O’Henry.  He moved to New York where he wrote 381 short stories.  Among his most famous works, Full House and The Gift of the Magi were made into feature length films. The Ransom of Red Chief is a story about two men who kidnap a ten year-old boy who makes their life so miserable that they end up paying the kid’s father to take him back.  It's the subject of numerous plays, a movie and a newly released as a graphic novel:

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In Heart of the West he relied heavily on his early cowboy experiences in Texas. Here is a sample of O’Henry quotes that reveal why he is so popular then and now:

“I don’t amount to a knot in a stake rope.”

“He swayed on his horse; had he been on foot, the earth would have risen and conquered him; but in the saddle he was a master of equilibrium, and laughed at whisky, and despised the centre of gravity.”

“That man was a spectacle.  Yes; he was worse; he was a spyglass; he was the great telescope in the Lick Observatory.”

“She blushed, and then looked at me cool, like I was the snow scene from the ‘Two Orphans.’”

“…prancing around anvidiously like  an irremediable turkey gobbler…”

“He’s all ventilated with oldness and rectitude and decay.”

“I think he’s as dry as a lava bed.”

“Do you think you could get it into that Hubbard squash you call your head that you are nix cum rous in this business.”

“…we drifted down to this little town…to rest up, and get some human grub, and have our whiskers harvested.”

“…he’s a plain incumbent of the mountains, with asperities and the usual failing of a spendthrift and a liar, but I never on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was a gentleman.”

“I have found him impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity.”

“My object is purely a gastronomical one.”