HENRY, O. (1862-191o), American short-story writer, was born in Greensboro (N.C.), Sept. 11, 1862. His real name was William Sydney Porter. Until 15 he attended school. Then he served for five years as a clerk in his uncle's drug store. For his health he spent two years on a friend's ranch in La Salle county, Texas, absorbing the colour and robust life of the south-west. In 1884 he moved to Austin, Texas, where he worked as a book keeper and then spent four years in the General Land Office. About the time of his marriage (1887) he began to send para graphs and humorous sketches to newspapers. During 1891 he was teller in the First National Bank of Austin. In 1894 he bought Brann's Iconoclast, a satiric weekly, and transformed it into an extraordinarily humorous farrago of skit and burlesque, illustrated by himself ; the venture was not a financial success, and in 1895 he joined the staff of the Houston Post, writing a daily column. In 1896 he was indicted on a charge of having embezzled funds (amounting to about $1,150) from the bank in Austin. This affair has never been cleared up. While waiting for trial he had the first news of the acceptance of some of his stories by important magazines. In 1898 he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in the Ohio penitentiary. His term was reduced to three years and three months for good behaviour. In prison he seriously settled down to story-writing. In 1903 he con tracted to do a short story a week for the New York World, at $500 each. His first book, Cabbages and Kings, was published in 1904. In 1907 he married Sarah Coleman, a boyhood friend. He died in New York, June 5, 1910, and was buried in Asheville, North Carolina.
0. Henry's varied life is reflected in his stories. The extraor dinary productivity of his eight years in New York brought him rapid fame, though he himself lived in seclusion. The sale of his books has been enormous, and they have been translated into many languages. The genial magic of his fine imagination, humour and brilliant narrative skill, triumph over the occasional journal ism of his method, and he remains endlessly and enchantingly re-readable. His New York stories are the most famous, but it is probable that some of the southern and western tales, in which there is less strain for glittering effect, are of more lasting value. The tragedy of his own life taught him a chivalrous tenderness for the unlucky. Some of the greatest native endowments a writer can have were undeniably his; of him, as much as of any mod ern writer, it can be said that he had "no talent, only genius."