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.
It was shortly after this date that an ominous shadow settled over O. Henry’s head. In February of 1896 the Federal Grand Jury at Austin brought an indictment against W. S. Porter, charging the embezzlement of funds while he was acting as paying and receiving teller of the First National Bank of Austin. Finally, summoned to trial in July, 1896, O. Henry left Houston to answer the charge; but he only got as far as Hempstead. There it was necessary to change trains; but instead of taking the train for Austin, he returned to Houston and then went on to New Orleans. When next heard from, he was in Honduras. In January, 1897, after six month’s absence O. Henry received news of the serious illness of his wife. He set out to join her immediately and reached Austin by February 5, 1897. He at once reported to the civil authorities. His bondsmen had not been assessed, and he was allowed to go free but with his bond doubled.
His wife died of tuberculosis the following July, and in February, 1898, O. Henry’ case came to trial. He plead not guilty, but for some unknown reason he maintained an utter indifference throughout the trial. On March 25 he was sentenced to imprisonment in the Federal Ward of the Ohio State Penitentiary. On account of good behavior, however, O. Henry’s term in prison was shortened to a little over three years. On July 24, 1901, he again became a free man. His ability as a pharmacist gave him the opportunity to work in prison at something comparatively easy. But what is of most interest to us in regard to his life there is that by the time he got out of confinement he was pretty well known, under the pseudonym of O. Henry by editors of a number of America’s most popular magazines.
As soon as he was out of prison O. Henry went to join his daughter and the Roaches, who were then living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He now devoted all his energies to writing, and in the spring of 1902 he was called to New York. The eight years that O. Henry spent in the great metropolis were marked by an astonishing fecundity in literary production and an ever increasing fame as the writer of a peculiar type of short story, now known universally as the “O. Henry short story.”
O. Henry died in New York City on June 5, 1910, and was buried in Asheville, North Carolina. The only other event of his life which should be recorded here is his marriage in 1907 to Miss Sara Coleman, a sweetheart of his North Carolina days, and author of Wind of Destiny in which appear many letters written to her by O. Henry just before their marriage.
Practically the whole body of O. Henry’s stories and sketches first appeared in periodicals. Doubleday, Page & Company (now Doubleday, Doran and Company) have put into book form almost everything he wrote, and the volumes in the order of their publication are as follows: Cabbages and Kings, 1904; The Four Million, 1906; The Trimmed Lamp and Heart of the West, 1907; The Voice of the City and The Gentle Grafter, 1908; Roads of Destiny and Options, 1909; Strictly Business and Whirligigs, 1910; Sixes and Sevens, 1911; Rolling Stones, 1913; Waifs and Strays, 1917. In 1923 Harper and Brothers brought out Postscripts by O. Henry, edited by Florence Stratton.