O.Henry

Sydney was born to a physician and his wife in 1862 in North Carolina. Three years later his mother died of pneumonia, leaving him and his brother to be raised by an aunt and their paternal grandmother. Although young Sydney loved to read, he left school at fifteen to make his own way, working as a drugstore clerk and a Texas ranch hand before taking a job as a bank teller.

It was hardly his best career move. Sydney wasn’t good with money; or maybe he was too good. Historians still argue both sides of that coin. Regardless, when money turned up missing and the evidence pointed towards Sydney, he did little to support his claim of innocence by fleeing to Honduras to avoid jail time.

After living on the lam for more than a year, Sydney got word that his wife was dying of a terminal illness. He returned to the states to be with her and earned himself an embezzlement conviction that carried a five year stay in a United States Federal Penitentiary.

It was there in that jail cell in Ohio that William Sydney Porter discovered his flair for writing and America discovered one of her most popular story- tellers of all time. Writing under the pseudonym of O. Henry, Mr. Porter told masterful tales inspired by ordinary people. While O. Henry’s trademark surprise endings were full of both drama and humor, it was a warm and noble humor that often celebrated man’s better qualities even as it highlighted our peculiar ways.

In today’s southern quote, we hear the wisdom of O. Henry tinged with the sadness of regret. For O. Henry once said,

“You can’t appreciate home till you’ve left it, money till it’s spent; your wife till she’s joined a woman’s club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.” – O. Henry