O. Henry

Born William Sydney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1862, he worked as a pharmacist before moving to Texas in 1882, settling in Austin and marrying Athol Estes. While drafting for the Texas General Land Office and later working at the First National Bank of Austin, he began sketching characters for short stories and published a weekly called The Rolling Stone. In 1895 an embezzlement charge sent him fleeing to Honduras, where he started writing Cabbages and Kings and coined "banana republic." He surrendered when he learned his wife was dying of tuberculosis, cared for her until her de…