It's the birthday of ... William Sidney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina (1862). His mother died when he was a kid, and he was raised by various relatives and headed off to Texas when he was 15. He worked as a hired hand on a sheep ranch, and he fell in love with a wealthy young woman. They got married and had a daughter. He got a respectable job at a bank, and then as a reporter for The Houston Post. But the bank was audited after he left, and he was arrested on charges of embezzling money. His wife's father posted bail for him, but before his trial he ran away, heading to Louisiana and then to Honduras. His wife was too sick with tuberculosis to meet him there, and heartbroken, he went back to Texas and turned himself in so that he could be with his wife while she died. Afterward, he was sentenced to prison for five years. It was while he was in jail that his writing career really took off — he published 14 stories before he was let out for good behavior after three years. He would send his stories to a friend who would send them to publishers, so no one ever suspected that O. Henry was writing from jail.
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| Saturday, September 17 pie, thanks to SV and SV |
The Writer's Almanac, September 11, 2011. What a wonderful capsule write-up! This is one to play in class, Thursday of the 4th week, before we read "The Gift of the Magi." And I can easily play the
July 4, 2011 edition today so that kids can get a capsule of Nathaniel Hawthorne, as well. (Thanks to my father for re-connecting me with this podcast. I'm gonna get a lot of mileage out of it!)
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