In 1897, however, he learned that his wife was seriously ill, so he returned to the United States and turned himself in.Īthol died in July of that year, and O. These stories were collected under the title Cabbages and Kings in 1904. He gathered material and wrote stories set in Central America while he was there. Henry fled Austin and sailed for Honduras. When the case was reinvestigated in 1895, and it became apparent that he would be charged with embezzlement, O. In 1894 he was dismissed from the bank because of shortages in his accounts. For about a year, he owned and wrote a weekly humor paper when this folded, he continued to submit articles and humorous stories to other newspapers under the pseudonym O. He also met Athol Estes, who soon became his wife together they had a daughter, Margaret. When he was twenty-two, Porter moved to Austin, where he landed a job as a bank teller.

These early jobs-pharmacist, ranch hand, and bank teller-gave him plenty of material for his stories about poor, working-class people. There he worked on a cattle ranch owned by friends of his family. At 19, worried that he might be susceptible to the pneumonia that had killed his mother at a young age, he moved to Texas to take advantage of its warm, dry climate. As a teenager, he worked as a pharmacist’s assistant in his uncle’s drugstore to help support his family. Though his father, Algernon Porter, was a doctor, the young boy did not receive much formal education. Henry was born William Sydney Porter on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Such love, the story and its title suggest, is like the gifts given by the wise men, called magi, who brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the newborn Jesus. A major reason given for its enduring appeal is its affirmation of unselfish love. Henry is widely known, including poor, working-class characters, a humorous tone, realistic detail, and a surprise ending.

The story contains many of the elements for which O. Included in The Four Million, his first collection of short stories, in 1906, it has been anthologized many times since then.

The author of the gift of magi