Chapter 2 begins:
- The drawing-rooms of one of the most magnificent private residences in Austin are a blaze of lights. Carriages line the streets in front, and from gate to doorway is spread a velvet carpet, on which the delicate feet of the guests may tread.
The occasion is the entrée into society of one of the fairest buds in the City of the Violet Crown. The rooms are filled with the culture, the beauty, the youth and fashion of society. Austin society is acknowledged to be the wittiest, the most select, and the highest bred to be found southwest of Kansas City.
Born in North Carolina, William Sydney Porter is better known as O. Henry. He came to Austin, Texas in 1884. In addition to jobs as a clerk, bookkeeper, draftsman, and bank teller he acted in local theatrical productions and began publishing a weekly newspaper, The Rolling Stone, in 1894.
Embezzlement charges by his former bank employer led Porter to flee to Honduras. Returning to Austin in 1897 he was arrested and sent to prison for three years. It was during this time, at the turn of the last century, that he began publishing short stories under the pen name O. Henry.
An O. Henry exhibit in the the old Texas General Land Office building (now the Capitol Visitors Center) features readings of excerpts of his stories and the spiral staircase featured in an O. Henry murder mystery. The building, where Porter once worked, was the setting for one of his earliest stories -- Bexar Scrip No. 2692, also known as Murder at the Land Office.
Porter's Austin home now houses the O. Henry Museum. View photos and get information on the O. Henry Pun-off, an annual competition held each Spring in Austin.
