The Gift of the Magi | Author Biography
O. Henry was born William Sydney Porter on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Though his father, Algernon Porter, was a doctor, the young boy did not receive much formal education. As a teenager, he worked as a pharmacist's assistant in his uncle's drugstore to help support 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. There he worked on a cattle ranch owned by friends of his family. These early jobs—pharmacist, ranch hand, and bank...
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