Porter used his prison time to begin a writing career, initially writing short stories to financially support his daughter. Porter was tried on an embezzlement charge, and sentenced to five years in the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus.
She died soon after, and he finally faced the criminal trial he had run from. In 1897, however, Porter learned that his wife was seriously ill, and he returned to the United States to care for her. Historical rumor suggests he was on the lamb with notorious South American criminals, using their $30,000 robbery booty to fund the trips. From New Orleans, he trekked to Honduras and South America, where he spent two years. Nevertheless, Porter skipped his train from Houston to Austin and went to New Orleans instead, fleeing his trial and leaving his wife and children behind. He was accused of embezzlement, though historians have speculated that the missing funds were probably due to bad bookkeeping rather than outright theft. In 1894, Austin's First National Bank discovered it was missing money, dating back to the time Porter had worked. His attempt to start a humor magazine called The Rolling Stone failed, and he began writing columns for the Houston Post. Four years later he took a teller's job at the First National Bank in Austin.
There he lived on a ranch and worked as a druggist, and then a draftsman, marrying Athol Estes Roach in 1887. When he was twenty, Porter developed a cough typical to the onset of tuberculosis, and moved to Austin, Texas to live with friends of the family. He became a licensed pharmacist under the guidance of his uncle, and received most of his education from his Aunt Lina. His mother died when he was three years old, and relatives raised him while his father worked as a physician. William Sidney Porter was born on September 11, 1862, in North Carolina he would live thirty-nine years before he legally adopted the infamous pen name. Though critics did not often like his dry wit or twist ending, the public loved him, and his short career earned him a reputation as one of the finest storytellers in American literature. From sickly North Carolina boy to Texas ranch hand, from married bank teller to fleeing thief, from dirt-poor prison inmate to nationally renowned author, O. The "Master of the Short Story" was hardly your average reclusive writer.
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