The Duplicity of Hargraves The Duplicity of Hargraves "The Duplicity of Hargraves" is a short story by the American writer William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name: O. Henry. The story was featured in "The Junior Munsey", February 1902, and republished in the volume "Sixes and Sevens" (1911). Sixty-eight-year-old Major Pendleton Talbot and his practical spinster daughter Lydia move to Washington D.C. The Talbots have fallen from their aristocratic past in the South before the American Civil War and are now quite poor. The pair stay at a boarding house in the nation's capital. There they become acquainted with Henry Hopkins Hargraves,
William J. Porter He died of cancer at the Rose Hawthorne Lathrop Home in Fall River, Massachusetts on March 15, 1988. William J. Porter William James Porter (September 1, 1914 – March 15, 1988) was an American diplomat who from 1971 to 1973 headed the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Talks to end the Vietnam War. Porter was the first-ever United States Ambassador to Algeria, and also served as Ambassador to South Korea, Canada, and Saudi Arabia. William J. Porter was born in Stalybridge, England on September 1, 1914, the son of a Royal Navy officer who died during World War I.