But if we had, Jawn, think what sorrow would be in our hearts this night, with our little Phelan run away and stolen in the city nowheres at all.’ You seem to be a genuine cosmopolite,’ I said admiringly. ‘But it also seems that you would decry patriotism.’ Porter married again in 1907, to childhood sweetheart Sarah (Sallie) Lindsey Coleman, whom he met again after revisiting his native state of North Carolina. However, despite his publishing success (or perhaps because of the attendant pressure success brought), Porter drank heavily.

While in Houston, he was arrested in 1896 in the bank embezzlement case. His father-in-law appealed for his bail but one day before the trial, he fled to Honduras. There he wrote “ Cabbages and Kings” and befriended Al Jennings, a notorious train robber and later on wrote about him in his book. She was too weak to light the lamp or to undress. She fell upon the iron cot, her fragile body scarcely hollowing the worn springs. And in that Erebus of a room she slowly raised her heavy eyelids, and smiled. Ye talk foolishness,’ said Mr. McCaskey. ‘’Tis Pat he would be named, after me old father in Cantrim.’ There came a time after that when Miss Leeson brought no formidable papers home to copy. And when she went in the morning, instead of working, she went from office to office and let her heart melt away in the drip of cold refusals transmitted through insolent office boys. This went on. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheek burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

Even though the plots of some of the stories and particularly the endings are gloomy and sad, the story also contains some hope, warmth, and true feelings. These things make the readers smile bitterly. The writing style with a blend of comedy and tragedy is called “tearful smile.” Jim, darling,’ she cried, ‘don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again – you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say Merry Christmas! Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice – what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.’ By the deported snakes!’ he exclaimed, ‘Jawn McCaskey and his lady have been fightin’ for an hour and a quarter by the watch. The missis could give him forty pounds weight. Strength to his arm.’

One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a typewriter made to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little girl, with eyes and hair that kept on growing after she had stopped and that always looked as if they were saying: ‘Goodness me. Why didn’t you keep up with us?’ Prokop, Jessica. "Candy History: Oh Henry". Candyfavorites.com. Archived from the original on August 30, 2019 . Retrieved November 16, 2018. His final work was "Dream", a short story intended for the magazine The Cosmopolitan. It was never completed. [8] In 2021 the Library of America included O. Henry in their list by publishing a collection of 101 of his stories, edited by Ben Yagoda. [24] Bibliography [ edit ] Stories [ edit ] The Four Million is another collection of stories. It opens with a reference to Ward McAllister's "assertion that there were only 'Four Hundred' people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen—the census taker—and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the 'Four Million.'" To O. Henry, everyone in New York counted. He had an obvious affection for the city, which he called " Bagdad-on-the-Subway," [1] and many of his stories are set there—but others are set in small towns and in other cities.A film was made in 1952 featuring five stories, called O. Henry's Full House. The episode garnering the most critical acclaim [13] was " The Cop and the Anthem" starring Charles Laughton and Marilyn Monroe. The other stories are "The Clarion Call", " The Last Leaf", " The Ransom of Red Chief", and " The Gift of the Magi". For example, in the novel The Cop and the Anthem, the readers can easily notice the humorous language. In the novel, he writes: “Soapy walked past the policeman sadly. He seemed doomed to liberty .” It is obvious that doomed has a negative connotation is usually followed by negative words like death, destruction, and failure, etc. whereas, liberty has a positive connotation. This strange use of the word makes the language funny as no one considers liberty as a negative word but Soapy, who is poor and homeless. For Soapy, liberty is something which means hunger, coldness, and death. He wants to live in winter to spend his winters. By using humorous language, O’Henry shows the miserable life of Soapy. Surprising Endings

a b Guy Davenport, The Hunter Gracchus and Other Papers on Literature and Art, Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1996. Tis Missis Murphy’s voice,’ said Mrs. McCaskey, harking. ‘She says she’s after finding little Mike asleep behind the roll of old linoleum under the bed in her room.’ Porter was a heavy drinker, and by 1908, his markedly deteriorating health affected his writing. In 1909, Sarah left him, and he died on June 5, 1910, of cirrhosis of the liver, complications of diabetes, and an enlarged heart. According to one account, he died of cerebral hemorrhage. [5] This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( September 2014) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically. Jim stepped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face. Wyatt overhears all this, loads his father's shotgun, and kills Curry before he can finish off Henry. Wyatt tries to help his father, but Henry tells him that it is too late. Henry speaks earnestly to his son, telling him that the world is changing, and Henry has no place in it anymore but that he hoped his son would now find a place for himself after teaching him to be an honest man. He dies in Wyatt's arms. Wyatt buries his father next to his mother and leaves the farm along with the gang's cash, two horses, and their few possessions. Smith, C. Alphonso (November 1916). "The Strange Case of Sydney Porter and 'O. Henry' ". The World's Work: A History of Our Time. XXXIII (1): 54–64 . Retrieved February 26, 2019. William Trevor writes in the introduction to The World of O. Henry: Roads of Destiny and Other Stories (Hodder & Stoughton, 1973) that "there was a prison guard named Orrin Henry" in the Ohio State Penitentiary "whom William Sydney Porter ... immortalised as O. Henry".