The story is about a wealthy businessman whose son wants to propose to his sweetheart before she leaves the USA for Europe in a couple of days’ time. Although the son believes that money cannot buy you time – the one thing he dearly needs more of if he is to woo his beloved – the events of the story suggest that money can be used to buy someone extra time. O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings.

Spring was taking its time to arrive in the city, and with no letter from her fiance in weeks, Sarah's quite wilted. "In a faint, golden glow from her dandeleonine dream, she fingered the typewriter keys absently for a little while, with her mind and heart in the meadow lane with her young farmer." Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Think of a New York girl shedding tears on the menu card!.. O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings.

"The Gift of the Magi" is a short story by O. Henry first published in 1905. The story tells of a young husband and wife and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money. As a sentimental story with a moral lesson about gift-giving, it has been popular for adaptation, especially for presentation at Christmas time.

Do you believe that people can change? Can a bank robber marry the banker’s daughter without having any hidden thoughts and intentions? "A Retrieved Reformation" tells the story of Jimmy, a formal prisoner, who decides to quit violating the law in the name of love. He takes up a new identity and starts a new life as an honorable man. However he is about to face a choice which can cost him his future. Will he sacrifice himself in order to save a child in danger or he will prefer to keep his old identity in secret? William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry, was an American writer who lived in the late 19th century. He gains wide popularity with his short stories which often take place either in New York or some small American towns. The plot twists and the surprise endings are a typical and integral part of O. Henry’s short stories. Some of his best known works are "The Gift of the Magi", "The Cop and the Anthem", "A Retrieved Reformation". His stories often deal with ordinary people and the individual aspects of life. As a result of the outstanding literature legacy that O. Henry left behind, there is an American annual award after his name, given to exceptional short stories.

The story is narrated by a yellow dog who lives in New York. The yellow dog recounts his life, his owners, and his love for his master (and his dislike for his master’s wife). Man and dog really do have a stronger bond in this story than man and wife, and ‘Memoirs of a Yellow Dog’ is a classic short story about our four-legged friends. O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings.

This classic series of plays, novels, and stories has been adapted, in a friendly format, for students reading at a various levels. Reading Level: 4-8 Interest Level: 6-12

Two men kidnap a mischievous boy and request a large ransom for his return.

As early as the 1780s, African Americans told stories that enabled them to survive and even thrive in the midst of unspeakable assault. Tracing previously unexplored narratives from the late eighteenth century to the 1920s, Laurie Maffly-Kipp brings to light an extraordinary trove of sweeping race histories that African Americans wove together out of racial and religious concerns. Asserting a role in God's plan, black Protestants sought to root their people in both sacred and secular time. A remarkable array of chroniclers—men and women, clergy, journalists, shoemakers, teachers, southerners and northerners—shared a belief that narrating a usable past offered hope, pride, and the promise of a better future. Combining Christian faith, American patriotism, and racial lineage to create a coherent sense of community, they linked past to present, Africa to America, and the Bible to classical literature. From collected shards of memory and emerging intellectual tools, African Americans fashioned stories that helped to restore meaning and purpose to their lives in the face of relentless oppression. In a pioneering work of research and discovery, Maffly-Kipp shows how blacks overcame the accusation that they had no history worth remembering. African American communal histories imagined a rich collective past in order to establish the claim to a rightful and respected place in the American present. Through the transformative power of storytelling, these men and women led their people—and indeed, all Americans—into a more profound understanding of their interconnectedness and their prospects for a common future.

Presents sixteen short fiction stories by nineteenth-century American author O. Henry, including the title work about the Christmas sacrifices of a young married couple.