欧·亨利(O. Henry,1862年9月11日-1910年6月5日),原名为威廉?西德尼?波特William
Sydney
Porter,欧?亨利是其笔名。美国著名批判现实主义作家,世界三大短篇小说大师之一。曾被评论界誉为曼哈顿桂冠散文作家和美国现代短篇小说之父。他的短篇小说构思精巧,风格独特,以表现美国中下层人民的生活、语言幽默、结局出人意料(即“欧?亨利式结尾”)而闻名于世。
目錄:
The Gift of the Magi
The Man Higher Up
Confessions of a Humorist
The Last Leaf
Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet
The Marionettes
The Roads We Take
Conscience in Art
A Retrieved Reformation
The Romance of a Busy Broker
Roads of Destiny
After Twenty Years
Witches'' Loaves
The Pimienta Pancakes
The Chair of Philanthromathematics.
By Courier
The Sphinx Apple
Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen .
Next to Reading Matter
While the Auto Waits
The Princess and the Puma
The Whirligig of Life
An Unfinished Story
The Love-Philtre ofIkey Schoenstein
Psyche and the Pskyscraper
Between Rounds
The Mammon and the Archer
Shearing the Wolf
One Thousand Dollars
The Cop and the Anthem
A Service of Love
The Count and the Wedding Guest
A Cosmopolite in a Care
Buried Treasure
A Double-Dyed Deceiver
The Hand that Riles the World
Hearts and Hands
The Furnished Room
The Green Door
A Municipal Report
The Exact Science of Matrimony
Springtime a la Carte
Skylight Room
The Handbook of Hymen
The Pendulum
內容試閱:
“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he
takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island
chorus girl. But what could I do—oh! What could I do with a dollar
and eighty-seven cents?” At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the
frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the
chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and
sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always
entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the
first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a
habit for saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday
things, and now she whispered: “Please God, make him think I am
still pretty.”
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin
and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two—and to be
burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without
gloves. 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.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him. “Jim, darling,”
she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and
sold 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.”
“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had
not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental
labor.
“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as
well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”
Jim looked about the room curiously.