One Thousand Dollars
O. HenryA carefree young heir must explain how he spends a thousand-dollar bequest before learning what the money may truly be worth.
10 min · Bittersweet
The story shelf
Follow your curiosity.
A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
The Brief Debut of Tildy
O. HenryA plain waitress mistakes one impulsive kiss for her long-awaited entrance into the glamorous world of romance.
10 min · Bittersweet
The Cop and the Anthem
O. HenryA homeless New Yorker tries every trick he can think of to secure a warm winter bed behind bars.
10 min · Humorous
The Duplicity of Hargraves
O. HenryA proud former Confederate officer is offended when an actor turns his old-fashioned manners and clothes into a theatrical sensation.
22 min · Bittersweet
The Furnished Room
O. HenryA young man searching for a vanished singer rents a decaying room whose lingering traces seem to answer his longing.
11 min · Melancholy
The Last Leaf
O. HenryIn a Greenwich Village artists' colony, a gravely ill young painter ties her fate to the last leaf on a neighboring vine.
11 min · Bittersweet
The Pendulum
O. HenryWhen his wife unexpectedly leaves for the night, a bored husband discovers how much of his ordinary life he has taken for granted.
8 min · Humorous
The Skylight Room
O. HenryA struggling typist finds a small, private universe in the star she watches through the skylight of her attic room.
10 min · Melancholy
The Third Ingredient
O. HenryTwo struggling women share a makeshift stew, while a mysterious stranger arrives carrying the one ingredient they lack.
21 min · Tender
The Trimmed Lamp
O. HenryTwo young working women pursue very different futures in a city where wages, style, and marriage all promise escape.
20 min · Bittersweet
The Whirligig of Life
O. HenryA mountain couple arrives at a makeshift court demanding a divorce, only to discover that separation may be harder than marriage.
10 min · Humorous
Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen
O. HenryEvery Thanksgiving, a wealthy old man takes a homeless stranger to dinner, preserving a private tradition neither can bear to break.
9 min · Tender
Mōri Sensei
Ryūnosuke AkutagawaYears after leaving school, a former pupil remembers the aging English teacher his class turned into an object of relentless laughter.
25 min · Bittersweet
The Ball
Ryūnosuke AkutagawaAt Tokyo’s dazzling Rokumeikan ball in 1886, a seventeen-year-old Japanese woman dances for the first time with a visiting French naval officer.
11 min · Nostalgic
The Handkerchief
Ryūnosuke AkutagawaA university professor receives a bereaved mother whose composed manner appears to embody the ideal he has made of Japanese restraint.
15 min · Reflective