A Service of Love
O. HenryTwo young artists quietly sacrifice for each other when money runs out and their shared creative life is threatened.
10 min · Tender
The story shelf
Follow your curiosity.
A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
Springtime à la Carte
O. HenryA struggling typist finds spring, memory, and a lost love hiding among the daily dishes on a restaurant menu.
10 min · Romantic
The Gift of the Magi
O. HenryDella has one dollar and eighty-seven cents, and one day left to buy her husband a Christmas present worth giving.
9 min · Tender
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 Romance of a Busy Broker
O. HenryA relentlessly busy Wall Street broker finally pauses long enough to make a romantic gesture to his quiet stenographer.
6 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
Transients in Arcadia
O. HenryTwo working New Yorkers spend a week pretending to be wealthy guests at a Broadway hotel and find an unexpected kindred spirit.
9 min · Romantic
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
10 stories