THE PENDULUM: We take things for granted, esp. Story is about, how they both play an important role in each other’s life for fulfillment of their destinies. A painter at the sunset of his age still believes that he’s going to create a masterpiece. THE LAST LEAF: A young woman suffering from pneumonia believes that she’ll die when the last leaf from the Ivy vine outside her room will fall. This one is wonderfully written and based on French backgrounds of the times of kings and queens. Each road leads him into a different kind of life but the ultimate destiny that awaits him is same. 3 sub-stories then predict his destiny based on the road he picks. After travelling for 3 leagues, he reached a point where road diverts into two branches, so he had 3 options, take left take right or go back to village. David Mignot (poet by choice and shepherd by luck) after a fight with Yvonne, his love interest, leaves village (Vernoy) for Paris to be a poet of name and fame or atleast to be someone. ROADS OF DESTINY: Longest and most intriguing story of the book. Now, without wasting any more words let me get straight into the tales in the order of my penchant. Language is bit difficult to grab (with some difficult words that may require you to consult Dictionary and old writing style) at the start but after 1 or 2 stories, one can easily adjust to O Henry’s kind of writing, which is both funny as well as moving at times.
These stories are funny, poignant, touching and very human in content and, as is with works of O Henry, all of them end with an unexpected twist. ‘THE BEST OF O HENRY’ is filled with 20 tales of master short storyteller who have allured the mind of readers for such a long time. So when I found 4 of those cherished stories in “Best of O Henry”, I’d no option but to go for it, and it really presented me with a gratifying journey back to those memorable days of my life. Since in those days I wasn’t that freak about books and literature, so lost tracks of their authors and all. Know All’, ‘On my 70th Birthday’, ‘The Gift of Magi’, ‘After 20 years’ etc) that I really liked and the idea of them still lingers in my mind. In my 7th to 12th Standard English Textbooks, there’re lots of stories (‘Mr.
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