O. Henry (1862-1910) was a prolific American short-story writer, a master of surprise endings, who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. A twist of plot, which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance, is typical of O. Henry's stories.

William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) was born in Greenboro, North Carolina. His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother and aunt. William was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen he left school, and then worked in a drug store and on a Texas ranch. He moved to Houston, where he had a number of jobs, including that of bank clerk. After moving to Austin, Texas, in 1882, he married.

In 1884 he started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. When the weekly failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. In 1897 he was convicted of embezzling money, although there has been much debate over his actual guilt. In 1898 he entered a penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.

While in prison O. Henry started to write short stories to earn money to support his daughter Margaret. His first work, «Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking» (1899), appeared in McClure's Magazine. After doing three years of the five years sentence, Porter emerged from the prison in 1901 and changed his name to O. Henry.

O. Henry moved to New York City in 1902 and from December 1903 to January 1906 he wrote a story a week for the New York World, also publishing in other magazines. Henry's first collection, Cabbages And Kings appeared in 1904. The second, The Four Million, was published two years later and included his well-known stories «The Gift of the Magi» and «The Furnished Room». The Trimmed Lamp (1907) included «The Last Leaf». Henry's best known work is perhaps the much anthologized «The Ransom of Red Chief», included in the collection Whirligigs (1910). The Heart Of The West (1907) presented tales of the Texas range. O. Henry published 10 collections and over 600 short stories during his lifetime.

O. Henry's last years were shadowed by alcoholism, ill health, and financial problems. He married Sara Lindsay Coleman in 1907, but the marriage was not happy, and they separated a year later. O. Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver on June 5, 1910, in New York. Three more collections, Sixes And Sevens (1911), Rolling Stones (1912) and Waifs And Strays (1917), appeared posthumously.

William Sidney Porter known by his pseudonym, O. Henry, was born in North Carolina. After a brief period of schooling he worked in a drugstore, then went to Texas, where after truing various professions he became a teller in a bank. When a loss of a thousand dollars was discovered, Porter, though he was innocent of the theft, fled to Central America: but on learning that his wife was on her death - bed, he returned home and was imprisoned for 3 years. After his release in 1902, he settled in New - York, writing short stories for magazines. They were published in the collections «The Four Million» 1906, «Heart of the West» 1907, «The Trimmed lamp» 1907, «The Gentle Grafted» 1908, «The Voice of the City» 1908, «Cabbages and Kings» 1904.

In this short stories O. Henry described amusing incidents of every day life in large cities on the ranches, and on the highways of America. For the most part he deliberately avoided important social themes, entertain his readers with humorous plots dependent coincidence and characterized by unexpected endings. A few of his stories touch upon serious themes. Taken as a whole, the work of O. Henry is bourgeois in its spirit. He wrote to console his readers, to cheer them up by telling them: «well, your life is hard, but then there is a possibility for a woman to marry a man - millionaire, for a man to marry a woman - millionaire, or to find something else».

O. Henry was born in 1867 in the family of a doctor in the town of Greensborough of the Northern Caroline. William became ill of tuberculosis when he was twenty years old; in wattempt at curing himself, he went to Texas. Travelling on to Texas he changed tens of professions - he was a cowboy, a druggist, a designer, a cashier, a journalist, an editor. O Henry wrote «Roads of Destiny», «Options» (1909)' «Strictly Business» (1910), «Whirlgigs». These collections were published as very interting in several magazines too. After his deuth his only novel «Cabbages and Kings» was published. He worked hard & much with literature.

O. Henry's stories, were published by the newspapers & magazines willingly, bringing them much frofit but to the writer they brought only fame. The publishers demanded him to write humouristic and funny stories with intriguing ending, standards, which the author stamped for Sunday newspapers. O. Henry dreamed about serious work.

For 10 years of his literary life he wrote more than six hundred stories, comical plays and humouristic poems.

In 1904 there appeared O. Henry's novel «Cabbages and Kings» it was followed by collections of short stories. «The Four Million» 1906, «The Trimmed Lamp» 1907, «Heart of the West» 1907 and others.

In «Cabbages and Kings» O. Henry created as he says «tragic», a comedy about the interrelations of the USA and its half - colony - the South America.

American dealers businessmen cynically interfere into political life of Latin American countries - such is the objective conclusion from «Cabbages and Kings». Satirically describing.

The Last Leaf

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called «places.» These «places» make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!

So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a «colony».

At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. «Johnsy» was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hфte of an Eighth Street «Delmonico's» and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.

That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown «places».

Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.

One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.

«She has one chance in - let us say, ten,» he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer.» And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?»

«She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day» said Sue.

«Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?»

«A man?» said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. «Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind».

«Well, it is the weakness, then,» said the doctor. «I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten.»

After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime.

Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.

She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.

As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.

Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward.

«Twelve,» she said, and little later «eleven»; and then «ten,» and «nine»; and then «eight» and «seven», almost together.

Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.

«What is it, dear?» asked Sue.

«Six,» said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. «They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now.»

«Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie.»

«Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?»

«Oh, I never heard of such nonsense,» complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. «What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self.»

«You needn't get any more wine,» said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. «There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too.»

«Johnsy, dear,» said Sue, bending over her, «will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the shade down.»

«Couldn't you draw in the other room?» asked Johnsy, coldly.

«I'd rather be here by you,» said Sue. «Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves.»

«Tell me as soon as you have finished,» said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as fallen statue, «because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves.»

«Try to sleep,» said Sue. «I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back.»

Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above.

Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker.

Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings.

«Vass!» he cried. «Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy.»

«She is very ill and weak,» said Sue, «and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet.»

«You are just like a woman!» yelled Behrman. «Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes.»

Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.

When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.

«Pull it up; I want to see,» she ordered, in a whisper.

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