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The Skylight Room
"First Mrs. Parker would show you the double parlours. You would not dare to interrupt her description of their advantages...
First published in 1906, 'The Skylight Room' is a short story written by O. Henry. The tale tells of a young woman, Miss Leeson, and her stay at one of Mrs. Parker's parlours. During her sojourn, Miss Leeson experiences hard times and is later rescued by a star. The story was first published in 1906, within a collection of short stories called 'The Four Million'.
O. Henry (1862–1910), the pen name of one William Sydney Porter in North Carolina, was an American writer who started his literary career writing short stories while incarcerated for fleeing embezzlement charges. Despite the rough start, in less than eight years, he became a bestselling author of short story collections. Today, many of his works have been adapted into award-winning films, still arousing interest and adulation for literary gems such as 'The Gift of the Magi' (1905), 'Selected Stories', and 'The Ransom of Red Chief' (1907).
First published in 1906, 'The Skylight Room' is a short story written by O. Henry. The tale tells of a young woman, Miss Leeson, and her stay at one of Mrs. Parker's parlours. During her sojourn, Miss Leeson experiences hard times and is later rescued by a star. The story was first published in 1906, within a collection of short stories called 'The Four Million'.
O. Henry (1862–1910), the pen name of one William Sydney Porter in North Carolina, was an American writer who started his literary career writing short stories while incarcerated for fleeing embezzlement charges. Despite the rough start, in less than eight years, he became a bestselling author of short story collections. Today, many of his works have been adapted into award-winning films, still arousing interest and adulation for literary gems such as 'The Gift of the Magi' (1905), 'Selected Stories', and 'The Ransom of Red Chief' (1907).
14 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1906
About the author
O. Henry
3,019 books1,985 followersSuch volumes as
Cabbages and Kings
(1904) and
The Four Million
(1906) collect short stories, noted for their often surprising endings, of American writer William Sydney Porter, who used the pen name O. Henry.
His biography shows where he found inspiration for his characters. His era produced their voices and his language.
Mother of three-year-old Porter died from tuberculosis. He left school at fifteen years of age and worked for five years in drugstore of his uncle and then for two years at a Texas sheep ranch.
In 1884, he went to Austin, where he worked in a real estate office and a church choir and spent four years as a draftsman in the general land office. His wife and firstborn died, but daughter Margaret survived him.
He failed to establish a small humorous weekly and afterward worked in poorly-run bank. When its accounts balanced not, people blamed and fired him.
In Houston, he worked for a few years until, ordered to stand trial for embezzlement, he fled to New Orleans and thence Honduras.
Two years later, he returned on account of illness of his wife. Apprehended, Porter served a few months more than three years in a penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. During his incarceration, he composed ten short stories, including A Blackjack Bargainer , The Enchanted Kiss , and The Duplicity of Hargraves .
In 1899, McClure's published Whistling Dick's Christmas Story and Georgia's Ruling .
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he sent manuscripts to New York editors. In the spring of 1902, Ainslee's Magazine offered him a regular income if he moved to New York.
In less than eight years, he became a bestselling author of collections of short stories. Cabbages and Kings came first in 1904 The Four Million, and The Trimmed Lamp and Heart of the West followed in 1907, and The Voice of the City in 1908, Roads of Destiny and Options in 1909, Strictly Business and Whirligigs in 1910 followed.
Posthumously published collections include The Gentle Grafter about the swindler, Jeff Peters; Rolling Stones , Waifs and Strays , and in 1936, unsigned stories, followed.
People rewarded other persons financially more. A Retrieved Reformation about the safe-cracker Jimmy Valentine got $250; six years later, $500 for dramatic rights, which gave over $100,000 royalties for playwright Paul Armstrong. Many stories have been made into films.
His biography shows where he found inspiration for his characters. His era produced their voices and his language.
Mother of three-year-old Porter died from tuberculosis. He left school at fifteen years of age and worked for five years in drugstore of his uncle and then for two years at a Texas sheep ranch.
In 1884, he went to Austin, where he worked in a real estate office and a church choir and spent four years as a draftsman in the general land office. His wife and firstborn died, but daughter Margaret survived him.
He failed to establish a small humorous weekly and afterward worked in poorly-run bank. When its accounts balanced not, people blamed and fired him.
In Houston, he worked for a few years until, ordered to stand trial for embezzlement, he fled to New Orleans and thence Honduras.
Two years later, he returned on account of illness of his wife. Apprehended, Porter served a few months more than three years in a penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. During his incarceration, he composed ten short stories, including A Blackjack Bargainer , The Enchanted Kiss , and The Duplicity of Hargraves .
In 1899, McClure's published Whistling Dick's Christmas Story and Georgia's Ruling .
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he sent manuscripts to New York editors. In the spring of 1902, Ainslee's Magazine offered him a regular income if he moved to New York.
In less than eight years, he became a bestselling author of collections of short stories. Cabbages and Kings came first in 1904 The Four Million, and The Trimmed Lamp and Heart of the West followed in 1907, and The Voice of the City in 1908, Roads of Destiny and Options in 1909, Strictly Business and Whirligigs in 1910 followed.
Posthumously published collections include The Gentle Grafter about the swindler, Jeff Peters; Rolling Stones , Waifs and Strays , and in 1936, unsigned stories, followed.
People rewarded other persons financially more. A Retrieved Reformation about the safe-cracker Jimmy Valentine got $250; six years later, $500 for dramatic rights, which gave over $100,000 royalties for playwright Paul Armstrong. Many stories have been made into films.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
February 16, 2023
I remember liking it and the protagonist very much but unfortunately, I read it a while back and I can’t really remember the details. It was good though I’ve read a few of his short stories, and this was one of the better ones very highly recommended.
September 25, 2018
We read because we always hope for a happy ending, don't we?
And O. Henry just knows it very well.
And O. Henry just knows it very well.
September 15, 2015
I've arranged my thoughts into a haiku:
"Doggedness can't void
The needs of a frail body,
Or an adverse room."
"Doggedness can't void
The needs of a frail body,
Or an adverse room."
November 12, 2016
Oh my Gosh the ending! He does it again!
May 29, 2022
O. Henry's "The Skylight Room" is indeed very familiar, I must have seen a version on television or heard it on Old Time Radio, because I knew I never read this short story before but I knew the ending would be this way. This is one of my favorites because I knew he the romantic angle. This story of O. Henry reminds me a little of Albert Payson Terhune's short stories.
Short story in short- Mrs. Parker's boarding house has a strange variety of working females and males but one particular Miss Leeson has the men dreaming. This story tells of her fate.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3482
Convinced by her second-floor manner that it was worth the $12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left to take charge of his brother’s orange plantation in Florida near Palm Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always spent the winters that had
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3484
the double front room with private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted something still cheaper. If you survived Mrs. Parker’s scorn, you were taken to look at Mr. Skidder’s large hall room on the third floor. Mr. Skidder’s room was not vacant. He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But every room-hunter was made to visit his room to admire the lambrequins. After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible eviction, would pay something on his rent.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert
Does she name the star Billy Jackson because she knows the doctor from afar or is he a hometown friend? Does he know her when he picks her almost dead body from the skylight room, or does he instantly care for her? I am not sure but I know they will be wed!
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3488
Then — oh, then — if you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand clutching the three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs. Parker be cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word “Clara,” she would show you her back, and march downstairs. Then Clara, the coloured maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7×8 feet of floor space at the middle of the
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3491
hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber closet or storeroom. In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser. Its four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coffin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as from a well — and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little skylight you saw a square of blue infinity.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3509
Presently the tocsin call of “Clara!” sounded to the world the state of Miss Leeson’s purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words “Two dollars!”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3511
“I’ll take it!” sighed Miss Leeson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron bed. Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes she had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps of the high stoop with the other roomers. Miss Leeson was not intended for a sky-light room when the plans were drawn for her creation. She was gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3515
she let Mr. Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy, “It’s No Kid; or, The Heir of the Subway.” There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss Leeson had time to sit on the steps for an hour or two. But Miss Longnecker, the tall blonde who taught in a public school and said, “Well, really!” to everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked in a department store,
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3519
sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat on the middle step and the men would quickly group around her. Especially Mr. Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part in a private, romantic (unspoken) drama in real life.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3531
As Mrs. Parker’s roomers sat thus one summer’s evening, Miss Leeson looked up into the firmament and cried with her little gay laugh: “Why, there’s Billy Jackson! I can see him from down here, too.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3533
All looked up — some at the windows of skyscrapers, some casting about for an airship, Jackson-guided. “It’s that star,” explained Miss Leeson, pointing with a tiny finger. “Not the big one that twinkles — the steady blue one near it. I can see it every night through my skylight. I named it Billy Jackson.” “Well, really!” said Miss Longnecker. “I didn’t know you were an astronomer, Miss Leeson.” “Oh, yes,” said the small star gazer, “I know as much as any
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3537
of them about the style of sleeves they’re going to wear next fall in Mars.” “Well, really!” said Miss Longnecker. “The star you refer to is Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia. It is nearly of the second
magnitude, and its meridian passage is—” “Oh,” said the very young Mr. Evans, “I think Billy Jackson is a much better name for it.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3544
“He doesn’t show up very well from down here,” said Miss Leeson. “You ought to see him from my room. You know you can see stars even in the daytime from the bottom of a well. At night my room is like the shaft of a coal mine, and it
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3546
makes Billy Jackson look like the big diamond pin that Night fastens her kimono with.” There came a time after that when Miss Leeson brought no formidable papers home to copy. And when she went out in the morning, instead of working, she went from office to office and let her heart melt away in the drip of cold refusals transmitted through insolent office boys. This went on. There came an evening when she wearily climbed Mrs. Parker’s stoop at the hour when she always returned from her dinner at the restaurant. But she had had no dinner.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3555
She was too weak to light the lamp or to undress. She fell upon the iron cot, her fragile body scarcely hollowing the worn springs. And in that Erebus of the skylight room, she slowly raised her heavy eyelids, and smiled. For Billy Jackson was shining down on her, calm and bright and constant through the skylight.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3557
There was no world about her. She was sunk in a pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing the star that she had so whimsically and oh, so ineffectually named. Miss Longnecker must be right; it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not let it be Gamma. As she lay on her back she tried twice to raise her arm. The third time she got two thin fingers to her lips and blew a kiss out of the black
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3560
pit to Billy Jackson. Her arm fell back limply. “Good-bye, Billy,” she murmured faintly. “You’re millions of miles away and you won’t even twinkle once. But you kept where I could see you most of the time up there when there wasn’t anything else but darkness to look at, didn’t you? . . . Millions of miles . . . Good-bye, Billy Jackson.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3565
In due time it backed up to the door with much gong-clanging, and the capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps. “Ambulance call to 49,” he said briefly. “What’s the trouble?” “Oh, yes, doctor,” sniffed Mrs. Parker, as though her trouble that there should be trouble in the house was
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3568
the greater. “I can’t think what can be the matter with her. Nothing we could do would bring her to. It’s a young woman, a Miss Elsie — yes, a Miss Elsie Leeson. Never before in my house—” “What room?” cried the doctor in a terrible voice, to which Mrs. Parker was a stranger. “The skylight room. It—” Evidently the ambulance doctor was familiar with the location of skylight rooms. He was gone up the stairs, four at a time. Mrs. Parker
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3572
followed slowly, as her dignity demanded. On the first landing she met him coming back bearing the astronomer in his arms. He stopped and let loose the practised scalpel of his tongue, not loudly. Gradually Mrs. Parker crumpled as a stiff garment that slips down from a nail. Ever afterward there remained crumples in her mind and body. Sometimes her curious roomers would ask her what the doctor said to her.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3576
“Let that be,” she would answer. “If I can get forgiveness for having heard it I will be satisfied.” The ambulance physician strode with his burden through the pack of hounds that follow the curiosity chase, and even they fell back along the sidewalk abashed, for his face was that of one who bears his own dead. They noticed that he did not lay down upon the bed prepared for it in the ambulance the form that he carried, and all that he said was:
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3579
“Drive like h––––l, Wilson,” to the driver. That is all. Is it a story? In the next morning’s paper I saw a little news item, and the last sentence of it may help you (as it helped me) to weld the incidents together. It recounted the reception into Bellevue Hospital of a young woman who had been removed from No. 49 East –––– street, suffering from debility induced by starvation. It concluded with these words:
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3583
“Dr. William Jackson, the ambulance physician who attended the case, says the patient will recover.”
Short story in short- Mrs. Parker's boarding house has a strange variety of working females and males but one particular Miss Leeson has the men dreaming. This story tells of her fate.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3482
Convinced by her second-floor manner that it was worth the $12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left to take charge of his brother’s orange plantation in Florida near Palm Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always spent the winters that had
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3484
the double front room with private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted something still cheaper. If you survived Mrs. Parker’s scorn, you were taken to look at Mr. Skidder’s large hall room on the third floor. Mr. Skidder’s room was not vacant. He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But every room-hunter was made to visit his room to admire the lambrequins. After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible eviction, would pay something on his rent.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert
Does she name the star Billy Jackson because she knows the doctor from afar or is he a hometown friend? Does he know her when he picks her almost dead body from the skylight room, or does he instantly care for her? I am not sure but I know they will be wed!
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3488
Then — oh, then — if you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand clutching the three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs. Parker be cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word “Clara,” she would show you her back, and march downstairs. Then Clara, the coloured maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7×8 feet of floor space at the middle of the
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3491
hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber closet or storeroom. In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser. Its four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coffin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as from a well — and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little skylight you saw a square of blue infinity.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3509
Presently the tocsin call of “Clara!” sounded to the world the state of Miss Leeson’s purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words “Two dollars!”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3511
“I’ll take it!” sighed Miss Leeson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron bed. Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes she had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps of the high stoop with the other roomers. Miss Leeson was not intended for a sky-light room when the plans were drawn for her creation. She was gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3515
she let Mr. Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy, “It’s No Kid; or, The Heir of the Subway.” There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss Leeson had time to sit on the steps for an hour or two. But Miss Longnecker, the tall blonde who taught in a public school and said, “Well, really!” to everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked in a department store,
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3519
sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat on the middle step and the men would quickly group around her. Especially Mr. Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part in a private, romantic (unspoken) drama in real life.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3531
As Mrs. Parker’s roomers sat thus one summer’s evening, Miss Leeson looked up into the firmament and cried with her little gay laugh: “Why, there’s Billy Jackson! I can see him from down here, too.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3533
All looked up — some at the windows of skyscrapers, some casting about for an airship, Jackson-guided. “It’s that star,” explained Miss Leeson, pointing with a tiny finger. “Not the big one that twinkles — the steady blue one near it. I can see it every night through my skylight. I named it Billy Jackson.” “Well, really!” said Miss Longnecker. “I didn’t know you were an astronomer, Miss Leeson.” “Oh, yes,” said the small star gazer, “I know as much as any
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3537
of them about the style of sleeves they’re going to wear next fall in Mars.” “Well, really!” said Miss Longnecker. “The star you refer to is Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia. It is nearly of the second
magnitude, and its meridian passage is—” “Oh,” said the very young Mr. Evans, “I think Billy Jackson is a much better name for it.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3544
“He doesn’t show up very well from down here,” said Miss Leeson. “You ought to see him from my room. You know you can see stars even in the daytime from the bottom of a well. At night my room is like the shaft of a coal mine, and it
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3546
makes Billy Jackson look like the big diamond pin that Night fastens her kimono with.” There came a time after that when Miss Leeson brought no formidable papers home to copy. And when she went out in the morning, instead of working, she went from office to office and let her heart melt away in the drip of cold refusals transmitted through insolent office boys. This went on. There came an evening when she wearily climbed Mrs. Parker’s stoop at the hour when she always returned from her dinner at the restaurant. But she had had no dinner.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3555
She was too weak to light the lamp or to undress. She fell upon the iron cot, her fragile body scarcely hollowing the worn springs. And in that Erebus of the skylight room, she slowly raised her heavy eyelids, and smiled. For Billy Jackson was shining down on her, calm and bright and constant through the skylight.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3557
There was no world about her. She was sunk in a pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing the star that she had so whimsically and oh, so ineffectually named. Miss Longnecker must be right; it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not let it be Gamma. As she lay on her back she tried twice to raise her arm. The third time she got two thin fingers to her lips and blew a kiss out of the black
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3560
pit to Billy Jackson. Her arm fell back limply. “Good-bye, Billy,” she murmured faintly. “You’re millions of miles away and you won’t even twinkle once. But you kept where I could see you most of the time up there when there wasn’t anything else but darkness to look at, didn’t you? . . . Millions of miles . . . Good-bye, Billy Jackson.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3565
In due time it backed up to the door with much gong-clanging, and the capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps. “Ambulance call to 49,” he said briefly. “What’s the trouble?” “Oh, yes, doctor,” sniffed Mrs. Parker, as though her trouble that there should be trouble in the house was
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3568
the greater. “I can’t think what can be the matter with her. Nothing we could do would bring her to. It’s a young woman, a Miss Elsie — yes, a Miss Elsie Leeson. Never before in my house—” “What room?” cried the doctor in a terrible voice, to which Mrs. Parker was a stranger. “The skylight room. It—” Evidently the ambulance doctor was familiar with the location of skylight rooms. He was gone up the stairs, four at a time. Mrs. Parker
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3572
followed slowly, as her dignity demanded. On the first landing she met him coming back bearing the astronomer in his arms. He stopped and let loose the practised scalpel of his tongue, not loudly. Gradually Mrs. Parker crumpled as a stiff garment that slips down from a nail. Ever afterward there remained crumples in her mind and body. Sometimes her curious roomers would ask her what the doctor said to her.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3576
“Let that be,” she would answer. “If I can get forgiveness for having heard it I will be satisfied.” The ambulance physician strode with his burden through the pack of hounds that follow the curiosity chase, and even they fell back along the sidewalk abashed, for his face was that of one who bears his own dead. They noticed that he did not lay down upon the bed prepared for it in the ambulance the form that he carried, and all that he said was:
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3579
“Drive like h––––l, Wilson,” to the driver. That is all. Is it a story? In the next morning’s paper I saw a little news item, and the last sentence of it may help you (as it helped me) to weld the incidents together. It recounted the reception into Bellevue Hospital of a young woman who had been removed from No. 49 East –––– street, suffering from debility induced by starvation. It concluded with these words:
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3583
“Dr. William Jackson, the ambulance physician who attended the case, says the patient will recover.”
December 31, 2017
O. Henry is a writer for the ages.
A story that could have been devastatingly sad, gave way to a hopeful and beautiful ending. Loved the twist in the end. Reaffirms my love for O. Henry all over again.
A story that could have been devastatingly sad, gave way to a hopeful and beautiful ending. Loved the twist in the end. Reaffirms my love for O. Henry all over again.
January 21, 2018
Well, if that ending is to be considered a twist in the tale at all - O. Henry, it was absolutely dumb..
April 1, 2019
Interesting.
July 31, 2023
В доме квартиры под аренду ранжированы от шикарных докторских апартаментов на первом этаже, до дрянной комнатушки на чердаке, которую снимает бедная машинистка, осевшая в Нью-Йорке. Мужчины-жильцы пытаются флиртовать, женщины-жилицы тихо ненавидят. Никто не заметил, что от плохого питания она ослабела и почти умерла, потом приехал молодой врач и спас её. Окончание автор предлагает придумать читателям самим. Видимо гонорар за рассказ был получен, а газетный формат не требовал дальше развивать повествование. Там ещё было что-то про звезду, что именно я не понял.
Ситуация конечно грустная, но написано это слащаво.
Ситуация конечно грустная, но написано это слащаво.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 13, 2025
6🌟/5🌟.
accidently reading this on 14th Feb. Okay why does this not happen to me😭. Yeah, am not jealous of Miss Leeson but HOW😭. WHY.
I also love stargazing, but maybe I'm more of Miss Longnecker, I'd refer to stars with their designated astronomical names. Maybe it's a sign to become more of Miss Leeson from now on❤️. The first time I see a blue star, I'd know it's Sirius but then I realise it ain't winter in the story and it turned out to be Gamma lol (it must be fall in the story then🤧). However, is it funny if I keep pet names to stars? I mean why not? Dayum I need to have a skylight room now.
accidently reading this on 14th Feb. Okay why does this not happen to me😭. Yeah, am not jealous of Miss Leeson but HOW😭. WHY.
I also love stargazing, but maybe I'm more of Miss Longnecker, I'd refer to stars with their designated astronomical names. Maybe it's a sign to become more of Miss Leeson from now on❤️. The first time I see a blue star, I'd know it's Sirius but then I realise it ain't winter in the story and it turned out to be Gamma lol (it must be fall in the story then🤧). However, is it funny if I keep pet names to stars? I mean why not? Dayum I need to have a skylight room now.
February 18, 2021
In my latest purview of short stories, I've realized with a shock that the second person POV is in vogue. It only seems fitting that it all began here, with one of O. Henry's lesser-known works. (Well, admittedly, I doubt it began here, but it is certainly notable in "The Skylight Room".)
Like "The Gift of the Magi", there is no tragic, horrific, and saddening end. Instead, the last scene and its closing words are enough to imbue hope into any reader.
Like "The Gift of the Magi", there is no tragic, horrific, and saddening end. Instead, the last scene and its closing words are enough to imbue hope into any reader.
June 20, 2024
The Skylight Room. I remember reading this in either middle or high school. I recall really liking this story at that time, and I do still enjoy the ending. But overall, reading this with more adult eyes, I realize this story really has not aged well in a couple respects. I now only consider it meh.
Read
February 23, 2024I generally don't get along with these stories, but to my surprise I found this very readable and got pulled in. The author's commitment to vignettes of realism doesn't interest me personally, but that's nothing on him. Didn't realize it was supposed to be a twist story until I saw other reviews.
May 10, 2025
I learned of this story either yesterday or the day before, when I was reading about Hetty Green. It... leaves a lot to be desired, though I do like the personal naming of a star; that was cute at least. Other than that, *shrug*
February 27, 2020
I had a Berif converation with a literature major and there was a suggestion of a bunch of short stories, O.Henry came up I don't dislike them but I might need a thesaurus.
May 1, 2021
The fat dude should have bought himself a StairMaster™.
November 5, 2022
I almost cried at the perfection of this story.
December 24, 2023
Very sweet! I could actually understand this one!
December 29, 2024
Narrated on the 1001 Classic Stories and Tales podcast by Jon Hagadorn.
June 20, 2025
What a wonderfully hopeful twist in this O. Henry story, I really enjoyed it!
January 12, 2026
Not my thing as stories go, but OK.
March 14, 2026
One may find hope in a room so isolated and small that all that may be seen is a star. Kristi & Abby Tabby
August 28, 2026
Be your own hero.
January 31, 2022
One of these days i am gonna name a star something cute as well. 💙
December 5, 2013
This is a wonderful story that touched my heart.
Read
October 31, 2018eh, wasn't for me.
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