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The Four Million
The Four Million (1906) is a collection of short stories by American writer O. Henry. Inspired by his experiences as a fugitive and in prison, these stories address themes of poverty, persecution, and hope.
The Four Million refers to the population of New York City, where O. Henry was living at the time of its composition. Containing twenty-five works of short fiction, the collection includes several of the author's best-known stories. "The Gift of the Magi" is a heartwarming story of a young married couple who struggle to afford gifts for one another in the days leading up to Christmas. Delia, placing her husband's happiness before her own, sells her own hair in order to afford a platinum pocket watch chain. When she returns home, however, she finds that Jim has made a similar sacrifice. In "The Skylight Room," a typist named Miss Leeson tries to find work while renting the smallest room at Mrs. Parker's boarding house. In a moment of quiet desperation, she names a star "Billy Jackson" while staring out of the room's tiny skylight, a view she soon struggles to afford. "The Cop and the Anthem" follows a homeless man named Soapy. As winter approaches, he commits a series of petty crimes in order to be taken to the shelter of jail. When his attempts fail, however, he discovers that justice has a cruel way of revealing itself. The Four Million, one of O. Henry's finest works, is an exemplary collection of short fiction that showcases the author's empathetic and hopeful outlook on poverty and American life. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of O. Henry's The Four Million is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.
The Four Million refers to the population of New York City, where O. Henry was living at the time of its composition. Containing twenty-five works of short fiction, the collection includes several of the author's best-known stories. "The Gift of the Magi" is a heartwarming story of a young married couple who struggle to afford gifts for one another in the days leading up to Christmas. Delia, placing her husband's happiness before her own, sells her own hair in order to afford a platinum pocket watch chain. When she returns home, however, she finds that Jim has made a similar sacrifice. In "The Skylight Room," a typist named Miss Leeson tries to find work while renting the smallest room at Mrs. Parker's boarding house. In a moment of quiet desperation, she names a star "Billy Jackson" while staring out of the room's tiny skylight, a view she soon struggles to afford. "The Cop and the Anthem" follows a homeless man named Soapy. As winter approaches, he commits a series of petty crimes in order to be taken to the shelter of jail. When his attempts fail, however, he discovers that justice has a cruel way of revealing itself. The Four Million, one of O. Henry's finest works, is an exemplary collection of short fiction that showcases the author's empathetic and hopeful outlook on poverty and American life. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of O. Henry's The Four Million is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.
154 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1906
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About the author
O. Henry
2,913 books1,861 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 - 30 of 102 reviews
August 30, 2024
The Four Million is a descriptive title — it was the approximate number of people living in New York City in the first decade of the 20th century. These stories are all New York tales. O. Henry was a principal architect of the mythology of NYC — a city he imagined as Baghdad on the Subway, invoking the image of adventure from the Arabian Nights. On his page, New York tenements, boarding houses, bars, eateries, parks, and dancehalls took on the exotic cast of those fabled, Oriental scenes. He created this enduring mythology one newspaper column at a time.
O. Henry wrote mostly of the city’s small folk — struggling artists, wretchedly payed shop girls and typists, young couples barely surviving, immigrants, homeless bums, cops (always Irish), cabbies. The adventures described are those of the small folk, mostly involving finding love or getting married. They are sentimental tales, but O.Henry’s clever wit and irony usually saved them from being merely maudlin.
O. Henry liked to play with language and slang. This can be an impediment to reading these tales as much of his verbiage, now well over a hundred years away from current, is dated and initially awkward to the ear. But if you can catch his rhythm, tap into the era’s argot that was his creative toolkit, you will find rich rewards.
(This is not an even collection — my four star rating reflects the excellence of the best and better tales rather than an overall average)
Tobin’s Palm: An Irish immigrant visits a Coney Island palm reader for insight on finding his Katie who came over after him and has disappeared into the vastness of the city. Her cryptic advice and how he and his less superstitious pal follow it gives the tale.
3 1/2 ⭐️
The Gift of the Magi: A poor young couple make serious sacrifices to give each other meaningful gifts for Christmas. Quite possibly O. Henry’s best known and most loved tale.
5 ⭐️
A Cosmopolite in a Cafe: Our narrator meets in a bar a world traveler, a man who claims to be a true citizen of the world, a decrier of nationalism, regionalism, patriotism, a proponent of the brotherhood of all mankind, address Earth, the Universe. But has place of birth no claims? Drinks will tell.
4⭐️
Between Rounds: An epic marital food fight with abundant broken crockery is interrupted by a call to alarm of a missing tike.
3 ⭐️
The Skylight Room: An impoverished working girl typist starves in the tiny room she can barely afford, and is rescued by her star.
3 ⭐️
A Service of Love: A young couple, one an aspiring concert pianist, the other a struggling artist, strive to serve their art while struggling with realities of survival in the city.
2 1/2 ⭐️
The Coming Out of Maggie: A tale of a lonely lass desperate for a date to the dance taking extraordinary measures. Not much as a story, but of historical interest illustrating the antagonism between Irish and Italian immigrants in NYC in the first decade of the 20th century.
2 1/2 ⭐️
Man About Town: The narrator searches first for an adequate definition of “the man about town,” then to meet a sample of the fabled type. The ending twist is clever but obvious. This story was such a random mishmash of verbiage as to be nearly unintelligible to the modern ear.
2 ⭐️
The Cop and the Anthem: Winter almost upon him, a bench dwelling bum undertakes to get himself arrested on some minor charge for his annual, 3-month jail holiday. Complications abound, and of course, an ironic twist at the end. One of O. Henry’s best known tales, often recreated in other formats.
5 ⭐️
An Adjustment of Nature: ”Deep down in his sunless soul he was either a prince, a fool, or an artist.” A trio of struggling creative types conspire to keep their favorite waitress at the hash house they frequent from being purloined by a newly rich Klondike prospector. A bookended beginning and ending was an unexpected touch.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Memoirs of a Yellow Dog: A dog narrates his role in an unhappy marriage. Not one of my favorites.
2 ⭐️
The Love Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein: In a rivalry over a young lass, sometimes a little extra is needed, and a shy pharmacist calls upon his professional skills to best the credulous hunk, his rival. But the best laid plans sometimes take unexpected twists.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Mammon and the Archer: In hopeless affairs of the heart, what can possibly prevail, love or money? A rare story focused on a millionaire, but still an outsider, as he worked for his fortune. ”I bet my money on money every time.”
3 1/2 ⭐️
Springtime à la Carte: Another lost love found through unlikely circumstance — a restaurant bill of fare. (O. Henry wrote this one on a challenge that he couldn’t come up with a story based on a bill of fare.) More sentimental than clever.
2 1/2 ⭐️
The Green Door: A tale of adventure in the city. A young man is twice given a handbill bearing a cryptic, enigmatic message — “The Green Door” — unlike all the other handbills being distributed. Feeling mysteriously chosen, he finds the door of green, knocks, and discovers a damsel in distress in the form of a starving shop girl. He rescues her, a spark is struck, but what of the mysterious handbill?
4 ⭐️
From the Cabby’s Seat: A drunken cabby, his young female fare, and a major misunderstanding. Ending felt a wee bit far fetched.
3 ⭐️
An Unfinished Story: A story of a six dollar a week shop girl, preparing for a date with the infamous Piggy, who always spends big on the girls. Much is left implied, and the author bookends the tale with a glimpse of Heavenly judgement on those who employ shop girls at six dollars a week.
”There is this difference between a furnished room and a boarding house — in a furnished room, other people do not know it when you go hungry.”
3 ⭐️
The Caliph, Cupid, and the Clock: An ultimatum and a time sensitive token to signify forgiveness leaves a young lover in despair, but he receives wisdom from a bum in the park who claims to be a prince.
”There must be no clocks…they measure our follies and limit our pleasures.”
3 1/2 ⭐️
Sisters of the Golden Circle: Newlyweds touring the city, a burglar on the lam, a case of mistaken identity, and solidarity between brides.
3 1/2 ⭐️
The Romance of a Busy Broker: If you listened to O. Henry stories you’d get the idea that New York was full of people either too drunk or too busy to remember they just got married.
2 ⭐️
After Twenty Years: My favorite of all O. Henry tales. A man who left New York to make his fortune in the West comes back to keep a promised appointment made twenty years before with his childhood chum. When they meet, they discover that life took them in startlingly different directions. The ending twist is perfection.
5 ⭐️
Lost On Dress Parade: This story of a couple of young strangers having dinner together, each play acting at being other than they are smacks of a morality tale aimed at the small folk. Don’t care for that.
2 ⭐️
By Courier: An estranged couple, seated across the park on different benches, make use of a wise-cracking kid as their go between and interpreter. Clever and fun.
4 1/2 ⭐️
The Furnished Room: A young man scours the city’s furnished rooms known to be frequented by theater folk, searching for his lost love. The surprisingly dark ending twist reunites them.
”They sing Home Sweet Home in ragtime”
3 ⭐️
The Brief Debut of Tildy: A plain waitress works side by side with her beautiful friend who gets constant attention. One day, a usually quiet customer gets fresh with the plain girl, which for a brief time elevates her and fills her with pride —until the next time that customer returns.
”He ain’t anything of a gentleman or he would never have apologized.”
3 1/2 ⭐️
O. Henry wrote mostly of the city’s small folk — struggling artists, wretchedly payed shop girls and typists, young couples barely surviving, immigrants, homeless bums, cops (always Irish), cabbies. The adventures described are those of the small folk, mostly involving finding love or getting married. They are sentimental tales, but O.Henry’s clever wit and irony usually saved them from being merely maudlin.
O. Henry liked to play with language and slang. This can be an impediment to reading these tales as much of his verbiage, now well over a hundred years away from current, is dated and initially awkward to the ear. But if you can catch his rhythm, tap into the era’s argot that was his creative toolkit, you will find rich rewards.
(This is not an even collection — my four star rating reflects the excellence of the best and better tales rather than an overall average)
Tobin’s Palm: An Irish immigrant visits a Coney Island palm reader for insight on finding his Katie who came over after him and has disappeared into the vastness of the city. Her cryptic advice and how he and his less superstitious pal follow it gives the tale.
3 1/2 ⭐️
The Gift of the Magi: A poor young couple make serious sacrifices to give each other meaningful gifts for Christmas. Quite possibly O. Henry’s best known and most loved tale.
5 ⭐️
A Cosmopolite in a Cafe: Our narrator meets in a bar a world traveler, a man who claims to be a true citizen of the world, a decrier of nationalism, regionalism, patriotism, a proponent of the brotherhood of all mankind, address Earth, the Universe. But has place of birth no claims? Drinks will tell.
4⭐️
Between Rounds: An epic marital food fight with abundant broken crockery is interrupted by a call to alarm of a missing tike.
3 ⭐️
The Skylight Room: An impoverished working girl typist starves in the tiny room she can barely afford, and is rescued by her star.
3 ⭐️
A Service of Love: A young couple, one an aspiring concert pianist, the other a struggling artist, strive to serve their art while struggling with realities of survival in the city.
2 1/2 ⭐️
The Coming Out of Maggie: A tale of a lonely lass desperate for a date to the dance taking extraordinary measures. Not much as a story, but of historical interest illustrating the antagonism between Irish and Italian immigrants in NYC in the first decade of the 20th century.
2 1/2 ⭐️
Man About Town: The narrator searches first for an adequate definition of “the man about town,” then to meet a sample of the fabled type. The ending twist is clever but obvious. This story was such a random mishmash of verbiage as to be nearly unintelligible to the modern ear.
2 ⭐️
The Cop and the Anthem: Winter almost upon him, a bench dwelling bum undertakes to get himself arrested on some minor charge for his annual, 3-month jail holiday. Complications abound, and of course, an ironic twist at the end. One of O. Henry’s best known tales, often recreated in other formats.
5 ⭐️
An Adjustment of Nature: ”Deep down in his sunless soul he was either a prince, a fool, or an artist.” A trio of struggling creative types conspire to keep their favorite waitress at the hash house they frequent from being purloined by a newly rich Klondike prospector. A bookended beginning and ending was an unexpected touch.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Memoirs of a Yellow Dog: A dog narrates his role in an unhappy marriage. Not one of my favorites.
2 ⭐️
The Love Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein: In a rivalry over a young lass, sometimes a little extra is needed, and a shy pharmacist calls upon his professional skills to best the credulous hunk, his rival. But the best laid plans sometimes take unexpected twists.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Mammon and the Archer: In hopeless affairs of the heart, what can possibly prevail, love or money? A rare story focused on a millionaire, but still an outsider, as he worked for his fortune. ”I bet my money on money every time.”
3 1/2 ⭐️
Springtime à la Carte: Another lost love found through unlikely circumstance — a restaurant bill of fare. (O. Henry wrote this one on a challenge that he couldn’t come up with a story based on a bill of fare.) More sentimental than clever.
2 1/2 ⭐️
The Green Door: A tale of adventure in the city. A young man is twice given a handbill bearing a cryptic, enigmatic message — “The Green Door” — unlike all the other handbills being distributed. Feeling mysteriously chosen, he finds the door of green, knocks, and discovers a damsel in distress in the form of a starving shop girl. He rescues her, a spark is struck, but what of the mysterious handbill?
4 ⭐️
From the Cabby’s Seat: A drunken cabby, his young female fare, and a major misunderstanding. Ending felt a wee bit far fetched.
3 ⭐️
An Unfinished Story: A story of a six dollar a week shop girl, preparing for a date with the infamous Piggy, who always spends big on the girls. Much is left implied, and the author bookends the tale with a glimpse of Heavenly judgement on those who employ shop girls at six dollars a week.
”There is this difference between a furnished room and a boarding house — in a furnished room, other people do not know it when you go hungry.”
3 ⭐️
The Caliph, Cupid, and the Clock: An ultimatum and a time sensitive token to signify forgiveness leaves a young lover in despair, but he receives wisdom from a bum in the park who claims to be a prince.
”There must be no clocks…they measure our follies and limit our pleasures.”
3 1/2 ⭐️
Sisters of the Golden Circle: Newlyweds touring the city, a burglar on the lam, a case of mistaken identity, and solidarity between brides.
3 1/2 ⭐️
The Romance of a Busy Broker: If you listened to O. Henry stories you’d get the idea that New York was full of people either too drunk or too busy to remember they just got married.
2 ⭐️
After Twenty Years: My favorite of all O. Henry tales. A man who left New York to make his fortune in the West comes back to keep a promised appointment made twenty years before with his childhood chum. When they meet, they discover that life took them in startlingly different directions. The ending twist is perfection.
5 ⭐️
Lost On Dress Parade: This story of a couple of young strangers having dinner together, each play acting at being other than they are smacks of a morality tale aimed at the small folk. Don’t care for that.
2 ⭐️
By Courier: An estranged couple, seated across the park on different benches, make use of a wise-cracking kid as their go between and interpreter. Clever and fun.
4 1/2 ⭐️
The Furnished Room: A young man scours the city’s furnished rooms known to be frequented by theater folk, searching for his lost love. The surprisingly dark ending twist reunites them.
”They sing Home Sweet Home in ragtime”
3 ⭐️
The Brief Debut of Tildy: A plain waitress works side by side with her beautiful friend who gets constant attention. One day, a usually quiet customer gets fresh with the plain girl, which for a brief time elevates her and fills her with pride —until the next time that customer returns.
”He ain’t anything of a gentleman or he would never have apologized.”
3 1/2 ⭐️
September 1, 2011
You think O. Henry and you think unexpected twist and romances and happy endings, but one thing that really struck me throughout all these New York stories is that O. Henry's world is really very dangerous and very scary. People could literally starve to death, regularly brawl in the streets, be ruined by a husband, resort to suicide and that very present loneliness of the big city, which enables the cute turns, but also presents very real risks.
December 31, 2020
Very entertaining, lighthearted and funny stories with often surprise endings. The author is a superbly versatile language master and clearly enjoys writing. Wise cracks and original descriptions galore:
‘Gradually Mrs. Parker crumpled as a stiff garment that slips down from a nail.’
‘He arose, joint by joint, as a carpenter’s rule opens,...’
‘Sarah’s fingers danced like midgets above a summer stream.’ (She is typewriting)
‘He was fat; he had the soul of a rat, the habits of a bat, and the magnanimity of a cat...’
‘“Name is Mr. Wiggins.” By such epithet was Piggy known to unfortunate ones who had to take him seriously.’
‘The young lady had been Maxwell’s stenographer for a year. She was beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstenographic.’
Highly recommended in case you’re a little sad, sure to make you smile again.
‘Gradually Mrs. Parker crumpled as a stiff garment that slips down from a nail.’
‘He arose, joint by joint, as a carpenter’s rule opens,...’
‘Sarah’s fingers danced like midgets above a summer stream.’ (She is typewriting)
‘He was fat; he had the soul of a rat, the habits of a bat, and the magnanimity of a cat...’
‘“Name is Mr. Wiggins.” By such epithet was Piggy known to unfortunate ones who had to take him seriously.’
‘The young lady had been Maxwell’s stenographer for a year. She was beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstenographic.’
Highly recommended in case you’re a little sad, sure to make you smile again.
May 3, 2014
The Four Million is the second collection of short stories by O Henry that was published in 1906. The title refers to the population of New York City at that time and is where all the stories are based. I like such random links.
The common thread that runs through most if not all the stories in the collection is the soullessness of the big city. The city is a paradoxical mix of promise and glitz and suffering and the different characters conjured up by the writer take us through the diverse array of emotions that the common dreamy failing resident of the city goes through.
The collection is solid. Some stories clearly stand out like The Gift of the Magi (which along with The Last Leaf from his third collection is probably amongst his most famous stories). Another favorite of mine is The Cop and the Anthem – A story of a destitute street dweller who is scared of the fast approaching winter and is trying his best to go to the warm and cozy confines of a prison.
O Henry is a master capturer of the human condition. He blends misery with humor to bring out a potent flavor. Of course the language itself is not completely what we are used to in the 21st century, but it is not a significant deterrent as well. I mean he uses words like ‘pulchritude’. Before you go for the dictionary, let me tell you that it means ‘beauty’. So you get the idea… Having said that, will I recommend this collection of short stories? Yes. Go for it, especially all you lovers of short fiction and those who one day might be…
The common thread that runs through most if not all the stories in the collection is the soullessness of the big city. The city is a paradoxical mix of promise and glitz and suffering and the different characters conjured up by the writer take us through the diverse array of emotions that the common dreamy failing resident of the city goes through.
The collection is solid. Some stories clearly stand out like The Gift of the Magi (which along with The Last Leaf from his third collection is probably amongst his most famous stories). Another favorite of mine is The Cop and the Anthem – A story of a destitute street dweller who is scared of the fast approaching winter and is trying his best to go to the warm and cozy confines of a prison.
O Henry is a master capturer of the human condition. He blends misery with humor to bring out a potent flavor. Of course the language itself is not completely what we are used to in the 21st century, but it is not a significant deterrent as well. I mean he uses words like ‘pulchritude’. Before you go for the dictionary, let me tell you that it means ‘beauty’. So you get the idea… Having said that, will I recommend this collection of short stories? Yes. Go for it, especially all you lovers of short fiction and those who one day might be…
August 17, 2025
ENGLISH: 25 short stories by O.Henry. This is the second time I've read them all. Some of them (the best) I've read more times. Those I liked best are the following:
In the first place: The gift of the Magi, The cop & the anthem and Mammon & the archer.
In the second place: Toby's palm, A service of love, Springtime à la carte, The green door, The romance of a busy broker and By courier.
ESPAÑOL: 25 relatos cortos de O. Henry. Esta es la segunda vez que los he leído. Algunos (los mejores) los he leído más veces. Los que más me han gustado son los siguientes:
En primer lugar: El regalo de los Reyes Magos, El policía y el himno y Mamón y el arquero.
En segundo lugar: La palma de Toby, Un servicio de amor, Primavera a la carta, La puerta verde, El romance de un corredor de bolsa muy ocupado y Por mensajero.
In the first place: The gift of the Magi, The cop & the anthem and Mammon & the archer.
In the second place: Toby's palm, A service of love, Springtime à la carte, The green door, The romance of a busy broker and By courier.
ESPAÑOL: 25 relatos cortos de O. Henry. Esta es la segunda vez que los he leído. Algunos (los mejores) los he leído más veces. Los que más me han gustado son los siguientes:
En primer lugar: El regalo de los Reyes Magos, El policía y el himno y Mamón y el arquero.
En segundo lugar: La palma de Toby, Un servicio de amor, Primavera a la carta, La puerta verde, El romance de un corredor de bolsa muy ocupado y Por mensajero.
July 7, 2008
O Henry began to write this collection of short stories about New Yorkers in response to a high society businessman who claimed that in New York there were only about 40 people worth writing about. O Henry's love of the common man shows through these delicious candy-like stories with that classic O'Henry twist at the end. One of his most favorite, The Gift of the Magi, you have probably heard of and maybe moved to tears by the pair's classic tale of sacrifice in love.
April 30, 2023
Clever and imaginative collection of short stories. Welcome O. Henry's New York City.
October 11, 2018
“’Tis a weary thing to count your pleasures by summers instead of hours.”
First published in 1906, this collection still resonates with wit and insight. Each story ends with a twist, usually but not always pleasant. Even knowing its coming, the reader is rewarded with a surprise.
“The almanac lied and said spring had come. Spring comes when it comes.”
O. Henry loved New York City every bit as much as Walt Whitman, if not so poetically, though the NYC they heralded may be as distant as the hanging gardens of Babylon.
“Gabriel had played his trump; and those of us who couldn’t follow suit ….”
O. Henry loved words: big words, French words, slang words, puns. His stories are a verbal fusillade. Modern electronic readers will find themselves seeking help deciphering his prose.
“In Soapy’s opinion the law was more benign than Philanthropy.”
Over a hundred year old, this story reflects some attitudes now discarded. O. Henry seemed to love his neighbor, even if he expresses himself in a manner which might set modern teeth on edge. (You’ve been warned.)
“We can’t buy one minute with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.”
First published in 1906, this collection still resonates with wit and insight. Each story ends with a twist, usually but not always pleasant. Even knowing its coming, the reader is rewarded with a surprise.
“The almanac lied and said spring had come. Spring comes when it comes.”
O. Henry loved New York City every bit as much as Walt Whitman, if not so poetically, though the NYC they heralded may be as distant as the hanging gardens of Babylon.
“Gabriel had played his trump; and those of us who couldn’t follow suit ….”
O. Henry loved words: big words, French words, slang words, puns. His stories are a verbal fusillade. Modern electronic readers will find themselves seeking help deciphering his prose.
“In Soapy’s opinion the law was more benign than Philanthropy.”
Over a hundred year old, this story reflects some attitudes now discarded. O. Henry seemed to love his neighbor, even if he expresses himself in a manner which might set modern teeth on edge. (You’ve been warned.)
“We can’t buy one minute with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.”
September 5, 2022
Some of the best stories by O. Henry are in this collection. My favorites are:
-The gift of the Magi
-A service of love (very similar to the previous)
-Tobin’s palm
-The cop and the anthem
-Springtime a la carte
-The green door
-From the cabbie’s seat
-The gift of the Magi
-A service of love (very similar to the previous)
-Tobin’s palm
-The cop and the anthem
-Springtime a la carte
-The green door
-From the cabbie’s seat
April 1, 2013
THE FOUR MILLION
"Tales of olde New York--Woodhouse with a Bitter Twist"
This anthology contains 25 tales of old New York city at the dawn of the 20th century. Plus the bonus of 4 tales set in the exotic tropics of a fictitious banana republic. O. Henry focuses his curious microscope on the diverse lives of various residents of this metropolis. A few protagonists claim idle-rich status, but most represent the middle class or poverty-stricken milieus. Indulgent readers will discover the flavor of a century past, rub shoulders with men on the other side of the law, commiserate with thwarted lovers--trustingly expecting the typical O Henry twist at the end.
But the author's style represents more than his own inspiration as several tales remind us of Woodhouse's moonstruck romantic pairs--or "Love--American style", in which we do not take their amorous escapades seriously. Then, to throw us off guard, he spikes the anthology with a few pathetic and even tragic stories. One wonders if he was trying gently and mildly to raise social consciousness.
Various ethnic groups with their inherent city-acquired bigotry become
the target of his witty pen: mainly the Irish, but also Italians. Told in the first as well as third person, some in slang and one offering a canine narrator, this collection includes antiquated vocabulary words
intermingled with literary, Biblical and artsy references. Plus a
liberal sprinkling of foreign words to research. Like the British
before him, O. Henry contemplates the danger of the temptations of a
tropical Paadise. Will Yankees "go native" as so many British did
before them? The real challenge, of course, is to choose your five favorites!
(April 1, 2012. I welcome dilaogue with teachers.)
"Tales of olde New York--Woodhouse with a Bitter Twist"
This anthology contains 25 tales of old New York city at the dawn of the 20th century. Plus the bonus of 4 tales set in the exotic tropics of a fictitious banana republic. O. Henry focuses his curious microscope on the diverse lives of various residents of this metropolis. A few protagonists claim idle-rich status, but most represent the middle class or poverty-stricken milieus. Indulgent readers will discover the flavor of a century past, rub shoulders with men on the other side of the law, commiserate with thwarted lovers--trustingly expecting the typical O Henry twist at the end.
But the author's style represents more than his own inspiration as several tales remind us of Woodhouse's moonstruck romantic pairs--or "Love--American style", in which we do not take their amorous escapades seriously. Then, to throw us off guard, he spikes the anthology with a few pathetic and even tragic stories. One wonders if he was trying gently and mildly to raise social consciousness.
Various ethnic groups with their inherent city-acquired bigotry become
the target of his witty pen: mainly the Irish, but also Italians. Told in the first as well as third person, some in slang and one offering a canine narrator, this collection includes antiquated vocabulary words
intermingled with literary, Biblical and artsy references. Plus a
liberal sprinkling of foreign words to research. Like the British
before him, O. Henry contemplates the danger of the temptations of a
tropical Paadise. Will Yankees "go native" as so many British did
before them? The real challenge, of course, is to choose your five favorites!
(April 1, 2012. I welcome dilaogue with teachers.)
November 9, 2011
A collection of O. Henry’s short stories bearing his trademark irony, comic misunderstandings, and surprise endings. I liked the memorable characters, the humorous slang, and O. Henry’s use of obscure vocabulary and analogies.
Besides the popular The Gift of the Magi, I also liked the stories Between Rounds, The Cop and the Anthem, Lost on Dress Parade, Memoirs of a Yellow Dog, and A Service of Love.
I listened to the free Librivox audiobook of The Four Million.
Besides the popular The Gift of the Magi, I also liked the stories Between Rounds, The Cop and the Anthem, Lost on Dress Parade, Memoirs of a Yellow Dog, and A Service of Love.
I listened to the free Librivox audiobook of The Four Million.
August 1, 2022
This was a family bookclub selection, picked by my uncle, a nostalgic fan of O. Henry. I selected this collection of stories, his second, for its focus on New York City and in particular the titular response to an Astor socialite claiming not but 400 individuals were worth knowing in the City. These are humble stories of everyday ‘types’ of people. At times they appear more as caricatures, frequently with mild to offensive depictions. Surely these may represent the time, yet the cringe-worthiness of the words or images remain.
At its highest achievement, there are stories of tenderness, love and generosity. Others are humorous, ironic and entertaining. All follow a formula of conceit with a surprise ending. They are short, simply-structured, often with a paragraph here or there unrelated to the narrative which provides foreshadowing and setup to the punchline. After 25 stories the repetition from my perspective was a bit much, lacking some greater, deeper meaning.
They were written in 1901, before Joyce wrote Dubliners. And yet those stories are what my heart and head contemplate. If in Joyce one finds a perfectly-structured, beautifully-worded story, in O. Henry one comes upon a far more jocular, talkative proletarian American sing-song kind of voice. The written story has about as much structure as one might expect in a short tale retold at a diner or at a bar. The joy to entertain, no need for a fully-fledged structure. And yet, there is great beauty and subtly to many of the phrases, imagery, or conceits of the story. I am glad to know who this author was, and how he came to be O. Henry.
At its highest achievement, there are stories of tenderness, love and generosity. Others are humorous, ironic and entertaining. All follow a formula of conceit with a surprise ending. They are short, simply-structured, often with a paragraph here or there unrelated to the narrative which provides foreshadowing and setup to the punchline. After 25 stories the repetition from my perspective was a bit much, lacking some greater, deeper meaning.
They were written in 1901, before Joyce wrote Dubliners. And yet those stories are what my heart and head contemplate. If in Joyce one finds a perfectly-structured, beautifully-worded story, in O. Henry one comes upon a far more jocular, talkative proletarian American sing-song kind of voice. The written story has about as much structure as one might expect in a short tale retold at a diner or at a bar. The joy to entertain, no need for a fully-fledged structure. And yet, there is great beauty and subtly to many of the phrases, imagery, or conceits of the story. I am glad to know who this author was, and how he came to be O. Henry.
November 15, 2025
Highlights:
The Cop and the Anthem
The Gift of the Magi
Mammon and the Archer
The Skylight Room
The Cop and the Anthem
The Gift of the Magi
Mammon and the Archer
The Skylight Room
November 29, 2011
A VERY REFRESHING READ.
“When ye run down politeness ye take the mortar from between the bricks of the foundations of society” [‘Between Rounds’]—page 23
O. Henry is one of my favorite go to guys whenever I need to cleanse my reading pallet. ‘The Four Million’ is a collection of 25 short stories all set in New York City in the early 1900s. Although I was already familiar with many of these tales, having read them in other O. Henry compendiums, they none-the-less provided a very refreshing and relaxing reading respite.
Recommendation: O. Henry needs no recommendation: he’s that good.
“She was tall, beautiful, lively, gracious and learned in persiflage.” “Tildy was dumpy, plain-faced, and too anxious to please to please.” [‘The Brief Debut of Tildy’]—page 152
Adobe Digital Editions [ePub] http://www.feedbooks.com, 162 pages
“When ye run down politeness ye take the mortar from between the bricks of the foundations of society” [‘Between Rounds’]—page 23
O. Henry is one of my favorite go to guys whenever I need to cleanse my reading pallet. ‘The Four Million’ is a collection of 25 short stories all set in New York City in the early 1900s. Although I was already familiar with many of these tales, having read them in other O. Henry compendiums, they none-the-less provided a very refreshing and relaxing reading respite.
Recommendation: O. Henry needs no recommendation: he’s that good.
“She was tall, beautiful, lively, gracious and learned in persiflage.” “Tildy was dumpy, plain-faced, and too anxious to please to please.” [‘The Brief Debut of Tildy’]—page 152
Adobe Digital Editions [ePub] http://www.feedbooks.com, 162 pages
October 25, 2021
No time to read long-long novels these days. But I've been feeling lately that I'm forgetting how a decent story feels like. So tried to explore my Books app for nice and free and short stories to read. O. Henry was the first name that popped up.
So here I am. Feeling alright after a long time.
So here I am. Feeling alright after a long time.
April 22, 2019
At one time, these stories would have been fascinating, surprising, satisfying. They harken back to a simpler time of hourly wage earners in rented furnished flats, cabbies who drove a horse-drawn hansom, and neighborhoods where everyone knows everyone's business. O Henry's endings are almost always a surprise (a couple you could anticipate), and almost always pleasing. OK, we are all jaded and sophisticated, and everyone has read "The Gift of the Magi" now, so it's harder to enjoy. But, it's a quick and easy read (listen), so I rate this a solid 4 and thank Mr. William Sidney Porter. I should mention he has an amazing way to turn a phrase. When he mentions a young man out on the town, the man is "accurately dressed." You can't forget a mention like that.
March 30, 2018
Some bad language of the time, but I feel like im just getting to know O. Henry and his humor.
March 23, 2025
Short stories
This is a compilation of 25 short stories. The theme is varied by each story. This is typical of a slice of life story.
This is a compilation of 25 short stories. The theme is varied by each story. This is typical of a slice of life story.
August 1, 2025
Read bits and pieces. An interesting bookmark in the history of American storytelling and newspaper culture.
November 23, 2025
O’ Henry Revisited
’Is O. Henry still relevant today?’ It’s a question that three friends — I the youngest by nearly two decades, they the seasoned veterans — decided to test during the strange stillness of Covid. On May 1st, 2021, we set ourselves a rather reckless mission: to reread every word O. Henry ever wrote, slowly, deliberately, over the course of a year. And we did. What follows are the reflections and reviews born from that long, unusual experiment — an O. Henry revisited, re-examined, and re-imagined for a modern age.
There’s something deliciously ironic about reading ‘The Four Million’ in the middle of a world-altering pandemic, when the idea of a “city of millions” felt like a fever dream and the idea of interacting with even four humans in a single day felt like some dangerous, prelapsarian luxury.
The book — or rather, the constellation of stories bundled inside it — becomes a counterpoint to the global loneliness of Covid. O. Henry’s New York is everything lockdown life was not: loud, crowded, unpredictable, brimming with accidental contact, nuisance encounters, overheard conversations, and the constant threat of bumping into someone who might entirely reconfigure your day, your life, or your emotional circuitry.
And rereading it now, you can’t help but notice how deeply he loved the city not for its grandeur but for its chaos, its pettiness, its tiny, tender miscalculations. He wasn’t a writer of skylines; he was a writer of street corners. And in a pandemic-era rereading, those street corners begin to glow strangely — like abandoned stages waiting for actors who never showed up.
That urban hum we all missed so badly becomes the invisible subtext. O. Henry’s New York suddenly becomes mythical, a place we might have dreamt during lockdown as we wandered our own apartments like cranky ghosts.
The title itself, ‘The Four Million’, has a kind of mathematical swagger to it — a flex aimed at a visiting snob who’d dismissed New Yorkers as aesthetically uninteresting unless they belonged to the top four hundred elite. O. Henry, in full chaotic-good mode, slaps back with the thesis that every single one of those four million souls has a story worth listening to. And reading it post-2020, when the world finally admitted that “essential workers” were not who we thought they were, his democratic tenderness feels prophetic. He saw beauty, drama, comedy, and absurdity in people long before the world learned to value the unnoticed.
There’s a particular intimacy in the way he moves through these stories — as though he’s walking down a Manhattan street with a psychic mic, picking up every faint emotional frequency. He doesn’t lean into the grandeur of city life; he leans into the micro-emotions, the incidental heartbreaks, the impulsive joys. His tone is always tinkering between mischief and melancholy. And that’s where the postmodern rereading kicks in: O. Henry’s stories are always built on the assumption that reality is unreliable, that chance is an author in its own right, and that the universe has a dark sense of humour.
Covid stripped us to our private narratives; O. Henry reminds us that stories are fundamentally communal. His city is alive with entanglements. You get the sense that any two people in his universe could have collided and generated a tale. It’s a vision completely at odds with the isolated, sterilised, hyper-sanitised world we lived through.
And so reading it now, the collection becomes almost utopian — chaotic kindness, unpredictable connections, emotional generosity erupting in alleyways. Even the con artists in O. Henry’s world have softer hearts and cleaner consciences than many real-life people we encountered online during lockdown.
The postmodern lens also draws out the meta-layer O. Henry himself may or may not have intended: the stories within ‘The Four Million’ often function like tiny parables about perception, class, desire, and the questionable reliability of appearances. Every character misreads someone or something. Every assumption gets gently overturned. If the modern meme culture had existed in O. Henry’s time, he would’ve been the undisputed king of the “plot twist” template — a twist not meant to shock, but to recalibrate the reader’s moral coordinates.
And while the pandemic made us all hyper-aware of inequality — who gets to stay home, who gets to risk their life for someone else’s groceries — O. Henry was always obsessed with the fragile social ecologies of the city. The clerk, the waitress, the quiet lover, the petty thief, the lonely wanderer: he elevates them not by idealizing them but by showing how complicated their inner worlds are. His stories function like tiny empathy machines. And rereading them during a time when empathy itself felt endangered gives them a new emotional voltage, almost like they were written for the future rather than the past.
There’s also the way he handles time: everything in his stories happens quickly, impulsively, and sometimes absurdly. Characters fall in love, fall out of love, lose fortunes, gain revelations, or stumble into chaotic morality plays within the space of a few pages. Covid time, by contrast, was glacial and muddy. Days lost shape. Hours bled into one another.
So O. Henry’s pacing feels like the opposite of our pandemic brain fog. It feels electric. It feels caffeinated. It feels like stepping out of a long dream into a city that’s fully awake.
But beneath the quickness, there’s a dreaminess — a strange emotional thickness that becomes clearer when viewed through the rearview mirror of 2020–2021. The stories are light, yes, but they shimmer with little aches. A humor that wobbles between mischief and sorrow. An optimism constantly negotiating with disappointment. A sentimentality that keeps wandering dangerously close to cynicism but always pulls back at the last second, as though O. Henry can’t help but believe in people even when they behave like gremlins.
This emotional tonal shift feels especially resonant for those of us who carried tiny heartbreaks through the pandemic — the friendships that fizzled, the people who changed, the versions of ourselves we shed. O. Henry’s characters are always in transition. They are caught between what they want to be and what the world lets them be. They’re improvising their way through life, attempting to manufacture dignity out of chaos. Their desires are small but fierce. Their mistakes are human. Their victories are absurdly fragile.
And yet, O. Henry never laughs ‘at’ them. He laughs ‘with’ them, from a place of affection. The world may be cruel, but its people — in his vision — are redeemable through small acts, odd coincidences, and unexpected moments of grace. And perhaps that’s why the collection feels so comforting today. It reaffirms the idea that the world is not driven purely by power or cruelty. It suggests that the universe still makes room for accidental kindness, secret generosity, impulsive sacrifice.
In a postmodern read, ‘The Four Million’ begins to look like a patchwork novel — a distributed emotional network, where each story feeds into a larger narrative about the city’s collective psyche. O. Henry gives us a metropolis not made of stone and steel but of desire, disappointment, longing, and chance. His New York becomes a character — one with too many moods, too many contradictions, too many pockets of strangeness to fully map. It has the kind of interiority a good novel has, except its consciousness is scattered across four million minds.
And that’s the strangest and loveliest part of reading it now: the recognition that the pandemic briefly turned all of us into isolated protagonists of our own little O. Henry stories — improvising, yearning, stumbling through the plot-twists of circumstance. In his world, endings are rarely neat, but always meaningful. And in ours, pandemic endings weren’t neat either — but they pushed us toward a deeper understanding of how we occupy the world and how the world occupies us.
O. Henry’s gentle anarchism — the belief that even the smallest life is worth a story — feels like the antidote to modern cynicism. He democratizes narrative importance. No character is too insignificant for a miracle, a revelation, a moral recalibration. And post-2020, when so many people felt invisible or reduced to statistics, his vision feels like a rebellion against erasure. It insists that every human life is thick with possibility.
And so ‘The Four Million’ becomes the literary equivalent of wandering through a crowd with an open heart, listening, observing, wondering. It’s a celebration of the unnoticed, the ordinary, the chaotic little tragedies and tender absurdities that make up a shared urban life. And though the stories are anchored in an older New York, the emotional architecture is timeless. People still hope this way. Still break this way. Still misread signals this way. Still love each other in these tiny, impulsive, catastrophic ways.
Which leads us perfectly to the final thought.
What could the ending have been like?
In an alternate universe — one where O. Henry leaned harder into sentiment — the final pulse of the collection might have crystallized into a single story that tied its threads together, giving all four million souls a symbolic moment of convergence. Or the ending could have stepped into a grander moral arc, letting a final tale deliver a quiet verdict on the unpredictability of human decency.
Another path might have leaned into playfulness: a meta-ending where O. Henry steps into his own narrative, cheekily admitting that he, too, is only one of the “four million” and therefore no more omniscient than the reader. Or the book could have ended on a darker, more modern note — emphasizing the alienation that lurks beneath the bustling city.
But the most intriguing alternate ending would be one that reveals the connective tissue between the stories — a single event or encounter that exposes how deeply the characters’ lives brush against each other without ever realizing it. A web we only see at the final moment.
Yet O. Henry chooses neither neat closure nor overt spectacle. His real ending is a soft pulse, a democratic assertion, a gentle insistence that the city is its own story — unfinished, unwieldy, and full of people whose lives matter even when no one is watching.
’Is O. Henry still relevant today?’ It’s a question that three friends — I the youngest by nearly two decades, they the seasoned veterans — decided to test during the strange stillness of Covid. On May 1st, 2021, we set ourselves a rather reckless mission: to reread every word O. Henry ever wrote, slowly, deliberately, over the course of a year. And we did. What follows are the reflections and reviews born from that long, unusual experiment — an O. Henry revisited, re-examined, and re-imagined for a modern age.
There’s something deliciously ironic about reading ‘The Four Million’ in the middle of a world-altering pandemic, when the idea of a “city of millions” felt like a fever dream and the idea of interacting with even four humans in a single day felt like some dangerous, prelapsarian luxury.
The book — or rather, the constellation of stories bundled inside it — becomes a counterpoint to the global loneliness of Covid. O. Henry’s New York is everything lockdown life was not: loud, crowded, unpredictable, brimming with accidental contact, nuisance encounters, overheard conversations, and the constant threat of bumping into someone who might entirely reconfigure your day, your life, or your emotional circuitry.
And rereading it now, you can’t help but notice how deeply he loved the city not for its grandeur but for its chaos, its pettiness, its tiny, tender miscalculations. He wasn’t a writer of skylines; he was a writer of street corners. And in a pandemic-era rereading, those street corners begin to glow strangely — like abandoned stages waiting for actors who never showed up.
That urban hum we all missed so badly becomes the invisible subtext. O. Henry’s New York suddenly becomes mythical, a place we might have dreamt during lockdown as we wandered our own apartments like cranky ghosts.
The title itself, ‘The Four Million’, has a kind of mathematical swagger to it — a flex aimed at a visiting snob who’d dismissed New Yorkers as aesthetically uninteresting unless they belonged to the top four hundred elite. O. Henry, in full chaotic-good mode, slaps back with the thesis that every single one of those four million souls has a story worth listening to. And reading it post-2020, when the world finally admitted that “essential workers” were not who we thought they were, his democratic tenderness feels prophetic. He saw beauty, drama, comedy, and absurdity in people long before the world learned to value the unnoticed.
There’s a particular intimacy in the way he moves through these stories — as though he’s walking down a Manhattan street with a psychic mic, picking up every faint emotional frequency. He doesn’t lean into the grandeur of city life; he leans into the micro-emotions, the incidental heartbreaks, the impulsive joys. His tone is always tinkering between mischief and melancholy. And that’s where the postmodern rereading kicks in: O. Henry’s stories are always built on the assumption that reality is unreliable, that chance is an author in its own right, and that the universe has a dark sense of humour.
Covid stripped us to our private narratives; O. Henry reminds us that stories are fundamentally communal. His city is alive with entanglements. You get the sense that any two people in his universe could have collided and generated a tale. It’s a vision completely at odds with the isolated, sterilised, hyper-sanitised world we lived through.
And so reading it now, the collection becomes almost utopian — chaotic kindness, unpredictable connections, emotional generosity erupting in alleyways. Even the con artists in O. Henry’s world have softer hearts and cleaner consciences than many real-life people we encountered online during lockdown.
The postmodern lens also draws out the meta-layer O. Henry himself may or may not have intended: the stories within ‘The Four Million’ often function like tiny parables about perception, class, desire, and the questionable reliability of appearances. Every character misreads someone or something. Every assumption gets gently overturned. If the modern meme culture had existed in O. Henry’s time, he would’ve been the undisputed king of the “plot twist” template — a twist not meant to shock, but to recalibrate the reader’s moral coordinates.
And while the pandemic made us all hyper-aware of inequality — who gets to stay home, who gets to risk their life for someone else’s groceries — O. Henry was always obsessed with the fragile social ecologies of the city. The clerk, the waitress, the quiet lover, the petty thief, the lonely wanderer: he elevates them not by idealizing them but by showing how complicated their inner worlds are. His stories function like tiny empathy machines. And rereading them during a time when empathy itself felt endangered gives them a new emotional voltage, almost like they were written for the future rather than the past.
There’s also the way he handles time: everything in his stories happens quickly, impulsively, and sometimes absurdly. Characters fall in love, fall out of love, lose fortunes, gain revelations, or stumble into chaotic morality plays within the space of a few pages. Covid time, by contrast, was glacial and muddy. Days lost shape. Hours bled into one another.
So O. Henry’s pacing feels like the opposite of our pandemic brain fog. It feels electric. It feels caffeinated. It feels like stepping out of a long dream into a city that’s fully awake.
But beneath the quickness, there’s a dreaminess — a strange emotional thickness that becomes clearer when viewed through the rearview mirror of 2020–2021. The stories are light, yes, but they shimmer with little aches. A humor that wobbles between mischief and sorrow. An optimism constantly negotiating with disappointment. A sentimentality that keeps wandering dangerously close to cynicism but always pulls back at the last second, as though O. Henry can’t help but believe in people even when they behave like gremlins.
This emotional tonal shift feels especially resonant for those of us who carried tiny heartbreaks through the pandemic — the friendships that fizzled, the people who changed, the versions of ourselves we shed. O. Henry’s characters are always in transition. They are caught between what they want to be and what the world lets them be. They’re improvising their way through life, attempting to manufacture dignity out of chaos. Their desires are small but fierce. Their mistakes are human. Their victories are absurdly fragile.
And yet, O. Henry never laughs ‘at’ them. He laughs ‘with’ them, from a place of affection. The world may be cruel, but its people — in his vision — are redeemable through small acts, odd coincidences, and unexpected moments of grace. And perhaps that’s why the collection feels so comforting today. It reaffirms the idea that the world is not driven purely by power or cruelty. It suggests that the universe still makes room for accidental kindness, secret generosity, impulsive sacrifice.
In a postmodern read, ‘The Four Million’ begins to look like a patchwork novel — a distributed emotional network, where each story feeds into a larger narrative about the city’s collective psyche. O. Henry gives us a metropolis not made of stone and steel but of desire, disappointment, longing, and chance. His New York becomes a character — one with too many moods, too many contradictions, too many pockets of strangeness to fully map. It has the kind of interiority a good novel has, except its consciousness is scattered across four million minds.
And that’s the strangest and loveliest part of reading it now: the recognition that the pandemic briefly turned all of us into isolated protagonists of our own little O. Henry stories — improvising, yearning, stumbling through the plot-twists of circumstance. In his world, endings are rarely neat, but always meaningful. And in ours, pandemic endings weren’t neat either — but they pushed us toward a deeper understanding of how we occupy the world and how the world occupies us.
O. Henry’s gentle anarchism — the belief that even the smallest life is worth a story — feels like the antidote to modern cynicism. He democratizes narrative importance. No character is too insignificant for a miracle, a revelation, a moral recalibration. And post-2020, when so many people felt invisible or reduced to statistics, his vision feels like a rebellion against erasure. It insists that every human life is thick with possibility.
And so ‘The Four Million’ becomes the literary equivalent of wandering through a crowd with an open heart, listening, observing, wondering. It’s a celebration of the unnoticed, the ordinary, the chaotic little tragedies and tender absurdities that make up a shared urban life. And though the stories are anchored in an older New York, the emotional architecture is timeless. People still hope this way. Still break this way. Still misread signals this way. Still love each other in these tiny, impulsive, catastrophic ways.
Which leads us perfectly to the final thought.
What could the ending have been like?
In an alternate universe — one where O. Henry leaned harder into sentiment — the final pulse of the collection might have crystallized into a single story that tied its threads together, giving all four million souls a symbolic moment of convergence. Or the ending could have stepped into a grander moral arc, letting a final tale deliver a quiet verdict on the unpredictability of human decency.
Another path might have leaned into playfulness: a meta-ending where O. Henry steps into his own narrative, cheekily admitting that he, too, is only one of the “four million” and therefore no more omniscient than the reader. Or the book could have ended on a darker, more modern note — emphasizing the alienation that lurks beneath the bustling city.
But the most intriguing alternate ending would be one that reveals the connective tissue between the stories — a single event or encounter that exposes how deeply the characters’ lives brush against each other without ever realizing it. A web we only see at the final moment.
Yet O. Henry chooses neither neat closure nor overt spectacle. His real ending is a soft pulse, a democratic assertion, a gentle insistence that the city is its own story — unfinished, unwieldy, and full of people whose lives matter even when no one is watching.
July 18, 2014
Coming into this collection I was only really familiar with the "Gift of the Magi" and one or two other random stories by O. Henry I read in some English class or another.
I enjoyed O.Henry's use of wordplay throughout and his humorously constructed scenarios. The twist endings, when done well, were enjoyable. I did find that some of the twists felt a bit contrived, or were easily anticipated. I wanted them to be cleverer or more exciting. Maybe this is because I've grown up in a world that O.Henry shaped with his prose, and most of the twist endings I'm familiar with owe their lineage to him.
I was surprised by how many of the stories dealt with Irish immigrants and their immortal hate of the Italians in New York. It's a very New Yorky collection, which lends itself to an interesting view of the city during that period. The fact that "Dixie" was sung by northerners with a strange misplaced nostalgia for the South. Or the references to the first (contrived) traffic jam. All interesting.
All told I was just hoping for a little more zing and punch with the twists. A few more pleasant surprises.
http://joshuarigsby.com
I enjoyed O.Henry's use of wordplay throughout and his humorously constructed scenarios. The twist endings, when done well, were enjoyable. I did find that some of the twists felt a bit contrived, or were easily anticipated. I wanted them to be cleverer or more exciting. Maybe this is because I've grown up in a world that O.Henry shaped with his prose, and most of the twist endings I'm familiar with owe their lineage to him.
I was surprised by how many of the stories dealt with Irish immigrants and their immortal hate of the Italians in New York. It's a very New Yorky collection, which lends itself to an interesting view of the city during that period. The fact that "Dixie" was sung by northerners with a strange misplaced nostalgia for the South. Or the references to the first (contrived) traffic jam. All interesting.
All told I was just hoping for a little more zing and punch with the twists. A few more pleasant surprises.
http://joshuarigsby.com
December 26, 2008
What can I say? I'm a sucker for O. Henry. His short stories are the sort of thing that I don't know if I think they're great because they actually are great, or just because I happen to like them; but I also don't care. This collection includes "The Gift of the Magi", that holiday classic- which I first learned of through Sesame Street when they adapted it so that it was Bert & Ernie as the couple.
August 1, 2014
Delightful, pleasant little stories, each with a peculiar twist for which O. Henry is known. I particularly like the way the author gives us character through dialog and makes us feel as if we know, or could have known, these very individuals if we'd been in his neighborhood. Henry cuts thick slices of urban life in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century and serves them hot and buttered with expression. Nice stories to fill gaps when a longer work is just too much for the moment.
May 1, 2016
Although all of the stories are worth reading, approximately 10 of them are lovely. And three of them are gorgeous.
O. Henry is very funny, and since the stories are all quite short, the weak parts are over pretty quick.
My three favorite stories are "The Gift of the Magi," "The Green Door," and "Mammon and the Archer."
I'm looking forward to the next collection.
O. Henry is very funny, and since the stories are all quite short, the weak parts are over pretty quick.
My three favorite stories are "The Gift of the Magi," "The Green Door," and "Mammon and the Archer."
I'm looking forward to the next collection.
September 1, 2024
5 stars, Metaphorosis reviews
Summary
A collection of short stories set in New York City by O. Henry.
Review
I enjoyed O. Henry’s stories when I was young. When I revisited them years later, I found them hard to get into. I think now that that’s because I started with Cabbages and Kings, which I found to be slow moving, and which is apparently a set of interrelated stories set in a fictional Latin America. I’m happy to say this collection brings back my original delight.
In these stories of New York City, O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) is full of wit and emotion, with quick, insightful sketches of characters and their lives. This collection includes “The Gift of the Magi”, and that’s a fair representation of the rest of the stories. They’re clever, surprising, and emotional. O/ Henry often tosses in asides about literature, which I read as jabs at high brow critics who didn’t enjoy his stories as much as the less calculating masses.
The masses had it right. The prose isn’t lyrical, and it’s often overtly bombastic and sentimental – but it’s meant to be that way, and it works. I read it as part of O. Henry’s overall good humor – he knows the prose is overblown and he knows we’re in in the joke. That’s not to say there’s not some good heartstring tugging going on here – there is, both in the overt and subtle stories. High brow or not, O. Henry knows what he’s doing and is masterful about it. Some of the stories are light little jokes, and a lot are very funny,but others reward deeper thought.
The overall mood is upbeat. Even in a story like the Magi, it all works out in the end; true love conquers all. There are stories that end on a down beat, but overall you’ll feel uplifted. I heartily recommend this book for both O. Henry fans (who have no doubt read it) and newcomers alike.
My favorites among the stories were:
“The Gift of the Magi”
“Between Rounds”
“Mammon and the Archer”
“Springtime a la Carte”
“From the Cabby’s Seat”
“The Romance of a Busy Broker”
“By Courier”
“The Brief Debut of Tildy”
Summary
A collection of short stories set in New York City by O. Henry.
Review
I enjoyed O. Henry’s stories when I was young. When I revisited them years later, I found them hard to get into. I think now that that’s because I started with Cabbages and Kings, which I found to be slow moving, and which is apparently a set of interrelated stories set in a fictional Latin America. I’m happy to say this collection brings back my original delight.
In these stories of New York City, O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) is full of wit and emotion, with quick, insightful sketches of characters and their lives. This collection includes “The Gift of the Magi”, and that’s a fair representation of the rest of the stories. They’re clever, surprising, and emotional. O/ Henry often tosses in asides about literature, which I read as jabs at high brow critics who didn’t enjoy his stories as much as the less calculating masses.
The masses had it right. The prose isn’t lyrical, and it’s often overtly bombastic and sentimental – but it’s meant to be that way, and it works. I read it as part of O. Henry’s overall good humor – he knows the prose is overblown and he knows we’re in in the joke. That’s not to say there’s not some good heartstring tugging going on here – there is, both in the overt and subtle stories. High brow or not, O. Henry knows what he’s doing and is masterful about it. Some of the stories are light little jokes, and a lot are very funny,but others reward deeper thought.
The overall mood is upbeat. Even in a story like the Magi, it all works out in the end; true love conquers all. There are stories that end on a down beat, but overall you’ll feel uplifted. I heartily recommend this book for both O. Henry fans (who have no doubt read it) and newcomers alike.
My favorites among the stories were:
“The Gift of the Magi”
“Between Rounds”
“Mammon and the Archer”
“Springtime a la Carte”
“From the Cabby’s Seat”
“The Romance of a Busy Broker”
“By Courier”
“The Brief Debut of Tildy”
November 30, 2020
I recently read and reviewed The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson and mentioned that it reminded me of O. Henry’s story, The Gift of the Magi, with its twist ending. The Lottery and The Gift of the Magi were two of the most memorable stories from my high school English classes. So, I figured I needed to re-read The Gift of the Magi. Fortunately I found The Four Million, an Anthology of Twenty-Five O. Henry short stories.
I’ve always been a sucker for a twist ending. Whether it be a story, a book, or a joke I just love the feeling of being caught off guard and being surprised when the story does not end the way you expected. Surprise endings are what O. Henry is famous for and he never disappoints.
O. Henry, real name William Sydney Porter, was charged with embezzling bank funds, which was actually technical mismanagement. He fled the country but returned to visit his dying wife and was subsequently jailed for three years. That alone is a love story! After jail, he moved to New York City and commenced to writing a short story a week for newspapers and magazines. His stories are most often about the poor and the down trodden. Many feature and focus on poorly paid working women. All of his stories include a twist ending.
This book, The Four Million, includes the story he is most famous for, The Gift of the Magi. I cannot read this story without crying both for the sorrow and the undying love of the couple portrayed. It has been made into a movie as least four times but Hallmark movies have nothing on this story!
Most of O. Henry’s stories were written in the early 1900’s yet they are as topical today as they were then. His concern for working women, salaries, office politics, and love were decades ahead of their times. In his own way he was on to second wave feminism sixty years before it became a household topic.
Some of these stories are better than others. Some you can anticipate the “surprise” at the end. But all of them are well written, heart wrenching, and heart warming. I loved this book and highly recommend it. If you read and loved The Gift of the Magi in high school, here is a chance to re-experience the story and many more. If you never had the pleasure of meeting O. Henry before, I envy you your first introduction.
I’ve always been a sucker for a twist ending. Whether it be a story, a book, or a joke I just love the feeling of being caught off guard and being surprised when the story does not end the way you expected. Surprise endings are what O. Henry is famous for and he never disappoints.
O. Henry, real name William Sydney Porter, was charged with embezzling bank funds, which was actually technical mismanagement. He fled the country but returned to visit his dying wife and was subsequently jailed for three years. That alone is a love story! After jail, he moved to New York City and commenced to writing a short story a week for newspapers and magazines. His stories are most often about the poor and the down trodden. Many feature and focus on poorly paid working women. All of his stories include a twist ending.
This book, The Four Million, includes the story he is most famous for, The Gift of the Magi. I cannot read this story without crying both for the sorrow and the undying love of the couple portrayed. It has been made into a movie as least four times but Hallmark movies have nothing on this story!
Most of O. Henry’s stories were written in the early 1900’s yet they are as topical today as they were then. His concern for working women, salaries, office politics, and love were decades ahead of their times. In his own way he was on to second wave feminism sixty years before it became a household topic.
Some of these stories are better than others. Some you can anticipate the “surprise” at the end. But all of them are well written, heart wrenching, and heart warming. I loved this book and highly recommend it. If you read and loved The Gift of the Magi in high school, here is a chance to re-experience the story and many more. If you never had the pleasure of meeting O. Henry before, I envy you your first introduction.
July 15, 2020
It seems to me that following the publication of his only novel, Cabbages and Kings William Sidney Porter must have realized where his true talent lay: the creation of lighthearted short stories with a characteristic twist at the end. I doubt if he has ever been surpassed in that genre. In assuming the pen name O. Henry, he seems to have created a formulaic caricature of himself. That said, the formula can become predictable and less than engaging if you read too many of these stories in short order. And many there were, 10 volumes over the succeeding years, each volume featuring a somewhat different overall theme. A few of his stories are regarded as classics, reprinted in numerous anthologies: “The Gift of the Magi”, the second story in this volume, is one that has received wide acclaim. It’s deserving of its fame but of the 25 stories in this set, I consider “An Unfinished Story” to be the best of the lot. O. Henry had a keen awareness for the absence of social justice in the society he inhabited and his levity was often just a thin veneer covering his resentment of the abuses suffered by the underpaid masses, especially the hordes of shop-girls, typists and waitresses he encountered on the streets of New York.
O. Henry’s use of a breezy vernacular and self-consciously clever quips places his work in a category that is hard to take seriously. It’s intended to be simple entertainment with no pretense at great literary merit and it was well suited for inclusion in “pulp” magazines of his day. I first read this book way back in the late 1950s when it already seemed dated; and it’s even more so today. Nevertheless, several of the tales in this volume, featuring people we would today regard as the “working poor” in NYC have a lasting appeal and make for amusing light entertainment. I find it a welcome relief after subjecting myself to the news of the day.
O. Henry’s use of a breezy vernacular and self-consciously clever quips places his work in a category that is hard to take seriously. It’s intended to be simple entertainment with no pretense at great literary merit and it was well suited for inclusion in “pulp” magazines of his day. I first read this book way back in the late 1950s when it already seemed dated; and it’s even more so today. Nevertheless, several of the tales in this volume, featuring people we would today regard as the “working poor” in NYC have a lasting appeal and make for amusing light entertainment. I find it a welcome relief after subjecting myself to the news of the day.
May 29, 2018
I found a 1906 edition of this book at a give away. The edition was very lovely hardback with thick, creamy pages and old fashioned font, typeface that split words at the end of a line if it didn't fit - in short all things I like about older books. The book stayed open by itself while I read it. I'd give it three stars alone just based on the edition I had. I like the stories too. Like 'em or hate 'em they are quite the time machine back to last century.
As other reviewers have pointed out not all of the stories in this little anthology end so nicely. In those days a person could starve to death, or die of cold, or get beat up. Life was tough. Henry writes sad stories, tragic stories, happy stories, funny stories - in one he takes the viewpoint of a dog. One thing that surprised me is his enormous vocabulary. I sat reading with a dictionary available at my side. But in a good way; his word choices are excellent. His slang hilarious. I would not consider this fine literature, by its own admission this is a book for regular people. It is uneven in execution - but certainly enjoyable reading and absolutely an important primary source for early 20th century fiction.
The bad news is, yesterday when I was out and about I seem to have lost the book! I can't imagine where, I went so many places. I felt a little sad because that particular edition is an antique, but I can't complain since I got it for free myself. I just hope, very, very, sincerely, that it does not end up as landfill somewhere. O. Henry is not as popular as he used to be - I fear this particular edition will not be reprinted.
As other reviewers have pointed out not all of the stories in this little anthology end so nicely. In those days a person could starve to death, or die of cold, or get beat up. Life was tough. Henry writes sad stories, tragic stories, happy stories, funny stories - in one he takes the viewpoint of a dog. One thing that surprised me is his enormous vocabulary. I sat reading with a dictionary available at my side. But in a good way; his word choices are excellent. His slang hilarious. I would not consider this fine literature, by its own admission this is a book for regular people. It is uneven in execution - but certainly enjoyable reading and absolutely an important primary source for early 20th century fiction.
The bad news is, yesterday when I was out and about I seem to have lost the book! I can't imagine where, I went so many places. I felt a little sad because that particular edition is an antique, but I can't complain since I got it for free myself. I just hope, very, very, sincerely, that it does not end up as landfill somewhere. O. Henry is not as popular as he used to be - I fear this particular edition will not be reprinted.
June 4, 2025
The Four Million encompasses twenty-five short stories, each set in early twentieth century New York City and each containing, with varying degrees of coercion, a characteristic O. Henry twist. While the twists themselves can get old reading story after story, I admire the way in which O. Henry can deftly turn from whimsical, long-winded narration to simple, direct dialogue right when he needs to deliver the gut punch. For instance, compare the paragraph-long description of a letterbox at the opening of "The Gift of the Magi" to the twelve-word sentence that delivers the denouement.
Not only does this volume contain the beloved, above-mentioned holiday tale, but also a similar, arguably more relevant story of impoverished lovers in "A Service of Love." "The Cop and the Anthem" and "Memoirs of a Yellow Dog" are some of the more humorous tales in the collection, though still bristling with social commentary.
Of course, not every tale among twenty-five can be a winner, particularly when the author famously sticks to a similar narrative convention. (I was much less impressed with the fan-favorite "The Skylight Room" than expected.) As you can see by my read dates, I had to really pace these out so as not to get worn down by the O. Henryisms. Unsurprisingly, many of the tales also contain then-common stereotypical depictions of ethnic and racial minorities. So while I can't give the collection as a whole a higher rating, The Four Million is definitely worth checking out for its most famous and entertaining yarns.
Not only does this volume contain the beloved, above-mentioned holiday tale, but also a similar, arguably more relevant story of impoverished lovers in "A Service of Love." "The Cop and the Anthem" and "Memoirs of a Yellow Dog" are some of the more humorous tales in the collection, though still bristling with social commentary.
Of course, not every tale among twenty-five can be a winner, particularly when the author famously sticks to a similar narrative convention. (I was much less impressed with the fan-favorite "The Skylight Room" than expected.) As you can see by my read dates, I had to really pace these out so as not to get worn down by the O. Henryisms. Unsurprisingly, many of the tales also contain then-common stereotypical depictions of ethnic and racial minorities. So while I can't give the collection as a whole a higher rating, The Four Million is definitely worth checking out for its most famous and entertaining yarns.
September 13, 2022
I absolutely love O. Henry and "The Four Million" collection a nice mix of short stories with romance, humor, mystery and so much more. I reviewed each story individually.
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I read these stories from Delphi collection of O. Henry's works which included the synopsis below:
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3026
The Four Million This is O. Henry’s second published collection of short stories, first released in 1906. There are twenty five stories of various lengths including several of his best known works, including The Gift of the Magi and The Cop and the Anthem. The collection’s title refers to the population of New York City, where many of the stories are set, at the time of publication.
The 25 stories below-
TOBIN’S PALM
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFÉ
BETWEEN ROUNDS
THE SKYLIGHT ROOM
A SERVICE OF LOVE
THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE
MAN ABOUT TOWN
THE COP AND THE ANTHEM
AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE
MEMOIRS OF A YELLOW DOG
THE LOVE- PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN
MAMMON AND THE ARCHER
SPRINGTIME À LA CARTE
THE GREEN DOOR
FROM THE CABBY’S SEAT
AN UNFINISHED STORY
THE CALIPH, CUPID AND THE CLOCK
SISTERS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE
THE ROMANCE OF A BUSY BROKER
AFTER TWENTY YEARS
LOST ON DRESS PARADE
BY COURIER
THE FURNISHED ROOM
THE BRIEF DÉBUT OF TILDY
➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
I read these stories from Delphi collection of O. Henry's works which included the synopsis below:
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 3026
The Four Million This is O. Henry’s second published collection of short stories, first released in 1906. There are twenty five stories of various lengths including several of his best known works, including The Gift of the Magi and The Cop and the Anthem. The collection’s title refers to the population of New York City, where many of the stories are set, at the time of publication.
The 25 stories below-
TOBIN’S PALM
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFÉ
BETWEEN ROUNDS
THE SKYLIGHT ROOM
A SERVICE OF LOVE
THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE
MAN ABOUT TOWN
THE COP AND THE ANTHEM
AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE
MEMOIRS OF A YELLOW DOG
THE LOVE- PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN
MAMMON AND THE ARCHER
SPRINGTIME À LA CARTE
THE GREEN DOOR
FROM THE CABBY’S SEAT
AN UNFINISHED STORY
THE CALIPH, CUPID AND THE CLOCK
SISTERS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE
THE ROMANCE OF A BUSY BROKER
AFTER TWENTY YEARS
LOST ON DRESS PARADE
BY COURIER
THE FURNISHED ROOM
THE BRIEF DÉBUT OF TILDY
Displaying 1 - 30 of 102 reviews