What do you think?
Rate this book
Printemps a La Carte/Springtime a La Carte
285pages. poche. Poche.
285 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1906
2 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
O. Henry
2,921 books1,877 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 5, 2018
Springtime A La Carte honestly left me awed with not only the fantastic storytelling but how witty and descriptive the narrative is. O. Henry outdid himself with the amount of imagery he used in this story while incorporating his perspective of how New York appeared in his own generation. Just as the story is symbolic using nature to draw the two characters together; he also used clever words play that engaged the reader through the humor he displayed from his point of view. O. Henry also made us feel a bit sympathetic towards the character as he implemented the hardship and relatable experiences from the early to mid-1900s. In a way, this is a love-story between the two characters as it showed some subtle, heartwarming scenes and the reality of their situation. Sarah, who is our main protagonist presents the struggle of working women as she found a way to provide a way survive while being dependent towards the men around her.
I recommend this to anyone who has an interest in reading old literature as it displays old English text to understand. The story mainly revolves around an ordinary couple who lived in New York to make a living, if the reader is interested in reading a sort of slice-of-life genre.
I recommend this to anyone who has an interest in reading old literature as it displays old English text to understand. The story mainly revolves around an ordinary couple who lived in New York to make a living, if the reader is interested in reading a sort of slice-of-life genre.
July 4, 2022
O. Henry's "Springtime a la Carte" is one of my favorites, it is a short story about romance and a menu.
Story in short- Sarah makes a mistake in typing a menu that helps her in every way.
➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4384
She was a free-lance typewriter and canvassed for odd jobs of copying. The most brilliant and crowning feat of Sarah’s battle with the world was the deal she made with Schulenberg’s Home Restaurant. The restaurant was next door to the old red brick in which she hall-roomed. One evening after dining at Schulenberg’s 40-cent, five- course
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4386
course table d’hôte (served as fast as you throw the five baseballs at the coloured gentleman’s head) Sarah took away with her the bill of fare. It was written in an almost unreadable script neither English nor German, and so arranged that if you were not careful you began with a toothpick and rice pudding and ended with soup and the day of the week. The next day Sarah showed Schulenberg a neat card on which the menu was beautifully typewritten with the viands temptingly
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4390
marshalled under their right and proper heads from “hors d’oeuvre” to “not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas.” Schulenberg became a naturalised citizen on the spot. Before Sarah left him she had him willingly committed to an agreement. She was to furnish typewritten bills of fare for the twenty-one tables in the restaurant — a new bill for each day’s dinner, and new ones for breakfast and lunch as often as changes occurred in the food or as neatness required.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4394
In return for this Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem to Sarah’s hall room by a waiter — an obsequious one if possible — and furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in store for Schulenberg’s customers on the morrow.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert
Sarah to make ends meet has started to type a restaurant's menus in exchange for free meals. It is Spring and she is to be married to a farmer but after she sent a letter, she has not received a reply and starts to worry. The farmer finally finds her by her mistyped menu, he did not receive the letter with the change of address.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4411
On the previous summer Sarah had gone into the country and loved a farmer.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4412
Sarah stayed two weeks at Sunnybrook Farm. There she learned to love old Farmer Franklin’s son Walter. Farmers have been loved and wedded and turned out to grass in less time. But young Walter Franklin was a modern agriculturist. He had a telephone in his cow house, and he could figure up exactly what effect next year’s Canada wheat crop would have on potatoes planted in the dark of the moon. It was in this shaded and raspberried lane that Walter had wooed and won her. And together they had sat and woven a crown of dandelions for her hair. He had immoderately praised the effect of the yellow blossoms against her brown tresses; and she had left the chaplet there, and walked back to the house swinging her straw sailor in her hands. They were to marry in the spring — at the very first signs of spring,
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4418
Walter said. And Sarah came back to the city to pound her typewriter.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4430
Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Tears from the depths of some divine despair rose in her heart and gathered to her eyes. Down went her head on the little typewriter stand; and the keyboard rattled a dry accompaniment to her moist sobs. For she had received no letter from Walter in two weeks, and the next item on the bill of fare was dandelions — dandelions with some kind of egg — but bother the egg! — dandelions, with whose
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4433
golden blooms Walter had crowned her his queen of love and future bride — dandelions, the harbingers of spring, her sorrow’s crown of sorrow — reminder of her happiest days.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4441
By and by Sarah forced back her tears. The cards must be written. But, still in a faint, golden glow from her dandeleonine dream, she fingered the typewriter keys absently for a little while, with her mind and heart in the meadow lane with her young farmer. But soon she came swiftly back to the rock-bound lanes of Manhattan, and the typewriter began to rattle and jump like a strike-breaker’s motor car.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4444
At 6 o’clock the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the typewritten bill of fare. When Sarah ate she set aside, with a sigh, the dish of dandelions with its crowning ovarious accompaniment. As this dark mass had been transformed from a bright and love-indorsed flower to be an ignominious vegetable, so had her summer hopes wilted and perished. Love may, as Shakespeare said, feed on itself: but Sarah could not bring herself to eat the dandelions that had graced, as
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4448
ornaments, the first spiritual banquet of her heart’s true affection.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4453
And then a strong voice was heard in the hall below, and Sarah jumped for her door, leaving the book on the floor and the first round easily the bear’s. You have guessed it. She reached the top of the stairs just as her farmer came up, three at a jump, and reaped and garnered
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4455
her, with nothing left for the gleaners. “Why haven’t you written — oh, why?” cried Sarah. “New York is a pretty large town,” said Walter Franklin. “I came in a week ago to your old address. I found that you went away on a Thursday. That consoled some; it eliminated the possible Friday bad luck. But it didn’t prevent my hunting for you with police and otherwise ever since! “I wrote!” said Sarah, vehemently. “Never got it!”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4460
“Then how did you find me?” The young farmer smiled a springtime smile. “I dropped into that Home Restaurant next door this evening,” said he. “I don’t care who knows it; I like a dish of some kind of greens at this time of the year. I ran my eye down that nice typewritten bill of fare looking for something in that line. When I got below cabbage I turned my chair over and hollered for the proprietor. He told me where you lived.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4463
“I remember,” sighed Sarah, happily. “That was dandelions below cabbage.” “I’d know that cranky capital W ‘way above the line that your typewriter makes anywhere in the world,” said Franklin. “Why, there’s no W in dandelions,” said Sarah, in surprise. The young man drew the bill of fare from his pocket, and pointed to a line. Sarah recognised the first card she had typewritten that afternoon. There was still the rayed splotch in
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4468
the upper right-hand corner where a tear had fallen. But over the spot where one should have read the name of the meadow plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms had allowed her fingers to strike strange keys. Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item: “DEAREST WALTER, WITH HARD- BOILED EGG.”
Story in short- Sarah makes a mistake in typing a menu that helps her in every way.
➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4384
She was a free-lance typewriter and canvassed for odd jobs of copying. The most brilliant and crowning feat of Sarah’s battle with the world was the deal she made with Schulenberg’s Home Restaurant. The restaurant was next door to the old red brick in which she hall-roomed. One evening after dining at Schulenberg’s 40-cent, five- course
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4386
course table d’hôte (served as fast as you throw the five baseballs at the coloured gentleman’s head) Sarah took away with her the bill of fare. It was written in an almost unreadable script neither English nor German, and so arranged that if you were not careful you began with a toothpick and rice pudding and ended with soup and the day of the week. The next day Sarah showed Schulenberg a neat card on which the menu was beautifully typewritten with the viands temptingly
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4390
marshalled under their right and proper heads from “hors d’oeuvre” to “not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas.” Schulenberg became a naturalised citizen on the spot. Before Sarah left him she had him willingly committed to an agreement. She was to furnish typewritten bills of fare for the twenty-one tables in the restaurant — a new bill for each day’s dinner, and new ones for breakfast and lunch as often as changes occurred in the food or as neatness required.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4394
In return for this Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem to Sarah’s hall room by a waiter — an obsequious one if possible — and furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in store for Schulenberg’s customers on the morrow.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert
Sarah to make ends meet has started to type a restaurant's menus in exchange for free meals. It is Spring and she is to be married to a farmer but after she sent a letter, she has not received a reply and starts to worry. The farmer finally finds her by her mistyped menu, he did not receive the letter with the change of address.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4411
On the previous summer Sarah had gone into the country and loved a farmer.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4412
Sarah stayed two weeks at Sunnybrook Farm. There she learned to love old Farmer Franklin’s son Walter. Farmers have been loved and wedded and turned out to grass in less time. But young Walter Franklin was a modern agriculturist. He had a telephone in his cow house, and he could figure up exactly what effect next year’s Canada wheat crop would have on potatoes planted in the dark of the moon. It was in this shaded and raspberried lane that Walter had wooed and won her. And together they had sat and woven a crown of dandelions for her hair. He had immoderately praised the effect of the yellow blossoms against her brown tresses; and she had left the chaplet there, and walked back to the house swinging her straw sailor in her hands. They were to marry in the spring — at the very first signs of spring,
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4418
Walter said. And Sarah came back to the city to pound her typewriter.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4430
Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Tears from the depths of some divine despair rose in her heart and gathered to her eyes. Down went her head on the little typewriter stand; and the keyboard rattled a dry accompaniment to her moist sobs. For she had received no letter from Walter in two weeks, and the next item on the bill of fare was dandelions — dandelions with some kind of egg — but bother the egg! — dandelions, with whose
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4433
golden blooms Walter had crowned her his queen of love and future bride — dandelions, the harbingers of spring, her sorrow’s crown of sorrow — reminder of her happiest days.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4441
By and by Sarah forced back her tears. The cards must be written. But, still in a faint, golden glow from her dandeleonine dream, she fingered the typewriter keys absently for a little while, with her mind and heart in the meadow lane with her young farmer. But soon she came swiftly back to the rock-bound lanes of Manhattan, and the typewriter began to rattle and jump like a strike-breaker’s motor car.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4444
At 6 o’clock the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the typewritten bill of fare. When Sarah ate she set aside, with a sigh, the dish of dandelions with its crowning ovarious accompaniment. As this dark mass had been transformed from a bright and love-indorsed flower to be an ignominious vegetable, so had her summer hopes wilted and perished. Love may, as Shakespeare said, feed on itself: but Sarah could not bring herself to eat the dandelions that had graced, as
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4448
ornaments, the first spiritual banquet of her heart’s true affection.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4453
And then a strong voice was heard in the hall below, and Sarah jumped for her door, leaving the book on the floor and the first round easily the bear’s. You have guessed it. She reached the top of the stairs just as her farmer came up, three at a jump, and reaped and garnered
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4455
her, with nothing left for the gleaners. “Why haven’t you written — oh, why?” cried Sarah. “New York is a pretty large town,” said Walter Franklin. “I came in a week ago to your old address. I found that you went away on a Thursday. That consoled some; it eliminated the possible Friday bad luck. But it didn’t prevent my hunting for you with police and otherwise ever since! “I wrote!” said Sarah, vehemently. “Never got it!”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4460
“Then how did you find me?” The young farmer smiled a springtime smile. “I dropped into that Home Restaurant next door this evening,” said he. “I don’t care who knows it; I like a dish of some kind of greens at this time of the year. I ran my eye down that nice typewritten bill of fare looking for something in that line. When I got below cabbage I turned my chair over and hollered for the proprietor. He told me where you lived.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4463
“I remember,” sighed Sarah, happily. “That was dandelions below cabbage.” “I’d know that cranky capital W ‘way above the line that your typewriter makes anywhere in the world,” said Franklin. “Why, there’s no W in dandelions,” said Sarah, in surprise. The young man drew the bill of fare from his pocket, and pointed to a line. Sarah recognised the first card she had typewritten that afternoon. There was still the rayed splotch in
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 4468
the upper right-hand corner where a tear had fallen. But over the spot where one should have read the name of the meadow plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms had allowed her fingers to strike strange keys. Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item: “DEAREST WALTER, WITH HARD- BOILED EGG.”
April 4, 2018
It would sentimental, but he cranks put New York life out of the side of his mouth.
December 31, 2024
.....A beautiful mistake....
August 1, 2021
There is a legend or anecdote related to this story. One day an American writer, Irwin Cobb, was sitting with O. Henry in a New York cafe and he asked O. Henry where he found the plots for his works. "Everywhere." answered O. Henry. "For example, here's a story for you."And, picking up the menu, improvising, he told Cobb the future story, "Springtime À La Carte."
The story starts with an unusual introduction. “It was a day in March. Never, never begin a story this way when you write one.” After that, the story turns to the bill of fare and it has a happy-ending as a classical love story.
This is the link to the text of the story:
https://americanliterature.com/author...
The story starts with an unusual introduction. “It was a day in March. Never, never begin a story this way when you write one.” After that, the story turns to the bill of fare and it has a happy-ending as a classical love story.
This is the link to the text of the story:
https://americanliterature.com/author...
May 20, 2020
Wow. This is my third short story for discussion group. And the first sweet one. The others were so downtrodden or sad. This at least had an uplifting ending. Girl meets Boy during summer hiatus in the country. They fall in love. She returns to the city to work. She doesn't hear from him and begins to have negative thoughts. What comes next?
June 17, 2024
“Springtime a la Carte” isn’t O. Henry’s best, but it’s a delightful little story that should, ideally, be read on the cusp of springtime when one has been particularly crossed in love. I read it in my ninth grade literature textbook and thought it was silly and inferior to the other O. Henry stories I had loved, but upon rereading it this year, “Springtime a la Carte” is actually an intelligently-written tale with a sweet conclusion.
Sarah, a young typist in Manhattan, spends her days typing up daily bills of fare for the German restaurant next door and pining for her fiancée Walter Franklin, a young farmer who promised to marry her after crowning her with dandelions but who has not written a word to her since. Sarah is dismayed to find dandelions on the menu that she has to type up that day, but her despair over Walter’s absence ends up giving him an unconventional clue about where to find her.
What really shines about “Springtime a la Carte” is Henry’s mastery of figurative language. The story spills over with similes, personification, and imagery of all sorts. Henry also manages to be self-aware (ruefully addressing the flaws in his compositional structure), conversational (accusing his readers of being more similar to Sarah than we may admit), and witty (comparing Sarah’s loss of hope to the reduction of dandelions to a mere vegetable). Wordplay and symbolism make up a lot of the linguistic curiosities as well, tossing in a Romeo and Juliet allusion as well as a few references to the modern concept of *gasp* having a phone in a cow-house. One of my favorite Henry-isms is his use of “raspberry” as a verb, setting one of his scenes “in this shaded and raspberried lane.” He also manages to turn a menu’s simple fare into a hilariously overblown diatribe:
The characters are a bit on the thin side, but in a way that befits the story. Sarah is a listless working girl trapped in the grimy, unwelcoming stone city of Manhattan, and her dreams of the golden summer she spent in a meadow with Walter provide a sharp juxtaposition to her current situation. Walter doesn’t get much characterization (except for being contrastingly described as both scientific and superstitious), but he does have an interesting throwaway line about how he is not ashamed, no matter what others may think of him, that he enjoys eating greens in the springtime. What kind of culture did Manhattan have in 1906 that prohibited the eating of collards in March?
“Springtime a la Carte” is a great example of Henry’s flair for words, and though he doesn’t pack a supersonic punch as he often did in his best stories (“Dearest Walter, with hard-boiled egg” is more for comic value than shock value), he does turn out a sentimental, clever little tale that has enough menu references to keep even the most dedicated epicure satisfied.
Sarah, a young typist in Manhattan, spends her days typing up daily bills of fare for the German restaurant next door and pining for her fiancée Walter Franklin, a young farmer who promised to marry her after crowning her with dandelions but who has not written a word to her since. Sarah is dismayed to find dandelions on the menu that she has to type up that day, but her despair over Walter’s absence ends up giving him an unconventional clue about where to find her.
What really shines about “Springtime a la Carte” is Henry’s mastery of figurative language. The story spills over with similes, personification, and imagery of all sorts. Henry also manages to be self-aware (ruefully addressing the flaws in his compositional structure), conversational (accusing his readers of being more similar to Sarah than we may admit), and witty (comparing Sarah’s loss of hope to the reduction of dandelions to a mere vegetable). Wordplay and symbolism make up a lot of the linguistic curiosities as well, tossing in a Romeo and Juliet allusion as well as a few references to the modern concept of *gasp* having a phone in a cow-house. One of my favorite Henry-isms is his use of “raspberry” as a verb, setting one of his scenes “in this shaded and raspberried lane.” He also manages to turn a menu’s simple fare into a hilariously overblown diatribe:
“The gracious spirit of spring pervaded the entire menu. Lamb, that lately capered on the greening hillsides, was becoming exploited with the sauce that commemorated its gambols. The song of the oyster, though not silenced, was diminuendo con amore. The frying-pan seemed to be held, inactive, behind the beneficent bars of the broiler. The pie list swelled; the richer puddings had vanished; the sausage, with his drapery wrapped about him, barely lingered in a pleasant thanatopsis with the buckwheats and the sweet but doomed maple.”
The characters are a bit on the thin side, but in a way that befits the story. Sarah is a listless working girl trapped in the grimy, unwelcoming stone city of Manhattan, and her dreams of the golden summer she spent in a meadow with Walter provide a sharp juxtaposition to her current situation. Walter doesn’t get much characterization (except for being contrastingly described as both scientific and superstitious), but he does have an interesting throwaway line about how he is not ashamed, no matter what others may think of him, that he enjoys eating greens in the springtime. What kind of culture did Manhattan have in 1906 that prohibited the eating of collards in March?
“Springtime a la Carte” is a great example of Henry’s flair for words, and though he doesn’t pack a supersonic punch as he often did in his best stories (“Dearest Walter, with hard-boiled egg” is more for comic value than shock value), he does turn out a sentimental, clever little tale that has enough menu references to keep even the most dedicated epicure satisfied.
August 2, 2025
This story has a smooth and soft atmosphere to read it.
It's like you are reading a diary of someone.
It's about a girl who wants to buy a dress but she can't afford it. Because she wants to attract a farmer to marry her.
But at this time something helps him..and it's not a person. It's poetry!)
How? You should read it to know(;
The way the story is written is interesting because in some parts (not many) it tells you directly about some things besides the happenings.
The order of events and accident in the story can be unbelievable but that's fine.
It's short for real with romantic comedy genre.
Because you know whenever we talk about poetry, love is there.
So, it's suitable for spring time that everyone wants to achieve their ambitions ^-^
It's like you are reading a diary of someone.
It's about a girl who wants to buy a dress but she can't afford it. Because she wants to attract a farmer to marry her.
But at this time something helps him..and it's not a person. It's poetry!)
How? You should read it to know(;
The way the story is written is interesting because in some parts (not many) it tells you directly about some things besides the happenings.
The order of events and accident in the story can be unbelievable but that's fine.
It's short for real with romantic comedy genre.
Because you know whenever we talk about poetry, love is there.
So, it's suitable for spring time that everyone wants to achieve their ambitions ^-^
September 14, 2023
Из комментария известно, что ОГ написал эту историю, когда его спросили: где он берёт сюжеты, а в руках было меню. "Да, везде! Вот хотя бы это меню."
Сюжет средневековый (если не раньше), а антураже, как и во многих рассказах ОГ виден 20 век, который в США наступил раньше. Слёзовыжимательная история, о машинистке (принцессе), которая печатает меню ресторанчика (вышивает и поёт в башне у дракона) и ждёт своего жениха - фермерского сына (принц) и похоже он уже не придёт. И горько плачет. И он находит её по очепяткам в меню (донёсшемуся пению) со своим именем. Все счастливы. Приметы 20 века. Девушка одна в Нью-Йорке и зарабатывает своей печаткой.
Сюжет средневековый (если не раньше), а антураже, как и во многих рассказах ОГ виден 20 век, который в США наступил раньше. Слёзовыжимательная история, о машинистке (принцессе), которая печатает меню ресторанчика (вышивает и поёт в башне у дракона) и ждёт своего жениха - фермерского сына (принц) и похоже он уже не придёт. И горько плачет. И он находит её по очепяткам в меню (донёсшемуся пению) со своим именем. Все счастливы. Приметы 20 века. Девушка одна в Нью-Йорке и зарабатывает своей печаткой.
December 25, 2020
Una historia corta, en edición blingüe con algunas ilustraciones. Amena, con pretensión de contar una historia de amor sencilla. En español está editado por Ken, que es una editorial que tiene libritos muy curiosos.
December 30, 2023
A re-read, and one of my favorites. It's so sweet and funny, especially that last sentence. Our heroine has landed a job typing out menus for a restaurant, but she's yearning for word from her fiancé, whom she has not heard from. There's a happy ending, and how that comes about is hilarious.
January 11, 2026
A great romance written from the perspective of a writer. I can imagine there's empathy about working at a typewriter's keys... even the girl typing daily menus for the restaurant which feeds her models the wandering from the focus. While her mind drift back the farmer and her spring wedding.
January 19, 2026
I didn't read it in the other language but this was the only one I could find on Goodreads. It amazes me how people found each other way back when before phones. This wasn't my favorite story but I am growing to love O. Henry and his artistic style and short stories.
June 24, 2019
Great descriptions and I love the last line.
June 29, 2020
I must have missed something. A girl thinks of a boy she misses while typing a menu, yawn.
May 3, 2021
A timely reminder for dandelion extermination.
July 12, 2025
O. Henry's love story with a unexpected ending.
January 1, 2022
Another cute very short story.
May 17, 2025
So,
my favourite romance is an O. Henry short story.
🙃
my favourite romance is an O. Henry short story.
🙃
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews