“The letters of ‘Dillingham’ looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called ‘Jim’ and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young,…”
This is the perfect story. If I tell you more about it, I would spoil it! You would be able to write it yourself. It was meant to be written by someone and thank the Bethlehem Star’s child that it was O. Henry! — with his MAGIcal turns of phrase and observations and exchanges of plot twists as part of a penurious and loving marriage’s exchange of gifts at Christmas. Santa Claus could not have got it more wrong! The only question I have is one about beautiful hair growing back to the beauty it was before it wasn’t. Only time will tell!
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My previous reviews of stories by O. Henry: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2020/02/17/o-henry-stories/
My other reviews of older or classic books HERE
IF I READ ANY MORE OF O. HENRY’s TOP CLASSIC STORIES, MY THOUGHTS ON THEM WILL APPEAR IN THE COMMENT STREAM BELOW…
MAMMON AND THE ARCHER
“wrinkling a contumelious nostril”
…but whose nostril I forget, but I do recall the archer is a Cupid called Eros, whereby a traffic grid-lock is planned or happens by happenstance when a young man called Rockwell, in a hurrying carriage with his unobtainable sweetheart, drops a valuable gold ring onto the road and stops the carriage an intended few seconds because he saw where it dropped (had he soaped his finger?!) after the same young man had earlier told his rich Rockwell soap-industrialist father: “We can’t buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.” But his Aunt Ellen gave him the ring to wear and use…
Yet there is more to the planning of the gridlock in a story of which most of the characters were ignorant?
“from the soft meadows of sunset to the rocky hills of morning”
MEMOIRS OF A YELLOW DOG
“Oh, oo’s um oodlum, doodlum, woodlum, toodlum, bitsy-witsy skoodlums?”
A first dog singular narration by a dog with as clever a wily, witty way with words as the wordsmith author himself, about its overbearing mistress and the husband whom she overbears, too.
And the dog and husband bond and go to the Rockies to escape us all: controlling author, interfering ladies, even us readers…