Page 10 - DENG105_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_II

Unit 1: The Last Leaf by O. Henry

The O. Henry Award is a prestigious annual prize named after Porter and given to outstanding Notes
short stories. Several schools around the country bear Porter’s pseudonym.
In 1952, a film featuring five stories, called O. Henry’s Full House, was made. The episode
garnering the most critical acclaim[citation needed] was “The Cop and the Anthem” starring
Charles Laughton and Marilyn Monroe. The other stories are “The Clarion Call”, “The Last
Leaf”, “The Ransom of Red Chief” (starring Fred Allen and Oscar Levant), and “The Gift of
the Magi”.

The O. Henry House and O. Henry Hall, both in Austin, Texas, are named after him. O. Henry
Hall, now owned by the University of Texas was previously served as the federal courthouse
in which O. Henry was convicted of embezzlement. Porter has elementary schools named for
him in Greensboro, North Carolina (William Sydney Porter Elementary and Garland, Texas
(O. Henry Elementary), as well as a middle school in Austin, Texas (O. Henry Middle School).

1.2 The Last Leaf

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves
into small strips called “places.” These “places” make strange angles and curves. One Street
crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street.
Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route,
suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!
So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north
windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported
some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a “colony.”
At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. “Johnsy” was
familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table
d’hôte of an Eighth Street “Delmonico’s,” and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and
bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.
That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia,
stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east
side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through
the maze of the narrow and moss-grown “places.”
Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little
woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted,
short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted
iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next
brick house.
One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.

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

“She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day.” said Sue.
“Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice—a man for instance?”
“A man?” said Sue, with a jew’s-harp twang in her voice. “Is a man worth - but, no, doctor;
there is nothing of the kind.”

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 5