Compliments of the Season - O.HENRY

O.Henry (William Sydney Porter) (1862 – 1910)

Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA. He attende school for a short time, worked as a clerk in a drugstore, later on a ranch. He wrote Cabbages and Kings (1904), The Four Million (1906), Heart of the West and The Trimmed Lamp (1907), The Gentle Grafter and The Voice of the City (1908), Options (1909), Whirligigs and Strictly Business (1910).

There are no more Christmas stories to write. Fiction is exhausted; and newspaper items, the next best, are manufactured by clever young journalists who have married early and have an engagingly pessimistic view of life. Therefore, for seasonable diversion, we are reduced to two very questionable sources—facts and philosophy. We will begin with—whichever you choose to call it. Children are pestilential little animals with which we have to cope under a bewildering variety of conditions. Especially when childish sorrows overwhelm them are we put to our wits’ end. We exhaust our paltry store of consolation; and then beat them, sobbing, to sleep. Then we grovel in the dust of a million years, and ask God why. Thus we call out of the rat-trap. As for the children, no one understands them except old maids, hunchbacks, and shepherd dogs.

The Invisible Man by H.G.Wells

Herbert George Wells (1866 – 1946)

Born in Bromley, London. Started as a schoolmaster in natural sciences, he took to writing articles for the papers.Wrote the books: The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), When the Sleeper Wakes (1910), The First Men in the Moon (1901), Tono-Bungay (1909), The World Set Free (1914), Russia in the Shadows (1920), etc.

'The Invisible Man' by Herbert G. Wells The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried. He staggered into the "Coach and Horses" more dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau down. "A fire," he cried, "in the name of human charity! A room and a fire!" He stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the inn.