Book 3 "Best Short Stories of O.Henry"

Title: Best Short Stories of O. Henry
Author: O. Henry
Publisher (level): IBC Publishing (2)
Summary:
There are six short stories in this book. The first story is “Witches’ Loaves,” written about a little love romance. The owner of a bakery, a woman sells loaves that were baked the day before at cheap price. For several weeks, a man comes to the bakery in the morning, and always buys a fresh loaves and old one. One day, the owner found that his sleeves were stained some paints. She thought he would be an artist, and then, that he would be poor. She wanted to make kindness of him, so she put a pat of butter secretly in the old loaf that the man bought. However, this her kindness did spoil their relation like as fleeting loves. Because he hadn’t eaten old loaves, but used those as erasers when he drafted the blueprint of a new city hall building. When he used the loaf with butter as usual, he could not erase error lines but got the paper dirty to recover impossibly. The architectural draftsman really got angry and abused her. Then, the romance went cool.
Other stories are “ Hearts and Hands,” “ By Courier,” “ The Defeat of the City,” “The Lost Blend” and “ Springtime a' la Carte.” These are really smart titles. Don’t you think so? Most of these stories have happy endings, but “ Hearts and Hands” is not only happy but also lonely story. If you read this, you will feel the longing of a man to a woman deeply.
Evaluation: 4stars
Short stories of this book are almost written about romances. Nonetheless, these are not only romances but also human dramas. Thus, we don’t feel stories as old-fashioned but as stirring, even though those were written some decades ago. Especially, “ Springtime a' la Carte” is the story I like very much. In the story, the typewriter is used as really effective tool, and made the story more romantic.