O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921

He went to his house. "I'll ask Marie," he thought.... She was sitting before a mirror, her hands clasped under her chin, smiling at herself.... She had put a flower in her hair...

This was meagre comfort, and Annie did not follow the primitive psychology of it. She only knew that into her happiness there had come again the darkening of a fear, fear that w...

The coffeepot on this particular day chose to boil. They rattled merrily out of Frederick and off into the higher hills beyond. It was a little after noon when they reached the...

"Ah, yes, I understand," said Madame d'Avala. "And yet I think I understand the little one, too. He and I--we have the same nature. We cannot breathe in the too-high altitudes....

The first page was a triumph. Count on the office to back up its men in the field! There was the whole story, the whole horror and heartbreak, finely displayed. There were his p...

So the bargain was struck in a way that worked the most cruel hardship on the girl. Food she could steal and did, blithely enough, since she had no monitor but the lure of brigh...

She wanted to recall the offer too late. In the car she felt chilly. He sank into a corner of the tonneau like a thrown laprobe. Mrs. Egg talked loudly about Adam all the way to...

Laughter! A great clapping of hands rolled about her like thunder, dying down and rising again to even greater volume. Cries of "Go on," assailed her ears, mingled with, "Stop,...

Nahara, a fairly respectable cattle-killer before, had become in a single night one of the worst terrors of India. Of course she was still a coward, but she had learned, by virt...

"Come thou now." He felt the gentle push of Houseen's hands. He found himself moving toward the door that stood open into the street. The light of an outer conflagration was in...

She seized Freddy's hand and walked rapidly toward the door. Howard lurched after her, followed by the interested stares of the spectators. On the street he caught up with her a...

The near horse knew the game, knew how to lead the others. That was Annie's salvation. As she swung into the field she had a struggle with the knife, but it dropped into place,...

They called him, but the old man was a little deaf. Some of the men rode to the top of the hill but could not see him. In his zeal he had got a considerable distance away. Meanw...

For a few minutes there was wild excitement at the village gates. Warwick Sahib was dead, they said--they had heard the shots and run to the place of firing, and beat up and dow...

When Habib had laughed for a moment he would grow silent. Presently he would go out into the ugly dark of the foreign quarter, followed very often by Raoul Genet. He had known R...

"For who shall forbid that the dawn she shall break--_hein_?" he continued. "The Curé? Not mooch. When the Dawn she come, she come; not with his hand can he hold her back. For m...

Tedge knew where there was feed for the starving animals, and the _Marie Louise_ was coming back light. By the Intercoastal Canal and the shallow string of bays along the Texas-...

A flat-bottomed bayou skiff, and in it the oars, a riverman's blanket-roll of greasy clothes, and a tin box! He knew the box. On one end, in faded gilt, was the name "B. Tedge."...

They were saving their matches and candles against necessity. Mechanically the old man chopped and hacked at the wall of earth in front of him. Now and then the pick would encou...

"You!.... Buy Grit's junk business!" What did _he_ want with junk? He was clean! From head to foot he was clean! His hair was parted. It was not only parted, it was brushed into...

Twelve hours more. The snow ceased. The wind died. Ten miles out of Kansas City Martin gave the homeward-bound order for Northport, then slumped weakly into a corner. Five minut...

From the beginning Simpson had preached more of hell than of heaven; he could not help doing so, for he held eternal punishment to be more imminent than eternal joy, and thought...

Simpson had some little skill with his pencil--a real love for drawing was one of the instincts which his austere obsessions had crushed out of him. He revolved several styles i...

"Poor stuff," he said to the bookseller, tossing it down again. "Give me 'Ars ne Lupin'." And he paid two sous for a paper-covered, dog-eared, much-thumbed copy of the famous de...

Not all you have heard and read about Grimshaw's career is true. But the best you can say of him is bad enough. He squandered his own fortune first--on Esther Levenson and the p...

Other members of society reflected in the year are preachers, judges, criminals, actors, and actresses. For some years, it is true, actor and actress have been treated increasin...

Father Antoine stared at him, not as an angry white man stares, but with head thrown back and mouth partly open, in the manner of his race. Then, with the unreasoned impetuousne...

The plan for the creation of the O. Henry Memorial Committee was conceived and the work of the Committee inaugurated in the year 1918 by the late John F. Tucker, LL.M., then Dir...

Raising her head she appraised the piles that surrounded her. "All this stuff!" It had to be disposed of. She lifted herself from the creaking chair and, finding a pot of black...