歐·亨利/O.Henry
歐·亨利（O.Henry，1862-1910），20世紀初美國著名短篇小說家，美國現代短篇小說創始人，批判現實主義作家，被譽為“美國的莫泊桑”。他一生極富傳奇色彩，當過藥房學徒、牧羊人、辦事員、新聞記者、銀行出納員。1898年2月，他因貪汙銀行公款罪被判處五年徒刑，後提前獲釋。他的作品貼近百姓生活，結局往往出人意料，以“含淚微笑”的風格被譽為“美國生活的幽默百科全書”。代表作有《麥琪的禮物》《警察與讚美詩》《最後一片葉》等。
Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished room to furnished room, transients forever-transients in abode, transients in heart and mind. They sing“Home, Sweet Home”in ragtime;they carry their lares et penates in a bandbox;their vine is entwined about a picture hat;a rubber plant is their fig tree.
Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt;but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant guests.
One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells. At the twelfth he rested his lean hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hatband and forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote, hollow depths. To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers.
He asked if there was a room to let.
“Come in,”said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat;her throat seemed lined with fur.“I have the third floor back, vacant since a week back. Should you wish to look at it?”