His works have been translated into nearly
every language. <...> He contributed much to the
American short story and was the most popular of the American shortstory writers before World War I. He was the author of about three
hundred short stories. <...> Some collections of his short stories were issued after O. Henry's
death: "Sixes and Sevens" (1911), "Rolling Stones" (1913). <...> Robert H. Davis, one of his biographers, said: "When I get lowspirited, 1 read O. Henry."
Today the desire to read him is as persistent as ever. <...> Words:
a masterpiece [ma:stэpi:s] – шедевр pneumonia [pnju: ‘mounjэ]
– воспаление легких
a vine – плющ
a model – натурщик
Sue often met Joanna (everybody called her Johnsy) in a little
cafe on the East Side of New York, where the two girls came for lunch
almost every day. <...> Perhaps because they were so different, or perhaps because they soon
discovered, that they liked the same things in art and music, and the
4
same poems and salads, they became friends – very good friends – and
they decided to live together and paint pictures and try to become great
artists. <...> They didn't have much money, but they were young and full of
hope, and life seemed good to them. <...> He didn't go near Sue, but he
put his cold hands on little Johnsy, and now she lay in her bed and
looked out of the window at the grey wall of the next house. <...> And that chance is that she must want to live. <...> I'll do everything I can, of course, but I can do nothing without my patient's help. <...> If
you can make her ask one question: аbout food, or about clothes, or
about her favourite picture, she will have a much better chance to live."
The doctor went away, and Sue stood in the corridor and cried. <...> I
mustn't cry!" she thought at last. "She mustn't know how seriously ill
she is!" And she stopped crying and washed her eyes <...>