What a sad old story this is, the "successful" artist dying broke and alone.
An O. Henry Ending
On this day in 1910, O. Henry died in New York City at the age of forty-seven. His death from alcoholism-related illnesses was the farthest thing from a surprise ending, but his last months and hours were in other ways characteristic of the fiction: the down-on-his-luck hero, the small-detail-revealing-all style, the polished-perfect irony.
Henry saw that he had made $250 while the hack was on his way to making $100,000, and concluded that he had other stories that could be dramatized. When he checked into the hospital, he emptied his pockets, saying, "Here I am going to die and only worth 23 cents." |
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