The more than 600 stories written by O. Henry provided an embarrassment
of riches for the compilers of this volume.The final selection of the
thirty-eight stories in this collection offers for the reader's delight
those tales honored almost unanimously by anthologists and those that
represent, in variety and balance, the best work of America's favorite
storyteller.They are tales in his most mellow, humorous, and ironic
moods.They give the full range and flavor of the man born William Sydney
Porter but known throughout the world as O. Henry, one of the great
masters of the short story."