警察与赞美诗

O. Henry (1862-1910)

He was a prolific American short-story writer, a master of surprise endings, who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. Henry was known as a good end, it was called “O• Henry-end”. Although some critics were not so enthusiastic about his work, the public loved it.

He was called Prose Laureate of Manhattan and Father of short stories.

He is one of three short story master in the world.(O. Henry , Maupassant, Chekhov) 创作丰富的美国短篇小说作家，主要描写纽约平民的生活，市民非常喜欢他。以“欧亨利式结尾”闻名于世。

曼哈顿桂冠散文作家和美国现代短篇小说之父。

世界三大短篇小说大师之一。（欧·亨利、莫泊桑、契诃夫

William Sydney Porter was born in Greenboro, North Carolina. His father was a physician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his parental grandmother and paternal aunt.

William was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen he left school, and then worked in a drug store and on a Texas ranch. He continued to Houston, where he had a number of jobs, including accountant,land board clerk, reporter. In 1887 he married Athol Estes Roach; they had a daughter and a son.

出生于美国北卡罗来纳州格林斯波罗镇一个医师家庭，三岁丧母，之后与祖母、姑姑一起生活。

狂热的阅读者，但15岁便离开学校。

做过许多工作，在药房当学徒，做过会计、土地局办事员、记者。

1887年结婚，生有一儿一女。

主要作品

The Romance of a Busy Broker 证券经纪人的浪漫故事

The Gift of Magi 麦琪的礼物

The Last Leaf 最后一片叶子

A Cosmopolite in a Café咖啡馆里的世界公民

Mammon and the Archer 财神和爱神

The Ransom of Red Chief 红色酋长的救赎

The Furnished Room 带家具出租的房间

The Cop and the Anthem 警察和赞美诗

简介

It’s about a New York City hobo named Soapy, who sets out to get arrested so he can avoid sleeping in the cold winter as a guest of the city jail. Despite efforts at petty theft, disorderly conduct, and "mashing" with a young prostitute, Soapy fails to draw the attention of the police. Disconsolate, he pauses in front of a church, where an organ anthem inspires him to clean up his life —and is ironically charged for loitering and sentenced to three months in prison.

The character Soapy, is homeless, a member of the substantial army of underclass men and women who had flocked to New York City during the earliest years of the twentieth century. In an unstated day in late fall, Soapy faces the urgent necessity of finding some sort of shelter for the winter. As with many other homeless people in the

United States, Soapy is psychologically experienced in thinking of the local jail as a homeless shelter. He therefore develops a series of tactics intended to encourage the police to classify him as a criminal and arrest him.

Firstly, he tried to go have dinner and not pay and get put in jail for that. The upper-class restaurant looks at Soapy's threadbare clothes and refuses to serve him. Waiter threw him out because his clothes looked like a bum's.

Then he threw a brick through a window. Officer didn't believe he did it because he hung around.

Soapy took a cobble-stone and dashed it through the glass. People came running round the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still, with his hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of brass buttons.“Where’s the man that done that?” inquired the officer excitedly. “Don’t you figure out that I might have had something to do with it?” said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but friendly, as one greets good fortune. The policeman’s mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men who smash windows do not remain to parley with the law’s minions. They take to their heels. The policeman saw a man halfway down the block running to catch a car.

Ate dinner at a cheap restaurant, said he couldn't pay. The waiter just had some guys throw him out.

He tried to hit on some woman, but she didn't call for the cops because she was a prostitute.

The fifth time he acted drunk but the cop thought he was a college student celebrating a win in a football game.

Then he tried to steal another man's umbrella. But the victim of the umbrella theft relinquishes the item without a struggle. Because it is also not his umbrella.

His attempts fail, he passed by a church and heard the Sabbath anthem .The influences about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties, and base motives that made up his existence. Soapy decides that on the very next day he will seek out this potential mentor and apply for employment.

At that time Soapy felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly round into the broad face of a policeman.

“What are you doing there?” asked the officer.

“Nothing’,” said Soapy.

“Then come along,” said the policeman.

“Three months on the Island,” said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.

O.Henry is famous for his effective use of situational irony to make a statement in a very short amount of time. Here the irony is that when Soapy wants to go to jail, he can't get arrested. When he decides that he doesn't want jail after all, he gets arrested for standing around, doing nothing.