SHORT STORY BY O’HENRY A Blackjack Bargainer Đây là một serries truyện ngắn anh ngữ nổi tiếng với những từ vựng quen thuộc. Nhằm giúp các em và các bạn yêu thich tiếng anh luyện tập và củng cố thêm kỹ năng đọc tiếng anh | SHORT STORY BY O HENRY A Blackjack Bargainer The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree s law office was Goree himself sprawled in his creakv old arm- chair. The rickety little office built of red brick was set flush with the street -- the main street of the town of Bethel. Bethel rested upon the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. Above it the mountains were piled to the sky. Far below it the turbid Catawba gleamed yellow along its disconsolate valley. The June day was at its sultriest hour. Bethel dozed in the tepid shade. Trade was not. It was so still that Goree reclining in his chair distinctly heard the clicking of the chips in the grand-jury room where the court- house gang was playing poker. From the open back door of the office a well-worn path meandered across the grassy lot to the court-house. The treading out of that path had cost Goree all he ever had -- first inheritance of a few thousand dollars next the old family home and latterly the last shreds of his selfrespect and manhood. The gang had cleaned him out. The broken gambler had turned drunkard and parasite he had lived to see this day come when the men who had stripped him denied him a seat at the game. His word was no longer to be taken. The daily bouts at cards had arranged itself accordingly and to him was assigned the ignoble part of the onlooker. The sheriff the county clerk a sportive deputy a gay attorney and a chalk-faced man hailing from the valley sat at table and the sheared one was thus tacitly advised to go and grow more wool. Soon wearying of his ostracism Goree had departed for his office muttering to himself as he unsteadily tra- versed the unlucky pathway. After a drink of corn whiskey from a demijohn under the table he had flung himself into the chair staring in a sort of maudlin apathy out at the mountains immersed in the summer haze. The little white patch he saw away up on the side of Blackjack was Laurel the village near which he had been born and bred. There also was the .
