Cabbages and Kings

O. Henry weaved together several stories into this highly episodic narrative, taking his title-and inspiration-from Lewis Carroll's ballad of the Walrus and the Carpenter in Alice in Wonderland. The stories are set in a fictional country called coralio in Central America, a banana republic where larceny is rampant and revolution lurking. It is a cutting satire of contemporary politics and prejudices, and it reveals O. Henry's essential middle-class morality: lovers are reunited, poverty obliterated, character rewarded, and sentiment satisfied.