Ririro.com - Short Stories

"The Schoolboy's Story" by Charles Dickens unfolds through the voice of a sharp-tongued schoolboy recounting the strange fate of Old Cheeseman — a lonely, mild-mannered figure who grew up at the school as an orphan, became a despised Latin master, and was branded a traitor by his fellow pupils. Sustained only by the quiet loyalty of Jane, the school's wardrobe woman, Cheeseman endures mockery and...

Nobody's Story follows an unnamed labouring man living beside a great, ever-flowing river — a symbol of time's indifferent current — who works tirelessly, raises his family in poverty, and asks only for education, fair governance, and simple human dignity. When the powerful "Bigwig family" quarrels endlessly over politics and doctrine, his children fall to ignorance, his neighbours die in a pestil...

"The Child's Story" by Charles Dickens follows a lone traveller on a magic journey through life, meeting companions at every stage — a joyful child, a learning boy, a young man in love, a busy father, and finally an old man who only remembers. Each companion is lost in turn as the seasons of the wood deepen from spring green to autumn gold. Dickens captures the tenderness and quiet grief of time p...

"The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky opens at a children's New Year's ball where a narrator quietly observes the powerful and self-important Julian Mastakovich. Among the guests is an eleven-year-old girl with a dowry of three hundred thousand rubles — and Mastakovich is already counting. What the narrator witnesses in a quiet side room is deeply unsettling: a grown man's col...

The Curse of Yig draws readers into the dust-choked plains of 1889 Oklahoma, where an ethnologist's search for snake-god folklore leads to a locked asylum cell — and something inside it that defies easy explanation. At the story's heart are Walker and Audrey Davis, Arkansas homesteaders whose fragile peace unravels when Audrey unknowingly destroys a nest of rattlesnakes sacred to Yig, the half-hum...

"A Ghost" is a chilling short story in which the elderly Marquis de la Tour-Samuel confesses a 56-year-old secret: a single errand to a dead woman's locked room that left him permanently scarred by fear. Sent to retrieve private letters from a grieving friend's abandoned château, he encounters a tall woman in white who asks him, in a soft and plaintive voice, to comb her ice-cold hair. What unsett...

"Young Goodman Brown" follows a young Puritan man who leaves his wife Faith one night to walk a dark forest road outside Salem village — and meets a sinister stranger bearing a serpent-carved staff. As the journey deepens, Brown recognises faces he trusts most: his minister, his deacon, his childhood teacher. At a hellish midnight gathering, even Faith may not be who she seemed. Hawthorne builds s...

"The Scarf Of The Lady" tells the story of a noblewoman who opens her harvest field each year to the poorest peasants of the land. One stormy afternoon she meets a serene young woman and her golden-haired child gleaning among the grain. When the sky darkens and thunder rolls in, she leads them to shelter beneath an oak and gently wraps her cherished silk scarf around the child's small shoulders. W...

A Midsummer Night's Dream retold as a short story follows Hermia and Lysander, two lovers who flee Athens to escape a law that would condemn Hermia to death for refusing her father's chosen husband. Their flight into a moonlit forest sets off a chain of magical disasters when the mischievous fairy Puck mistakenly enchants the wrong sleeping lovers with a spell that makes them fall for whoever they...

The Candle in the Forest tells the story of a poor but loving family who make the most of a simple Christmas with imagination, gratitude, and affection. While their wealthy neighbors have abundance but little happiness, the Small Girl’s family finds joy in small things—a homemade tree, a chocolate mouse, a candle in the forest, and time together. Their warmth and kindness touch a lonely neighbor b...

"The Poor Relation's Story" by Charles Dickens follows a quiet, overlooked bachelor who takes his turn at the Christmas fireside and confesses that everything the family believes about him is wrong. What begins as a portrait of shabby solitude — cheap lodgings, aimless days, a threadbare existence — slowly reveals itself as something far more poignant. Through his tender bond with young Little Fra...

The Other Wise Man follows Artaban, a Persian Magian who sells all his possessions to buy three precious gems — a sapphire, a ruby, and a pearl — as gifts for the promised King. But before he can join the other Wise Men, a dying stranger, a mother's terrorised child, and a girl facing slavery each claim a jewel in turn. With every act of mercy, his offering diminishes and his arrival is delayed —...

"A Country Christmas" draws Sophie Vaughan — a fashionable city woman weighing a loveless millionaire's proposal — to her aunt's Vermont farmhouse for an old-fashioned holiday. She invites novelist Randal and friend Emily, expecting a charming rustic diversion. What unfolds is sharper than anyone anticipates: blunt farmhouse wisdom cuts through polished pretension, a wartime story told by quiet gi...

"Hoodoo McFiggin's Christmas" is a short comic story about a devout, generous boy who spends all his pocket money on gifts for his parents and leaves his own Christmas fortune entirely to Santa Claus — praying for skates, a puppy, a bicycle, and more. What arrives instead is a tooth-brush, celluloid collars, sensible boots, short pants, and a family Bible. Leacock's sharp satirical eye turns each...

"Merry Christmas" by Stephen Leacock opens with Father Time interrupting a writer's late-night struggle to craft a Christmas story worth telling in wartime. When Father Time beckons Father Christmas in from the dark street, a figure appears — tattered, frightened, flinching at the sound of passing cars as if they were guns. Once jolly and certain of his welcome, Father Christmas now carries rain-s...

An Unfinished Christmas Story humorously begins as a classic Christmas tale about Harry Stickney, a lonely young clerk spending Christmas Eve in New York with little money and no family nearby. The narrator introduces the eccentric landlady Mrs. Kannon and hints at a heartwarming holiday story to come—but the manuscript abruptly ends just as the plot is beginning. The joke is that the “Christmas s...

A Hint for Next Christmas is a humorous essay arguing that Christmas gifts should be standardized in size and value, especially for house guests who must carry presents home. The narrator mocks impractical gifts, praises a friend's clever trick for giving presents he never bought, and suggests that Christmas cards should be reserved for old friends with whom we have lost touch. Beneath the humor i...

"The Christmas Present" is a short story by Richmal Crompton about Mary Clay, a reserved woman worn thin by ten years of marriage to a loud, demanding husband. When a Christmas visit to her deaf aunt takes an unexpected turn, Mary is offered something extraordinary — a secret passed down through three generations of women in her family. What begins as a bleak winter scene becomes a quiet, charged...

Bertie’s Christmas Eve is a humorous story about Bertie Steffink, a mischievous young man who resents being sent away. On Christmas Eve, when his family goes to the cow-house hoping to hear animals speak at midnight, Bertie locks them inside and spends the evening entertaining a group of rowdy strangers in the house. After causing maximum chaos and embarrassment, he finally lets his family out. Th...

Reginald on Christmas Presents is a witty satire in which Reginald complains about the art of gift-giving. He mocks relatives and friends who give impractical or unwanted presents and argues that people should put more thought into what others actually enjoy. Despite claiming to be easy to please, he insists there is one gift he absolutely does not want: a “George, Prince of Wales” Prayer-book. Th...

"What the Bell Saw and Said" is a short story by Louisa M. Alcott set at midnight on Christmas Eve, where six ancient bell spirits gather in a city steeple to deliver their annual reports on humanity. Each spirit presides over a different parish and social class, bearing witness to merchant dishonesty, fashionable excess, and grinding poverty — including the heartbreaking fate of a young seamstres...

"Cousin Tribulation's Story" is a short story by Louisa May Alcott drawn from a real New Year's morning in her childhood. When their mother arrives at the breakfast table with news of a freezing, starving family nearby, four young sisters must decide whether to give up their hot porridge and bread. One girl quietly wrestles with selfishness while another immediately offers her most treasured jar o...

"A Stolen Christmas" follows Marg'ret Poole, a fiercely proud but impoverished grandmother raising three young grandchildren alone in a small New England village. With no money for gifts and no letter arriving from their struggling father, she watches the Christmas store displays day after day, fingering toys she cannot afford. On Christmas Eve, temptation overwhelms her lifelong honesty and she s...

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking follows a cheerful, whistling vagrant navigating the streets and levees of New Orleans on Christmas Eve, only to be ordered out of the city by a friendly policeman. Drifting into the Louisiana plantation country, Dick falls in with a gang of hardened tramps plotting a dangerous robbery — and finds himself held at gunpoint when he refuses to take part. With only...

Christmas by Injunction tells the story of Cherokee, a generous prospector who returns to his old mining town with gifts and a Christmas tree for local children, only to discover there are none. After a town-wide search, only one lonely boy is found. Cherokee then realizes the boy is the son of a woman he once loved and quietly takes him home for Christmas. The story celebrates generosity, redempt...