After Twenty Years

"After Twenty Years" is a short story by the American author William Sydney Porter, who wrote under the pseudonym of O. Henry. It was first published in the Sunday edition of the New York World in 1905. The story was included in the 1906 anthology The Four Million, and it has since been republished in many short story collections.

In the story, a man returns to New York to keep an appointment he made with his childhood friend twenty years ago. Their reunion proves difficult as the different paths taken by the two friends have led their lives in opposite directions.