Today's Short Story by John O'Hara

Today's story is Exactly Eight Thousand Dollars Exactly by John O'Hara. It is in a book my childhood friend's mother gave me years ago, called Read With Me, A personal anthology of memorable reading, selected and introduced by Thomas B. Costain. A man comes to borrow money from his very successful brother. It is really an age-old story of (some) brothers; one rich, one down-and-out, a state usually brought on by himself; one kind, one mean; one in the limelight for good work, the other in that same limelight for bad deeds. How often we see this, even in our Presidents and their brothers. Through the words he uses, in the way he talks to employees of his brother's company, the reader sees the kind of man he is. We learn about the other brother through his story which he recites. Well written, interesting, though it wasn't such pleasant reading.