When I told my father that I was moving to Des Moines, lowa, he told me about the only time he had been there. It was in the 1930s, when he was an editor of the literary magazine of Southern Methodist University(SMU) in Dallas, Texas. He also worked as a professor at SMU, and there was a girl student in his class who suffered from a serious back disease. She couldn’t afford the operation because her family was poor.
Her mother ran a boardinghouse in Galveston, a seaside town near Houston, Texas. She was cleaning out the attic(阁楼) one day when she came across an old dusty manuscript(手稿). On its top page were the words, “By O. Henry.” It was a nice story, and she sent it to her daughter at SMU, who showed it to my father. My father had never read the story before, but it sounded like O. henry, and he knew that O. Henry had once lived in Houston. So it was possible that the famous author had gone to the beach and stayed in the Galveston boardinghouse, and had written the story there and left the manuscript behind by accident. My father visited an O. Henry expert at Columbia University in New York, who authenticated the story as O. Henry’s.
My father then set out to sell it. Eventually, he found himself in Des Moines, meeting with Gardner Cowles, a top editor at the Des Moines Register. Cowles loved the story and bought it on the spot. My father took the money to the girl. It was just enough for her to have the operation she so desperately needed.
My father never told me what the O. Henry story was about. But I doubt that it could have been better than his own story.
24. Which of the following might explain the fact that the manuscript was found in the attic?
A. O. Henry once worked in Houston. B. O. Henry once stayed in Galveston.
C. O. Henry once moved to Des Moines. D. O. Henry once taught at SMU.
25. The underlined word “authenticated” in Paragraph 2 probably means .
A. named B. treated C. proved D. described
26. According to the text, why did the author’s father go to Des Moines?
A. To sell the O. Henry story. B. To meet the author himself.
C. To talk with the O. Henry expert. D. To give money to the girl.