In “Essays, Letters and Miscellanies,“ Leo Tolstoy says: ”Stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.” Tolstoy urges us to resist the human tendency to be so consumed by work that we forget to look up and see the life that surrounds us.
In his short story “The Romance of a Busy Broker,” O. Henry shows that when we allow work to swallow us, we do not see what is around us and end up losing our humanity. By following the busy broker Harvey Maxwell, Henry shows that we can see life, with all its secrets and beauties, if we pay attention.
