2015-29 O Henry: The Gift of the Magi
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| O Henry [1862-1910] |
William Sydney Porter, known by his pen name O. Henry, was an
American writer. O. Henry's short stories are known for their wit, wordplay,
warm characterization, and surprise endings.
The Gift
of the Magi is a short story, about a young married couple and how they deal
with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very
little money.
As a sentimental story with a moral lesson about gift-giving,
it has been a popular one for adaptation, especially for presentation during
the Christmas season.
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was
all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time
by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's
cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing
implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And
the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly
nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did
it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs,
sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of
the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look
at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar
description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy
squad.
In the vestibule below
was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from
which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a
card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."
The
"Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of
prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income
was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a
modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and
reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs.
James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very
good.
Della finished her cry
and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and
looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard.
Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a
present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this
result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than
she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her
Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him.
Something fine and rare and sterling—something just a little bit near to being
worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass
between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8
flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a
rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of
his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled
from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly,
but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down
her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two
possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty
pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his
grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the
flat across the air shaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window
some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King
Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim
would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at
his beard from envy.
So now Della's beautiful
hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It
reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she
did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood
still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown
jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the
brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the
stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the
sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up
Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly,
hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my
hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair,"
said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of
it."
Down rippled the brown
cascade.
"Twenty
dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand.
"Give it to me
quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two
hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking
the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It
surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any
of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob
chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance
alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all good things should do. It
was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be
Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value—the description applied to both.
Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87
cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the
time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the
sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home
her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her
curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made
by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a
mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her
head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully
like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long,
carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't
kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me,
he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do—oh! what
could I do with a dollar and eighty seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee
was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook
the chops.
Jim was never late.
Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near
the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down
on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit
for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she
whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim
stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was
only twenty-two—and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and
he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the
door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon
Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it
terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor
any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her
fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the
table and went for him.
"Jim,
darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut
off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you
a present. It'll grow out again—you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it.
My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You
don't know what a nice—what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off
your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent
fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and
sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me
without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the
room curiously.
"You say your hair
is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look
for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you—sold and gone, too. It's
Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my
head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but
nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim
seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard
with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction.
Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference? A
mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought
valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be
illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from
his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any
mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in
the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl
any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a
while at first."
White fingers and nimble
tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then,
alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the
immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The
Combs—the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a
Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rims—just
the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs,
she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the
least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should
have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to
her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and
say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And then Della leaped up
like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his
beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull
precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent
spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy,
Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a
hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on
it."
Instead of obeying, Jim
tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and
smiled.
"Dell," said
he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're
too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your
combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, as you know,
were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger.
They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts
were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of
duplication.
And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of
two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the
greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days
let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who
give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest.
They are the magi.
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