The Gift of the Magi by O Henry

Books at Bedtime by Calming Anxiety, the gift of the Magi by O Henry.

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all, and sixty cents of it was in pennies. Penny 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 and prismony that such close dealing implied. Three times deleted, one dollar and eighty-seven cents.

And the next day would be Christmas. There was clearly nothing to do but flopped down on the shabby little couch and hell, so deleted. 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 eight dollars per week. It did not exactly beg a description. But it certainly had that word on the look out for the mendiciney squad. In the vestibule below was a letter box into which no letter would go.

And an electric button for which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also, a pertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name, Mr. James Darlingham Young.

The Darlingham had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid thirty dollars per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to twenty dollars, the letters of Dillingham looked blurred. As though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. Then Mr. James Darlingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called Jim, and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Darlingham Young already.

And Mrs. Darlingham 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 the grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey back yard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only one dollar and eighty-seven, 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 have been greater than she had calculated. They always are.

Only one dollar eighty-seven 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.

Just a little bit near to being worthy of the honour of being owed by Jim. There was a pure glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pure glass in an eight dollar flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing, the reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal stripes, 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 colour within twenty seconds. Suddenly 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. With the queen of Shiba, lived in the flat across the air shaft, Della would have let her hair hang out of 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 it his beard with envy. Although now, Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her.

And then she did it up again, and nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet. One went her old brown jacket, on went her old brown coat, with a whirl of skirts and with a brilliant sparkle still in her eyes. She fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign-read, Madame Sofroni, hair goods of all kinds, one flight up Della and collected herself panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the Sofroni. Will you buy my hair, Astella? I buy hair, said Madame, take your hats off and let's have a sight of 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 Madame. "Oh, and the next two hours trip 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.

She had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum, fog chain, simple and chased in its design. Properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meritricious 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, and as the watch was. He sometimes looked at it on the sly, on account of the old leather strap that was used in place of a chain. When Della reached home, her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. He got out her curling iron and lighted the gas and went to work, repairing the ravages made by the generosity he 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 Kony Island chorus girl."

"But what could I do? What could I do with a dollar, an 87 cents?" At seven 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 corn of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stairs, a way down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayers 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 22 and to be burdened with a family. He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves. Jim stopped inside the door, as a moveable as a satire at the centre of a 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 other sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixately with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della rigged 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 will grow out again. You won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast.

Same Mary Christmas, Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice, what a beautiful nice gift I've got you. You've cut your hair off. Asked Jim, laboriously.

As if he had not arrived at that present fact yet, even after the hardest mental labour. "Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair," aimed I.

Jim looked around the room curiously. "You say your hair is gone," he said, with an air almost of idiosocene. "You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you.

Sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. He could 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 wait. He unfolded 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, could give you the wrong answer. The Maggie brought valuable gifts. But that was not among them. This dark, ascitation will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table. "Don't make any mistake," Della, he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that can 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 in the paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy. And then a lass, a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediately 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. Her shoulder combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewellered 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 creases that should have adorned the coveted adornments, they were gone. But she hugged them to her pusson. 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 sinked 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 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 a bang, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smile. "Dell," said he. "Let's put our Christmas presents away and keep them a while. They're too nice to use just at present.

I sold the watch to get the money to buy your cams, and now I suppose you should put the chopps on." The Maggie, 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 treasure of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days, let it be said that of all those who give gifts these two were the wisest, of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the wisest, everything they are the wisest. They are the Maggie, the End. And if I may, my friend, a personal footnote.

I never knew who wrote this, as I started narrating this story. It came flashing back to me. It had been read to us by a Padre at Sunday School in the 70s. It haunted my dreams of true love, and here I am decades later, an older, wise man.

I had to edit this so heavily for the tears of joy running down my cheeks. I hope you enjoyed it too. Have a wonderful life, and as always, be kind.