This is my favourite Christmas story. \u00a0It’s actually one of my favourites stories of any type. I won’t say why. I’ll let you discover the reason for yourself. -Lane<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Gift of the Magi\u201d\u00a0by O. Henry<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cMr. James Dillingham Young.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cDillingham\u201d 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 \u201cJim\u201d and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t 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\u2013something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim\u2019s gold watch that had been his father\u2019s and his grandfather\u2019s. The other was Della\u2019s hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n So now Della\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Where she stopped the sign read: \u201cMne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.\u201d One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the \u201cSofronie.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWill you buy my hair?\u201d asked Della.<\/p>\n \u201cI buy hair,\u201d said Madame. \u201cTake yer hat off and let\u2019s have a sight at the looks of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Down rippled the brown cascade.<\/p>\n \u201cTwenty dollars,\u201d said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.<\/p>\n \u201cGive it to me quick,\u201d said Della.<\/p>\n Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim\u2019s present.<\/p>\n 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\u2013as 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\u2019s. It was like him. Quietness and value\u2013the 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2013a mammoth task.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Jim doesn\u2019t kill me,\u201d she said to herself, \u201cbefore he takes a second look at me, he\u2019ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do\u2013oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?\u201d<\/p>\n At 7 o\u2019clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.<\/p>\n 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: \u201cPlease God, make him think I am still pretty.\u201d<\/p>\n The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two\u2013and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Della wriggled off the table and went for him.<\/p>\n \u201cJim, darling,\u201d she cried, \u201cdon\u2019t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn\u2019t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It\u2019ll grow out again\u2013you won\u2019t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!\u2019 Jim, and let\u2019s be happy. You don\u2019t know what a nice\u2013 what a beautiful, nice gift I\u2019ve got for you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve cut off your hair?\u201d asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.<\/p>\n \u201cCut it off and sold it,\u201d said Della. \u201cDon\u2019t you like me just as well, anyhow? I\u2019m me without my hair, ain\u2019t I?\u201d<\/p>\n Jim looked about the room curiously.<\/p>\n \u201cYou say your hair is gone?\u201d he said, with an air almost of idiocy.<\/p>\n \u201cYou needn\u2019t look for it,\u201d said Della. \u201cIt\u2019s sold, I tell you\u2013sold and gone, too. It\u2019s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,\u201d she went on with sudden serious sweetness, \u201cbut nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2013what 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.<\/p>\n Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t make any mistake, Dell,\u201d he said, \u201cabout me. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s 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\u2019ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n For there lay The Combs\u2013the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims\u2013just 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.<\/p>\n But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: \u201cMy hair grows so fast, Jim!\u201d<\/p>\n And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, \u201cOh, oh!\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIsn\u2019t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You\u2019ll 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.<\/p>\n \u201cDell,\u201d said he, \u201clet\u2019s put our Christmas presents away and keep \u2018em a while. They\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The magi, as you know, were wise men\u2013wonderfully wise men\u2013who 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. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is my favourite Christmas story. \u00a0It’s actually one of my favourites stories of any type. I won’t say why. I’ll let you discover the…<\/p>\n