The Gift of the Magi
This
story was originally published on Dec 10, 1905 in The New York Sunday
World as "Gifts of the Magi." It was
subsequently published as The Gift of the Magi in O.
Henry's 1906 short story collection The Four Million.
We created The Gift of the Magi Study Guide for this story to benefit teachers and students.
We created The Gift of the Magi Study Guide for this story to benefit teachers and students.
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 left 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 look-out 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, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as
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 grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey
backyard. To-morrow 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 honour of being owned by Jim.
(updating...)
There
was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a
pier-glass in an $8 Bat. 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 colour 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 airshaft, 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
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 cluttered out of the door and
down the stairs to the street.
Where
she stopped the sign read: "Mme Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds."
One Eight 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 practised 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 78 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 of 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 twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He
needed a new overcoat and he was with out gloves.
Jim
stepped 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 it 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 labour.
"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 a 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
for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise-shell, with
jewelled 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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- Download free audiobook (version 1)
- Version 2: The gift of the magi
'The Gift of the Magi' by O. Henry. Karen Leggett adapted this story for VOA Learning English. Your storyteller was Shep O'Neal.
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- Download free audiobook (version 1)
- Version 2: The gift of the magi
'The Gift of the Magi' by O. Henry. Karen Leggett adapted this story for VOA Learning English. Your storyteller was Shep O'Neal.
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