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."
