The Gift of the Magi
O' Henry
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.
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.
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?"
"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 {lash 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.
COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS:
1) Who is the author of ‘The Gift of
Magi’?
2) Who are the characters in the
story?
3) What kind of couples are they?
4) Explain the title of the short
story.
5) If you were Jim or Della, what
gift would you like to give? Consider the socio-economic status.
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