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 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 lookout 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, 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 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'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 honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass
between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pierglass
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.
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.
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 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
fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where
she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All
Kinds." One flight 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
practiced 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
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.
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
atruant 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 a little silent prayer 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 without gloves.
Jim stopped
inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail.
His eyes were fixed upon Della, and here 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 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
labor.
"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 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 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."
Why do we fast? Apart from the religious connotations for observing a fast, it is also a way of practicing to control our urges by controlling hunger. The most arduous form of fast involves giving up all food and water for a period of time. While this may not be possible for all, certain foods from each food group can be eaten during the fasts. 
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