MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS
THE GIFT OF
THE MAGI
By O Henry,
Special To The Lightning
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 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.
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 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 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 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
for saying 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 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 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 them 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. O all who give and receive gifts, such as
they are wisest.
Everywhere
they are wisest.
They are the
magi.
