Christmas Day Gift: Jim and Della's Story

Gift of the Magi

 O. Henry

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. This was everything. 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 cheeks burned with the silent calculation of parsimony that such close dealing implied by. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. The next day would be Christmas holiday. 

  

 There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the small couch shabby and howling. So did della it. Who instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominance. While the lady of the house is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the house. Furnished apartment in the $ 8 per week. I did not exactly beggar description, but it was certainly the word on the overall look of the team begging. In the vestibule below was a letter to the box that the letter did not go, and the electric button that no mortal finger could coax a loop. Dangling thereunto was also bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young card." The "Dillingham" were remote to breeze during the previous period of prosperity when its owner was paying $ 30 a week. Now, have shrunk when he walked to $ 20, and the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as if they were thinking seriously about 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 embraced many of Ms. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. All of which are very good. Della finished cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. I stood at the window and looked dully in the gray cat walking on the gray wall in the backyard of Ramadi. Tomorrow will be a holiday to Christmas Day, and it's only $ 1.87 with which to buy Jim present. She had to save every penny they can for several months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week does not go away. Expenses may have been greater than it was calculated. They are always. Only $ 1.87 to buy a gift for Jim. Jim them. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something wonderful for him. Everything was fine and rare and sterling - something a little close to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was glass from the sidewalk between the room windows. You've probably seen on the glass in the sidewalk is $ 8. A person may very thin and very agile, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, and get an accurate perception to some extent 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. Quickly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length. Now, there are two property James Dillingham Youngs which both take great pride. It was one gold watch Jim, who was his father and grandfather. The other was Della hair. Was the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della, the let me be her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to Her Majesty's jewels and gifts go down. The King Solomon was a 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. And yet beautiful hair fell about Della, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. And reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. Then I did it 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. He went on the old brown hat. With swirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle, which is still in her eyes, she cluttered out of the door and down the stairs to the street. Where you left off reading marked as follows: "Ms. Sovruna. Hair goods of all types." One eight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked "Sovruna." "Would you buy my hair? "asked Della.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take YR hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it." Crispy brown the bottom of the waterfall. "Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand. "Give it to me quickly," said Della. Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. The looted stores to present Jim. I found it in the end. It certainly made for Jim and no one else. There was nothing else like it in any of the stores, and they all turned inside out. The platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by the decoration ignited - as all good things should be done. It was even worth the watch. Once she saw that she knew that it must be Jim. It was like him. Calm and value - Applied description alike. Twenty-one dollars they took them for that, she hurried home with the 78 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Great as was the watch, he looked at times on the sly on account of the old leather belt from which was used instead of the chain. When I arrived home della poisoning gave way to a little wisdom and reason. Flatiron came out and lit her gas and went to work renovating the devastation made by generosity added to love. Which is always a formidable task dear friends - a daunting task. Within forty minutes her head was covered by a small, near lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and dangerous. "If Jim does not kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a look at the second at me, and he'll say look like a Coney Island chorus girl, but what could I do - oh what can I do! With the dollar and eighty-seven cents?"

At 7:00 gave coffee and frying pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the pieces. Jim never was late. Della doubled fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door, which is always income. Then he heard his steps on the ladder away from the bottom of the first on board the plane, 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" open the door and Jim stepped in and closed. He looked thin and very serious. The poor, and it was only twenty-two - and to be burdened with a family! He needs a new coat, and it was with the gloves. Jim stepped inside the door, and immovable in Kassanah smell 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 feelings that had been prepared for. He simply stared at her steadily with this strange expression on his face. Della wriggled off the table and went for him. "Jim, darling," she cried, "do not look at me that way I would have cut my hair off and sold because I could not have lived through the holiday Christmas without giving you a gift it will grow again. - You will not mind, will? I just had to do it . My hair grows awfully quickly say "Merry Holiday! Jim, and let us be happy. You do not know what a nice-what a beautiful, nice gift I've got you. "" I've cut your hair? "Jim asked, laboriously, as if he had not arrived to this fact patented yet, even after the hardest mental labor." Cut run it and sell it, "said Della." Do not you want me just as well, anyway? I'm me without my hair, do not I? "

Jim looked around the room strange. "You say your hair is gone?" He said, almost with an air of idiocy. "You do not need to look for it," said Della. "I've sold, and I'm telling you -... sold, also went It's the night of Eid Birth, boy Be good to me, for it went for you probably are numbered hair out of my head," I went with serious sweetness of a sudden, "but it can not be a ever count my love for you. I will put the pieces on the C? " Of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. Della was shrouded him. 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? The mathematics or wit give you the wrong answer. Magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This assertion will be illuminated in the dark later. Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it on the table. "Do not make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me, I do not think that there is anything in order to shave or shave or shampoo that could make me like my daughter any less. But if you 'll unwrap that package you may see Why I had a go at the beginning of time. " White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then ecstatic scream of joy. And then, unfortunately! Rapid feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the Lord of the apartment. Combs put it - a set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshiped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled edges - just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, I knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearn for them without the least hope of possession. Now, they have, but Tris was that should have adorned the coveted gold decorations.

But she hugged them to her chest, and along they were able to look with dark eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows fast, Jim!" Then Della jumped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!" And Jim had not yet seen the beautiful gift. She ran to him eagerly open her palm. It seems that the precious metal boring to {whip with a reflection of the bright and ardent spirit. "Is not it a first-class, 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: "Let's put holiday Birth our offers away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I've sold an hour to get the money to buy combs your own. Suppose now to put the pieces on." Magi, as you know, were wise men - great sages - who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving holiday gifts. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise and may incur privilege of exchange in case of duplication. Here we have an embarrassing facts relating to a quiet folly of two children in an apartment wisest who have sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let say that all who give gifts these two were the wisest. All of giving and receiving gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.