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Read and recorded by Betsie Bush. Marquette, Michigan, December 2005.

The Gift of the Magi by 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 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: “Mme. 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 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 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 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.” 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.

End of The Gift of the Magi.