Happy day-after-Christmas! If you’re anything like my family you are trying
to wake up, slightly sluggish from the previous day of barely sleeping and
overeating, possibly needing a little pick me up! Diet Pepsi and a good read, usually worked
for my Mom and me! I've got my Diet Pepsi (hope you do too) and an excerpt from one of my Mom’s favorite stories, O.
Henry’s, “The Gift of the Magi.”
I’ll set up the scene: Picture the early 1900’s…Mr. and Mrs. James
Dillingham Young (Jim and Della) have fallen on difficult financial times. Christmas Eve was usually an exciting day for
Della, but this year she only had $1.87 to buy her husband, Jim, a gift. Della so loved her Jim and wanted desperately to give him something wonderful for Christmas! She glanced at herself in the mirror and let
down her long, luxurious brown hair….I’ll let O. Henry tell you from here:
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.
