The Gift of the Magi

Part One · One Dollar and Eighty-Seven Cents

One dollar and eighty-seven cents was the entire fortune, and sixty cents of it consisted of pennies, saved one and two at a time by negotiating with the grocer and the vegetable merchant and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent accusation of stinginess that such relentless bargaining inevitably implied. Three times Della counted the coins, and each time the total remained one dollar and eighty-seven cents, and the following day would be Christmas. There was obviously nothing to do except collapse onto the shabby little couch and weep, so Della did precisely that, which instigates the philosophical reflection that existence is composed of sobs, sniffles and smiles, with the sniffles predominating considerably. While the mistress of the household is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, we may take a respectful look at the home itself, a furnished apartment that rented for eight dollars a week.

It did not precisely beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the beggary 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, and beside it a card bearing the name of Mr. James Dillingham Young. The name had been displayed with considerable confidence during a former period of prosperity, when its owner was being paid thirty dollars a week, but now that the income had shrunk to twenty dollars, the letters of the name looked faded and uncertain, as though they were seriously contemplating a contraction to a modest and unassuming initial. Nevertheless, whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and climbed to his apartment above, he was called Jim and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della, and that was all very good.

Della finished her crying and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and gazed out dully at a gray cat walking along a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only one dollar and eighty-seven cents with which to purchase a present for Jim. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result, because twenty dollars a week does not travel very far, and expenses had been considerably greater than she had calculated, as they invariably are. Only one dollar and eighty-seven cents to buy a present for Jim, her Jim. Many happy hours she had spent planning something exquisite for him, something rare and genuine and valuable, something just a little bit nearly worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a narrow mirror between the windows of the room, of the kind that 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 appearance. Della, being slender, had mastered the art. Suddenly she whirled away from the window and stood before the glass, and 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, which had belonged to his father and his grandfather before him. The other was Della's hair, which, had the Queen of Sheba lived in the apartment across the airshaft, would have depreciated Her Majesty's jewels and gifts.

Part Two · Madame Sofronie

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters, reaching below her knees and making itself almost a garment for her. Then she gathered 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, and on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out of the door and down the stairs to the street. Where she stopped, the sign read: Madame Sofronie, Hair Goods of All Kinds. One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, and chilly, hardly looked the part of an elegant proprietor of hair goods.

Della inquired whether Madame would purchase her hair, and Madame replied that she bought hair, and instructed her to take her hat off and let her have a look at it. Down rippled the brown cascade. Madame lifted the mass with a practiced hand and pronounced her verdict: twenty dollars. Della told her to give it to her quickly. Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings, if you will forgive the hashed metaphor. Della was ransacking the stores for Jim's present, and she discovered it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else, because 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, because it was like him, quiet and valuable, and that description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the eighty-seven cents. With that chain on his watch, Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company, because, grand as the watch was, he sometimes glanced at it secretly 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, 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.

Part Three · The Magi

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, and worried that Jim would not approve of her before he took a second look at her, and that he would say she looked like a chorus girl from Coney Island. But what could she have done with a dollar and eighty-seven cents? At seven 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 through which he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair, and she turned white for just a moment, and whispered a little prayer that he would still think her 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 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, begging him not to look at her that way, explaining that she had had her hair cut off and sold because she could not have lived through Christmas without giving him a present.

"It'll grow out again," she pleaded, "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." Jim asked laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact even after the hardest mental labor, whether she had cut off her hair. Della assured him that she had cut it off and sold it, and asked whether he did not like her just as well anyhow, since she was the same person without her hair. Jim looked about the room curiously, and repeated, with an air almost of idiocy, that her hair was gone. Then he seemed to awaken quickly from his trance, and he enfolded his Della in his arms, and for ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in another direction.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table, explaining that she must not make any mistake about him, because no haircut or shampoo could ever make him like his girl any less, but that if she would unwrap that package, she might understand why she had disturbed him so. White fingers nimbly 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 apartment. For there lay The Combs, the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for so long in a Broadway window: beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled 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 announce that her hair grew very fast. 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, and 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, put his hands under the back of his head, and smiled. "Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep them 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, and they invented the art of giving Christmas presents. 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. They are the magi.