Speaker 1: High excursionists. It's me Nari once again. It is that
wonderful holiday season that we love to celebrate, regardless of
which holiday it is that you celebrate in your own homes.
As you know, I tend to lean towards Christmas stories
at this time, and I do have a very nice
one picked out for us this year. Family friendly as always,
I hope that you and yours can sit around and
enjoy this little bit of Christmas cheer and holiday togetherness.
Thank you again for joining me. Are you ready? The
gift of the Magi author oh Henry provided by the
Project Gutenberg ebook collection. 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, the vegetable man, and the butcher until one's
cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such
close dealings 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 reflections 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 eight dollars per week. It did
not exactly beg your description, but it certainly had that
word on the lookout for the medicancy 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 mister James Dillingham Young. The Dillingham
had been flung to the breeze during a former period
of prosperity, when its possessor was being paid thirty dollars
per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to twenty dollars, though,
they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and
unassuming d But whenever mister James Dillingham Young came home
and reached his flat above, he was called Jim and
greatly hugged by missus James Dillingham Young already introduced to
you as Della, which is all very good. Della finished
her cry and attended her cheeks with the powder rag.
She stood by the window and looked out at a
dull gray cat walking 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 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 a dollar eighty seven to buy
a present for Jim her Jim. Many a happy hour
she had spent planning something nice for him, something fine
and rare and sterling, something just a little bit nearer
to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a peer glass between the windows of the room.
Perhaps you have seen a peer glass in an eight
dollar 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 air shaft, 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 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 Madame sofroni hair goods of all kinds one
flight up. Della ran and collected herself, panting. Madame large,
too white, chilly, hardly looked the SOFURNI will you buy
my hair, asked Ella. I buy hair, said Madame. Take
your 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 practiced hand. Give
it to me quick, said Dela. Oh. And on 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
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
eighty seven 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 to a little 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 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 at 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 every day things,
and now she whispered, Please God, make him think I'm
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 the 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.
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 a 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 awake.
He unfolded Della for ten seconds. Let us regard with
some 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 mag I 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 worshiped
long in a Broadway window, beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell,
with jeweled rims, just the shade of wear in the
beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and
her heart 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.
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. And then
Della leaped up like a 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 bell. He said, 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, our gifts were no doubt
wise ones, possibly burying 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 Happy
Holidays from us here at Into the Night Anthology Podcast.
Thank you for joining me for this wonderful story that
is very close and dear to my heart. I hope
that you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed sharing
it with you.