The Eye and Growing My Hair Again Short Story Comparison
The Gift of the Magi
past O. Henry
This story was originally published on December ten, 1905 in The New York Sun Globe equally "Gifts of the Magi." It was subsequently published as The Gift of the Magi in O. Henry's 1906 curt story collection The Four 1000000.
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One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And threescore cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and 2 at a fourth dimension by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable human and the butcher until ane'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 exist Christmas.
There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the shabby little burrow 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 abode is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a await at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per calendar week. It did non exactly beggar clarification, only it certainly had that discussion on the expect-out for the mendicancy team.
In the lobby 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 menu 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 existence paid $30 per week. At present, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. Only whenever Mr. James Dillingham Immature came home and reached his flat in a higher place he was called "Jim" and profoundly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Immature, 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 grey true cat walking a gray fence in a grey lawn. To-morrow would exist Christmas Mean solar day, and she had only $i.87 with which to buy Jim a nowadays. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. 20 dollars a calendar week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $ane.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 lilliputian bit almost to existence worthy of the honour of existence owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps y'all have seen a pier-glass in an $eight Bat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate formulation of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the fine 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 xx seconds. Quickly 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 picket that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della'south pilus. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would take allow her pilus hang out of the window some mean solar day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty'due south jewels and gifts. Had Rex Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled upwards in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to come across him pluck at his beard from green-eyed.
Then now Della'southward beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining similar a cascade of chocolate-brown waters. It reached below her human knee and made itself nigh a garment for her. And and so she did it up once 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 erstwhile brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle however in her eyes, she cluttered out of the door and downwardly the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One 8 upwardly Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, big, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Volition you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Accept yer chapeau off and allow's have a sight at the looks of information technology."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised paw.
"Requite it to me quick" said Della.
Oh, and the next 2 hours tripped past on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim'due south present.
She found it at concluding. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like information technology in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. Information technology was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--every bit all proficient things should practice. It was fifty-fifty worthy of The Watch. As presently as she saw it she knew that it must exist Jim's. Information technology was like him. Quietness and value--the description practical to both. Twenty-ane dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried dwelling house with the 78 cents. With that concatenation on his watch Jim might be properly anxious virtually the time in any company. Chiliad as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on business relationship of the onetime leather strap that he used in identify of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her crimper irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to dearest. Which is always a tremendous chore honey friends--a mammoth job.
Within forty minutes her caput was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her await wonderfully similar 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 2nd wait at me, he'll say I look similar 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 dorsum of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never belatedly. Della doubled the play a trick on chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his footstep on the stair away downwards on the first flight, and she turned white for simply a moment. She had a addiction of saying trivial silent prayers most the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Delight, God, brand him think I am yet pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed information technology. He looked sparse and very serious. Poor young man, he was only xx-2--and to be burdened with a family unit! He needed a new overcoat and he was with out gloves.
Jim stepped inside the door, as immovable equally a setter at the aroma of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and at that place was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was non anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He just stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face up.
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 information technology because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving yous a nowadays. Information technology'll abound out over again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to exercise it. My pilus grows clumsily fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's exist happy. Yous don't know what a prissy-what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, equally if he had not arrived at that patent fact however, even afterward the hardest mental labour.
"Cut it off and sold information technology," said Della. "Don't you like me merely also, anyhow? I'g me without my hair, own't I?"
Jim looked almost the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air most of idiocy.
"You needn't expect for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be proficient to me, for it went for yous. Perchance the hairs of my caput were numbered," she went on with a sudden serious sweet, "just nobody could e'er count my love for you lot. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed rapidly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For x seconds permit united states of america regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other management. Eight dollars a week or a million a yr--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would requite you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, merely that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on on.
Jim drew a parcel from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the tabular array.
"Don't make whatever mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there'southward anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my daughter any less. But if you lot'll unwrap that parcel you lot may run across why y'all 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 so, alas! a quick feminine modify to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the apartment.
For in that location lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise-shell, with jewelled rims--but the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had merely craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, just the tresses that should take adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
Merely she hugged them to her bust, and at length she was able to expect upwards with dim eyes and a grinning and say: "My hair grows then fast, Jim!"
And and then Della leaped up similar a trivial singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not all the same seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open up palm. The boring precious metallic seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't information technology a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to observe it. You'll accept to look at the time a hundred times a day at present. Give me your watch. I desire to see how it looks on information technology."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "allow's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at nowadays. I sold the lookout to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, every bit y'all know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men-who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Existence wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, mayhap begetting the privilege of exchange in example of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful relate of 2 foolish children in a flat who nigh 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 equally they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
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