Short stories from 100 Selected Stories, by OHenryy The

Gift of the Magi A Cosmopolite in a Café Between Rounds The

Skylight Room A Service of Love The Coming-Out of Maggie The
Cop and the Anthem Memoirs of a Yellow Dog The Love-philtre of
Ikey Shoenstein The Furnished Room The Last Leaf The Poet and the
Peasant A Ramble in Aphasia A Municipal Report Proof of the
Pudding
 I The Gift of the Magi 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 butche until one’s cheek 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 left 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 look-out 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, the letters of ‘Dillingham’ looked blurred, as 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. Delia finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with
the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a
grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. To-morrow 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 .it of saying
little silent prayers 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 stepped 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 it 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 labour.
'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 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 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 awhile 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 for long in a
Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoiseshell, 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 awhile. 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. II A Cosmopolite in a Café AT
MIDNIGHT THE CAFÉ was crowded. By some chance the little
table at which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant
chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of
patrons. And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad,
for I held a theory that since Adam no true citizen of the world has
existed. We hear of them, and we see foreign labels on much luggage,
but we find travellers instead of cosmopolites. I invoke your
consideration of the scene - the marble-topped tables, the range of
leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in
demi-state toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste,
economy, opulence or art, the sedulous and largess-loving garçons,
the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the
mélange of talk and laughter and if you will the Würzburger in the
tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherry sways on its
branch to the beak of a robber jay. I was told by a sculptor from
Mauch Chunk that the scene was truly Patisina. My cosmopolite
was named E. Rushmore Coglan, and he will be heard from next
summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new 'attraction' there, he
informed me, offering kingly diversion. And then his conversation
rang along parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great, round
world in his hand, so to speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it
seemed no larger than the seed of a Maraschino cherry in a table-
d'hôte grape fruit. He spoke disrespectfully of the equator, he skipped
from continent to continent, he derided the zones, he mopped up the
high seas with his napkin. With a wave of his hand he would speak of
a certain bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would have you on skis in
Lapland. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at
Kealaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas postoak
swamp, let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho
ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese archdukes. Anon
he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a Chicago lake
breeze and how old Escamila cured it in Buenos Ayres with a hot
infusion of the chuchula weed. You would have addressed the letter to
'E. Rushmore Coglan, Esq., the Earth, Solar System, the Universe,'
and have mailed it, feeling confident that it would be delivered to
him. I was sure that I had at last found the one true cosmopolite since
Adam, and I listened to his world-wide discourse fearful lest I should
discover in it the local note of the mere globe-trotter. But his opinions
never fluttered or drooped; he was as impartial to cities, countries and
continents as the winds or gravitation. And as E. Rushmore Coglan
prattled of this little planet I thought with glee of a great almost-
cosmopolite who wrote for the whole world and dedicated himself to
Bombay. In a poem he has to say that there is pride and rivalry
between the cities of the earth, and that 'the men that breed from
them, they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities' hem as a
child to the mother's gown.' And whenever they walk 'by roaring
streets unknown' they remember their native city 'most faithful,
foolish, fond; making her mere-breathed name their bond upon their
bond.' And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling
napping. Here I had found a man not made from dust; one who had
no narrow boasts of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at
all, would brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and the
inhabitants of the Moon. Expression on these subjects was
precipitated from E. Rushmore Coglan by the third corner to our
table. While Coglan was describing to me the topography along the
Siberian Railway the orchestra glided into a medley. The concluding
air was 'Dixie,' and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were
almost overpowered by a great clapping of hands from almost every
table. It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be
witnessed every evening in numerous cafés in the City of New York.
Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to account for it.
Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town hie
themselves to cafés at nightfall. This applause of the 'rebel' air in a
Northern city does puzzle a little; but it is not insolvable. The war
with Spain, many years' generous mint and water-melon crops, a few
long-shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant
banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the
North Carolina Society, have made the South rather a 'fad' in
Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger
reminds her so much of a gentleman's in Richmond, Va. Oh, certainly;
but many a lady has to work now - the war, you know.