The Gift Of The Magi Full Summary In English | O Henry gift of the magi full text

O Henry Gift Of The Magi Full Text

Henry, also known as William Sydney Porter, was a famous American writer known for his short stories that often had surprise endings. 

Full NameWilliam Sydney Porter
BirthplaceGreensboro, North Carolina, United States.
Born11 September 1862
Died5 June 1910 (aged 47);
Best short storyThe Gift of the Magi
NationalityAmerican
WifeAthol Estes

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 and the vegetable man and the butcher  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 months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far.  Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always  are. Only $1.87 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 little bit near to  being worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.  There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 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  colour 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  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 of the door and down the stairs to the  street.  Where she stopped the sign read: ‘Mme.

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, closelying 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 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  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 To  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

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, aren’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 fo ryou. 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 up. He unfolded his Dell. For ten seconds let us regard with some discreet scrutiny

inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year – what’s 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 for 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 for a long time in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoiseshell, 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 say: ‘My hair grows so Fast, Jim!’ And then Della leaped up like a little sung 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 To do ’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 – who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the 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 giving gifts to these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wiset. The are the magi. 

 

Today you Read, O Henry gift of the magi short story in full text.  If you liked this post, share it on social media. Write any questions or suggestions in the blog comment box below.

 

Related Post 

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe full story 

Between Roads O Henry Full story

The Skylight Room Writer O Henry Short story

American Rapper Eminem Top 10 Lyrics with Embedded Videos

Leave a Comment