ENGLISH 9

Read the story in preparation for the next lesson:

What is a perfect gift? Will you sacrifice something important in your life just to give someone you love
a perfect gift?

O. Henry is the pen name of American writer William Sydney Porter. He is known for writing
morally loaded stories that usually have surprising endings. He is also known for his clear
characterization and eye for details.
As you read the story, study how he makes references to other characters or things from other
texts. Analyze how it helps in emphasizing and magnifying the message of the story.
Source: Voyagers 9

The Gift of the Magi

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 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 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
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 lookout 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 https://www.mamalisa.com/images/blog/image1124.png

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.
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 cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. Tomorrow 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 honor 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 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 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 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
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1260/4225/products/SilverCh chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the
ain-127640_fe592c74-d0ea-4071-9bd4-
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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, 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 7 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 for 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 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 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 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,” 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 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 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 worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful
combs, pure tortoise shell, 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
magi.gif (349×170)
gone. (bp.blogspot.com)

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 them 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 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, 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.
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REFERENCES

Lebantino, R., & Templonuevo, J. E. (2015). Voyagers 9 English for Junior High School. Quezon City,
Philippines: C& E Publishing, Inc.