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, 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.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray 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 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, 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 of saying a little silent prayer 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 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 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 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.

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it in pennies. Della’s fingers brushed the coins—half-dollar and quarters cold, pennies dull and worn smooth. She counted again. Then a third time, just to be sure. No, that was it. The gaslight fluttered, making the little heap of coins flicker.

Sixty cents in pennies, saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man until her cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony. For Jim. Her throat tightened. “Eighty-seven cents,” she whispered. “All that.”

Tomorrow was Christmas Day. Nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. A raw, unladylike cry of despair rose from her, soaking into the faded velvet upholstery. The gas jet hissed a counterpoint to her grief, and from the stove, the chops sputtered impatiently.

When the sobbing subsided, she sat up and looked around. Eight dollars a week. In the vestibule below, a letter-box into which no letter would go, and a name card reading “Mr. James Dillingham Young.” The “Dillingham” had a certain quiet dignity when its bearer was paid thirty dollars a week. Now, with the income shrunk to twenty, it seemed almost a reproach. But when he came home, he was just Jim, and greatly hugged by Della.

She remembered him yesterday, thin and serious. Only twenty-two, no overcoat, no gloves. A fierce, aching love for him swelled in her chest. She wanted to give him something fine and rare and sterling—something worthy of belonging to Jim.

She rose and went to the window, staring out at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Only a paltry sum to buy a present for her Jim, saved penny by penny for months with this result.

Now, two possessions the James Dillingham Youngs took mighty pride in. Jim’s gold watch, his father’s and his grandfather’s. Della’s hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let it hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels.

She turned from the window and let it fall. It cascaded in brown ripples below her knee, almost a garment. She gathered the heavy mass, feeling its weight, then looked at the pitiful heap of coins on the table. A wild, terrible idea began to stir. Would it be enough? She stood still, the brown cascade slipping through her fingers as the thought took shape.

She stood frozen, heart pounding, the hair slipping through her fingers—the tears she’d fought in the hall still hot behind her eyes. In the cracked pier glass, her reflection split in two: two Dellas, both sad. With trembling fingers, she freed the pins. The brown cascade fell, pulling at her scalp with a familiar weight, rippling to its full length below her knee. *One treasure. All I have.* She stared until a single tear splashed onto the worn red carpet, darkening a threadbare spot. She blinked it away, then worked quickly, twisting the great mass of hair up again, pinning it tight—caging the wildness.

She pulled on the old brown jacket; the smell of chops and yesterday's worry rose from the wool. Hat pulled down firm, she squared her thin shoulders. At the door, a last glance around the shabby room, then out into the chill December hall. Her heels clicked down the stair. The raw air bit her cheeks, stinging with the promise of snow. *Another second, I'll lose my nerve.* Her breath puffed white as she climbed the stairs to a sign: Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.

Pushing through the door, panting, she met the shop’s chemical-dust smell—a stale blend of mothballs and cheap perfume. A large, too-white woman sat behind the counter, motionless—a statue of commerce. Della’s voice caught, then steadied. “Will you buy my hair?” The words tumbled out.

Madame lifted pale eyes without warmth. “Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at it.” With a practiced hand, she lifted the thick mass, rubbing a hank between thumb and forefinger. Della was rigid, her heart thumping against her ribs. *Twenty dollars. That’s what she’ll say. All I’ll get.*

“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, flat and final. Della's breath hitched. “Give it to me quick,” she said fiercely. The scissors glinted; the weight vanished from her head. Her hand flew to her nape—bare. *Gone. It's done.* She took the money, the coins cool in her palm.

For two hours she ransacked the stores, her shorn head light under her hat. She lifted trinkets, rejecting brass and gilt, seeking something quiet and valuable. At last, she found it. A platinum fob chain, plain and chaste, proclaimed its worth by substance alone. For Jim's watch. It cost twenty-one dollars. She counted out the sum, leaving eighty-seven cents jingling. Clutching the little box tight, she hurried home, praying under her breath. *Let him still think me pretty. Let him not look at me with stunned eyes.* She would put the chops on, light the stove, and wait.

Forty minutes. Della had been at the pier-glass that long, the little box from Madame Sofronie’s still warm on the bureau, repairing the ravages of generosity. The gaslight hissed; the curling irons chimed softly as she set them down. She had been coaxing the close-shorn locks into obedient curls—each one a truant schoolboy ordered back to his place. She turned her head left and right, studying the stranger in the reflection.

“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to the girl in the glass, the jest a thin shield, “he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl.” Her eyes were bright with a fear that belied the joke. The words trailed into the hiss of the gas as she whispered, softer, “But what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?”

She lifted the little box and opened it. The platinum fob chain lay coiled, each link catching the light. It was simple, fine, a fit chain for a watch that had travelled through three generations. A tremulous smile broke through—pure, brief triumph—as she ran a finger along its cool surface. Then her gaze caught the shorn nape of her neck in the mirror, and the smile faltered. Dread, cold and quiet, pressed at her throat.

From the tiny kitchen came the soft bubble of the coffee pot and the sizzle of the pork chops in the pan. The smell—warm and rich—drifted through the flat, a small comfort. She checked the chops, turned them once with a fork, then returned to the front room. The little box was closed now on the bureau, its secret tucked away.

At the table by the door, she settled on its corner as always when waiting for him. From the box she took the chain, doubling it between her fingers. Twice, three times she wound it around her hand, counting the links as though they were beads of a rosary. The chain was cool against her skin, but her palm was warm with the prayer forming there.

A step on the stair—that familiar tread, slow and heavy from the long day—and her breath caught in her chest. She turned white. Her hand tightened on the chain. She stared at the door, her heart a wild bird against her ribs. Her lips moved, and the whisper was so faint it might have been only a shaping of air: “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.” The step stopped at the door. The chain was warm now, coiled tight around her fingers. She did not breathe. The gaslight flickered, and the only sound in the flat was the faint bubble of coffee and the sizzle of chops, and the silence that hung like a held note.

Her step halted before the door. Della’s breath caught. The chain—a cold weight in her palm. As it swung inward, December air pushed in, smelling of damp stone and evening. Jim stepped inside—thin, his worn overcoat collar turned up—and halted. His eyes locked onto the tight curls where her hair once poured. The gaslight hissed, catching pallor under his eyes, and his stillness emptied the room of air.

She scrambled off the table, chain in fist, and rushed to him before fear could stop her. “Jim, darling,” she said, the words tumbling high and too fast, “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—you don’t mind, do you?” She thrust the chain toward him, platinum glinting in the gaslight. “Say ‘Merry Christmas, Jim,’ and let’s be happy. You’ll never guess what a nice present I’ve got for you.” She searched his face, but found only that blank, terrible gentleness.

Jim did not move. His gaze drifted—pier glass, meager furniture, worn rug—reaching for a fact that would not fit. “You’ve cut off your hair?” he asked, the words slow, airless. After a long pause, he said it again. “You say your hair is gone?” *He asked it twice. Something inside him is stalled.* Her throat tightened.

The rush drained out of her. She stepped closer, voice dropping into sudden, tender seriousness. “It went for you. Perhaps the hairs of my head were numbered, but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?” The words fell like a gift laid down. The faint sizzle of chops on the stove drifted in, warm and ordinary—a reminder the world had not ended.

A tremor crossed his face. He shook his head once, then pulled her into his arms and held her so tightly the rough wool of his overcoat grazed her cheek, his heart steady against her. She let herself breathe.

He released her, reached inside his coat, and drew out a brown-paper package. He tossed it onto the table; it landed with a soft, fateful thud. “Don’t make any mistake, Dell, about me,” he said, quiet and tender. “Nothing 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.”

The package sat on the worn tablecloth, plain and mysterious, the chain still clutched in her hand. Della stared at it, then up at Jim's face. The room held its breath—a silence filled with the gift she could not yet unwrap and the gift she had already given.

The brown paper, coarse against her fingers, tears with a dry rasp. Inside, the tortoiseshell combs gleam darkly, and Della's scream of joy catches on a sob. Nestled on tissue paper soft as moth wings, they lay—the set she had worshipped for months in a Broadway window. Pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rims that caught the low gaslight. A rush of hot tears blurred their gleam as she snatched them up, pressing the cool, smooth shell against her breast where her heart hammered. Her shorn head trembled. *For the hair that was her glory—the hair that could have worn them.* She forced a dim, brave smile for Jim. “My hair grows so fast, Jim!” she whispered, a loving lie against the sudden, aching truth.

Then she remembered. Her hand darted to the pocket of her skirt, her fingers closing around her own secret. She pulled out the platinum fob chain. It glimmered in the gaslight, a dull, precious metal that flashed with the spirit that had burned in her eyes when she bought it. She held it out on an open palm toward him, her voice suddenly bright, teasing. “Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? 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.” The chain lay cool and light on her skin, a silver promise of all she had sacrificed. The rich, earthy aroma of the chops drifted from the stove, filling the worn room as she waited.

Jim did not move. His gaze slipped from the chain to her face, to the close-lying curls where her cascade of brown water had been. A long moment stretched, the gaslight hissing softly into the quiet. In his eyes now was a quiet, terrible understanding she could not name. Then he tumbled onto the shabby little couch, lacing his hands behind his head. A slow smile spread across his serious young face, a tenderness so deep it erased the lines of worry.

“Dell,” he said, his voice unhurried, “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.” He paused, his smile holding steady. “And now suppose you put the chops on.”

The meaning flooded her in a silent rush. His father’s watch, his grandfather’s—gone. Sold for the combs that now lay useless on the table. Her glorious hair, sold for a chain that would never hang from its rightful place. *He sold his watch. For me.* She stared at the chain in her palm, at the combs, at Jim’s gentle face. In the warm kitchen, with the gaslight low and the chops simmering, she understood. Two foolish children in a flat, who had most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last moment of wisdom, she knew that of all who give gifts, they were the wisest. They were the magi.