The Gift of the Magi (Ad-Free)

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SPEAKER_01 0:20

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 beg description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the Beggar Squad. In the vestibule below was a letterbox 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. $20 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 Young's 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 air shaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window someday 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 Madame Saphroni, hair goods of all kinds. One flight up Delarand and collected herself panting. Madame was large, too white, chilly, and hardly looked like a saffroni.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Will you buy my hair?

SPEAKER_01 4:43

asked Della.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

I buy hair, said Madame. Take your hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Down rippled the brown cascade. Twenty dollars, said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Give it to me quick, said Della.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

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.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

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 can I do? Oh, what can I do with a dollar and eighty seven cents?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

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 keychain 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'm 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.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Jim, darling, she cried, don't look at me that way. I 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 I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say Merry Christmas, Jim, and and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice what a beautiful, nice gift I've got you.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

You've cut your hair off? asked Jim laboriously, as if he had not arrived at the patent fact yet, even after the hardest mental labor.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

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?

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Jim looked about the room curiously. You say your hair is gone. He said with an air almost of idiocy.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

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 in my head were numbered.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

She went on with sudden serious sweetness.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

But nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Out of his trance, Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his dela. 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, Delve, he said. About me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that can 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. Whitefingers 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 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 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.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

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.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled. Dell, he said, let's uh 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 sacrifice 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. Let's jump into our normal questions. So, first, what sort of values do we see in the characters in this story?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Well, Della values her husband Jim and his qualities as a man. She views Jim in such high respect and honor that she is willing to lose something so precious to her to be able to give him a gift that she deems worthy of being owned by him. And then Jim also values Della and her beauty and qualities as a woman. He is willing to sell the one most valuable thing that he owns in order to generously adorn his bride with something that she fancies and that would complement the beauty that she already possesses. The second question would be: what can you learn to apply these things in your daily life?

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Giving of ourselves brings meaning and joy. We talk a lot during Christmas about the gifts that the magi, or the wise men, bring to Christ, the King, as a little baby. But we forget something very important. See, our nativity sets and books often show the magi at the manger right after Jesus was born. This isn't what happened though. It does make for easy storytelling, I'll give it that. But the magi didn't arrive until about two years after Jesus was born. That means the Magi gave more than two years of their own lives following the star and searching for the baby king of all creation. They gave of themselves, not just their wealth. Della and Jim should remind each of us that pouring ourselves out for others, whether it's your wife, your husband, your kids, your neighbors, and so on, that brings greater joy than giving out of our wealth. It wasn't the amount of money in the story that was important. It was the disposition each person had to give up what was so valuable to them in order to show how much they valued the other person. So, this Christmas, give of yourself. It may be uncomfortable, difficult, or maybe even awkward, but give nonetheless. Show at least one person how much you value and love them by giving something more than just something off of their list.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

That's really good. Well, we hope you enjoyed this special ad-free bonus episode of the Story Cottage. And remember, you could listen to all of our stories ad free by going to the storycottage.buzzsprout.com and supporting the show for only five dollars a month. We'd really love to keep bringing these wonderful old tales to you guys next year.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yep. Well, God bless you all and Merry Christmas to you and your family.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Tootaloo.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

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