The Gift of the Magi
by O. Henry
Originally published on Dec 10, 1905 in The
New York Sunday World as "Gifts of the Magi."
An illustration for the story The Gift of the
Magi by the author O. Henry
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 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.
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. 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 Bat. 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 of 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 cluttered 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 Eight 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 78 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
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 with out
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.
I his 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 for 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.
STATEMENT
Direct:
1.
"You
needn't look for it," said Della.
Indirect:
1.
Della
said that you needn’t looked for it.
= The direct speech has simple present tense.
If we want to change it into indirect speech, we change the simple present form
into simple pastense form.
Verb 1 -> Verb 2
Direct:
2.
"I
buy hair," said Madame.
Indirect:
2.
Madame
said that she bought hair.
= The direct sentence has simple present. We
should change it into past simple if we want to change it into indirect
sentence. The verb is “buy” so we must change it into verb 2 “bought”.
QUESTION
Direct:
1.
"Will
you buy my hair?" asked Della.
Indirect:
1.
Della
asked that would you bought her hair.
= In this sentence, the direct speech has future
tense. SO, we change “will” into “would” and “buy” into “bought”.
Direct:
2.
"You've
cut off your hair?" asked Jim.
Indirect:
2.
Jim
asked that you had cut off your hair.
= The form of the direct speech is present
perfect tense. So, we must change the form. Indeed, we change “have” into “had”
and “cut” is irregular verb. It has same form. Cut ->Cut->Cut. So it
change from have cut become had cut.
IMPERATIVE:
Direct:
1.
"My
hair grows so fast, Jim!". She said.
Indirect:
1.
She
said that her hair grew so fast.
= The tense of the direct speech is simple
present tense. So, the indirect speech changed into simple past form. Indeed,
we change the verb “grow” into “grew”.
Direct:
2.
“Open
the door and sit down!”. She said.
Indirect:
2.
She
said to opened the door and sat down.
= It has simple present tense and we should
change it into simple past tense. So, the verb changed “open” imto “opened” and
“sit” become “sat”
NAME :
RITA APRILIANI HARSOYO
NPM :
16611286
4SA04
