The gift of the Magi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_the_Magi

For those uninitiated with Biblical stories, the 'Magi' were three wise men, kings from the east, who came with gifts for the infant Jesus Christ in the manger after being apprised of his birth by a star in the heavens.The gifts are mentioned as gold, myrrh and frankincense.

O.Henry, in his inimitable style, has created this cute young couple of Della and James 'Jim' Dillingham Young, a couple very much in love and struggling to meet both ends meet.

The couple have two special sources of pride, a watch belonging to Jim's father and Della's lovely knee length hair.

One Christmas, Della is shown weeping because she has no money to buy Jim a Christmas present. At last, she rises with a kind of desperate resolve and goes to a beauty salon where she sells her hair for twenty one dollars.With the money, she buys a watch chain for Jim's watch. She thinks a tad wistfully that the chain was just like Jim- it had 'quietness and value'.

At home, she gets to work on her shorn hair with a curling iron and sits in deep dread of Jim's reaction.

When Jim finally enters, he stands dumbstruck at her appearance.She implores him not to look at her like that, as she only sold her hair to buy his Christmas present. Jim recovers and tells her in a warm embrace that this makes no difference to him.

But when he hands over his present, Della unwraps it and screams with excitement at th sight of two lovely tortoiseshell combs for her hair. She had admired them in a shop window and had never hoped to own them. But - the tresses that they should have adorned were gone!

When she showed Jim his present, he stared - and told her that he had sold his watch to buy her combs!!

The story ends with this pretty little scene- but the author remarks that these foolish young things were like the wise Magi in a way. They sacrificed their most precious things for the love of each other, and thus made the useless gifts the most precious of all.

This story attracts for its simplicity, feeling and gentle wit. And also for O.Henry's relative departure from his verbose style. And of course, the 'punch' or surprise at the end of the story is vintage O.Henry.

I would recommend all to read O. Henry- despite his contrived language, he is indeed a delightful writer!