The Gift of the Magi

by O. Henry

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Pages: 6

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The Gift of the Magi
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The Gift of the Magi (1906) is a public domain work.

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About this book

It is Christmas Eve in a furnished flat that rents for eight dollars a week, and Della has exactly one dollar and eighty-seven cents, much of it in pennies scraped together by haggling with the grocer and the butcher. She wants to give her husband Jim something worthy of him, and the story follows the few hours in which she works out how.

Jim earns twenty dollars a week, down from thirty, and the couple own two things they are proud of: his gold watch, passed down from his father and grandfather, and her long brown hair. The narrator talks straight to the reader in a wry, joking voice, teasing the shabby letter-box and the thin pier glass while treating the pair's devotion with real tenderness.

A New York tale of poverty, love and sacrifice, first published in 1906 and known for its closing turn, which is not given away here. It takes only a few minutes to read, which is why many people return to it each December.

About the author

O. Henry

O. Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), an American writer celebrated for his warm, witty short stories and their surprise endings. He drew on a varied life as a pharmacist, bank teller, and one-time prison inmate, and became one of America's most popular storytellers.