And the Yeah, Welcome back everyone to 1001 Classic Short Stories and Tales.

This is your host, John Hecadorn.

Today, The Gift of the Magi by O Henry.

This story was originally published on December 10, 1905 in the New York Sunday world as

gifts of the Magi. It was subsequently published as the gift of the Magi in

O'Henry's 1906 short story collection, The 4 Million. And now our story.

One dollar and eighty seven. That was all.

And 60 cents of it was in pennies.

Penny 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 Dela

accounted it, $1.87 And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing left to do but flopped down on the shabby little couch and cry.

So Della did it, which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles with snipples 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 a 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 thereon to 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

...