THE GIFT OF THE MAGI (Click here for the full text)
by 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 that such close dealing . 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 the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles .

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 lookout for the squad.

In the below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no finger could a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."