Subject: FW: from a reader


-----Original Message-----
 
Terri Jones  wrote: 

From: "Terri Jones" 
To: rebeccatan@geocities.com
Subject: from a reader
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 17:56:16 -0500


I'm wondering why you are plagiarizing the "Gift of the Magi" story by 
O'Henry?


http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/wts/plagiarism.html


THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
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 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 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 
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 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, 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 gray cat walking a gray fence 
in a gray backyard. Tomorrow 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 honor 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 flat. 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 color 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 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 fluttered out 
the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." 
One flight 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 87 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 for saying little silent prayer 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 without gloves.

Jim stopped 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 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 labor.

"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 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. This 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 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 them 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. O all who give and receive 
gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the 
magi.






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