The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 146: OCCASIONALLY--Christmastime

Episode Date: December 24, 2019

Christmastime is upon us, and with it comes the season of giving. Mike recites perhaps the greatest story ever written about the spirit of giving.

This is the way I heard it. Hey there, it's Mike Rowe, and this is not the way I heard it. No, no, no, no. This is occasionally the far lazier version of the podcast to which you've become accustomed. Occasionally, the version of the podcast wherein I go in search of stories written not by me, but by authors with far more talent, stories that comport in some way, shape, or form with a particular occasion at hand. Well, the occasion at hand is Christmas time. And the story I'd like to share with you is one I dare say you are familiar with.

It was written way back in 1905 by a very famous writer named William Sidney Porter, Will to his friends and to the rest of the world, O. Henry. Oh, Henry, of course, wrote The Gift of the Magi. And even though I know you've heard it, I'm sharing it because I'm sharing it because I I wonder if you've heard it in its original text. And I wonder this because I hadn't. It really never occurred to me until last week. I was sitting home recuperating.

Incidentally, I apologize for going dark in the month of December. My hope was to share every week a true story for the curious mind with a short attention span. I had the stories written, but returning the favor, as it turns out, is coming back sooner than I thought I wound up on the road longer than I thought, and by the time I got home, I lost my voice. I just got my voice back yesterday. Ah, I feel great. However, last week I did not. I was lying there on the sofa, mute, flicking around, and I heard Kristen Chenoweth recite

the gift of the Magi with the help of an orchestra. She was great, very talented woman. Orchestra sounded terrific, but as I listened, it occurred to me. that it just sounded too modern. It didn't sound like something O. Henry would have written way back in 1905. Oh, Henry used big, 10-cent words. He wrote in that stilted, almost Victorian kind of way. And this just didn't sound like that.

So I looked around, I found the original text, and I was right. And then I found other performers, other celebrities telling this story. And none of them relied on the original text. and they all offered the same excuse. They all said, well, we're just trying to make the story more accessible to a modern audience. How do you feel about that? Me? I don't like it. And maybe it's because I just finished writing my first book.

And maybe it's because should I be so lucky as to have someone 100 years from now read one of my stories, I don't think I'd feel good if they change the word. in order to be more accessible to people 100 years later, you know? So, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe O. Henry doesn't care. Maybe he wouldn't have minded. But I like the original text, and this is the way he wrote it. I think it's the way he would want you to hear it.

I can't prove it, but regardless, this is certainly the way I read it. A happy Christmas to you and yours. Thank you for your support on the podcast this year. I'll be back next month with news stories. For now, this is occasionally, and it's Christmas time. The gift of the Magi. $1.87. That was all. And 60 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 pennies saved one's. silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times, Della counted it. One dollar and 87 cents. And the next day would be Christmas. There was clearly nothing to do but flopped 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,

let's take a look at the home, a furnished flat at $8 per week. It does not exactly beggar description, but it certainly has 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, with the income shrunk to just $20 a week,

they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and more unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham, Ham 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. $20 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 gym. 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 belonging to him. There was a pure glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you've seen a peer 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 20 seconds.

Rapidly, she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length. Now there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Young's, in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfathers. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the air shaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window

someday to dry just to deprecate 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 car. On went her old brown jacket, on went her old brown hat with a world of skirts and with that brilliant sparkle in her eyes. She fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street where she stopped.

The sign read, Madame Sofrenet, hair goods of all kinds. One flight up, Della ran and collected herself panting. Madame, large, two white, and chilly. hardly looked the sophronet. Will you buy my hair? Ask Della. I buy hair, said Madam. Take your 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 practiced hand. Give it to me quick, said Della. Oh, at 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 merititious 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. $21 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 only 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 to a little 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 40 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 87 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, a way down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying a little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered, please God, make him think, I'm still pretty. The door opened, and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow. He was only 22, 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 any? 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 now regard with distinct scrutiny,

some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year. What's 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, Del, he said. 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 tour at the string in paper, and then an ecstatic scream of joy, and then, alas, a quick, feminine change to hysterical tears and wales, 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 jeweled 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 pears. 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 to smile and say, my hair grows so fast, Jim. And then 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 doll, precious metals 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. Del, he said, let's put our Christmas presents away and keep them 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,

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