ENG 099 Conversational American English (Dec. 2012) Atom 4:

Christmas Short Story 1 of 10

Students and teacher read this short story “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry. It is a Christmas story and given this is a December course it’s especially appropriate. O. Henry is a famous American author from the early 20th century.

Vocabulary

• magi n. pl. IPA: /meɪˈd͡ʒaɪ/ plural form of mage, or magician; “wise men or philosophers of the East” (Webster’s 1828).
• imputation n. IPA: /ˌɪm.pjʊˈteɪ.ʃən/ a charge, saying someone did something bad; an accustion, the act of imputing or charging; attribution; ascription; also, anything imputed or charged.
• parsimony n. IPA: /ˈpɑr səˌmoʊ ni/ not spending a lot of money; cheap; thrifty; closeness or sparingness in the expenditure of money.
• shabby adj. IPA: /ˈʃæb.i/ old and dirty place or thing; poor; ragged.
• flat n. IPA: /flæt/ apartment, floor, loft, or story in a building; especially, a floor of a house, which forms a complete residence in itself.

“The Gift of the Magi” 1 of 10 Text

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.

“The Gift of the Magi” 1 of 10 Audio

Now listen and take notes on this recording from the beginning to 1:22 to hear this lecture’s text of the short story. We will read all of it over the course of the 10 lessons.

• If you can’t see the audio player above, please click here to listen to it in the Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org).
• You can also download the 128Kbps MP3 (15.3 MB), Ogg Vorbis (17.6 MB), and/or 64 Kbps MP3 (7.7 MB) files from the Internet archive.

Video