ate
affairs. The material for this book was drawn largely from Mr. White's
participation in political affairs.

In 1917 he was sent to France as an observer by the American Red Cross.
The lighter side of what he saw there was told in _The Martial
Adventures of Henry and Me_. His latest book is a long novel, _In the
Heart of a Fool_, another study of American life of to-day.

All in all, he stands as one of the chief interpreters in fiction of the
spirit of the Middle West,--a section of our country which some
observers say is the most truly American part of America.

A PAIR OF LOVERS

_The typical love story begins by telling us how two young people fall
in love, allows us to eavesdrop at a proposal, with soft moonlight
effects, and then requests our presence at a wedding. Or perhaps an
elopement precedes the wedding, which gives us an added thrill. The
scene may be laid anywhere, the period may be the present or any time
back to the Middle Ages, (apparently people did not fall in love at any
earlier periods), but the formula remains the same. O. Henry wrote a
love story that does not follow the formula. He called it "The Gift of
the Magi."_

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 house 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, wh