f the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering dolorously after
the fashion of street singers at Home. There was not a soul in sight,
and he was out of all possible earshot of the houses. And he sang
through his nose, turning his head from right to left:

The Son of Man goes forth to war,
A golden crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar--
Who follows in his train?

I waited to hear no more, but put the poor wretch into my carriage and
drove him off to the nearest missionary for eventual transfer to the
Asylum. He repeated the hymn twice while he was with me whom he did not
in the least recognize, and I left him singing it to the missionary.

Two days later I inquired after his welfare of the Superintendent of the
Asylum.

"He was admitted suffering from sun-stroke. He died early yesterday
morning," said the Superintendent. "Is it true that he was half an hour
bare-headed in the sun at midday?"

"Yes," said I, "but do you happen to know if he had anything upon him by
any chance when he died?"

"Not to my knowledge," said the Superintendent.

And there the matter rests.

XII. THE GIFT OF THE MAGI[*] (1905)

[* From "The Four Million." Used by special arrangement with Doubleday,
Page & Company, publishers of O. Henry's Works.]

BY O. HENRY[*] (1862-1910)

[*: The pen-name of William Sidney Porter.]

[_Setting_. Christmas Eve in New York and a furnished flat at $8 per
week make the setting of this perfect little story. Della has only $1.87
with which to buy a present for Jim and outside is "a grey cat walking a
grey fence in a grey backyard." But there is a spirit within that is to
make the modest flat a place of glory and this Christmas Eve memorable
in short-story annals. The flat is the stable with the manger, and New
York widens into Bethlehem.

_Plot_. "And when they were come into the house, they saw the young
child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him; and when
they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts: gold,
and frankincense, and myrrh." These were the gifts of the magi, but
their gift was love. The infant Christ could make no use of gold or
frankincense or myrrh, nor could Della and Jim make use of the combs and
the chain; but the love that prompted the giving shines all the more
resplendent because the gifts, humanly speaking, were egregious misfits.
"That the gold at least," says a recent commentator, "would be highly
serviceable to th