e parents in their unexpected journey to Egypt and
during their stay there--thus much at least admits of no dispute."
Perhaps so. But read the famous passage once more and turn again to O.
Henry's story. Which interpretation goes deeper into the heart of the
incident? Which leaves you more in love with love?

_Characters_. Della and Jim have been said to illustrate the "story of
cross-purposes." But the phrase is not well used. Their purposes were
one; only their methods crossed. O. Henry rarely comments on his
characters, but he has here picked out one quality of these "two foolish
children in a flat" for unreserved praise: "Of all who give gifts these
two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are
wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi." If the magi, as
O. Henry says, "invented the art of giving Christmas presents," Della
and Jim re-discovered it. We have had no two characters in whose company
it is better to leave our study of the short story.]

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, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as
though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and
unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and