Oh, Henry!

Well, here’s something I didn’t know about this day in history:

It seems that 124 years ago, on July 24, 1901, one William Sydney Porter was released early from his five-year prison term at the Ohio Penitentiary, where he’d been sent down for embezzlement.

To his credit, Porter–who’d been charged in 1895 and had fled to Honduras prior to the trial, put himself in harm’s way by coming back to his native country to care for his wife, who was terminally ill with tuberculosis, and began his five-year sentence in March 1898, eight months after her death.

His subsequent life wasn’t all that happy either: He spent a few years in Pittsburgh with his daughter, then moved to New York, married his childhood sweetheart, succumbed to drink, lost his family, and died in 1910, at the age of 47, of cirrhosis of the liver and other complications of his dissolute lifestyle.

Sad.

A few years after his release from prison, Porter wrote (under his “O. Henry” pen name) what is probably his most famous short story, “The Gift of the Magi.”  Although the emotionally incontinent are prone to weep over it, I’ve always found it incredibly tiresome and tedious.

It’s the story of two young people, recently married who–without speaking to each other on the matter–imagine that they know the other’s mind when it comes to a Christmas gift.  He imagines that, most of all, she’d like a beautiful comb for her glorious hair.  She imagines that, most of all, he’d like a chain for his dearest possession, his grandfather’s gold watch.  He sells his gold watch to buy her a hair comb.  She sells her tresses to buy him a watch chain.

The results are, as expected, disastrous. from a practical point of view, although the characters attempt to make the best of them.

Oh, the humanity.

Cue the tears.

Argh.

Could they not have simply had a rational conversation about the thing that might most have benefited them in their young and poor circumstances?  Perhaps an icebox? Or a slightly bigger apartment to accommodate their promise of a family?  Or something else. Good comms?

Just a suggestion….