The Gifts of Magi - Jill Carattini - Slice of Infinity 9 Jan 2012
I was sold on the genre of tragedy as a child at Christmastime, long before I knew anything about genres or tragedies. Jim Dillingham Young and his wife Della are the subjects of The Gift of the Magi, a short story written by O. Henry in 1906. Struggling to make ends meet in their one room apartment, Jim and Della have but two prized possessions between them: for Jim, a pocket watch given to him by his father, and for Della, her long, beautiful hair, of which it is said that even the queen of Sheba would be envious. When Christmas comes, Jim and Della have nothing to scrape together to buy even a simple gift for the other. Yet, longing to give something meaningful out of great love, each, unbeknownst to the other, sacrifices the greatest treasure of the house; Della sells her hair to buy her husband a silver chain for his beloved pocket watch, and Jim his pocket watch to buy Della pearl combs for her beautiful hair. Thus unfolds The Gift of the Magi and “the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days,” writes O. Henry, “let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest.”(1)
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Buddh, Asoka, Aristotle, Roger Bacon, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus Christ
One day I asked a great historian: “You have viewed the whole panorama of human progress. What heads rise above the common level? Among them all, what half-dozen men deserve to be called great?”
He turned the question over for a day or two, then gave me a list of six names with his reasons for each. An extraordinary list! Jesus. Budha. Asoka. Roger Bacon, Abraha, Lincoln.
Think of the tousands of emperors who have battled for fame. Yet Asoka, who ruled in India centuries before Christ, is the only emperor on the list - and not because of his victories but because he voluntarily abandoned war and devoted himself to the betterment of his subjects.
Think of all those who have struggled for wealth. But no millionarie os on the list, with the exception again of Asoka.
Who sat on the throne in Rome, when Jesus of Narareth hung on the cross? Who ruled the hosts of Persia when Aristotle though and taught? Who was king of England when Roger Bacon laid the foundations of modern scientifc research?
The historian, when he seeks for seomthing that has endured, finds the message of a teacher, the dream of a scientist, the vision of a seer. “These six men stood on the corners of history, the historian said. “Events hinged on them. The current of human thought was freer and clearer because they lived and worked. They took little from the world and left it much. They did not getl they gave.”
From The Man Nobody Knows
by Bruce Barton
Give don’t take
‘See how the mass of men worry themselves into nameless graves, while here and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immportality’
Emerson
Been listening to these three talks on the sovereignty of God.
