Hello! Welcome to Classics Read Aloud. I’m Ruby Love, and I’m delighted to bring you a curated stream of excellent literature—mostly short stories, and the occasional novel.
The public domain archives are awash in terrific things to read, and I am having immense fun hunting around for the most entertaining of morsels. Please sign up to receive new readings directly to your inbox!
“And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house...Everywhere they are the wisest. They are the magi.”
Humans are complex beings. We contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman wisely observed; some, indeed, more than others.
O. Henry was born William Sydney Porter in September of 1862. His pen name is a familiar one to this day, attributable to his enviable flourish with the pen and imagination. But it is, ironically, because his real name was so well-known that he adopted the pseudonym in the first place.
In 1894, Porter launched The Rolling Stone, a weekly humor publication that gained robust public interest, circulating to nearly 10% of residents in its hometown of Austin, Texas. Publishing turned out to be too tough a business, and The Rolling Stone was shuttered after only a year in print.
Meanwhile, Porter made ends meet by working as a teller at the First National Bank of Austin. Far from developing a hum-drum career there, Porter was arrested in February of 1896 for embezzlement. It is reported that this was perhaps the result of some technical error; however, Porter foolishly fled the state, eventually ending up in Honduras. Compelled to return to the US to support his wife during a terminal illness, he was arrested, convicted, and spent 3 years in an Ohio jail.
Suffice it to say, “imprisoned for fraud” doesn’t serve as a winning backdrop for an author publishing stories as sweetly sentimental as “The Gift of the Magi.” And thus, O. Henry was born (in jail, no less!).
This jail baby made great use of his grey matter, churning out volumes of entertaining short stories. It turns out that Porter possessed one of the most valuable tools for any author: an unending fascination with people. “The Gift of the Magi” was first published in 1905 in The New York Sunday World, and was later included in his 1906 collection Four Million Stories. Why four million? That was the population of New York at the time, where Porter whiled away his days writing and drinking at the long, rosewood bar of Healy’s Café, perched at the corner of East 18th Street and Irving Place. He believed each one of those New Yorkers carried a story worth telling.
Today’s reading, the story of a young married couple struggling to demonstrate their adoration at Christmas despite their meager means, is one such worthy glimpse. It has become one of the most beloved tales of the Christmas season.
Please enjoy…
Gifting: Last year at Christmas, my younger son gave me a handmade “Soups for Every Season” cookbook, with recipes he found online that sounded delicious. His sweet gift has served us well throughout the year, and I continue to hold immense gratitude for developing young taste buds that finally find soup delicious instead of just a yucky mingling of things that should never touch.
This year, all I want for Christmas is a homemade template I can use to trim my pastry dough to the right-sized ovals for the tops of our pot pie crocks. I envision a flat piece of finished wood with a handle, which I can reliably trace a paring knife around. This will be a supreme upgrade to the thin sheet of parchment paper I use until I accidentally throw it away and need to cut a new one.
Barring that, here are a few other desirables. Should you have a food-focused person like me in your life, this is a treasure trove of gift ideas:
Quality finishing olive oil
Artisanal sesame halva candy
Exceptional vinegar
Chocolate orange shortbread
Sturdy bench scraper
Absolutely anything from SOS-Chefs
Listening: ICYMI, I published “The Hidden Gems of Christmas Albums” on Thursday. There’s an album for every day until Christmas with room for a few repeats. Never rely on Spotify’s “Top Christmas” banality fest ever again.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, 1843
“Christmas on the Roof of the World” by Ernest Hemingway, 1923
“The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen, 1844
