Word: magie
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...Henry, who lived on Irving Place and used to drink at Healy's Cafe, now Pete's Tavern, and still on 18th Street. One of the rare continuing neighborhood disputes concerns O. Henry. The people at Pete's claim that he wrote The Gift of the Magi in a booth there. A plaque at Sal Anthony's, a restaurant on the site of O. Henry's home, half a block from Pete's, insists that he composed the story in "two feverish hours" sitting in his wide front window-writing of the wife...
...Park to li live in, choosing one another's company as much as the old trees and pretty houses. Like most people, they behave better than people are generally reputed to behave, proclaiming their value, as O. Henry said of the watch fob in The Gift of the Magi, "by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation...
...music, the tree. I think I half expected something wonderful to happen as I watched, or perhaps I dimly realized that something wonderful was already happening. On those nights, as on every Christmas Eve since they came into being, the man and wife of The Gift of the Magi were exchanging then-gifts, which turned out to be the gifts of each other. Such is the exchange transacted frequently in this park, in this city, and in more than a few small places in the world...
...people have a Shakespearean sweep. "He always worked a triple-hinged surprise/ To end the scene and make one rub his eyes." So wrote Poet Vachel Lindsay about the master of the trick ending, O. Henry. None of his stories has received more notice than The Gift of the Magi (Neugebauer; $11.95); none is more appropriate to the season. As Christmas approaches, a young bride with long, luxuriant hair sells her locks to buy a watch fob for her husband. He, meanwhile, has pawned his timepiece to purchase a set of combs. Lisbeth Zwerger's biting line and soft...
This Balthazar (symbolically named for one of the Magi) is an ambiguous wise man. He has been a phony evangelist who muleted gullible believers, a sly fox in the vineyards of the Lord. Precisely because he has dabbled in the devil's art, he can cite Scripture, incandescently, to cast out the devils who possess Shelley...