The Gift of the Magi

O'Henry wrote one of the most fundoofied texts of all time: The Gift of the Magi. It starts like this:

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.

And then it carries on till the end, a story of two innocent people much in love with each other. What I absolutely love about it is the language; phases such as:

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He
enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with
discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other
direction.

What a vivid way to write! It's like a little jigsaw puzzle in which you can clearly see the next piece in your head while reading each sentence. Coax yourself to read it again and every time you read that other thing you missed in your last reading, and suddenly, a new picture emerges. Tresses, watches, gifts and Christmas. It's a simple story, written in brilliant language.

I wish that one day I will write like that. For he conveys, in a few words elaborately juxtaposed, a meaning I would take a tome to describe.