Children -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy literature
Long before her child could talk the mother noticed how closely he
observed everything about him, and how quickly he responded to the
faintest smile upon her face. As he grew older it was a delight to take
him out for a walk. He was constantly discovering some new beauty in the
landscape. He saw the first red glow of the evening sunset. His eyes
were the first to spy out the early spring flower, even before the snow
was off the ground. In the late autumn when the wind was sharp and cold
and the woods were bare, he was sure to bring home some red mountain
berries, or some withered leaf into a corner of which a cunning little
caterpillar had wrapped himself, sewing it over and over as one would
sew a bag. Then he would tell gleefully how the frost had touched the
ponds and changed them into smooth glass. Often on a cold winter morning
he would waken his mother by clapping his hands with joy over the
frost-pictures on the window pane. Sometimes in the evening twilight he
would ask his mother if the stars were pinholes in the floor of heaven
through which the glory shone. No stone nor cloud nor stream nor tree
but gave him pleasure.
"Ah," thought the mother, "this is the fairy's birthday gift. She has
made his eyes to see the beautiful everywhere." "More than that, far
more than that! Kings and princes shall yet call him great!" was
whispered gently in her ear. The mother was amazed. Who could have heard
her unuttered thoughts? She looked up, but she only saw a robin hopping
about in a branch of the tree overhead. Still she seemed to hear again
the soft but distant singing of the words,
"Love well, love well, love well,
That the heart within may swell,
Love well, love well, love well."
"Surely," said she, half aloud, "who could help loving the child. He has
indeed, blessed eyes."
As the boy grew older he seemed somehow to know the people about him as
nobody else knew them. He was always finding out the best that was in
each of them. Somehow he had a way of helping all the other lads out of
their difficulties. For instance, early one morning when he chanced to
be passing the old basket maker's, he heard the shop boy speaking in
loud, angry tones to the baskets, abusing them for being so contrary and
ill-shaped. Blessed-Eyes paused, and looking through the open door he
saw the poor apprentice struggling to fit a round cover on to a square
basket and a square cover on to a round basket.
"Let me help you," said Blessed-Eyes cheerily, "I think you have made a
mistake, that's all. This cover was intended for that basket, and that
cover for this basket." With these words he put the round cover on to
the round basket, and the square cover on to the square basket, and each
fitted snugly into its place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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