“As light that shineth in a dark place.”
If I were to ask you what you think the brightest thing in the world, I dare say there would be many different answers. Some of you might say that there is nothing very much brighter, in your eyes, than a nice new sixpenny piece, fresh from the Mint. For an active-minded boy can do a great deal with sixpence. Your mothers would probably say that the brightest thing in the home is a shining morning face, belonging to a boy who comes downstairs in good time for breakfast, with his hands clean, and his hair brushed, and everything about him neat and spruce. On a Saturday, when you are going to have an afternoon holiday, and when you know very well what you want to do with it, the brightest thing in the world to you then is a fine dry day. But have you ever noticed how often it rains on Saturday afternoons? It was always the same when I was a boy. I never could find out the reason.
Will you picture to yourselves a country road, on a summer morning, just about the time when children go to school? The boys have all finished their game, and they are clustered round the schoolhouse, spending the last few minutes before the master comes, in larking with one another, or in finding their books and caps, and otherwise getting themselves ready for school.
The master arrives, and, of course, there is not a single boy who is not delighted to see him. He greets them in his usual way, “Good morning, boys!” And they answer back, “Good morning, sir!”—and all troop after him into the schoolroom.
When they are seated and the master has called for silence, he opens the Bible and reads a few sentences, and then he asks for God’s blessing on the work of the day.
Then follow the lessons, and somehow or other they all seem to be expecting something special that day, for even the laziest boy in the school has not to be found fault with for his work. The lessons are got through in double quick time, and then the master calls them all around his desk.
He opens it, and exhibits a box with queer figures of birds painted upon it, that looks as if it had come from a foreign country, and from this box he takes out just the very things that boys most like—knives and tops, and whistles, and candy—and distributes them, till everyone has something. Then he shows them a little white statue of an angel, with hands folded over her breast, and face looking upwards as if it were full of happiness, and the boys wonder whatever that can be for, and who is to be the lucky possessor of such a prize as that.
The master says, “And now, lads, I come to the last and best of all. Tomorrow morning I will give this white angel to the boy who brings me the brightest thing in the world.” Whereupon, they all stare with open eyes, and some of them open their mouths as well. For it puzzles them to know what the master means. And all the rest of that day those boys are skirmishing around, searching for the brightest things they can think of.
Next morning, it was a very excited school that gathered in front of the master’s desk. Each boy had got something in his pocket that he felt sure would win the prize.
One had brought a polished stone, all smooth and shining like glass. Another had got a crystal, which had once been in a watch; he thought he had never seen anything brighter than that. The master took them and smiled, and laid them on the desk.
Another, with a bit of a jest inside him, had brought a piece of coal; “Nothing is brighter than coal,” said he, “when you set it on fire”; and he expected that his joke would win him the prize.
Another had polished a piece of metal till it shone again, and another stepped out of the class, and caught a ray of sunlight on a little mirror that he held in his hand, and flashed it right on to the master’s face. The master laughed, and said, “Very good, very good; but we will see them all first.”
Then a lad named Henry, who was the son of a well-to-do farmer, pulled out a breast-pin, which his father had given him, and in the center of it there was a diamond. A long “Oh!” came from the class, and many voices cried, “Henry is the winner!”
“Wait a little,” said the master, “I must see them all; where’s Karl?”
Karl was absent, and no one had thought of him till that moment. Just then, the half-open door of the schoolroom was pushed inwards, and in ran Karl, with something in his hands.
He came quickly forward, and, though a little out of breath with running, said, “Oh, sir, I was looking for the brightest thing, and I didn’t know what to bring, and I saw some boys throwing stones at this bird, and I couldn’t stand it, so I picked it up, and it’s hurt, and I’m afraid it’ll die.”
It was a dove, and there were stains of blood upon its snow-white breast. The master looked at it, and examined it as it lay in Karl’s hands. “Poor thing,” said he, “its wing is broken, and it is hurt here as well; we can do nothing for it.”
And even as he spoke, the dove’s head fell, and its eyes closed, and it was dead.
Then this happened. Two big tears came out of Karl’s eyes, and rolled down his face. And Karl roughly brushed them away with the back of his hand.
The master opened his desk, and took out the white angel.
And the whole school cried, “Give Karl the white angel!”
And the master said, “Yes, boys, Karl has won the prize—the brightest thing in the world is the tear of Pity.”