The Potato Child and Others Part 4

"For whom is thy service to-night, my son? Last birth-night it was to the sorrowing; before that to the blind, and even yet to the deaf and the lame. And whither tend thy footsteps now?"

"To the tempted ones, mother."

"And thou shalt stay their feet, dear boy, for rememberest not the Immanuels of last year? How the sorrowful found strange, staying joy in their hearts? How the blind said, as thou named their gifts, and placed them in their hands, that it seemed they could straightway behold them?

How even the dumb gave forth pleasant sounds like music from their helpless tongues? and how even the lame well-nigh leaped from their lameness, for the light of thy young face? But when thou comest to thy crown and throne thou needest not got forth alone upon thy birth-night, but send out thy gifts with love and plenty."

"I know not, my mother."

"But all will be thine? What said the angel: 'The Lord G.o.d shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and of his kingdom there shall be no end!' It may be soon, we know not, for lo! King David was but a boy, and at his daily toil, when he was called to reign over the house of Jacob. Forget not, thou art born the King."

"Oh, gladden not thy heart, loved mother, with this joy. I seek not to behold the future, but I see not in this world my kingdom, for the rose blossoms I pluck from out the hedge-rows fall; and it is their thorn branch that ever within my hands twines into a crown."

Here ends The Potato Child and Others by Mrs. Charles J.

Woodbury. The frontispiece after a bas-relief by Elizabeth Ferrea. Published by Paul Elder & Company and done into a book for them at their Tomoye Press, under the direction of John Henry Nash, in the city of San Francisco, Nineteen Hundred & Eleven