“There was once a mother left alone in the world with her little boy—the only creature in the world she cared for. She was a good mother to him, as good a mother as you can think, always kind. She never thought of herself but only her son, the apple of her eye. It was not because of any return he could make her that she loved him. It was not to make him feel how good she was, that she did everything for him. It was not to give him reasons for loving her, but because she loved him, and because he needed her. He was a delicate child, requiring every care she could lavish upon him, and she did lavish it. Oh, how she loved him! She would sit with the child on her lap from morning till night, gazing on him. She always went to sleep with him in her bosom—as close to her as ever he could lie. When she woke in the dark night, her first movement was to strain him closer, her next to listen if he was breathing—for he might have died and been lost! When he looked up at her with eyes of satisfaction, she felt all her care repaid.

“The years went by and the child grew and the mother loved him more and more. But he did not love her as she loved him. He soon began to care more for the things she gave him, but he did not learn to love the mother who gave them. Now the whole of good things is to be the messengers of love—to carry love from one heart to the other. But when they are grasped at by a greedy, ungiving hand, they never reach the heart but block up the path of love, and divide heart from heart, so that the greedy heart forgets the love of the giving heart more and more. That is the way generosity fares with the ungenerous. The boy would be very pleasant to his mother so long as he thought to get something from her, but when he had got what he wanted, he would forget her until he wanted something more.

“There came at last a day when she said to him, ‘Dear boy, I want you to go and bring me some medicine, for I feel very poorly, and am afraid I am going to be ill.’ He mounted his pony and rode away to get the medicine. Now his mother had told him to be very careful because the medicine was dangerous, and he must not open the bottle. But once he had got it he said to himself, ‘It is probably something very nice and mother does not want me to have any of it!’ So he opened the bottle and tasted what was in it, and it burned him terribly.