I first saw King Roy on a lovely summer’s evening near Hyde Park. It was a Sunday evening, and I recollect there was a light pleasant breeze, which just tempered the heat, and once in a playful moment caught King Roy’s small velvet cap and tossed it off his curly head. Then ensued a race, a scuffle, and a laugh, in which I, although a stranger to his Majesty, joined. This induced me to consider him more attentively, and thus to study well one of the bonniest baby faces it has ever been my lot to behold. For—yes, it is true—King Roy was only a king in right of his babyhood, being no higher up in this world’s social scale than a carpenter’s son.
A brawny, large, and handsome man was the father, on whose shoulder the little fellow was riding, while a demure, pale-faced sister of about ten, walked by the side of the two. Father and little sister might have been met with anywhere, any day, but the baby once in a lifetime.
He was a rounded and curved creature—not an angle anywhere about him; his chin was a dimple, his lips rose-buds, his eyes sapphires; his little head was a mass of tangled golden curls; sunshine seemed to kiss him all over—hair, eyes, lips, even to the small pink toes—for he had pulled off his shoes and stockings, which were held tightly in two fat hands. He was full of heart-sunshine too, for his gay voice babbled continually, saying words, to our deaf ears meaningless, but which, doubtless, the angels understood very well.
“Ah boo!” was his remark to me, and he pointed with his small finger. Following the direction of the tiny finger, I saw a fly sailing slowly through space. Between King Roy and that fly there was doubtless some untold sympathy. As though attracted by his admiration it came nearer. Yes, he must have been giving it some message, for he babbled more sweetly than before. The fly sailed away; it looked important with big tidings, as it went higher into the blue, and the little group of three turning Hyde Park Corner disappeared from my sight.
I never saw King Roy again, but afterwards I heard a story about him—a story which so moved me that it may some others; so I tell it here.
John Henry Warden was a carpenter by trade; he was a well-to-do workman, employed constantly in a profitable and moneymaking business. God had also endowed him with excellent mental and physical powers. Sickness was unknown to this man, and as to the many heart-aches which come into the daily measure of most other lives, they were strangers to his nature. He did not understand moping; he had no sympathy with gloom. He considered himself a successful man, he was also ambitious; he meant, if he lived, to leave this world in a much higher position than when he had entered it. He was very much respected by his neighbours, for he was a strictly honourable, upright, and honest man. But though respected he was not loved. It was his misfortune that never yet in all his life had he either awakened or given love. And yet he was not without those closest ties which knit hearts to hearts. He had been a husband; he was now a widower and a father. He had married a young and beautiful girl, a sensitive creature who needed love as the plants need sunshine. She lived with him for a little over ten years, all the time, year after year, fading slowly but surely. Then she died; no one said she died of a broken heart—Warden least of all suspected it. He regrett