"Come now, my dear little stars,"
said Mother Moon, "and I will tell
you the Christmas story."
Every morning for a week before Christmas, Mother
Moon used to call all
the little stars around her and tell them a story.
It was always the same story, but the stars never
wearied of it. It was
the story of the Christmas star--the Star of
Bethlehem.
When Mother Moon had finished the story the little
stars always said:
"And the star is shining still, isn't it, Mother
Moon, even if we can't
see it?"
And Mother Moon would answer: "Yes, my dears, only
now it shines for
men's hearts instead of their eyes."
Then the stars would bid the Mother Moon good-night
and put on their
little blue nightcaps and go to bed in the sky
chamber; for the stars'
bedtime is when people down on the earth are
beginning to waken and see
that it is morning.
But that particular morning when the little stars
said good-night and
went quietly away, one golden star still lingered
beside Mother Moon.
"What is the matter, my little star?" asked the
Mother Moon. "Why don't
you go with your little sisters?"
"Oh, Mother Moon," said the golden star. "I am so
sad! I wish I could
shine for some one's heart like that star of wonder
that you tell us
about."
"Why, aren't you happy up here in the sky country?"
asked Mother Moon.
"Yes, I have been very happy," said the star; "but
to-night it seems
just as if I must find some heart to shine for."
"Then if that is so," said Mother Moon, "the time
has come, my little
star, for you to go through the Wonder Entry."
"The Wonder Entry? What is that?" asked the star.
But the Mother Moon
made no answer.
Rising, she took the little star by the hand and led
it to a door that
it had never seen before.
The Mother Moon opened the door, and there was a
long dark entry; at
the far end was shining a little speck of light.
"What is this?" asked the star.
"It is the Wonder Entry; and it is through this that
you must go to
find the heart where you belong," said the Mother
Moon.
Then the little star was afraid.
It longed to go through the entry as it had never
longed for anything
before; and yet it was afraid and clung to the
Mother Moon.
But very gently, almost sadly, the Mother Moon drew
her hand away. "Go,
my child," she said.
Then, wondering and trembling, the little star
stepped into the Wonder
Entry, and the door of the sky house closed behind
it.
The next thing the star knew it was hanging in a toy
shop with a whole
row of other stars blue and red and silver. It
itself was gold.
The
shop smelled of evergreen, and was full of Christmas
shoppers, men and
women and children; but of them all, the star looked
at no one but a
little boy standing in front of the counter; for as
soon as the star
saw the child it knew that he was the one to whom it
belonged.
The little boy was standing beside a sweet-faced
woman in a long black
veil and he was not looking at anything in
particular.
The star shook and trembled on the string that held
it, because it was
afraid lest the child would not see it, or lest, if
he did, he would
not know it as his star.
The lady had a number of toys on the counter before
her, and she was
saying: "Now I think we have presents for every one:
There's the doll
for Lou, and the game for Ned, and the music box for
May; and then the
rocking horse and the sled."
Suddenly the little boy caught her by the arm. "Oh,
mother," he said. He had seen the star.
"Well, what is it, darling?" asked the lady.
"Oh, mother, just see that star up there! I
wish--oh, I do wish I had
it."
"Oh, my dear, we have so many things for the
Christmas-tree," said the
mother.
"Yes, I know, but I do want the star," said the
child.
"Very well," said the mother, smiling; "then we will
take that, too."
So the star was taken down from the place where it
hung and wrapped up
in a piece of paper, and all the while it thrilled
with joy, for now it
belonged to the little boy.
It was not until the afternoon before Christmas,
when the tree was
being decorated, that the golden star was unwrapped
and taken out fromthe paper.
"Here is something else," said the sweet-faced lady.
"We must hang this
on the tree. Paul took such a fancy to it that I had
to get it for him.
He will never be satisfied unless we hang it on
too."
"Oh, yes," said some one else who was helping to
decorate the tree; "we
will hang it here on the very top."
So the little star hung on the highest branch of the
Christmas-tree.
That evening all the candles were lighted on the
Christmas-tree, and
there were so many that they fairly dazzled the
eyes; and the gold and
silver balls, the fairies and the glass fruits,
shone and twinkled in
the light; and high above them all shone the golden
star.
At seven o'clock a bell was rung, and then the
folding doors of the
room where the Christmas-tree stood were thrown
open, and a crowd of
children came trooping in.
They laughed and shouted and pointed, and all talked
together, and
after a while there was music, and presents were
taken from the tree
and given to the children.
How different it all was from the great wide, still
sky house!
But the star had never been so happy in all its
life; for the little
boy was there.
He stood apart from the other children, looking up
at the star, with
his hands clasped behind him, and he did not seem to
care for the toys
and the games.
At last it was all over. The lights were put out,
the children went
home, and the house grew still.
Then the ornaments on the tree began to talk among
themselves.
"So that is all over," said a silver ball. "It was
very gay this
evening--the gayest Christmas I remember."
"Yes," said a glass bunch of grapes; "the best of it
is over. Of course
people will come to look at us for several days yet,
but it won't be
like this evening."
"And then I suppose we'll be laid away for another
year," said a paper
fairy. "Really it seems hardly worth while. Such a
few days out of the
year and then to be shut up in the dark box again. I
almost wish I were
a paper doll."
The bunch of grapes was wrong in saying that people
would come to look
at the Christmas-tree the next few days, for it
stood neglected in the
library and nobody came near it. Everybody in the
house went about very
quietly, with anxious faces; for the little boy was
ill.
At last, one evening, a woman came into the room
with a servant. The
woman wore the cap and apron of a nurse.
"That is it," she said, pointing to the golden star.
The servant
climbed up on some steps and took down the star and
put it in the
nurse's hand, and she carried it out into the hall
and upstairs to a
room where the little boy lay.
The sweet-faced lady was sitting by the bed, and as
the nurse came in
she held out her hand for the star.
"Is this what you wanted, my darling?" she asked,
bending over the
little boy.
The child nodded and held out his hands for the
star; and as he clasped
it a wonderful, shining smile came over his face.
The next morning the little boy's room was very
still and dark.
The golden piece of paper that had been the star lay
on a table beside
the bed, its five points very sharp and bright.
But it was not the real star, any more than a
person's body is the real
person.
The real star was living and shining now in the
little boy's heart, and
it had gone out with him into a new and more
beautiful sky country than
it had ever known before--the sky country where the
little child angels
live, each one carrying in its heart its own
particular star.
