"But angels wouldn't have spears, would they?"
I went to a shelf of the library in which we were talking and took down a volume in which I found a picture of St. Michael in full armor.
"It is like the fire from the stars," I said. "Of course nobody ever saw an angel to know how he would look, but to show how strong and powerful an angel might be, a good many men that make pictures have painted them like knights."
"But men that had spears wouldn't cry; I shouldn't think angels would."
"Even the strongest men cry sometimes, my boy; only it has to be something tremendous to make them. A thing that would make the angels 'water heaven with their tears' must be something so terrible that you couldn't tell how sad it was."
"Well, anyway, I'd rather be a tiger than a lamb," he proclaimed rather unexpectedly.
"Very likely," I assented, "but I think you'd rather have a lamb come after Baby Lou than a tiger."
"Oh, I wouldn't want a tiger to get Baby Lou!" he cried with a tremor.
"I suppose that is the way the angels might feel at the idea of the tiger's killing anybody," I rejoined.
With a lad somewhat older one would have gone on to develop the thought that to the watching angels the tiger, leaping out fierce and bloodthirsty from the hand of the Creator, would be like the incarnation of evil, and that in their weeping was represented all the sorrowful problem of the existence of evil in the Universe; but this on the present occasion I did not touch upon.