Once upon a time a beautiful present was given to a little boy named Hazen. It was not a tent or a launch or a tree-top house or a pretend aeroplane, but it was a little glass casket. And it was the most wonderful little casket of all the kinds of caskets that there are.
For in the casket was a little live thing, somewhat like a fairy and somewhat like a spirit, and so beautiful that everyone wanted one too.
Now the little fairy (that was like a spirit) was held fast in the casket, which was tightly sealed. And when the casket was given to Hazen, the Giver said:—
“Hazen dear, until you get that little spirit free, you cannot be wise or really good or loved or beautiful. But after you get her free you shall be all four. And nobody can free her but you yourself, though you may ask anybody and everybody to tell you how.”
Now Hazen’s father was a king. And it chanced that while Hazen was yet a little boy, the king of a neighbour country came and took Hazen’s father’s kingdom, and killed all the court—for that was the way neighbour countries did in those days, not knowing that neighbours are nearly one’s own family. They took little Hazen prisoner and carried him to the conquering king’s court, and they did it in such a hurry that he had not time to take anything with him. All his belongings—his tops, his football, his books, and his bank, had to be left behind, and among the things that were left was Hazen’s little glass casket, forgotten on a closet shelf, upstairs in the castle. And the castle was shut up and left as it was, because the conquering king thought that maybe he might like sometime to give to his little daughter, the Princess Vista, this castle, which stood on the very summit of a sovereign mountain and commanded a great deal of the world.
In the court of the conquering king poor little Hazen grew up, and he was not wise or really good or loved or beautiful, and he forgot about the casket or thought of it only as a dream, and he did not know that he was a prince. He was a poor little furnace boy and kitchen-fire builder in the king’s palace, and he slept in the basement and did nothing from morning till night but attend to drafts and dampers. He did not see the king at all, and he had never even caught a glimpse of the king’s little daughter, the Princess Vista.
One morning before daylight Hazen was awakened by the alarm-in-a-basin at the head of his cot—for he was always so tired that just an alarm never wakened him at all, but set in a brazen basin an alarm would waken anybody. He dressed and hurried through the long, dim passages that led to the kitchens, and there he kindled the fires and tended the drafts and shovelled the coal that should cook the king’s breakfast.
Suddenly a Thought spoke to him. It said:—