Little Peter was playing one morning in the palace garden, and such playing as it was! He would be moulding little balls of loam and fashioning them with seeds, when suddenly they would break into life as buds and then as flowers, almost as one now sees twigs of wood break into life, or as quiet cocoons become living butterflies—for the world is not so different. Or Peter would be playing with a spongy-looking mass on a rock in the brook, when it would break from its rock and go gayly swimming about, and be a fish-thing. Or he would push at a bit of ooze with a cat-tail, and a little flying life would mount abruptly and wing away. It was exciting playing in those days, and some of the things you can do in these days. Only then it was all new, so Peter could see just how wonderful it was.
Now, that morning the king was walking in his palace garden. And he was troubled, for everywhere that he looked there were loose ends and rough edges, and shapeless things waiting to be fashioned, and it was so all over his kingdom. There was such a great lot to do that he could not possibly do it all alone—no king, however industrious, could have done it all. And he longed for the help of all his subjects. So when the king came on little Peter, busily making living things where none had been before, he was mightily pleased, and he sat down with the little lad on a grassy platform in the midst of the garden.
“Lo, now, little lad,” said the king, “what do you play?”
Instead of playing at keeping store or keeping house or at acting or hunting or exploring, little Peter was playing another game.
“I’m playing it’s creation, your majesty,” he answered, “and I’m playing help the king.”
“Lo, now,” said the king, “I would that all my subjects would play as well as you.”
The king thought for a moment, looking out on all the savage angles and wild lines, while little Peter watched a bit of leaf mould becoming a green plant.
“Summon me my hundred heralds!” the king suddenly bade his servants.
So the servants summoned the hundred heralds, who hurried into their blue velvet and silver buckles and came marching, twenty abreast, across the grassy plateau, where the morning sun made patterns like wings, and among the wings they bowed themselves and asked the king his will.
“Hundred heralds,” said the king, “be it only that you do this willingly, I would that you go out into my kingdom, into its highways and even to its loneliest outposts, and take my people my message. Cry to them, until each one hears with his heart as well as his head: ‘The world is beginning. You must go and help the king.’”