Fancy that when the eldest brother had earned his first money by rowing a stranger over the river, he came and gave it to his mother without reserving a penny!  Then his mother looked so happy that he swelled with pride, and could not help betraying how ambitious beyond measure he had been.

“Mother, am I not now as good as Brother Reuben?” His mother looked at him questioningly.  She seemed as if she was comparing his fresh, glowing face with the little pale boy out on the stone steps.  And she would have liked to have answered yes, if she had been able, but she could not.

“I am very fond of you, Ivan, but you will never be like Reuben.”

It was beyond their powers; all the children realized it, and yet they could not help trying.

They grew up strong and capable; they worked their way up to wealth and consideration, while Brother Reuben only sat still on his stone steps.  But he still had a start; he could not be overtaken.

And at every success, every improvement, as they by degrees were able to offer their mother a good home and comfort, it had to be reward enough for them for their mother to say:  “Ah, if my little Reuben could have seen that!”

Brother Reuben followed his mother through the whole of her life, even to her deathbed.  It was he who robbed the death pangs of their sting, since she knew that they bore her to him.  In the midst of her greatest suffering the mother could smile at the thought that she was going to meet little Reuben.

And so died one whose faithful love had exalted and deified a poor little three-year-old boy.

But neither was that the end of little Reuben’s story.  To all the brothers and sisters he had become a symbol of their life of endeavor, of their love for their mother, of all the touching memories from the years of struggle and failure.  There was always something rich and warm in their voices when they spoke of him.

So he also glided into the lives of the children of his brothers and sisters.  His mother’s love had raised him to greatness, and the great influence generation after generation.

Sister Berta had a son, who had much to do with Uncle Reuben.

He was four years old the day he sat on the curbstone and stared down into the gutter.  It was full of rain water.  Sticks and straws were carried past in wild swirlings down to the sea.  The little boy sat and looked on with that pleasant calm that people feel in following the adventurous existence of others, when they themselves are in safety.

But his peaceful philosophizing was interrupted by his mother, who, the moment she saw him, thought of the stone steps at home and of her brother.

“Oh, my dear little boy,” she said, “do not sit there!  Do you know that your mamma had a little brother whose name was Reuben, and he was four years old just like you?  He died because he sat on just such a curbstone and caught cold.”