(A warm, brightly lit room. Sitting around the table: the mother; Fritz, 6 years old; Marie, 9 years old; Katie, 14 years old.)

“Mother, tell us a story!”

“All right,” the kind mother said, “Inside I have a chest full of pictures. I want to take them out one by one and show them to you.”

“Where is the chest?” the curious Fritz cried.

“One step at a time! Wait a minute! These are not ordinary pictures. He who does not have an innocent heart cannot see them at all. To those who are attentive, however, they appear wonderfully pretty, and to the best they appear the most beautiful.”

Everyone waited excitedly, because Mother always knew how to come up with such wonderful stories.

And so she began:

Once upon a time there was a boy who did not have a father or a mother. Both of them were buried out at the cemetery. Whenever he became too sad, he went out there to see his parents. But they lay deep under the black earth. He could not see them there. That is why he cried, for he did not have anyone who would be willing to show him the ways of life.

The foreign people with whom he lived pointed him to the door and said: “Now you are big enough to continue on by yourself. Go out into the world. Somewhere out there is happiness, go in search of it.”

Thereafter they shut the door behind him. He was now outside. But he became very anxious. He began to run as though he had to reach the end of the world today so as to not lose his courage. He then arrived in the magic forest. “I want to rest a little,” he decided, as he lay down on the beautiful grass. Suddenly he heard a noise. In the stillness of the forest there was something that knocked and hammered…it was his heart. But why was he so frightened? Everything was quiet around him; the birds were resting feather to feather; the flowers were blooming quietly; no one was causing him any harm.