Love Is the Whole. A Story for Children by Edward Everett Hale

This is a story about some children who were living together in a Western State, in a little house on the prairie, nearly two miles from any other. There were three boys and three girls; the oldest girl was seventeen, and her oldest brother a year younger. Their mother had died two or three years before, and now their father grew sick, -- more sick and more, and died also. The children were taking the best care they could of him, wondering and watching. But no care could do much, and so he told them. He told them all that he should not live long; but that when he died he should not be far from them, and should be with their dear mother. "Remember," he said, "to love each other. Be kind to each other. Stick together, if you can. Or, if you separate, love one another as if you were together. " He did not say any more then. He lay still awhile, with his eyes closed; but every now and then a sweet smile swept over his face, so that they knew he was awake.

Then he roused up once more, and said, "Love is the whole, George; love is the whole," -- and so he died.

I have no idea that the children, in the midst of their grief and loneliness, took in his meaning. But afterwards they remembered it again and again, and found out why he said it to them.

Any of you would have thought it a queer little house. It was not a log cabin. They had not many logs there. But it was no larger than the log cabin which General Grant is building in the picture. There was a little entry-way at one end, and two rooms opening on the right as you went. A flight of steps went up into the loft, and in the loft the boys slept in two beds. This was all. But if they had no rooms for servants, on the other hand they had no servants for rooms. If they had no hot-water pipes, on the other hand a large kettle hung on the crane above the kitchen fire, and there was but a very short period of any day that one could not dip out hot water. They had no gas-pipes laid through the house. But they went to bed the earlier, and were the more sure to enjoy the luxury of the great morning illumination by the sun. They lost but few steps in going from room to room. They were never troubled for want of fresh air.

They had no door-bell, so no guest was ever left waiting in the cold. And though they had no speaking-tubes in the house, still they found no difficulty in calling each other if Ethan were up stairs and Alice wanted him to come down.

Their father was buried, and the children were left alone. The first night after the funeral they stole to their beds as soon as they could, after the mock supper was over. The next morning George and Fanny found themselves the first to meet at the kitchen hearth. Each had tried to anticipate the other in making the morning fire. Each confessed to the other that there had been but little sleep, and that the night had seemed hopelessly long.

"But I have thought it all over," said the brave, stout boy. "Father told us to stick together as long as we can. And I know I can manage it. The children will all do their best when they understand it. And I know, though father could not believe it, I know that I can manage with the team. We will never get in debt. I shall never drink. Drink and debt, as he used to say, are the only two devils. Never you cry, darling Fanny, I know we can get along."

"George," said Fanny, "I know we can get along if you say so. I know it will be very hard upon you. There are so many things the other young men do which you will not be able to do; and so many things which they have which you might have. But none of them has a sister who loves them as I love you. And, as he said, 'Love is the whole."

I suppose those words over the hearth were almost the only words of sentiment which ever passed between those two about their plans. But from that moment those plans went forward more perfectly than if they had been talked over at every turn, and amended every day. That is the way with all true stories of hearth and home.

For instance, it was only that evening, when the day's work of all the six was done -- and for boys and girls, it was hard work, too -- Fanny and George would have been glad enough, both of them, to take each a book, and have the comfort of resting and reading. But George saw that the younger girls looked down-cast and heavy, and that the boys were whispering round the door-steps as if they wanted to go down to the blacksmith's shop by way of getting away from the sadness of the house. He hated to have them begin the habit of loafing there, with all the lazy boys and men from three miles round. And so he laid down his book, and said, as cheerily as if he had not laid his father's body in the grave the day before, --

"What shall we do to-night that we can all do together? Let us have something that we have never had before. Let us try what Mrs. Chisholm told us about. Let us act a ballad."

Of course the children were delighted with acting. George knew that, and Fanny looked across so gratefully to him, and laid her book away also; and, in a minute, Ethan, the young carpenter of the family, was putting up sconces for tallow candles to light the scenes, and Fanny had Sarah and Alice out in the wood-house, with the shawls, and the old ribbons, and strips of bright calico, which made up the dresses, and George instructed Walter as to the way in which he should arrange his armor and his horse, and so, after a period of preparation, which was much longer than the period of performance, they got ready to act in the kitchen the ballad of Lochinvar.

The children had a happy evening. They were frightened when they went to bed -- the little ones -- because they had been so merry. They came together with George and Fanny, and read their Bible as they had been used to do with their father, and the last text they read was, "Love is the fulfilling of the law. " So the little ones went to bed, and left George and Fanny again together.