Boy's Gratitude Was Real

1909

Has Long Cared for Grave of Men Who Been Kind to Him Many Years Ago

Rev. John Henri Sattig, pastor of St Philip's church, Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, tells this beautiful story.

"In Milford, Pa., there is an old graveyard, neglected, weed-grown and unkempt. Of all the mounds in that village of the dead only one is cared for. On that the grass is neatly trimmed, flowers bloom and never a weed appears. The visitor who looks upon this evidence of love and devotion amid so many examples of forgetfulness usually asks whose grave it is, and the sexton answers: 'The man whose body rests there had neither chick nor child. Nearly every day for the six years since the man died a boy comes here to 'tend to the grave. Winter and summer he comes. The lad is the butcher boy. The man was the only human being who ever was kind to the boy.' "