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Unappreciated Value

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 21, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 46.

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Unappreciated Value

ONE of the first diamonds found on South African diamond fields was picked up by the child of a small farmer, as he was playing beside a brook near his father’s cottage. Some months afterward a pedler came to the cottage with a pack on his back. As he was displaying his wares, the pedler spied the stone on a shelf in the room. He took it up and examined it, and then asked the mother what she would take for it. She pointed to the child, and said, laughingly, “It belongs to that bairn, not to me.” The pedler then offered the boy a box of wooden soldiers, worth a few cents, in exchange for the stone, and the child gladly accepted the offer. That stone was a very precious jewel. The pedler took it to Cape Town, where he sold it for a large sum to a jeweler. When the jeweler sent it to Europe to be sold, he obtained $125,000 for it, and it now adorns a royal neck. Neither the child nor the parents were wise enough to know its value. Similarly multitudes barter away for a mess of pottage the pearl of great price which is within the reach of all.—Preacher’s Helper.