18. The Boy and the Echo

“Hurrah! Hurrah!” shouted a boy in the woods one day. “Hurrah! Hurrah!” some one shouted back. He thought it must be another boy in the woods, and started off to find him, but no other boy was to be seen anywhere. “Where are you?” he called out. “Where are you?” came back at once. “You are mocking me!” he cried. “You are mocking me,” came again the voice. “You are a goose,” the boy cried, becoming angry. “You are a goose,” came back the same voice. The boy began to cry, and ran home to tell his mother that a bad boy hiding in the woods called him bad names. “Did he speak first or you?” his mother asked. When he explained it all, his mother said: “There was only one boy there, and you were that boy, and what you heard was your echo. If you had spoken kind words, only kind words would have come back to you.”