Story 10 of 12 · United States of America · 1893
The Story of the Other Wise Man
Who it suits: Readers of ten and over, and adults.
A fourth wise man sets out to follow the star to Bethlehem, carrying three jewels as gifts, and arrives too late because he stops to help a stranger lying ill on the road. Henry van Dyke was born in 1852 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was a Presbyterian minister in New York City, later a professor of literature at Princeton University, and from 1913 to 1916 the United States minister (ambassador) to the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
The story began as one that van Dyke read to his congregation at the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York, and it was first published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in January 1893, then as a book in 1895. It follows its hero, Artaban, through thirty-three years of searching. Each time he is about to find the one he is looking for, someone in need stands in his way: two of his three jewels go to people in need, and the third is sold to pay for the journey.
The story draws on the Gospel of Matthew, which describes wise men from the east who followed a star to find the infant Jesus. Van Dyke imagined a fourth, who never arrives in time, and asks what his journey was worth.
In the book, The Story of the Other Wise Man is printed in full with seven notes beside the words they explain, its map, its city view and its illustration.
