| Share page |
|
THE FIR TREE |
259 |
||
|
wished it had remained in the dark corner of the garret; it thought of its fresh youth in the wood, of the merry Christmas-eve, and of the little Mice which had listened so pleasantly to the story of Humpty-Dumpty.
' Past ! past! ' said the poor Tree. ' Had I but rejoiced when I could have done so ! Past ! past 1 '
And the servant came and chopped the Tree into little pieces ; a whole bundle lay there : it blazed brightly under the great brewing copper, and it sighed deeply, and each sigh was like a little shot : and the children who were at play there ran up and seated themselves at the fire, looked into it, and cried, ' Puff! puff ! ' But at each explosion, which was a deep sigh, the tree thought of a summer day in the woods, or of a winter night there, when the stars beamed ; it thought of Christmas-eve and of Humpty-Dumpty, the only story it had ever heard or knew how to tell; and then the Tree was burned.
The boys played in the garden, and the youngest had on his breast a golden star, which the Tree had worn on its happiest evening. Now that was past, and the Tree's life was past, and the story is past too : past! past!— and that's the way with all stories. |
|||
|
THE SNOW QUEEN
IN SEVEN STORIES FIRST STORY
Which treats of the Mirror and Fragments
Look you, now we're goingjojbegin. When we are at the end of the story we shall know more than we do now, for he was a bad goblin. He was one of the very worst, for he was the devil himself. One day he was in very high spirits, for he had made a mirror which had this peculiarity, that everything good and beautifu]Tl;hat was reflected in it shrank together into almost nothing, but that whatever was worthless and looked ugly became prominent and looked worse than ever. The most lovely |
|||