The Complete Fairy Tales & Other Stories
By Hans Christian Andersen - online book
Oxford Complete Illustrated Edition all his stories written between 1835 and 1872.
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347 BY THE ALMSHOUSE WINDOW |
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Near the grass-covered rampart which encircles Copenhagen lies a great red house with many windows ; in these grow balsams and plants of southernwood; the |
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interior is sufficiently poverty-stricken ; and poor and old are the people who inhabit it. The building is the Vartu Almshouse.
Look ! at the window there leans an old maid : she plucks the withered leaf from the balsam, and looks at the grass-covered rampart, on which many children are playing. What is the old maid thinking of ? A whole life-drama is unfolding itself before her mind.
' The poor little children, how happily they play ! What red cheeks and what angels' eyes ! but they have no shoes nor stockings. They dance on the green rampart, just on the place where, according to the old story, the ground |
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