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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GOOD HUMOUR                          447
any of my friends, or my non-friends, go on too fast for me, I go out to my favourite spot, and select a mound, and bury him or her there—bury that person who is yet alive ; and there those I bury must stay till they come back as new and improved characters. I inscribe their life and their deeds, looked at in my fashion, in my record ; and that 's what all people ought to do. They ought not to be vexed when any one goes on ridiculously, but bury him directly, and maintain their good humour, and keep to the Intelli­gencer, which is usually a book written by people under competent guidance.
When the time comes for me to be bound with my history in the boards of the grave, I hope they will put up as my epitaph, ' A good humoured one.' And that's my story.
A GREAT GRIEF
This story really consists of two parts ; the first part might be left out, but it gives us a few particulars, and these are useful.
We were staying in the country at a gentleman's seat, where it happened that the master and mistress were absent for a few days. In the meantime there arrived from the next town a lady ; she had a pug-dog with her, and came, she said, to dispose of shares in her tan-yard. She had her papers with her, and we advised her to put them in an envelope, and to write thereon the address of the proprietor of the estate, * General War-Commissary Knight,' &c.
She listened to us attentively, seized the pen, paused, and begged us to repeat the direction siowiy. "We complied, and she wrote ; but in the midst of the ' General War . . .' she stuck fast, sighed deeply, and said,' I am only a woman!' She had set the pug on the floor while she wrote, and he growled, for he had been taken with her for his amusement and for the sake of his health ; and then one ought not to be set upon the floor. His outward appearance was charac­terized by a snub nose and a very fat back.
* He doesn't bite,' said the lady ; * he has no teeth. He