A rose tree drooped in the window. Not so long ago it was green and blooming, but now it looked sickly – something was wrong with it. A regiment of invaders were eating it up; and, by the way, it was a very decent and respectable regiment, dressed in green uniforms. I spoke to one of the invaders; he was only three days old but already a grandfather. Do you know what he said? Well, what he said is all true – he spoke of himself and the rest of the invaders. Listen!
Continue reading →The goblin and the woman
You know the Goblin, but do you know the Woman-the Gardener’s wife? She was very well read and knew poems by heart; yes, and she could write them, too, easily, except that the rhymes-“clinchings,” as she called them-gave her a little trouble. She had the gift of writing and the gift of speech; she could very well have been a parson or at least a parson’s wife.
Continue reading →Peiter, Peter, and Peer
It is unbelievable all that children know nowadays; one can scarcely say what they don’t know. They no longer believe the old story that the stork brought them to father and mother out of the well or the millpond when they were little, and yet it is really true.
Continue reading →Godfather’s picture book
Godfather could tell stories, so many of them and such long ones, and he could cut out paper figures and draw pictures. When it was nearly Christmas he would bring out a scrapbook with clean white pages, and on these he pasted pictures cut out of books and newspapers; and if there weren’t enough for the story he was going to tell, he drew them himself. When I was a little boy I got several of these picture books, but the prettiest of them all was the one from “that memorable year when gas replaced the old oil lamps in Copenhagen” – and that was the inscription written on the first page.
Continue reading →Which was the happiest?
“Such lovely roses!” said the Sunshine. “And each bud will soon burst in bloom and be equally beautiful. These are my children. It is I who have kissed them to life.”
Continue reading →The puppet-show man
On board a steamer I once met an elderly man, with such a merry face that, if it was really an index of his mind, he must have been the happiest fellow in creation; and indeed he considered himself so, for I heard it from his own mouth. He was a Dane, the owner of a travelling theatre. He had all his company with him in a large box, for he was the proprietor of a puppet-show. His inborn cheerfulness, he said, had been tested by a member of the Polytechnic Institution, and the experiment had made him completely happy. I did not at first understand all this, but afterwards he explained the whole story to me; and here it is:–
Continue reading →The days of the week
The days of the week once wanted to be free to get together and have a party. But each of the seven days was so occupied, the year around, that they had no time to spare. They wanted a whole extra day; but then they had that every four years, the intercalary day that comes in February for the purpose of keeping order in chronology.
Continue reading →The dryad
We are travelling to Paris to the Exhibition.
Continue reading →The rags
Outside the paper mill, masses of rags lay piled in high stacks; they had been gathered from far and wide. Every rag had a tale to tell, and told it, too; but we can’t listen to all of them. Some of the rags were native; others came from foreign countries.
Continue reading →The comet
Now there came a comet with its shiny nucleus and its menacing tail. People from the great castles and people from the poor huts gazed at it. So did the crowd in the street, and so did the man who went his solitary way across the pathless heath. Everyone had his own thoughts. “Come and look at the omen from heaven. Come out and see this marvelous sight,” they cried, and everyone hastened to look.
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