Читать книгу: «Wonderful Stories for Children», страница 6

The Norwegian cousins were two lively boys, who were called Jonas and Adolph; their father had given them two new cross-bows, and these they brought with them to show to Ida. She told them about the poor flowers which were dead, and so they got leave to bury them. The two boys went first, with their cross-bows on their shoulders; and little Ida came after, with the dead flowers in the pretty little box. Down in the garden they dug a little grave. Ida kissed the flowers, and then put them in their box, down into the earth, and Jonas and Adolph stood with their cross-bows above the grave, for they had neither arms nor cannon.

THE CONSTANT TIN SOLDIER

There were, once upon a time, five-and-twenty tin soldiers; they were all brothers, for they were born of an old tin spoon. They held their arms in their hands, and their faces were all alike; their uniform was red and blue, and very beautiful. The very first word which they heard in this world, when the lid was taken off the box in which they lay, was, "Tin soldiers!" This was the exclamation of a little boy, who clapped his hands as he said it. They had been given to him, for it was his birthday, and he now set them out on the table. The one soldier was just exactly like another; there was only one of them that was a little different; he had only one leg, for he had been the last that was made, and there was not quite tin enough; yet he stood just as firmly upon his one leg as they did upon their two, and he was exactly the one who became remarkable.

Upon the table on which he had set them out, there stood many other playthings; but that which was most attractive to the eye, was a pretty little castle of pasteboard. One could look through the little windows as if into the rooms. Outside stood little trees, and round about it a little mirror, which was to look like a lake; swans of wax swam upon this, and were reflected in it. It was altogether very pretty; but the prettiest thing of all was the little young lady who stood at the open castle door, for she was a dancer; and she lifted one of her legs so high in the air, that the tin soldier might almost have fancied that she had only one leg, like himself.

"That is a wife for me!" thought he, "but she is a great lady; she lives in a castle, I in nothing but a box; and then we are five-and-twenty of us, there is no room for her! Yet I must make her acquaintance!"

And so he set himself behind a snuff-box, which stood on the table, and from thence he could very plainly see the pretty little lady, which remained standing upon one leg, without ever losing her balance.

That continued all the evening, and then the other tin soldiers were put into their box, and the people of the house went to bed. The playthings now began to amuse themselves; they played at company coming, at fighting, and at having a ball. The tin soldiers rattled about in their box, for they wanted to be with the rest of the things, but they could not get the box lid off. The nutcrackers knocked about the gingerbread nuts, and the slate-pencil laughed with the slate; it was so entertaining that the canary-bird awoke, and began to chatter with them also, but she chattered in verse. The only two which did not move from their place were the tin soldier and the little dancing lady. She kept herself so upright, standing on the point of her toe, with both her arms extended; and he stood just as steadily upon his one leg, and his eyes did not move from her for one moment.

It now struck twelve o'clock, and crash! up sprang the lid of the snuff-box, but there was no snuff in it; no, there was a little black imp – it was a jack-in-the-box.

"Tin soldier!" said the imp, "keep thy eyes to thyself!"

But the tin soldier pretended that he did not hear.

"Yes, we shall see in the morning!" said the imp.

And now it was the next morning, and the children got up, and they set the tin soldier in the window, – and either it was the imp, or else it was a sudden gust of wind, but the casement burst open, and out went the tin soldier, head foremost, down from the third story! It was a horrible fall, he turned head over heels, and remained standing with his one leg up in the air, and with his bayonet down among the stones of a sink.

The maid-servant and the little boy went down directly to seek for him, but although they almost trod upon him, still they could not see him. If the tin soldier had only shouted out, "Here I am!" they would have found him; but he did not think it would be becoming in him to shout out when he had his uniform on.

It now began to rain; one drop fell heavier than another; it was a regular shower. When it was over there came up two street boys.

"Look here!" said one of them, "here lies a tin soldier. He shall have a sail!"

So they made a boat of a newspaper, and set the tin soldier in it, and now he sailed down the kennel; the two lads ran, one on each side, and clapped their hands. Dear me! what billows there were in the uneven kennel, and what a torrent there was, for it had poured down with rain! The paper boat rocked up and down, and whirled round so fast! The tin soldier must have trembled, but he showed no fear at all, he never changed his countenance, and stood holding his weapon in his hand.

Just then the boat was driven under a large arch of the kennel, and it was as dark to the tin soldier as if he had been in his box.

"Where am I now come to?" thought he; "yes, yes, it is all that imp's doing! Ah! if the little dancing lady were only in the boat, I would not mind if it were twice as dark!"

At that moment up came a great big water-rat, which lived under the kennel's archway.

"Have you a passport?" asked the rat. "Out with your passport!"

But the tin soldier said not a word, and stood stock still, shouldering his arms. The boat shot past, and the rat came after. Ha! how he set his teeth, and cried to the sticks and the straws, —

"Stop him! stop him! he has not paid the toll! He has not shown his passport!"

But the stream got stronger and stronger. The tin soldier could already see daylight at the end of the tunnel, but at the same time he heard a roaring sound, which might well have made a bolder man than he tremble. Only think! where the tunnel ended, the water of the kennel was poured down into a great canal; which would be, for him, just as dangerous as for us to sail down a great waterfall!

He was now come so near to it that he could no longer stand upright. The boat drove on; the tin soldier held himself as stiff as he could; nobody could have said of him that he winked with an eye. The boat whirled round three times, and filled with water to the very edge – it must sink! The tin soldier stood up to his neck in water! Deeper and deeper sank the boat, the paper grew softer and softer! Now went the water above the soldier's head! – he thought of the little dancing lady, whom he should never see more, and it rung in the tin soldier's ear, —

 
"Fare thee well, thou man of war!
Death with thee is dealing!"
 

The paper now went in two, and the tin soldier fell through; and at that moment was swallowed by a large fish!

Nay, how dark it was now in there! It was darker than in the kennel archway, and much narrower. But the tin soldier was steadfast to his duty; and he lay there, shouldering his arms. The fish twisted about, and made the most horrible sort of movements; at last it became quite still; a flash of lightning seemed to go through it. Light shone quite bright, and some one shouted aloud, "Tin soldier!"

The fish had been caught, taken to market, sold, and brought into the kitchen, where the servant-girl cut it up with a great knife. She took the soldier, who was as alive as ever, between her two fingers, and carried it into the parlor, where she showed them all what a remarkable little man had been travelling about in the stomach of the fish! But the tin soldier was not proud. They set him upon the table, and there – Nay, how wonderfully things happen in this world! – the tin soldier was in the self-same room he had been in before; he saw the self-same child, and the self-same playthings on the table; the grand castle, with the pretty little dancing lady standing at the door. She was standing still upon one leg, with the other raised; she also was constant. It quite affected the tin soldier, he was ready to shed tin tears, only that would not have been becoming in him. He looked at her, and she looked at him, but neither of them said a word.

At that very moment one of the little boys took up the tin soldier, and threw it into the stove. There was no reason for his doing so; it must certainly have been the jack-in-the-box that was the cause of it.

The tin soldier stood amid the flames, and felt a great heat, but whether it was actual fire, or love, he knew not. All color was quite gone out of him; whether from his long journeying, or whether from care, there is no saying. He looked at the little dancing lady, and she looked at him; he felt that he was melting away, but for all that, he stood shouldering his arms. With that the door of the room suddenly opened, and a draught of wind carried away the dancer. Like a sylph she flew into the stove to the tin soldier; became, all at once, flame, and was gone! The tin soldier melted to a little lump; and when the servant, the next day, was carrying out the ashes, she found him like a little tin heart: of the dancing lady, on the contrary, there was nothing but the ground on which she had stood, and that was burned as black as a coal.

THE STORKS

Upon the last house in a little town there stood a stork's nest. The stork-mother sat in the nest, with her four young ones, which stuck out their heads, with their little black beaks, for their beaks had not yet become red. Not far off, upon the ridge of the house roof, stood the stork-father, as stiffly and proudly as possible; he had tucked up one leg under him, for though that was rather inconvenient, still he was standing as sentinel. One might have fancied that he was carved out of wood, he stood so stock still.

"It looks, certainly, very consequential," thought he to himself, "that my wife should have a sentinel to her nest! Nobody need know that I am her husband; they will think, of course, that I commanded the sentinel to stand here. It looks so very proper!" And having thus thought, he continued to stand on one leg.

A troop of little boys were playing down in the street below, and when they saw the storks, the boldest lad amongst them began to sing, and at last they all sang together, that old rhyme about the storks, which the children in Denmark sing; but they sang it now, because it had just come into their heads: —

 
"Stork, stork on one leg,
Fly home to thy egg;
Mrs. Stork she sits at home,
With four great, big young ones;
The eldest shall be hung,
The second have its neck wrung;
The third shall be burned to death,
The fourth shall be murdered!"
 

"Only hear what those lads sing!" said the little storks; "they sing that we shall be hanged and burned!"

"Do not vex yourselves about that," said the stork-mother; "don't listen to them, and then it does not matter."

But the boys continued to sing, and they pointed with their fingers to the stork; there was one boy, however, among them, and his name was Peter, and he said that it was a sin to make fun of the storks, and he would not do it.

The stork-mother consoled her young ones thus: "Don't annoy yourselves about that. Look how funnily your father stands on one leg!"

"We are so frightened!" said the young ones, and buried their heads down in the nest.

The next day, when the children assembled again to play, they saw the storks, and they began their verse: —

 
"The second have its neck wrung;
The third shall be burned to death!"
 

"Shall we be hanged and burned?" asked the young storks.

"No, certainly not!" said the mother. "You will learn to fly; I will exercise you; and so we shall take you out into the meadows, and go a visiting to the frogs, that make courtesies to us in the water; they sing – 'koax! koax!' and so we eat them up; that is a delight!"

"And how so?" asked the young storks.

"All the storks which are in the whole country assemble," said the mother, "and so the autumn manœuvres begin; every one must be clever at flying; that is of great importance, for those that cannot fly are pecked to death by the general, with his beak; and, therefore, it is well to learn something before the exercise begins."

"And so we really may be murdered! as the boys said; and hark! now they are singing it again."

"Listen to me, and not to them!" said the stork-mother. "After the great manœuvre, we fly away to the warm countries – O, such a long way off, over mountains and woods! We fly to Egypt, where there are three-cornered stone houses, which go up in a point above the clouds; they are called pyramids, and are older than any stork can tell. There is a river which overflows its banks, and so the country becomes all mud. One goes in the mud, and eats frogs."

"O!" said all the young ones.

"Yes, that is so delightful! One does nothing at all but eat, all day long; and whilst we are so well off, in this country there is not a single green leaf upon the trees; here it is, then, so cold; and the very clouds freeze into pieces, and fall down in little white rags!"

That was the snow which she meant, but she could not explain it more intelligibly.

"Will it freeze the naughty boys into bits?" asked the young ones.

"No, it will not freeze them into bits, but it will pretty nearly do so; and they will be obliged to sit in dark rooms and cough. You, on the contrary, all that time, can be flying about in the warm countries, where there are flowers and warm sunshine!"

Some time had now passed, and the young ones were so large that they could stand up in the nest and look about them, and the stork-father came flying every day with nice little frogs and snails, and all the stork-delicacies which he could find. O, it was extraordinary what delicious morsels he got for them. He stretched out his head, clattered with his beak, as if it had been a little rattle, and thus he told them tales about the marshes.

"Listen to me; now you must learn to fly," said the stork-mother, one day; and so all the four young ones were obliged to get out of the nest upon the ridge of the house; and how dizzy they were; how they balanced themselves with their wings, and for all that were very near falling!

"Look at me," said the mother, "you must hold your heads thus! and thus must you set your wings! Now! one, two! one, two! This it is which must help you out into the world!"

With this she flew a little way, and the young ones made a little clumsy hop – bump! – there lay they, for their bodies were heavy.

"I cannot fly!" said one of the young ones; "it's no use my trying!" and crept up to the nest again.

"Wilt thou be frozen to death here, when winter comes?" asked the mother. "Shall the boys come and hang thee, and burn thee, and wring thy neck? Shall I go and call them?"

"O, no!" said the young stork; and so hopped again on the roof, like the others.

On the third day after that it could regularly fly a little, and so they thought that they could now rest awhile in the air. They tried to do so, but – bump! – there they tumbled, and so they were obliged to flutter their wings again.

The boys were now down in the street once more, and sung their rhyme: —

 
"Stork, stork, fly."
 

"Shall not we fly down and peck their eyes out?" said the young ones.

"No, let them be," said the mother, "and listen to me, that is far wiser. One, two, three! Now we fly round, higher than ever! One, two, three! Now to the left of the chimney! – see, that was very well done! and the last stroke of the wings was so beautiful and correct, that I will give you leave to go down to the marsh with me, to-morrow! There will come a great number of pleasant stork-families there, with their children; let me have the happiness of seeing that mine are the nicest, and that they can make a bow and courtesy; that looks so well, and gains respect!"

"But shall we not have revenge on the naughty boys?" inquired the young storks.

"Let them sing what they like!" said the mother; "you will fly amid the clouds, go to the land of the pyramids, when they must freeze, and neither have a green leaf left, nor a sweet apple!"

"Yes, but we will be revenged!" whispered they one to another, and then went out again to exercise.

Of all the boys in the street there was not one who sung the jeering rhymes about the storks so much as he who first began it; and he was a very little one, and was not more than six years old. The young storks thought to be sure that he must be a hundred years old, for he was so much larger than either their mother or their father; and they, poor things, knew nothing about how old children and great men might be. All their revenge, they determined, should be taken upon this boy; he was the first to begin, and he it was who always sang. The young storks were very much irritated, and the more they were determined on revenge, the less they said of it to their mother. Their mother, they thought, would at last grant their wishes, but they would leave it till the last day they were in the country.

"We must see how you conduct yourselves in the great manœuvre," said the mother; "if you fail in that, then the general will run you through with his beak, and then the boys will be right in one way, at least. Now let us see."

"Yes, thou shalt see!" said the young ones; and so they took great pains and practised every day, and flew so beautifully and so lightly that it was charming to see them.

Now came the autumn; and all the storks began to assemble to fly away into the warm countries, while we have winter. That was a manœuvre! Over wood and town went they, just to see how they could fly. The young storks performed so expertly that they could discern very well both frogs and snakes. That was the very best test of skill. "Frogs and snakes, therefore, they should eat;" and they did so.

"Now let us have revenge," said they.

"Leave off talking of revenge," said the mother. "Listen to me, which is a great deal better. Do not you remember the good little boy who said, when the others sung, 'that it was a sin to make fun of the storks?' let us reward him, that is better than having revenge."

"Yes, let us reward him," said the young storks.

"He shall have, next summer, a nice little sister, such a beautiful little sister as never was seen! – Will not that be a reward for him?" said the mother.

"It will," said the young ones; "a sweet little sister he shall have!"

"And as he is called Peter," continued the mother, "so shall you also be called Peter altogether."

And that which she said was done. The little boy had the loveliest of little sisters next year; and, from that time, all the storks in Denmark were called Peter; and so are they to this day.