The Snow Queen

								
IN SEVEN STORIES


STORY THE FIRST

Which describes a looking-glass and the broken fragments.

You must attend to the commencement of this story, for when we get
to the end we shall know more than we do now about a very wicked
hobgoblin; he was one of the very worst, for he was a real demon.
One day, when he was in a merry mood, he made a looking-glass which
had the power of making everything good or beautiful that was
reflected in it almost shrink to nothing, while everything that was
worthless and bad looked increased in size and worse than ever. The
most lovely landscapes appeared like boiled spinach, and the people
became hideous, and looked as if they stood on their heads and had
no bodies. Their countenances were so distorted that no one could
recognize them, and even one freckle on the face appeared to spread
over the whole of the nose and mouth. The demon said this was very
amusing. When a good or pious thought passed through the mind of any
one it was misrepresented in the glass; and then how the demon laughed
at his cunning invention. All who went to the demon's school--for he
kept a school--talked everywhere of the wonders they had seen, and
declared that people could now, for the first time, see what the world
and mankind were really like. They carried the glass about everywhere,
till at last there was not a land nor a people who had not been looked
at through this distorted mirror. They wanted even to fly with it up
to heaven to see the angels, but the higher they flew the more
slippery the glass became, and they could scarcely hold it, till at
last it slipped from their hands, fell to the earth, and was broken
into millions of pieces. But now the looking-glass caused more
unhappiness than ever, for some of the fragments were not so large
as a grain of sand, and they flew about the world into every
country. When one of these tiny atoms flew into a person's eye, it
stuck there unknown to him, and from that moment he saw everything
through a distorted medium, or could see only the worst side of what
he looked at, for even the smallest fragment retained the same power
which had belonged to the whole mirror. Some few persons even got a
fragment of the looking-glass in their hearts, and this was very
terrible, for their hearts became cold like a lump of ice. A few of
the pieces were so large that they could be used as window-panes; it
would have been a sad thing to look at our friends through them. Other
pieces were made into spectacles; this was dreadful for those who wore
them, for they could see nothing either rightly or justly. At all this
the wicked demon laughed till his sides shook--it tickled him so to
see the mischief he had done. There were still a number of these
little fragments of glass floating about in the air, and now you shall
hear what happened with one of them.


SECOND STORY

A LITTLE BOY AND A LITTLE GIRL


In a large town, full of houses and people, there is not room
for everybody to have even a little garden, therefore they are obliged
to be satisfied with a few flowers in flower-pots. In one of these
large towns lived two poor children who had a garden something
larger and better than a few flower-pots. They were not brother and
sister, but they loved each other almost as much as if they had
been. Their parents lived opposite to each other in two garrets, where
the roofs of neighboring houses projected out towards each other and
the water-pipe ran between them. In each house was a little window, so
that any one could step across the gutter from one window to the
other. The parents of these children had each a large wooden box in
which they cultivated kitchen herbs for their own use, and a little
rose-bush in each box, which grew splendidly. Now after a while the
parents decided to place these two boxes across the water-pipe, so
that they reached from one window to the other and looked like two
banks of flowers. Sweet-peas drooped over the boxes, and the
rose-bushes shot forth long branches, which were trained round the
windows and clustered together almost like a triumphal arch of
leaves and flowers. The boxes were very high, and the children knew
they must not climb upon them, without permission, but they were
often, however, allowed to step out together and sit upon their little
stools under the rose-bushes, or play quietly. In winter all this
pleasure came to an end, for the windows were sometimes quite frozen
over. But then they would warm copper pennies on the stove, and hold
the warm pennies against the frozen pane; there would be very soon a
little round hole through which they could peep, and the soft bright
eyes of the little boy and girl would beam through the hole at each
window as they looked at each other. Their names were Kay and Gerda.
In summer they could be together with one jump from the window, but in
winter they had to go up and down the long staircase, and out
through the snow before they could meet.

"See there are the white bees swarming," said Kay's old
grandmother one day when it was snowing.

"Have they a queen bee?" asked the little boy, for he knew that
the real bees had a queen.

"To be sure they have," said the grandmother. "She is flying there
where the swarm is thickest. She is the largest of them all, and never
remains on the earth, but flies up to the dark clouds. Often at
midnight she flies through the streets of the town, and looks in at
the windows, then the ice freezes on the panes into wonderful
shapes, that look like flowers and castles."

"Yes, I have seen them," said both the children, and they knew
it must be true.

"Can the Snow Queen come in here?" asked the little girl.

"Only let her come," said the boy, "I'll set her on the stove
and then she'll melt."

Then the grandmother smoothed his hair and told him some more
tales. One evening, when little Kay was at home, half undressed, he
climbed on a chair by the window and peeped out through the little
hole. A few flakes of snow were falling, and one of them, rather

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