A the little match girl A It was bitterly cold on the last evening of the year.
One New Year’s Eve a small girl shuffled through the deserted streets, her thin body frozen through by the terrible cold. She carried a bundle of matches in her old apron and had been trying to sell them. However, nobody had bought any all day long and no one had given her a crumb to eat. Snowflakes settled on her long fair hair, turning it white, but she did not care. In a corner where the walls of two houses met, she curled up for warmth but only grew colder and colder. She did not dare to go home because her father would beat her as she had earned no money. Besides, it was just as cold there because the biting wind whistled round the rags stuffed into the cracks. Her hands were numbed with cold. She wondered whether a match might warm them. She took one out and struck it. How it flared! The flame warmed her frosty fingers and shone so brightly. It was the most wonderful light and it seemed to the little girl that she was sitting by a large iron stove. She gazed into the flickering fire and felt the comfort of its warmth. She stretched out her feet to warm them too, but the flame went out and only a burnt matchstick remained in her shivering hand. She lit another match. Where its light fell on the wall of the house, she could see into the room as if through a veil. There stood a table covered with a pure white tablecloth and laid with a fine dinner service. In the middle a roast goose stuffed with apples and plums steamed. The young girl savoured the smell. Then, suddenly, the goose hopped up and waddled towards her with a knife and fork in its breast. But before the bird reached her, the match went out and all she could see was the cold, thick wall. When she lit the third match, she was sitting beside a glittering Christmas tree. It was like the one she had seen at Christmas through the glass door of the rich merchant’s house, but this one was even bigger and more beautiful. Thousands of candles were burning on its branches and beneath the tree were marvellous picture books like the ones she had seen in the bookshop window. She reached towards them but in that moment the light of the match faded away. Once more, she was alone on the street. To the sound of carols, her head turned heavenward, where the lights of Christmas became stars in the sky. One of them fell down, drawing a trail of fire behind it. “Someone has just died,” the child whispered. Her grandmother had told her that every time a star falls down someone goes to heaven. She struck another match and, in the gleam of its light, she saw her grandmother, her eyes just as bright, kind and loving as she remembered. “Grandma!” cried the girl. “Take me with you. Don’t disappear and leave me here again!” She took the bundle of matches and lit them all together so that her grandmother would stay with her. The grandmother took the girl in her arms and flew away with her. Next morning the little girl’s lifeless body was found together with the spent matches. “Poor thing, she was trying to warm herself,” the people said. No one could imagine what beautiful things she had seen and how happy she was to go with her grandmother and never to be cold or hungry again. A A the little match girl A
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A the storm shakes the signs A In the old days, when grandpa was still a boy, many things were very different from how they are today.
When grandpa was young, he wore red breeches, a red coat and a feather in his cap. This was what boys wore when they dressed in their best clothes. The streets were often decorated in a way that cannot be seen today because times have changed and that is now out of date and old-fashioned. It was a wonderful sight when the shoemakers moved to their new guild house taking their sign there. Their silken flag had a large pair of boots and a double-headed eagle on it. The youngest lads carried the sign and the chest of the workmen’s guild, and the older master craftsmen marched with drawn swords, each with a lemon stuck on its point. Music filled the streets, particularly the sound of an instrument called the “bird” with all types of metal jingle-jangles ringing from the top of a long stick. It was a real Turkish instrument. When the stick was swung up and down, it played and it quite dazzled the eyes when the sun shone on all its gold, silver and copper. At the head of the procession ran the harlequin, wearing his colourful patchwork costume, with a blackened face and bells tinkling on his cap as he skipped and larked around. He waved his bat at people, which made a loud clap but did not hurt anyone. The boys and girls ran along the gutter, tripping over their own toes. The old women elbowed their way to the front of the crowd lining the street and told each other off as they watched the procession go by. Everyone wanted to see it: people thronged the windows and some climbed onto roofs. What stories grandpa could tell! This was because as a young boy he had actually seen all these things. The eldest member of the guild made a speech from a platform. But he said his message in verse like a poet. Indeed, three people had composed it after drinking a bowl of punch to make sure the speech flowed well. The people cheered the speech, and the harlequin joined the fun. The fool drank mead from small glasses which, when emptied, he threw into the crowd. Everyone who caught one was very pleased. Grandpa was given such a glass by a stone mason. The sign was hung on the front of the new guild house with a garland of flowers around it. Once, grandpa’s parents took him to the city. There were so many people on the streets that he thought that a sign was being carried. There were a great many signs in the metropolis. Each had a splendid picture telling the trade of a person who dwelt there. At the tailor’s the sign depicted all kinds of clothing, and at the tobacco seller’s there was a young man smoking a cigar. There were signs with painted butter, coffins and fish, and some with words as well. Grandpa thought it was very useful to know who lived in which house. On the first night when he had come to the city by himself, the most terrible gale the townsfolk could remember sprang up. Even the newspapers had not recorded such a strong storm. Roof tiles
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A the storm shakes the signs A
flew through the air, chasing the litter blown by the wind along the ground, and a wheelbarrow ran down the street all alone, only to get out of the way of the storm. The wind spared nothing in its path. The canal broke its banks, flooding the streets, and the walls of the bastion were shaken. Plenty of chimneys toppled and the church tower bowed under the strength of nature and has not straightened up to this day. The old chief of the fire brigade was always the last to arrive at a blaze. The storm played a trick on him, lifting up his sentry-house and speeding it down the street. The wind could not know that the carpenter’s lad had saved three lives in the last fire. Still, perhaps not by chance, the sentry-house came to a halt right outside the door of the young man’s house. The brass bowl, the barber’s sign, crashed straight into the judge’s window, which might not have been an accident either – the neighbours used to joke that the judge’s wife and her close friends were as sharp as a razor because there was nothing they did not know about other people’s business. The wind flew the sign of a beady-eyed fish to the door of the man who wrote the newspaper, without any concern for how he might take revenge in the columns of his next edition. The weathercock was not pleased when a strong gust lifted him onto the neighbour’s roof, where he remained perched with an evil look in his eye. The wind skilfully placed the cooper’s tub over the hook above the ladies costumes shop, just for the fun of it. Even the menu of the restaurant on a board in a metal frame was not safe and landed at the entrance to the theatre. Perhaps this was intended to attract more people. The new show “Horse radish soup and stuffed cabbage” drew a crowd to the theatre, who did not know what to make of it. It was a terrible night. In the morning everyone was surprised to find all the signs in new places. Grandpa would not tell all the capers the wind had got up to, and only chuckled in secret, but anyone with a little imagination might guess that he made some up himself. The new signs confused the local people, while travellers visiting the city could rightly feel that they were the victims of a bad joke. For example, those who wanted to go to a meeting of wise old men where important decisions were made found themselves in a noisy school with children leaping up on their desks and enjoying the hullaballoo, while others fumed for mistaking the church for the theatre. There has never been a storm again like the one in grandpa’s time though that was years and years ago when he was young. Perhaps the next such storm will come in our grandchildren’s life – and then it would be best if everyone stayed at home when the storm is moving signs again. A
A the storm shakes the signs A
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