reach them. She fully believed that the jewel which outshines all
the glories of the world would yet be found, and that upon the
forehead of humanity it would glitter even in the castle of her
father. "Even in my father's house," she repeated. "Yes, the place
in which this jewel is to be found is earth, and I shall bring more
than the promise of it with me. I feel it glow and swell more and more
in my closed hand. Every grain of truth which the keen wind carried up
and whirled towards me I caught and treasured. I allowed it to be
penetrated with the fragrance of the beautiful, of which there is so
much in the world, even for the blind. I took the beatings of a
heart engaged in a good action, and added them to my treasure. All
that I can bring is but dust; still, it is a part of the jewel we
seek, and there is plenty, my hand is quite full of it."
She soon found herself again at home; carried thither in a
flight of thought, never having loosened her hold of the invisible
thread fastened to her father's house. As she stretched out her hand
to her father, the powers of evil dashed with the fury of a
hurricane over the Tree of the Sun; a blast of wind rushed through the
open doors, and into the sanctuary, where lay the Book of Truth.
"It will be blown to dust by the wind," said the father, as he
seized the open hand she held towards him.
"No," she replied, with quiet confidence, "it is indestructible. I
feel its beam warming my very soul."
Then her father observed that a dazzling flame gleamed from the
white page on which the shining dust had passed from her hand. It
was there to prove the certainty of eternal life, and on the book
glowed one shining word, and only one, the word BELIEVE. And soon
the four brothers were again with the father and daughter. When the
green leaf from home fell on the bosom of each, a longing had seized
them to return. They had arrived, accompanied by the birds of passage,
the stag, the antelope, and all the creatures of the forest who wished
to take part in their joy.
We have often seen, when a sunbeam burst through a crack in the
door into a dusty room, how a whirling column of dust seems to
circle round. But this was not poor, insignificant, common dust, which
the blind girl had brought; even the rainbow's colors are dim when
compared with the beauty which shone from the page on which it had
fallen. The beaming word BELIEVE, from every grain of truth, had the
brightness of the beautiful and the good, more bright than the
mighty pillar of flame that led Moses and the children of Israel to
the land of Canaan, and from the word BELIEVE arose the bridge of
hope, reaching even to the unmeasurable Love in the realms of the
infinite.
THE END
.
1872
FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
THE PHOENIX BIRD
by Hans Christian Andersen
IN the Garden of Paradise, beneath the Tree of Knowledge,
bloomed a rose bush. Here, in the first rose, a bird was born. His
flight was like the flashing of light, his plumage was beauteous,
and his song ravishing. But when Eve plucked the fruit of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil, when she and Adam were driven from
Paradise, there fell from the flaming sword of the cherub a spark into
the nest of the bird, which blazed up forthwith. The bird perished
in the flames; but from the red egg in the nest there fluttered
aloft a new one- the one solitary Phoenix bird. The fable tells that
he dwells in Arabia, and that every hundred years, he burns himself to
death in his nest; but each time a new Phoenix, the only one in the
world, rises up from the red egg.
The bird flutters round us, swift as light, beauteous in color,
charming in song. When a mother sits by her infant's cradle, he stands
on the pillow, and, with his wings, forms a glory around the
infant's head. He flies through the chamber of content, and brings
sunshine into it, and the violets on the humble table smell doubly
sweet.
But the Phoenix is not the bird of Arabia alone. He wings his
way in the glimmer of the Northern Lights over the plains of
Lapland, and hops among the yellow flowers in the short Greenland
summer. Beneath the copper mountains of Fablun, and England's coal
mines, he flies, in the shape of a dusty moth, over the hymnbook
that rests on the knees of the pious miner. On a lotus leaf he
floats down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eye of the Hindoo
maid gleams bright when she beholds him.
The Phoenix bird, dost thou not know him? The Bird of Paradise,
the holy swan of song! On the car of Thespis he sat in the guise of
a chattering raven, and flapped his black wings, smeared with the lees
of wine; over the sounding harp of Iceland swept the swan's red
beak; on Shakspeare's shoulder he sat in the guise of Odin's raven,
and whispered in the poet's ear "Immortality!" and at the minstrels'
feast he fluttered through the halls of the Wartburg.
The Phoenix bird, dost thou not know him? He sang to thee the
Marseillaise, and thou kissedst the pen that fell from his wing; he
came in the radiance of Paradise, and perchance thou didst turn away
from him towards the sparrow who sat with tinsel on his wings.
The Bird of Paradise- renewed each century- born in flame,
ending in flame! Thy picture, in a golden frame, hangs in the halls of
the rich, but thou thyself often fliest around, lonely and
disregarded, a myth- "The Phoenix of Arabia."
In Paradise, when thou wert born in the first rose, beneath the
Tree of Knowledge, thou receivedst a kiss, and thy right name was
given thee- thy name, Poetry.
THE END
.
1872
FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
THE PORTER'S SON
by Hans Christian Andersen
THE General lived in the grand first floor, and the porter lived
in the cellar. There was a great distance between the two families-
the whole of the ground floor, and the difference in rank; but they
lived in the same house, and both had a view of the street, and of the
courtyard. In the courtyard was a grass-plot, on which grew a blooming
acacia tree (when it was in bloom), and under this tree sat
occasionally the finely-dressed nurse, with the still more
finely-dressed child of the General- little Emily. Before them
danced about barefoot the little son of the porter, with his great
brown eyes and dark hair; and the little girl smiled at him, and
stretched out her hands towards him; and when the General saw that
from the window, he would nod his head and cry, "Charming!" The
General's lady (who was so young that she might very well have been
her husband's daughter from an early marriage) never came to the
window that looked upon the courtyard. She had given orders, though,
that the boy might play his antics to amuse her child, but must
never touch it. The nurse punctually obeyed the gracious lady's
orders.
The sun shone in upon the people in the grand first floor, and
upon the people in the cellar; the acacia tree was covered with
blossoms, and they fell off, and next year new ones came. The tree
bloomed, and the porter's little son bloomed too, and looked like a
fresh tulip.
The General's little daughter became delicate and pale, like the
leaf of the acacia blossom. She seldom came down to the tree now,
for she took the air in a carriage. She drove out with her mamma,
and then she would always nod at the porter's George; yes, she used
even to kiss her hand to him, till her mamma said she was too old to
do that now.
One morning George was sent up to carry the General the letters
and newspapers that had been delivered at the porter's room in the
morning. As he was running up stairs, just as he passed the door of
the sand-box, he heard a faint piping. He thought it was some young
chicken that had strayed there, and was raising cries of distress; but
it was the General's little daughter, decked out in lace and finery.
"Don't tell papa and mamma," she whimpered; "they would be angry."
"What's the matter, little missie?" asked George.
"It's all on fire!" she answered. "It's burning with a bright
flame!" George hurried up stairs to the General's apartments; he
opened the door of the nursery. The window curtain was almost entirely
burnt, and the wooden curtain-pole was one mass of flame. George
sprang upon a chair he brought in haste, and pulled down the burning
articles; he then alarmed the people. But for him, the house would
have been burned down.
The General and his lady cross-questioned little Emily.
"I only took just one lucifer-match," she said, "and it was
burning directly, and the curtain was burning too. I spat at it, to
put it out; I spat at it as much as ever I could, but I could not
put it out; so I ran away and hid myself, for papa and mamma would
be angry."
"I spat!" cried the General's lady; "what an expression! Did you
ever hear your papa and mamma talk about spitting? You must have got
that from down stairs!"
And George had a penny given him. But this penny did not go to the
baker's shop, but into the savings-box; and soon there were so many
pennies in the savings-box that he could buy a paint-box and color the
drawings he made, and he had a great number of drawings. They seemed
to shoot out of his pencil and out of his fingers' ends. His first
colored pictures he presented to Emily.
"Charming!" said the General, and even the General's lady
acknowledged that it was easy to see what the boy had meant to draw.
"He has genius." Those were the words that were carried down into
the cellar.
The General and his gracious lady were grand people. They had
two coats of arms on their carriage, a coat of arms for each of
them, and the gracious lady had had this coat of arms embroidered on
both sides of every bit of linen she had, and even on her nightcap and
her dressing-bag. One of the coats of arms, the one that belonged to
her, was a very dear one; it had been bought for hard cash by her
father, for he had not been born with it, nor had she; she had come
into the world too early, seven years before the coat of arms, and
most people remembered this circumstance, but the family did not
remember it. A man might well have a bee in his bonnet, when he had
such a coat of arms to carry as that, let alone having to carry two;
and the General's wife had a bee in hers when she drove to the court
ball, as stiff and as proud as you please.
The General was old and gray, but he had a good seat on horseback,
and he knew it, and he rode out every day, with a groom behind him
at a proper distance. When he came to a party, he looked somehow as if
he were riding into the room upon his high horse; and he had orders,
too, such a number that no one would have believed it; but that was
not his fault. As a young man he had taken part in the great autumn
reviews which were held in those days. He had an anecdote that he told
about those days, the only one he knew. A subaltern under his orders
had cut off one of the princes, and taken him prisoner, and the Prince
had been obliged to ride through the town with a little band of
captured soldiers, himself a prisoner behind the General. This was
an ever-memorable event, and was always told over and over again every
year by the General, who, moreover, always repeated the remarkable
words he had used when he returned his sword to the Prince; those
words were, "Only my subaltern could have taken your Highness
prisoner; I could never have done it!" And the Prince had replied,
"You are incomparable." In a real war the General had never taken
part. When war came into the country, he had gone on a diplomatic
career to foreign courts. He spoke the French language so fluently
that he had almost forgotten his own; he could dance well, he could
ride well, and orders grew on his coat in an astounding way. The
sentries presented arms to him, one of the most beautiful girls
presented arms to him, and became the General's lady, and in time they
had a pretty, charming child, that seemed as if it had dropped from
heaven, it was so pretty; and the porter's son danced before it in the
courtyard, as soon as it could understand it, and gave her all his
colored pictures, and little Emily looked at them, and was pleased,
and tore them to pieces. She was pretty and delicate indeed.
"My little Roseleaf!" cried the General's lady, "thou art born
to wed a prince."
The prince was already at the door, but they knew nothing of it;
people don't see far beyond the threshold.
"The day before yesterday our boy divided his bread and butter
with her!" said the porter's wife. "There was neither cheese nor
meat upon it, but she liked it as well as if it had been roast beef.
There would have been a fine noise if the General and his wife had
seen the feast, but they did not see it.
George had divided his bread and butter with little Emily, and
he would have divided his heart with her, if it would have pleased
her. He was a good boy, brisk and clever, and he went to the night
school in the Academy now, to learn to draw properly. Little Emily was
getting on with her education too, for she spoke French with her
"bonne," and had a dancing master.
"George will be confirmed at Easter," said the porter's wife;
for George had got so far as this.
"It would be the best thing, now, to make an apprentice of him,"
said his father. "It must be to some good calling- and then he would
