Read Ebook: Wonderful Stories for Children by Andersen H C Hans Christian Howitt Mary Mary Botham Translator

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Ebook has 318 lines and 27817 words, and 7 pages

The trick had been played at a great race dinner, and Miss Ferret's convincing argument for making an experiment of a like nature at Colbrook, was contained in the following laconicism, "what has been, may be." Sir Roger succumbed, and no one detected the fraud. "Depend upon it," said Miss Ferret, "that all the French wines are made at home, and you are no greater cheat than your wine merchant."

The young danced, the elders played whist, carriages were heard rolling in the court, the party dispersed, and as all things must, sooner or later, come to a conclusion, thus ended the wedding-day, and Miss Ferret had laid the plan of another ere the sun was set.

DRYDEN.

As a flat road, however, admits of quick driving, we shall not detain the reader unmercifully in describing a scene which presented no alterations of light and shade, no moral vicissitudes of hill and dale, to vary the landscape; but satisfy ourselves with a short sketch of connubial contentment in a welcome-home to Mr. and Mrs. Hartland, who after a brief aberration from their domestic settlement, returned to the delights of clipped hedges, rolled terrace, and trim bowers.

It may be remembered that our wedded pair had each passed the term when people of both sexes in the presumption of life's springtide, talk of marriage as a common event which "comes to all;" and toss their fortunes to and fro, with lavish prodigality, altogether unprophetic of succeeding dearth.

Mr. Hartland's situation was not less enviable. Having passed all his youthful prime without considering marriage as practicable, he had thought less than any body during early life of changing his condition; and since he had attained competency, and became desirous of uniting himself suitably to a virtuous partner, the difficulties of seeking, finding, choosing, proposing, and wedding, rose upon his view like Alps beyond Alps, and presented such a formidable barrier against hope, that he could not see how the matter was ever to be undertaken, much less how it would ever come to pass.

The husband, therefore, was just as much enchanted as the wife. He felt himself raised in the scale of creation; he was now a person of more consequence than he had ever been before. Then his affections, which had been arrested by his mother's death, and which might be said to have suffered a blockade since that event, were all set flowing again with redoubled tenderness and activity. His former poverty, too, having prevented him from being an object of competition, his vanity had never been excited, and he was a total stranger, in his own person, to those attentions, which, we are sorry to say, are often disgustingly paid to men by the fair sex, when rank or fortune furnishes motive for entrapping them. Mr. Hartland's gratitude, therefore, to Miss Robinson, for having married him, was as sincere as it was unbounded; and thus this favoured pair were, in the language of the nursery tales of olden time, "as happy as the day is long;" reminding us of the spider, who spinning her web from her own vitals, "lives along the line" of her own daily occupation; or , the Hartlands frequently suggested to our memory the Epicurean aspiration of the celebrated Quin, "Oh, that I had a throat half a mile in length, and palate all the way." Now, the moral palate of Henbury's inhabitants extended to the utmost verge of their possessions; and they might be said to taste and relish whatever they found in their path.

They had neither of them seen much of the world, and neither knew any thing of thuntry; but--where was the Garden of Paradise?--of that he could not learn one word; and that it was of which he thought most.

His grandmother had told him, when he was quite a little boy, and first began to go to school, that every flower in the Garden of Paradise was the most delicious cake; one was history, another geography, a third, tables, and it was only needful to eat one of these cakes, and so the lesson was learned; and the more was eaten of them, the better acquainted they were with history, geography, and tables.

At that time he believed all this; but when he grew a bigger boy, and had learned more, and was wiser, he was quite sure that there must be some other very different delight in this Garden of Paradise.

"Oh! why did Eve gather of the tree of knowledge? why did Adam eat the forbidden fruit? If it had been me, I never would have done so! If it had been me, sin should never have entered into the world!"

So said he, many a time, when he was young; so said he when he was much older! The Garden of Paradise filled his whole thoughts.

One day he went into the wood; he went alone, for that was his greatest delight.

The evening came. The clouds drew together; it began to rain as if the whole heavens were one single sluice, of which the gate was open; it was quite dark, or like night in the deepest well. Now, he slipped in the wet grass; now, he tumbled over the bare stones, which were scattered over the rocky ground. Every thing streamed with water; not a dry thread remained upon the prince. He was obliged to crawl up over the great blocks of stone, where the water poured out of the wet moss. He was ready to faint. At that moment he heard a remarkable sound, and before him he saw a large, illuminated cave. In the middle of it burned a fire, so large that a stag might have been roasted at it,--and so it was; the most magnificent stag, with his tall antlers, was placed upon a spit, and was slowly turning round between two fir trees, which had been hewn down. A very ancient woman, tall and strong, as if she had been a man dressed up in woman's clothes, sat by the fire, and threw one stick after another upon it.

"Come nearer!" said she, seeing the prince; "sit down by the fire, and dry thy clothes."

"It is bad travelling to-night," said the prince; and seated himself on the floor of the cave.

"It will be worse yet, when my sons come home!" replied the woman. "Thou art in the cave of the winds; my sons are the four winds of the earth; canst thou understand?"

"Where are thy sons?" asked the prince.

"Yes, it is not well to ask questions, when the questions are foolish," said the woman. "My sons are queer fellows; they play at bowls with the clouds, up in the big room there;" and with that she pointed up into the air.

"Indeed!" said the prince, "and you talk somewhat gruffly, and are not as gentle as the ladies whom I am accustomed to see around me."

"Yes, yes, they have nothing else to do!" said she; "I must be gruff if I would keep my lads in order! But I can do it, although they have stiff necks. Dost thou see the four sacks which hang on the wall; they are just as much afraid of them, as thou art of the birch-rod behind the looking-glass! I can double up the lads, as I shall, perhaps, have to show thee, and so put them into the bags; I make no difficulties about that; and so I fasten them in, and don't let them go running about, for I do not find that desirable. But here we have one of them."

With that in came the northwind; he came tramping in with an icy coldness; great, round hail-stones hopped upon the floor, and snow-flakes flew round about. He was dressed in a bear's-skin jerkin and hose; a hat of seal's-skin was pulled over his ears; long icicles hung from his beard, and one hail-stone after another fell down upon his jerkin-collar.

"Do not directly go to the fire!" said the prince, "else thou wilt have the frost in thy hands and face!"

"Frost!" said the northwind, and laughed aloud. "Frost! that is precisely my greatest delight! What sort of a little dandified chap art thou? What made thee come into the winds' cave?"

"He is my guest!" said the old woman; "and if that explanation does not please thee, thou canst get into the bag!--now thou knowest my mind!"

This had the desired effect; and the northwind sat down, and began to tell where he was come from, and where he had been for the greater part of the last month.

"I come from the Arctic Sea; I have been upon Bear Island with the Russian walrus-hunters. I lay and slept whilst they sailed up to the North Cape. When I now and then woke up a little, how the storm-birds flew about my legs! They are ridiculous birds! they make a quick stroke with their wings, and then keep them immoveably expanded, and yet they get on."

"Don't be so diffuse!" said the winds' mother; "and so you came to Bear Island."

"That is a charming place; that is a floor to dance upon!" roared the northwind, "as flat as a pan-cake! Half covered with snow and dwarfish mosses, sharp stones and leg-bones of walruses and ice-bears lie scattered about, looking like the arms and legs of giants. One would think that the sun never had shone upon them. I blew the mist aside a little, that one might see the erection there; it was a house, built of pieces of wrecks, covered with the skin of the walrus, the fleshy side turned outward; upon the roof sat a living ice-bear, and growled. I went down to the shore, and looked at the birds' nests, in which were the unfledged young ones, which screamed, and held up their gaping beaks; with that I blew down a thousand throats, and they learned to shut their mouths. Down below tumbled about the walruses, like gigantic ascarides, with pigs' heads and teeth an ell long!"

"Thou tell'st it very well, my lad!" said the mother; "it makes my mouth water to hear thee!"

"So the hunting began," continued the northwind. "The harpoons were struck into the breast of the walrus, so that the smoking blood started like a fountain over the iron. I then thought of having some fun! I blew, and let my great ships, the mountain-like fields of ice, shut in the boats. How the people shrieked and cried; but I cried louder than they! The dead bodies of their fish, their chests and cordage, were they obliged to throw out upon the ice! I showered snow-flakes upon them, and left them, in their imprisoned ship, to drive southward with their prey, there to taste salt-water. They will never again come to Bear Island!"

"It was very wrong of thee!" said the winds' mother.

"The others can tell what good I have done!" said he! "And there we have my brother from the west; I like him the best of them all; he smacks of the sea, and has a blessed coldness about him!"

"Is it the little zephyr?" inquired the prince.

"Yes, certainly, it is the zephyr!" said the old woman; "but he is not so little now. In old times he was a very pretty lad, but that is all over now."

He looked like a wild man, but he had one of those pads round his head, which children used to wear formerly, to prevent them from being hurt. He held in his hand a mahogany club, which had been cut in the mahogany woods of America.

"Where dost thou come from?" asked the mother.

"From the forest-wilderness," said he, "where the prickly lianas makes a fence around every tree; where the water-snakes lie in the wet grass, and man seems superfluous!"

"What didst thou do there?"

"I looked at the vast river, saw how it was hurled from the cliffs, became mist, and was thrown back into the clouds, to become rainbows. I saw the wild buffalo swim in the river; but the stream bore him along with it; madly did it bear him onward, faster and faster, to where the river was hurled down the cliffs--down, also, must he go! I bethought myself, and blew a hurricane, so the old trees of the forest were torn up, and carried down, too, and became splinters!"

"And didst thou do any thing else?" asked the old woman.

"I tumbled head-over-heels in the Savannas; I have patted the wild horses, and shook down cocoa-nuts! Yes, yes, I could tell tales, if I would! But one must not tell all one knows, that thou know'st, old lady!" said he, and kissed his mother so roughly that he nearly knocked her backward from her chair; he was a regularly wild fellow.

Now came in the southwind, with a turban on his head, and a flying Bedouin-cloak.

"It is dreadfully cold out here!" said he, and threw more wood on the fire; "one can very well tell that the northwind has come first!"

"Here it is so hot, that one might roast an ice-bear!" said the northwind.

"You are an ice-bear, yourself!" replied the southwind.

"Do you want to go in the bags?" asked the old woman; "sit down on the stone, and tell us where thou hast been."

"In Africa, mother," said he; "I have been lion-hunting, with the Hottentots, in Caffreland. What grass grows in the fields there, as green as the olive! There dances the gnu; and the ostrich ran races with me, but my legs were the nimblest. I came to the deserts of yellow sand, which look like the surface of the ocean. There I met a caravan! They had killed their last camel to get water to drink, but they only found a little. The sun burned above them, and the sand beneath their feet. There was no limit to the vast desert. I then rolled myself in the fine, loose sand, and whirled it up in great pillars--that was a dance! You should have seen how close the dromedaries stood together, and the merchants pulled their kaftans over their heads. They threw themselves down before me, as if before Allah, their god. They are now buried; a pyramid of sand lies heaped above them; I shall, some day, blow it away, and then the sun will bleach their white bones, and so travellers can see that there have been human beings before them in the desert; without this it were hard to believe it!"

"Thou, also, hast done badly!" said the mother. "March into the bag!" and before the southwind knew what she would be at, she had seized him by the body, and thrust him into the bag. The bag, with him in it, rolled about on the floor; but she seized it, held it fast, and sat down upon it; so he was forced to lie still.

"They are rough fellows!" said the prince.

"So they are!" returned she; "but I can chastise them! But here we have the fourth!"

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