Two of my Favorite Stories
(Give it up to my fellow assistants: the dancing cartoons!)
he well was deep, and therefore the rope had to be a long one;
it was heavy work turning the handle when any one had to raise a bucketful
of water over the edge of the well. Though the water was clear, the sun
never looked down far enough into the well to mirror itself in the waters;
but as far as its beams could reach, green things grew forth between
the stones in the sides of the well.
Down below dwelt a family of the Toad race. They had, in fact,
come head-over-heels down the well, in the person of the old Mother-Toad,
who was still alive. The green Frogs, who had been established there
a long time, and swam about in the water, called them “well-guests.”
But the new-comers seemed determined to stay where they were, for they
found it very agreeable living “in a dry place,” as they called the wet
stones.
The Mother-Frog had once been a traveller. She happened to
be in the water-bucket when it was drawn up, but the light became too
strong for her, and she got a pain in her eyes. Fortunately she scrambled
out of the bucket; but she fell into the water with a terrible flop, and
had to lie sick for three days with pains in her back. She certainly
had not much to tell of the things up above, but she knew this, and all
the Frogs knew it, that the well was not all the world. The Mother-Toad
might have told this and that, if she had chosen, but she never answered
when they asked her anything, and so they left off asking.
“She’s thick, and fat and ugly,” said the young green Frogs;
“and her children will be just as ugly as she is.”
“That may be,” retorted the mother-Toad, “but one of them has
a jewel in his head, or else I have the jewel.”
The young frogs listened and stared; and as these words did
not please them, they made grimaces and dived down under the water.
But the little Toads kicked up their hind legs from mere pride, for each
of them thought that he must have the jewel; and then they sat and held
their heads quite still. But at length they asked what it was that made
them so proud, and what kind of a thing a jewel might be.
“Oh, it is such a splendid and precious thing, that I cannot
describe it,” said the Mother-Toad. “It’s something which one carries
about for one’s own pleasure, and that makes other people angry. But
don’t ask me any questions, for I shan’t answer you.”
“Well, I haven’t got the jewel,” said the smallest of the Toads;
she was as ugly as a toad can be. “Why should I have such a precious
thing? And if it makes others angry, it can’t give me any pleasure.
No, I only wish I could get to the edge of the well, and look out; it
must be beautiful up there.”
“You’d better stay where you are,” said the old Mother-Toad,
“for you know everything here, and you can tell what you have. Take
care of the bucket, for it will crush you to death; and even if you get
into it safely, you may fall out. And it’s not every one who falls so
cleverly as I did, and gets away with whole legs and whole bones.”
“Quack!” said the little Toad; and that’s just as if one of
us were to say, “Aha!”
She had an immense desire to get to the edge of the well, and
to look over; she felt such a longing for the green, up there; and the
next morning, when it chanced that the bucket was being drawn up, filled
with water, and stopped for a moment just in front of the stone on which
the Toad sat, the little creature’s heart moved within it, and our Toad
jumped into the filled bucket, which presently was drawn to the top, and
emptied out.
“Ugh, you beast!” said the farm laborer who emptied the bucket,
when he saw the toad. “You’re the ugliest thing I’ve seen for one while.”
And he made a kick with his wooden shoe at the toad, which just escaped
being crushed by managing to scramble into the nettles which grew high
by the well’s brink. Here she saw stem by stem, but she looked up also;
the sun shone through the leaves, which were quite transparent; and she
felt as a person would feel who steps suddenly into a great forest, where
the sun looks in between the branches and leaves.
“It’s much nicer here than down in the well! I should like
to stay here my whole life long!” said the little Toad. So she lay there
for an hour, yes, for two hours. “I wonder what is to be found up here?
As I have come so far, I must try to go still farther.” And so she crawled
on as fast as she could crawl, and got out upon the highway, where the
sun shone upon her, and the dust powdered her all over as she marched
across the way.
“I’ve got to a dry place. now, and no mistake,” said the Toad.
“It’s almost too much of a good thing here; it tickles one so.”
She came to the ditch; and forget-me-nots were growing there,
and meadow-sweet; and a very little way off was a hedge of whitethorn,
and elder bushes grew there, too, and bindweed with white flowers. Gay
colors were to be seen here, and a butterfly, too, was flitting by.
The Toad thought it was a flower which had broken loose that it might
look about better in the world, which was quite a natural thing to do.
“If one could only make such a journey as that!” said the Toad.
“Croak! how capital that would be.”
Eight days and eight nights she stayed by the well, and experienced
no want of provisions. On the ninth day she thought, “Forward! onward!”
But what could she find more charming and beautiful? Perhaps a little
toad or a few green frogs. During the last night there had been a sound
borne on the breeze, as if there were cousins in the neighborhood.
“It’s a glorious thing to live! glorious to get out of the
well, and to lie among the stinging-nettles, and to crawl along the
dusty road. But onward, onward! that we may find frogs or a little
toad. We can’t do without that; nature alone is not enough for one.”
And so she went forward on her journey.
She came out into the open field, to a great pond, round about
which grew reeds; and she walked into it.
“It will be too damp for you here,” said the Frogs; “but you
are very welcome! Are you a he or a she? But it doesn’t matter; you
are equally welcome.”
And she was invited to the concert in the evening—the family
concert; great enthusiasm and thin voices; we know the sort of thing.
No refreshments were given, only there was plenty to drink, for the
whole pond was free.
“Now I shall resume my journey,” said the little Toad; for
she always felt a longing for something better.
She saw the stars shining, so large and so bright, and she
saw the moon gleaming; and then she saw the sun rise, and mount higher
and higher.
“Perhaps after all, I am still in a well, only in a larger
well. I must get higher yet; I feel a great restlessness and longing.”
And when the moon became round and full, the poor creature thought,
“I wonder if that is the bucket which will be let down, and into which
I must step to get higher up? Or is the sun the great bucket? How great
it is! how bright it is! It can take up all. I must look out, that I may
not miss the opportunity. Oh, how it seems to shine in my head! I don’t
think the jewel can shine brighter. But I haven’t the jewel; not that I
cry about that—no, I must go higher up, into splendor and joy! I feel so
confident, and yet I am afraid. It’s a difficult step to take, and yet it
must be taken. Onward, therefore, straight onward!”
She took a few steps, such as a crawling animal may take, and
soon found herself on a road beside which people dwelt; but there were
flower gardens as well as kitchen gardens. And she sat down to rest
by a kitchen garden.
“What a number of different creatures there are that I never
knew! and how beautiful and great the world is! But one must look
round in it, and not stay in one spot.” And then she hopped into the
kitchen garden. “How green it is here! how beautiful it is here!”
“I know that,” said the Caterpillar, on the leaf, “my leaf
is the largest here. It hides half the world from me, but I don’t care
for the world.”
“Cluck, cluck!” And some fowls came. They tripped about in
the cabbage garden. The Fowl who marched at the head of them had a
long sight, and she spied the Caterpillar on the green leaf, and pecked
at it, so that the Caterpillar fell on the ground, where it twisted and
writhed.
The Fowl looked at it first with one eye and then with the
other, for she did not know what the end of this writhing would be.
“It doesn’t do that with a good will,” thought the Fowl, and
lifted up her head to peck at the Caterpillar.
The Toad was so horrified at this, that she came crawling straight
up towards the Fowl.
“Aha, it has allies,” quoth the Fowl. “Just look at the crawling
thing!” And then the Fowl turned away. “I don’t care for the little
green morsel; it would only tickle my throat.” The other fowls took
the same view of it, and they all turned away together.
“I writhed myself free,” said the Caterpillar. “What a good
thing it is when one has presence of mind! But the hardest thing remains
to be done, and that is to get on my leaf again. Where is it?”
And the little Toad came up and expressed her sympathy. She
was glad that in her ugliness she had frightened the fowls.
“What do you mean by that?” cried the Caterpillar. “I wriggled
myself free from the Fowl. You are very disagreeable to look at. Cannot
I be left in peace on my own property? Now I smell cabbage; now I am
near my leaf. Nothing is so beautiful as property. But I must go higher
up.”
“Yes, higher up,” said the little Toad; “higher-up! She feels
just as I do; but she’s not in a good humor to-day. That’s because of
the fright. We all want to go higher up.” And she looked up as high as
ever she could.
The stork sat in his nest on the roof of the farm-house. He
clapped with his beak, and the Mother-stork clapped with hers.
“How high up they live!” thought the Toad. “If one could only
get as high as that!”
In the farm-house lived two young students; the one was a poet
and the other a scientific searcher into the secrets of nature. The
one sang and wrote joyously of everything that God had created, and
how it was mirrored in his heart. He sang it out clearly, sweetly, richly,
in well-sounding verses; while the other investigated created matter
itself, and even cut it open where need was. He looked upon God’s creation
as a great sum in arithmetic—subtracted, multiplied, and tried to know
it within and without, and to talk with understanding concerning it; and
that was a very sensible thing; and he spoke joyously and cleverly of it.
They were good, joyful men, those two,
“There sits a good specimen of a toad,” said the naturalist.
“I must have that fellow in a bottle of spirits.”
“You have two of them already,” replied the poet. “Let the
thing sit there and enjoy its life.”
“But it’s so wonderfully ugly,” persisted the first.
“Yes, if we could find the jewel in its head,” said the poet,
“I too should be for cutting it open.”
“A jewel!” cried the naturalist. “You seem to know a great
deal about natural history.”
“But is there not something beautiful in the popular belief
that just as the toad is the ugliest of animals, it should often carry
the most precious jewel in its head? Is it not just the same thing with
men? What a jewel that was that Aesop had, and still more, Socrates!”
The Toad did not hear any more, nor did she understand half
of what she had heard. The two friends walked on, and thus she escaped
the fate of being bottled up in spirits.
“Those two also were speaking of the jewel,” said the Toad
to herself. “What a good thing that I have not got it! I might have
been in a very disagreeable position.”
Now there was a clapping on the roof of the farm-house. Father-Stork
was making a speech to his family, and his family was glancing down
at the two young men in the kitchen garden.
“Man is the most conceited creature!” said the Stork. “Listen
how their jaws are wagging; and for all that they can’t clap properly.
They boast of their gifts of eloquence and their language! Yes, a fine
language truly! Why, it changes in every day’s journey we make. One of
them doesn’t understand another. Now, we can speak our language over
the whole earth—up in the North and in Egypt. And then men are not able
to fly, moreover. They rush along by means of an invention they call
’railway;’ but they often break their necks over it. It makes my beak turn
cold when I think of it. The world could get on without men. We could do
without them very well, so long as we only keep frogs and earth-worms.”
“That was a powerful speech,” thought the little Toad. “What
a great man that is yonder! and how high he sits! Higher than ever
I saw any one sit yet; and how he can swim!” she cried, as the Stork
soared away through the air with outspread pinions.
And the Mother-Stork began talking in the nest, and told about
Egypt and the waters of the Nile, and the incomparable mud that was
to be found in that strange land; and all this sounded new and very
charming to the little Toad.
“I must go to Egypt!” said she. “If the Stork or one of his
young ones would only take me! I would oblige him in return. Yes, I
shall get to Egypt, for I feel so happy! All the longing and all the
pleasure that I feel is much better than having a jewel in one’s head.”
And it was just she who had the jewel. That jewel was the continual
striving and desire to go upward—ever upward. It gleamed in her head,
gleamed in joy, beamed brightly in her longing.
Then, suddenly, up came the Stork. He had seen the Toad in
the grass, and stooped down and seized the little creature anything
but gently. The Stork’s beak pinched her, and the wind whistled; it
was not exactly agreeable, but she was going upward—upward towards Egypt—
and she knew it; and that was why her eyes gleamed, and a spark seemed
to fly out of them.
“Quunk!—ah!”
The body was dead—the Toad was killed! But the spark that had
shot forth from her eyes; what became of that?
The sunbeam took it up; the sunbeam carried the jewel from
the head of the toad. Whither?
Ask not the naturalist; rather ask the poet. He will tell it
thee under the guise of a fairy tale; and the Caterpillar on the cabbage,
and the Stork family belong to the story. Think! the Caterpillar is changed,
and turns into a beautiful butterfly; the Stork family flies over mountains
and seas, to the distant Africa, and yet finds the shortest way home to
the same country—to the same roof. Nay, that is almost too improbable;
and yet it is true. You may ask the naturalist, he will confess it is so;
and you know it yourself, for you have seen it.
But the jewel in the head of the toad?
Seek it in the sun; see it there if you can.
The brightness is too dazzling there. We have not yet such
eyes as can see into the glories which God has created, but we shall
receive them by-and-by; and that will be the most beautiful story
of all, and we shall all have our share in it.
The Snow Man
(Again, give it up for the dancing cartoons!!!)
t is so delightfully cold,” said the Snow Man, “that
it makes my whole body crackle. This is just the kind of wind to blow
life into one. How that great red thing up there is staring at me!” He
meant the sun, who was just setting. “It shall not make me wink. I shall
manage to keep the pieces.”
He had two triangular pieces of tile in his head, instead of
eyes; his mouth was made of an old broken rake, and was, of course,
furnished with teeth. He had been brought into existence amidst the
joyous shouts of boys, the jingling of sleigh-bells, and the slashing
of whips. The sun went down, and the full moon rose, large, round, and
clear, shining in the deep blue.
“There it comes again, from the other side,” said the Snow
Man, who supposed the sun was showing himself once more. “Ah, I have
cured him of staring, though; now he may hang up there, and shine, that
I may see myself. If I only knew how to manage to move away from this
place,—I should so like to move. If I could, I would slide along yonder
on the ice, as I have seen the boys do; but I don’t understand how; I
don’t even know how to run.”
“Away, away,” barked the old yard-dog. He was quite hoarse,
and could not pronounce “Bow wow” properly. He had once been an indoor
dog, and lay by the fire, and he had been hoarse ever since. “The sun
will make you run some day. I saw him, last winter, make your predecessor
run, and his predecessor before him. Away, away, they all have to go.”
“I don’t understand you, comrade,” said the Snow Man. “Is that
thing up yonder to teach me to run? I saw it running itself a little
while ago, and now it has come creeping up from the other side.”
“You know nothing at all,” replied the yard-dog; “but then,
you’ve only lately been patched up. What you see yonder is the moon,
and the one before it was the sun. It will come again to-morrow, and most
likely teach you to run down into the ditch by the well; for I think the
weather is going to change. I can feel such pricks and stabs in my left
leg; I am sure there is going to be a change.”
“I don’t understand him,” said the Snow Man to himself; “but
I have a feeling that he is talking of something very disagreeable.
The one who stared so just now, and whom he calls the sun, is not my
friend; I can feel that too.”
“Away, away,” barked the yard-dog, and then he turned round
three times, and crept into his kennel to sleep.
There was really a change in the weather. Towards morning,
a thick fog covered the whole country round, and a keen wind arose,
so that the cold seemed to freeze one’s bones; but when the sun rose,
the sight was splendid. Trees and bushes were covered with hoar frost,
and looked like a forest of white coral; while on every twig glittered
frozen dew-drops. The many delicate forms concealed in summer by luxuriant
foliage, were now clearly defined, and looked like glittering lace-work.
From every twig glistened a white radiance. The birch, waving in the
wind, looked full of life, like trees in summer; and its appearance was
wondrously beautiful. And where the sun shone, how everything glittered
and sparkled, as if diamond dust had been strewn about; while the snowy
carpet of the earth appeared as if covered with diamonds, from which countless
lights gleamed, whiter than even the snow itself.
“This is really beautiful,” said a young girl, who had come
into the garden with a young man; and they both stood still near the
Snow Man, and contemplated the glittering scene. “Summer cannot show a
more beautiful sight,” she exclaimed, while her eyes sparkled.
“And we can’t have such a fellow as this in the summer time,”
replied the young man, pointing to the Snow Man; “he is capital.”
The girl laughed, and nodded at the Snow Man, and then tripped
away over the snow with her friend. The snow creaked and crackled beneath
her feet, as if she had been treading on starch.
“Who are these two?” asked the Snow Man of the yard-dog. “You
have been here longer than I have; do you know them?”
“Of course I know them,” replied the yard-dog; “she has stroked
my back many times, and he has given me a bone of meat. I never bite
those two.”
“But what are they?” asked the Snow Man.
“They are lovers,” he replied; “they will go and live in the
same kennel by-and-by, and gnaw at the same bone. Away, away!”
“Are they the same kind of beings as you and I?” asked the
Snow Man.
“Well, they belong to the same master,” retorted the yard-dog.
“Certainly people who were only born yesterday know very little. I
can see that in you. I have age and experience. I know every one here
in the house, and I know there was once a time when I did not lie out
here in the cold, fastened to a chain. Away, away!”
“The cold is delightful,” said the Snow Man; “but do tell me
tell me; only you must not clank your chain so; for it jars all through
me when you do that.”
“Away, away!” barked the yard-dog; “I’ll tell you; they said
I was a pretty little fellow once; then I used to lie in a velvet-covered
chair, up at the master’s house, and sit in the mistress’s lap. They
used to kiss my nose, and wipe my paws with an embroidered handkerchief,
and I was called ’Ami, dear Ami, sweet Ami.’ But after a while I grew
too big for them, and they sent me away to the housekeeper’s room; so I
came to live on the lower story. You can look into the room from where
you stand, and see where I was master once; for I was indeed master to the
housekeeper. It was certainly a smaller room than those up stairs; but
I was more comfortable; for I was not being continually taken hold of
and pulled about by the children as I had been. I received quite as good
food, or even better. I had my own cushion, and there was a stove—it is
the finest thing in the world at this season of the year. I used to go under
the stove, and lie down quite beneath it. Ah, I still dream of that stove.
Away, away!”
“Does a stove look beautiful?” asked the Snow Man, “is it at
all like me?”
“It is just the reverse of you,” said the dog; “it’s as black
as a crow, and has a long neck and a brass knob; it eats firewood, so
that fire spurts out of its mouth. We should keep on one side, or under
it, to be comfortable. You can see it through the window, from where
you stand.”
Then the Snow Man looked, and saw a bright polished thing with
a brazen knob, and fire gleaming from the lower part of it. The Snow
Man felt quite a strange sensation come over him; it was very odd, he
knew not what it meant, and he could not account for it. But there are
people who are not men of snow, who understand what it is. “And why did
you leave her?” asked the Snow Man, for it seemed to him that the stove
must be of the female sex. “How could you give up such a comfortable place?”
“I was obliged,” replied the yard-dog. “They turned me out
of doors, and chained me up here. I had bitten the youngest of my master’s
sons in the leg, because he kicked away the bone I was gnawing. ’Bone
for bone,’ I thought; but they were so angry, and from that time I have
been fastened with a chain, and lost my bone. Don’t you hear how hoarse
I am. Away, away! I can’t talk any more like other dogs. Away, away, that
is the end of it all.”
But the Snow Man was no longer listening. He was looking into
the housekeeper’s room on the lower storey; where the stove stood on
its four iron legs, looking about the same size as the Snow Man himself.
“What a strange crackling I feel within me,” he said. “Shall I ever get
in there? It is an innocent wish, and innocent wishes are sure to be fulfilled.
I must go in there and lean against her, even if I have to break the window.”
“You must never go in there,” said the yard-dog, “for if you
approach the stove, you’ll melt away, away.”
“I might as well go,” said the Snow Man, “for I think I am
breaking up as it is.”
During the whole day the Snow Man stood looking in through
the window, and in the twilight hour the room became still more inviting,
for from the stove came a gentle glow, not like the sun or the moon;
no, only the bright light which gleams from a stove when it has been
well fed. When the door of the stove was opened, the flames darted out
of its mouth; this is customary with all stoves. The light of the flames
fell directly on the face and breast of the Snow Man with a ruddy gleam.
“I can endure it no longer,” said he; “how beautiful it looks when it stretches
out its tongue?”
The night was long, but did not appear so to the Snow Man,
who stood there enjoying his own reflections, and crackling with the
cold. In the morning, the window-panes of the housekeeper’s room were
covered with ice. They were the most beautiful ice-flowers any Snow
Man could desire, but they concealed the stove. These window-panes
would not thaw, and he could see nothing of the stove, which he pictured
to himself, as if it had been a lovely human being. The snow crackled
and the wind whistled around him; it was just the kind of frosty weather
a Snow Man might thoroughly enjoy. But he did not enjoy it; how, indeed,
could he enjoy anything when he was “stove sick?”
“That is terrible disease for a Snow Man,” said the yard-dog;
“I have suffered from it myself, but I got over it. Away, away,” he barked
and then he added, “the weather is going to change.” And the weather
did change; it began to thaw. As the warmth increased, the Snow Man
decreased. He said nothing and made no complaint, which is a sure sign.
One morning he broke, and sunk down altogether; and, behold, where he
had stood, something like a broomstick remained sticking up in the ground.
It was the pole round which the boys had built him up. “Ah, now I understand
why he had such a great longing for the stove,” said the yard-dog. “Why,
there’s the shovel that is used for cleaning out the stove, fastened to
the pole.” The Snow Man had a stove scraper in his body; that was what moved
him so. “But it’s all over now. Away, away.” And soon the winter passed.
“Away, away,” barked the hoarse yard-dog. But the girls in the house sang,
“Come from your fragrant home, green thyme;
Stretch your soft branches, willow-tree;
The months are bringing the sweet spring-time,
When the lark in the sky sings joyfully.
Come gentle sun, while the cuckoo sings,
And I’ll mock his note in my wanderings.”
And nobody thought any more of the Snow Man.
And since Christmas is coming soon...
I thought it would be a good idea to "plug in" one good old
tale that everybody should see at least once in their life
I'm talking about Dr. Seuss'
Here is a short sequence of this classic
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