Stories from Hans Andersen | Page 2

mirror, and this caused
real delight to the demon. All the scholars in the demon's school, for he
kept a school, reported that a miracle had taken place: now for the first
time it had become possible to see what the world and mankind were
really like. They ran about all over with the mirror, till at last there was
not a country or a person which had not been seen in this distorting
mirror. They even wanted to fly up to heaven with it to mock the angels;
but the higher they flew, the more it grinned, so much so that they
could hardly hold it, and at last it slipped out of their hands and fell to
the earth, shivered into hundreds of millions and billions of bits. Even
then it did more harm than ever. Some of these bits were not as big as a
grain of sand, and these flew about all over the world, getting into
people's eyes, and, once in, they stuck there, and distorted everything
they looked at, or made them see everything that was amiss. Each
tiniest grain of glass kept the same power as that possessed by the
whole mirror. Some people even got a bit of the glass into their hearts,
and that was terrible, for the heart became like a lump of ice. Some of
the fragments were so big that they were used for window panes, but it
was not advisable to look at one's friends through these panes. Other
bits were made into spectacles, and it was a bad business when people
put on these spectacles meaning to be just. The bad demon laughed till
he split his sides; it tickled him to see the mischief he had done. But
some of these fragments were still left floating about the world, and
you shall hear what happened to them.
SECOND STORY
ABOUT A LITTLE BOY AND A LITTLE GIRL
[Illustration: Many a winter's night she flies through the streets and
peeps in at the windows, and then the ice freezes on the panes into
wonderful patterns like flowers.]
In a big town crowded with houses and people, where there is no room

for gardens, people have to be content with flowers in pots instead. In
one of these towns lived two children who managed to have something
bigger than a flower pot for a garden. They were not brother and sister,
but they were just as fond of each other as if they had been. Their
parents lived opposite each other in two attic rooms. The roof of one
house just touched the roof of the next one, with only a rain-water
gutter between them. They each had a little dormer window, and one
only had to step over the gutter to get from one house to the other. Each
of the parents had a large window-box, in which they grew pot herbs
and a little rose-tree. There was one in each box, and they both grew
splendidly. Then it occurred to the parents to put the boxes across the
gutter, from house to house, and they looked just like two banks of
flowers. The pea vines hung down over the edges of the boxes, and the
roses threw out long creepers which twined round the windows. It was
almost like a green triumphal arch. The boxes were high, and the
children knew they must not climb up on to them, but they were often
allowed to have their little stools out under the rose-trees, and there
they had delightful games. Of course in the winter there was an end to
these amusements. The windows were often covered with hoar-frost;
then they would warm coppers on the stove and stick them on the
frozen panes, where they made lovely peep-holes, as round as possible.
Then a bright eye would peep through these holes, one from each
window. The little boy's name was Kay, and the little girl's Gerda.
In the summer they could reach each other with one bound, but in the
winter they had to go down all the stairs in one house and up all the
stairs in the other, and outside there were snowdrifts.
'Look! the white bees are swarming,' said the old grandmother.
'Have they a queen bee, too?' asked the little boy, for he knew that there
was a queen among the real bees.
'Yes, indeed they have,' said the grandmother. 'She flies where the
swarm is thickest. She is biggest of them all, and she never remains on
the ground. She always flies up again to the sky. Many a winter's night
she flies through the streets and peeps in at the windows, and then the
ice freezes on the panes into wonderful patterns like flowers.'

'Oh yes, we have seen that,' said