Notes

The Little Match Girl

It was late ona bitterly cold New Year's Eve, and the snow was falling. A poor little girl was wandering in the dark cold streets. She was bareheaded and shoeless, and her bare feet were red and blue with the cold. She carried a quantity of matches in her old apron, and held a packet of them in her hand. Nobody had bought any from her all day long. the poor little girl was hungry and perishing with cold. She was the picture of misery. The snowflakes fell on her long yellow hair, which curled prettily around her face, but she paid no attention. Lights were shining from every window, and there was a most delicious odor of roast goose in the streets, for it was a holiday. She crouched for a time beneath the overhang of a roof and drew her feet up under her, but she was colder than ever. She did not dare to go home, for she had not dare to go hom, for she had not earned a single penny. Her father would beat her, and besides it was almost as cold at home as it was here. Her little hands were stiff with cold. Oh, one little match would do some good! If she only dared, she would pull one out of the packet and strike it on the wall to warm her fingers. She pulled out just one. R-rsh-sh! How it sputtered and blazed! It burnt just like a little candle, and the girl fancied she was sitting infront of a big stove with polished brass feet and handles. There was a splendid fire blazing in it and warming her so beautifully, but- what happened? Just as she was stretching out her feet to warm them, the flame went out, the stove vanished--and she was left sitting with a burnt-out match. She struck a new one. It blazed up and where the light fell upon the all, it became transparent like gauze, and she could see right through it it into the room.The table was spread with a snowy white cloth and pretty china. A roast goose stuffed with apples and prunes was on the table and---the match went out, and there was nothing but a black wall. She lit another match. this time she was sitting under a Christmas three. Thousandsof lighted candles gleamed on its ranches. The girl stretched out both her hands--then out went the match. All the Christmas candles rsoe higher and higher, till she saw that they were only the twinkling stars. One of them fell and made a bright streak of light across the sky. "Someone is dying," thought the littl girl, for her old grandmother, the onl person who had ever been kind to her, used to say, "When a star falls, a soul is going up to God." Now she struck another match against the wall, and this time it was her grandmother who appeared in the circle of flame. She saw her quite and happy. "Grandmother!" cried the little girl. "Oh, do take me with you. I know you will vanish when the match goes out. You will banish like the warm stove, the delicious goose, and the beautiful Christmas tree!" She hastily struck a whole bundle of mathes, because she did long to keep her grandmother with her. The matches made it so bright, and her grandmother had never before looked so big or so beautiful. She lifted the little girl up in her arms, and they soared in a halo of light and joy, far, far above the earth, where there was no more cold, no hunger, and no pain-- for they were with God. In the cold morning light, the poor little girl sat there, with rosy cheeks and a smile on her face--dead. Frozen to death on the last night of the old year. The burnt-out matches were still in her hand. "She must have tried to warm herself," they said. Nobody knew what beautiful visions she had seen, nor in what a halo she had entered with her grandmother upon the glories of the New Year.
- Hans Christian Andersen