And she got both shoes and a muff; she was dressed very nicely, too; and when she was about to set off, a new carriage stopped before the door.  It was of pure gold, and the arms of the Prince and Princess shone like a star upon it; the coachman, the footmen, and the outriders, for outriders were there too, all wore golden crowns.  The Prince and Princess helped her into the carriage themselves, and wished her good luck.  The Crow of the woods, who was now married, went with her for the first three miles.  He sat beside Gerda, for he could not bear riding backward; the other Crow stood in the doorway, and flapped her wings; she could not go with Gerda, because she suffered from headache since she had had a steady place, and ate so much.  The carriage was lined inside with sugar-plums, and in the seats were fruits and cookies.

“Good-by! good-by!” cried Prince and Princess; and little Gerda wept, and the Crows wept.  Thus passed the first miles; and then the Crow said good-by, and this was the worst good-by of all.  He flew into a tree, and beat his black wings as long as he could see the carriage, that shone from afar like the clear sunlight.

THE NIGHTINGALE

From ‘Riverside Literature Series’:  1891, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

I—­THE REAL NIGHTINGALE

In China, you must know, the Emperor is a Chinaman, and all whom he has about him are Chinamen too.  It happened a good many years ago, but that’s just why it’s worth while to hear the story before it is forgotten.

The Emperor’s palace was the most splendid in the world.  It was made wholly of fine porcelain, very costly, but so brittle and so hard to handle that one had to take care how one touched it.  In the garden were to be seen the most wonderful flowers, and to the prettiest of them silver bells were tied, which tinkled, so that nobody should pass by without noticing the flowers.

Yes, everything in the Emperor’s garden was nicely set out, and it reached so far that the gardener himself did not know where the end was.  If a man went on and on, he came into a glorious forest with high trees and deep lakes.  The wood went straight down to the sea, which was blue and deep; great ships could sail to and fro beneath the branches of the trees; and in the trees lived a Nightingale, which sang so finely that even the poor Fisherman, who had many other things to do, stopped still and listened, when he had gone out at night to throw out his nets, and heard the Nightingale.

“How beautiful that is!” he said; but he had to attend to his work, and so he forgot the bird.  But the next night, when the bird sang again, and the Fisherman heard it, he said as before, “How beautiful that is!”

From all the countries of the world travelers came to the city of the Emperor, and admired it, and the palace, and the garden; but when they heard the Nightingale, they all said, “That is the best of all!”