—­HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN.

[Illustration:  Girl reading a book]

THE WONDERFUL WORLD

  Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,
  With the wonderful water round you curled,
  And the wonderful grass upon your breast,
  World, you are beautifully drest.

  The wonderful air is over me,
  And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree—­
  It walks on the water, and whirls the mills,
  And talks to itself on the top of the hills.

  You friendly Earth, how far do you go,
  With the wheat-fields that nod and the rivers that flow,
  With cities and gardens, and cliffs and isles,
  And people upon you for thousands of miles?

  Ah! you are so great, and I am so small,
  I hardly can think of you, World, at all;
  And yet, when I said my prayers to-day,
  A whisper within me seemed to say,
  “You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot! 
  You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!”

—­William Brighty Rands.

[Illustration:  The Hillman at the housewife’s door]

THE HILLMAN AND THE HOUSEWIFE

As every one knows, fairies are always just.  They are kind to others, and in return they expect others to be kind to them.  In some countries across the sea there are fairies called Hillmen.

Now, there once lived a certain housewife who liked to make bargains.  She gave away only those things for which she had no use, and then expected always to get something in return.

One day a Hillman knocked at her door.

“Can you lend us a saucepan?” he asked.  “There’s a wedding on the hill, and all the pots are in use.”

“Is he to have one?” whispered the servant who opened the door.

“Aye, to be sure,” answered the housewife; “one must be neighborly.  Get the saucepan for him, lass.”

The maid turned to take a good saucepan from the shelf, but the housewife stopped her.

“Not that, not that,” she whispered.  “Get the old one out of the cupboard.  It leaks, but that doesn’t matter.  The Hillmen are so neat and are such nimble workers that they are sure to mend it before they send it home.  I can oblige the fairies and save sixpence in tinkering, too.”

The maid brought the old saucepan that had been laid by until the tinker’s next visit, and gave it to the Hillman.  He thanked her and went away.

When the saucepan was returned, it had been neatly mended, just as the housewife thought it would be.

At night the maid filled the pan with milk and set it on the fire to heat for the children’s supper.  In a few moments the milk was so smoked and burnt that no one would touch it.  Even the pigs refused to drink it.

“Ah, you good-for-nothing!” cried the housewife.  “There’s a quart of milk wasted at once.”