world really looked.  They ran about with the mirror; and at last there was not a land or a person who was not represented distorted in the mirror.  So then they thought they would fly up to the sky, and have a joke there.  The higher they flew with the mirror, the more terribly it grinned:  they could hardly hold it fast.  Higher and higher still they flew, nearer and nearer to the stars, when suddenly the mirror shook so terribly with grinning, that it flew out of their hands and fell to the earth, where it was dashed in a hundred million and more pieces.  And now it worked much more evil than before; for some of these pieces were hardly so large as a grain of sand, and they flew about in the wide world, and when they got into people’s eyes, there they stayed; and then people saw everything perverted, or only had an eye for that which was evil.  This happened because the very smallest bit had the same power which the whole mirror had possessed.  Some persons even got a splinter in their heart, and then it made one shudder, for their heart became like a lump of ice.  Some of the broken pieces were so large that they were used for windowpanes, through which one could not see one’s friends.  Other pieces were put in spectacles; and that was a sad affair when people put on their glasses to see well and rightly.  Then the wicked sprite laughed till he almost choked, for all this tickled his fancy.  The fine splinters still flew about in the air:  and now we shall hear what happened next.

SECOND STORY.  A Little Boy and a Little Girl

In a large town, where there are so many houses, and so many people, that there is no roof left for everybody to have a little garden; and where, on this account, most persons are obliged to content themselves with flowers in pots; there lived two little children, who had a garden somewhat larger than a flower-pot.  They were not brother and sister; but they cared for each other as much as if they were.  Their parents lived exactly opposite.  They inhabited two garrets; and where the roof of the one house joined that of the other, and the gutter ran along the extreme end of it, there was to each house a small window:  one needed only to step over the gutter to get from one window to the other.

The children’s parents had large wooden boxes there, in which vegetables for the kitchen were planted, and little rosetrees besides:  there was a rose in each box, and they grew splendidly.  They now thought of placing the boxes across the gutter, so that they nearly reached from one window to the other, and looked just like two walls of flowers.  The tendrils of the peas hung down over the boxes; and the rose-trees shot up long branches, twined round the windows, and then bent towards each other:  it was almost like a triumphant arch of foliage and flowers.  The boxes were very high, and the children knew that they must not creep over them; so they often