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"The Little Match Girl"
A Fairy Tale.

            It was horribly cold; it snowed, and was nearly dark. It was New Year’s Eve, the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness, there walked along the street a little girl, without a hat, and with bare feet. When she left home, she had slippers on, but they were very large slippers which her mother had worn. They were so large that the little girl lost them as she hurried across the street because of cars that were speeding by. The slippers had been ruined, so the little girl walked on with her tiny bare feet that were quite red and blue from the cold.

            She carried matches in her pockets, and she held some of them in her hand. She tried to sell them to the people that walked by so that she could have money for food, but nobody had bought anything from her the whole day; no one had given her a single penny. She walked slowly, trembling with cold and hunger--the poor little thing! Flakes of snow covered her long golden hair which fell in beautiful curls around her neck.

            From all the windows of the houses she passed, candles were glowing, and it smelled of roast turkey, for it was New Year’s Eve, and everyone was preparing for a large dinner. In a corner at the end of the street, she sat herself down and tried to warm herself. She had pulled her legs close to her, but still she grew colder and colder. She could not go home, for she had not sold any matches and had no money to bring home to her father. Her father would be angry and hit her. She would not go home until she had money. She shivered with cold. Oh, a match might warm her a little, if she only dared take a single one out, strike it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it! She took one out. “Rischt!” how it blazed, how it burned! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it. It seemed for a moment to the little girl as though she were warming her hands in front of a fireplace. The fire burned perfectly and warmed her. The little girl had already stretched out her feet to warm them too, but...the small flame went out, the fireplace she had imagined vanished. She had only the remains of the burned-out match in her hand.

            She rubbed another against the wall. It burned brightly, and where the light fell on the wall, she imagined she could see into the house. On the table was spread a snow-white tablecloth. A roast turkey was steaming flavor with its stuffing of apple and dried plums. Then she swore she saw it--the turkey hopped down from the dish, jumped on the floor (still with the knife and fork in it), and walked to the poor little girl. At that moment, the match went out and nothing but the thick, cold, damp wall remained. The turkey had vanished.

She lit another match. Now she imagined she was sitting under the most magnificent tree. It was the largest and most decorated one she had ever seen inside a house. Thousands of lights were shining on the green branches. The little girl stretched out her hands towards them when the match went out. The lights of the tree rose high into the night sky until she saw them reach the stars in heaven; one star fell down and formed a long trail of fire.

            “Someone has just died!” whispered the little girl. For her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, had told her before she had died, that when a star falls, it means that someone has died. The little girl drew another match against the wall. The light came again. This time, in the middle of the light, stood the old grandmother. Her grandmother’s smile was bright and full of love.

            “Grandmother!” cried the little one. “Oh, take me with you! You will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, like the delicious roast turkey, and like the magnificent tree!” And she quickly rubbed the rest of her matches against the wall, for she wanted to be quite sure her grandmother would not disappear. This time the matches that she lit gave such a brilliant light; she had never seen her grandmother so beautiful and so tall.

            The grandmother reached down, took the little girl in her arms, and both flew in brightness and in happiness so very high. They found above them neither cold, nor hunger, nor worries--they were in heaven.

            But down on earth, in the street corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall--frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. The child had died with those matches in her hand. All of them had been burned.

            “She wanted to warm herself,” people said, when they learned of the poor girl who had died.

            No one had the slightest suspicion of the beautiful things the girl had seen in her dying moments. No one realized the happiness in which the girl and her grandmother had entered the New Year.