and cried rejoicingly from the depths of his heart:

"I never dreamed of so much happiness when I was still the Ugly
Duckling!"

THE WILD SWANS

BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

Far away, where the swallows fly when our Winter comes on, lived a King
who had eleven sons, and one daughter named Eliza. The eleven brothers
were Princes, and each went to school with a star on his breast and his
sword by his side. They wrote with pencils of diamond upon slates of
gold, and learned by heart just as well as they read: one could see
directly that they were Princes. Their sister Eliza sat upon a little
stool of plate-glass, and had a picture-book which had been bought for
the value of half a kingdom.

Oh, the children were particularly well off; but it was not always to
remain so.

Their father, who was King of the whole country, married a bad Queen,
who did not love the poor children at all. On the very first day they
could notice this. In the whole palace there was great feasting, and
the children were playing there. Then guests came; but instead of the
children receiving, as they had been accustomed to do, all the spare
cake and all the roasted apples, they only had some sand given them in a
tea-cup, and were told that they might make believe that was something
good. The next week the Queen took the little sister Eliza into the
country, to a peasant and his wife; and but a short time had elapsed
before she told the King so many falsehoods about the poor Princes that
he did not trouble himself any more about them.

"Fly out into the world and get your own living," said the wicked Queen.
"Fly like great birds without a voice."

But she could not make it so bad for them as she had intended, for they
became eleven magnificent wild swans. With a strange cry they flew out
of the palace windows, far over the park and into the wood.

It was yet quite early morning when they came by the place where their
sister Eliza lay asleep in the peasant's room. Here they hovered over
the roof, turned their long necks, and flapped their wings; but no one
heard or saw it. They were obliged to fly on, high up toward the clouds,
far away into the wide world; there they flew into a great dark wood,
which stretched away to the seashore.

Poor little Eliza stood in the peasant's room and played with a green
leaf, for she had no other playthings. And she pricked a hole in the
leaf, and looked through it up at the sun, and it seemed to her