and it had become quite black;
but black makes one look more slender, and the needle fancied it
looked more delicate than ever.

"Here comes an egg-shell sailing along!" said the boys; and then they
stuck the needle upright in the egg-shell.

"The walls white and myself black," said the needle. "That is
becoming! People can see me now! If only I do not get seasick, for
then I shall snap."

But it was not sea-sick, and did not snap.

"It is good for sea-sickness to have a stomach of steel, and not to
forget that one is something more than a human being! Now my
sea-sickness is over. The finer one is, the more one can endure!"

"Crack!" said the egg-shell: a wheel went over it.

"Good heavens! how heavy that presses!" said the needle. "Now I shall
be sea-sick! I snap!" But it did not snap, although a wheel went over
it. It lay there at full length, and there it may lie still.

------------

THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL.

Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and
evening--the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there
went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked
feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was
the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had
hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them
as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that
rolled by dreadfully fast. One slipper was nowhere to be found; the
other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he
thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other
should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her
tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. She carried a
quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in
her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no
one had given her a single farthing.

She crept along trembling with cold and hunger--a very picture of
sorrow, the poor little thing!

The flakes of snow covered her long fair hair, which fell in beautiful
curls around her neck; but of that, of course, she never once now
thought. From all the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt
so deliciously of roast goose, for you know it was new year's eve;
yes, of that she thought.

In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the
other, she seated herself dow