Project Gutenberg's Fairy Tales from the German Forests, by Margaret Arndt

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Title: Fairy Tales from the German Forests

Author: Margaret Arndt

Release Date: January 2, 2010 [EBook #30834]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAIRY TALES ***

Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

FAIRY TALES FROM THE
GERMAN FORESTS

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

"The Meadows of Play"

(With an Introduction by G. K. Chesterton;
Illustrated by Edith Calvert.)

London, ELKIN MATTHEWS, Vigo Street
2s. 6d. net

[Illustration: "The Dwarf."]

[Illustration:
FAIRY TALES _from the_
GERMAN FORESTS

FRAU ARNDT]

LONDON: EVERETT & CO. LTD. 42 Essex Street, W.C.

TO MY DAUGHTERS
MARGARET AND BARBARA,
AND TO MY NEPHEWS
CHARLES AND STEPHEN JOHNSON,
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

INTRODUCTORY POEM

"The stories that the fairies told
I learnt in English lanes of old,
Where honeysuckle, wreathing high,
Twined with the wild rose towards the sky,
Or where pink-tinged anemones
Grew thousand starred beneath the trees.

I saw them, too, in London town,
But sly and cautious, glancing down,
Where in the grass the crocus grow
And ladies ride in Rotten Row,
St James's Park's a garden meet
For tiny babes and fairy feet.

But since I came to Germany,
The good folk oftener talk to me;
I find them in their native home
When through the forest depths I roam,
When through the trees blue mountains shine,
The heart of fairyland is mine."

WHAT'S THE USE OF IT?

A CHRISTMAS STORY

In a village that was close to the great forest, though it had already
become the suburb of a large town, lived a little girl named Hansi
Herzchen. She was the seventh child of a family of seven, and she lived
at No 7 ---- Street. So you see she was a lucky child, for seven is
always a lucky number; but nothing had happened to prove her luck as
yet.

Her father was a clerk in the post office at the neighbouring town. He
would have found it hard to make two ends meet with seven little mouths
to fill, but that his wife ha