United States or Austria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the pit, sober people relax themselves, and suck oranges, and quaff ginger-pop; in the boxes, Miss, gazing through her curls, thinks the Fairy Prince the prettiest creature she ever beheld, and Master, that to be a clown must be the pinnacle of human happiness: while up in the galleries the hard literal world is for an hour sponged out and obliterated; the chimney-sweep forgets, in his delight when the policeman comes to grief, the harsh call of his master, and Cinderella, when the demons are foiled, and the long parted lovers meet and embrace in a paradise of light and pink gauze, the grates that must be scrubbed tomorrow.
He was his mother's favourite, and he let her put her arm round his neck in public because she was a widow; but he was also partial to adventures, and liked to play with a chimney-sweep who had killed a good many bears.
"I will do whatever you wish," said the little chimney-sweep; "let us go immediately: I think I shall be able to maintain you with my profession." "If we were but safely down from the table!" said she; "I shall not be happy till we are really out in the world." Then he comforted her, and showed her how to place her little foot on the carved edge and gilt-leaf ornaments of the table.
Whereupon little Sloppet, who was organ-blower and verger and beadle and sexton and bell-ringer on Sundays, besides being postman and chimney-sweep all the week, would go out very briskly and valiantly and send him mournfully away. Sloppet, I am glad to say, felt it in his more thoughtful moments at any rate. It was like sending a dog home when you start out for a walk, he told me.
A milkwoman or two, a stray chimney-sweep, a pieman with his smoking apparatus, and several of those nameless nothings that always congregate and make the nucleus of a mob probably our young friends who had been passing the night in Hyde Park had already gathered round the office door.
His clothes were stiff with dirt, his shoes and stockings wet, and his face more like that of a chimney-sweep than anything else. But this was not all; there was a great lump as large as a pigeon's egg on the back of his head, a black-and-blue spot on his forehead and a bad cut on his upper lip.
So she taught Tom every day in the week; only on Sundays she always went away home, and the kind fairy took her place. And before she had taught Tom many Sundays, his prickles had vanished quite away, and his skin was smooth and clean again. "Dear me!" said the little girl; "why, I know you now. You are the very same little chimney-sweep who came into my bedroom." "Dear me!" cried Tom.
All she had seen was a poor little black chimney-sweep, crying and sobbing, and going to get up the chimney again. Of course, she was very much frightened: and no wonder. But that was all. The boy had taken nothing in the room; by the mark of his little sooty feet, they could see that he had never been off the hearthrug till the nurse caught hold of him. It was all a mistake.
Five soldi were still lacking. "The girls of the fourth class are coming; they will have it," said one girl. The members of the fourth class came, and the soldi showered down. All hurried forward eagerly; and it was beautiful to see that poor chimney-sweep in the midst of all those many-colored dresses, of all that whirl of feathers, ribbons, and curls.
"What is he going to do about the tax on mixed biscuits?" shouted Klaus von der Flue, who was a chimney-sweep of the town and loved mixed biscuits. "Never mind about tea and mixed biscuits!" cried his neighbour, Meier of Sarnen. "What I want to know is whether we shall have to pay for keeping sheep any more."
Word Of The Day