There was once a fine gentleman whose entire worldly possessions
consisted of a boot-jack and a hair-brush; but he had the most beautiful
shirt-collar in the world, and it is about this that we are going to
hear a story.

The shirt-collar was so old that he began to think about marrying;
and it happened one day that he and a garter came into the wash-tub
together.

'Hulloa!' said the shirt-collar, 'never before have I seen anything so
slim and delicate, so elegant and pretty! May I be permitted to ask your
name?'

'I shan't tell you,' said the garter.

'Where is the place of your abode?' asked the shirt-collar.

But the garter was of a bashful disposition, and did not think it proper
to answer.

'Perhaps you are a girdle?' said the shirt-collar, 'an under girdle? for
I see that you are for use as well as for ornament, my pretty miss!'

'You ought not to speak to me!' said the garter' 'I'm sure I haven't
given you any encouragement!'

'When anyone is as beautiful as you,' said the shirt-collar, 'is not
that encouragement enough?'

'Go away, don't come so close!' said the garter. 'You seem to be a
gentleman!'

'So I am, and a very fine one too!' said the shirt-collar; 'I possess a
boot-jack and a hair-brush!'

That was not true; it was his master who owned these things; but he was
a terrible boaster.

'Don't come so close,' said the garter. 'I'm not accustomed to such
treatment!'

'What affectation!' said the shirt-collar. And then they were taken out
of the wash-tub, starched, and hung on a chair in the sun to dry, and
then laid on the ironing-board. Then came the glowing iron.

'Mistress widow!' said the shirt-collar, 'dear mistress widow! I am
becoming another man, all my creases are coming out; you are burning a
hole in me! Ugh! Stop, I implore you!'

'You rag!' said the iron, travelling proudly over the shirt-collar, for
it thought it was a steam engine and ought to be at the station drawing
trucks.

'Rag!' it said.

The shirt-collar was rather frayed out at the edge, so the scissors came
to cut off the threads.

'Oh!' said the shirt-collar, 'you must be a dancer! How high you can
kick! That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen! No man can
imitate you!'

'I know that!' said the scissors.

'You ought to be a duchess!' said the shirt-collar. 'My worldly
possessions consist of a fine gentleman, a boot-jack, and a hair-brush.
If only I had a duchy!'

'What! He wants to marry me?' said the scissors, and she was so angry
that she gave the collar a sharp snip, so that it had to be cast aside
as good for nothing.

'Well, I shall have to propose to the hair-brush!' thought the
shirt-collar. 'It is really wonderful what fine hair you have, madam!
Have you never thought of marrying?'

'Yes, that I have!' answered the hair-brush; 'I'm engaged to the
boot-jack!'

'Engaged!' exclaimed the shirt-collar. And now there was no one he could
marry, so he took to despising matrimony.

Time passed, and the shirt-collar came in a rag-bag to the paper-mill.
There was a large assortment of rags, the fine ones in one heap, and the
coarse ones in another, as they should be. They had all much to tell,
but no one more than the shirt-collar, for he was a hopeless braggart.

'I have had a terrible number of love affairs!' he said. 'They give me
no peace. I was such a fine gentleman, so stiff with starch! I had a
boot-jack and a hair-brush, which I never used! You should just have
seen me then! Never shall I forget my first love! She was a girdle, so
delicate and soft and pretty! She threw herself into a wash-tub for my
sake! Then there was a widow, who glowed with love for me. But I
left her alone, till she became black. Then there was the dancer, who
inflicted the wound which has caused me to be here now; she was very
violent! My own hair-brush was in love with me, and lost all her hair
in consequence. Yes, I have experienced much in that line; but I grieve
most of all for the garter,-I mean, the girdle, who threw herself into a
wash-tub. I have much on my conscience; it is high time for me to become
white paper!'

And so he did! he became white paper, the very paper on which this story
is printed. And that was because he had boasted so terribly about things
which were not true. We should take this to heart, so that it may not
happen to us, for we cannot indeed tell if we may not some day come to
the rag-bag, and be made into white paper, on which will be printed our
whole history, even the most secret parts, so that we too go about the
world relating it, like the shirt-collar.

How astonishingly cold it is! My body is cracking all over!' said the
Snow-man. 'The wind is really cutting one's very life out! And how that
fiery thing up there glares!' He meant the sun, which was just setting.
'It sha'n't make me blink, though, and I shall keep quite cool and
collected.'

Instead of eyes he had two large three-cornered pieces of slate in his
head; his mouth consisted of an old rake, so that he had teeth as well.

He was born amidst the shouts and laughter of the boys, and greeted by
the jingling bells and cracking whips of the sledges.

The sun went down, the full moon rose, large, round, clear and
beautiful, in the dark blue sky.

'There it is again on the other side!' said the Snow-man, by which he
meant the sun was appearing again. 'I have become quite accustomed to
its glaring. I hope it will hang there and shine, so that I may be
able to see myself. I wish I knew, though, how one ought to see about
changing one's position. I should very much like to move about. If I
only could, I would glide up and down the ice there, as I saw the boys
doing; but somehow or other, I don't know how to run.'

'Bow-wow!' barked the old yard-dog; he was rather hoarse and couldn't
bark very well. His hoarseness came on when he was a house-dog and used
to lie in front of the stove. 'The sun will soon teach you to run! I saw
that last winter with your predecessor, and farther back still with his
predecessors! They have all run away!'

'I don't understand you, my friend,' said the Snow-man. 'That thing up
there is to teach me to run?' He meant the moon. 'Well, it certainly did
run just now, for I saw it quite plainly over there, and now here it is
on this side.'

'You know nothing at all about it,' said the yard-dog. 'Why, you have
only just been made. The thing you see there is the moon; the other
thing you saw going down the other side was the sun. He will come up
again tomorrow morning, and will soon teach you how to run away down the
gutter. The weather is going to change; I feel it already by the pain in
my left hind-leg; the weather is certainly going to change.'

'I can't understand him,' said the Snow-man; 'but I have an idea that he
is speaking of something unpleasant. That thing that glares so, and then
disappears, the sun, as he calls it, is not my friend. I know that by
instinct.'

'Bow-wow!' barked the yard-dog, and walked three times round himself,
and then crept into his kennel to sleep. The weather really did change.
Towards morning a dense damp fog lay over the whole neighbourhood; later
on came an icy wind, which sent the frost packing. But when the sun
rose, it was a glorious sight. The trees and shrubs were covered with
rime, and looked like a wood of coral, and every branch was thick with
long white blossoms. The most delicate twigs, which are lost among the
foliage in summer-time, came now into prominence, and it was like a
spider's web of glistening white. The lady-birches waved in the wind;
and when the sun shone, everything glittered and sparkled as if it were
sprinkled with diamond dust, and great diamonds were lying on the snowy
carpet.

'Isn't it wonderful?' exclaimed a girl who was walking with a young
man in the garden. They stopped near the Snow-man, and looked at the
glistening trees. 'Summer cannot show a more beautiful sight,' she said,
with her eyes shining.

'And one can't get a fellow like this in summer either,' said the young
man, pointing to the Snow-man. 'He's a beauty!'

The girl laughed, and nodded to the Snow-man, and then they both danced
away over the snow.

'Who were those two?' asked the Snow-man of the yard-dog. 'You have been
in this yard longer than I have. Do you know who they are?'

'Do I know them indeed?' answered the yard-dog. 'She has often stroked
me, and he has given me bones. I don't bite either of them!'

'But what are they?' asked the Snow-man.

'Lovers!' replied the yard-dog. 'They will go into one kennel and gnaw
the same bone!'

'Are they the same kind of beings that we are?' asked the Snow-man.

'They are our masters,' answered the yard-dog. 'Really people who have
only been in the world one day know very little.' That's the conclusion
I have come to. Now I have age and wisdom; I know everyone in the house,
and I can remember a time when I was not lying here in a cold kennel.
Bow-wow!'

'The cold is splendid,' said the Snow-man. 'Tell me some more. But don't
rattle your chain so, it makes me crack!'

'Bow-wow!' barked the yard-dog. 'They used to say I was a pretty little
fellow; then I lay in a velvet-covered chair in my master's house. My
mistress used to nurse me, and kiss and fondle me, and call me her dear,
sweet little Alice! But by-and-by I grew too big, and I was given to the
housekeeper, and I went into the kitchen. You can see into it from where
you are standing; you can look at the room in which I was master, for so
I was when I was with the housekeeper. Of course it was a smaller place
than upstairs, but it was more comfortable, for I wasn't chased about
and teased by the children as I had been before. My food was just as
good, or even better. I had my own pillow, and there was a stove there,
which at this time of year is the most beautiful thing in the world. I
used to creep right under that stove. Ah me! I often dream of that stove
still! Bow-wow!'

'Is a stove so beautiful?' asked the Snow-man. 'Is it anything like me?'

'It is just the opposite of you! It is coal-black, and has a long neck
with a brass pipe. It eats firewood, so that fire spouts out of its
mouth. One has to keep close beside it-quite underneath is the nicest of
all. You can see it through the window from where you are standing.'

And the Snow-man looked in that direction, and saw a smooth polished
object with a brass pipe. The flicker from the fire reached him across
the snow. The Snow-man felt wonderfully happy, and a feeling came over
him which he could not express; but all those who are not snow-men know
about it.

'Why did you leave her?' asked the Snow-man. He had a feeling that such
a being must be a lady. 'How could you leave such a place?'

'I had to!' said the yard-dog. 'They turned me out of doors, and chained
me up here. I had bitten the youngest boy in the leg, because he took
away the bone I was gnawing; a bone for a bone, I thought! But they were
very angry, and from that time I have been chained here, and I have lost
my voice. Don't you hear how hoarse I am? Bow-wow! I can't speak like
other dogs. Bow-wow! That was the end of happiness!'

The Snow-man, however, was not listening to him any more; he was looking
into the room where the housekeeper lived, where the stove stood on its
four iron legs, and seemed to be just the same size as the Snow-man.

'How something is cracking inside me!' he said. 'Shall I never be able
to get in there? It is certainly a very innocent wish, and our innocent
wishes ought to be fulfilled. I must get there, and lean against the
stove, if I have to break the window first!'

'You will never get inside there!' said the yard-dog; 'and if you were
to reach the stove you would disappear. Bow-wow!'

'I'm as good as gone already!' answered the Snow-man. 'I believe I'm
breaking up!'

The whole day the Snow-man looked through the window; towards dusk the
room grew still more inviting; the stove gave out a mild light, not at
all like the moon or even the sun; no, as only a stove can shine, when
it has something to feed upon. When the door of the room was open, it
flared up-this was one of its peculiarities; it flickered quite red upon
the Snow-man's white face.

'I can't stand it any longer!' he said. 'How beautiful it looks with its
tongue stretched out like that!'

It was a long night, but the Snow-man did not find it so; there he
stood, wrapt in his pleasant thoughts, and they froze, so that he
cracked.

Next morning the panes of the kitchen window were covered with ice, and
the most beautiful ice-flowers that even a snow-man could desire, only
they blotted out the stove. The window would not open; he couldn't see
the stove which he thought was such a lovely lady. There was a cracking
and cracking inside him and all around; there was just such a frost as a
snow-man would delight in. But this Snow-man was different: how could he
feel happy?

'Yours is a bad illness for a Snow-man!' said the yard-dog. 'I also
suffered from it, but I have got over it. Bow-wow!' he barked. 'The
weather is going to change!' he added.

The weather did change. There came a thaw.

When this set in the Snow-man set off. He did not say anything, and he
did not complain, and those are bad signs.

One morning he broke up altogether. And lo! where he had stood there
remained a broomstick standing upright, round which the boys had built
him!

'Ah! now I understand why he loved the stove,' said the yard-dog.
'That is the raker they use to clean out the stove! The Snow-man had a
stove-raker in his body! That's what was the matter with him! And now
it's all over with him! Bow-wow!'

And before long it was all over with the winter too! 'Bow-wow!' barked
the hoarse yard-dog.

But the young girl sang:

     Woods, your bright green garments don!
     Willows, your woolly gloves put on!
     Lark and cuckoo, daily sing--     February has brought the spring!
     My heart joins in your song so sweet;
     Come out, dear sun, the world to greet!

And no one thought of the Snow-man.

A poor woodcutter lived with his wife and three daughters in a little
hut on the borders of a great forest.

One morning as he was going to his work, he said to his wife, 'Let our
eldest daughter bring me my lunch into the wood; and so that she shall
not lose her way, I will take a bag of millet with me, and sprinkle the
seed on the path.'

When the sun had risen high over the forest, the girl set out with a
basin of soup. But the field and wood sparrows, the larks and finches,
blackbirds and green finches had picked up the millet long ago, and the
girl could not find her way.

She went on and on, till the sun set and night came on. The trees
rustled in the darkness, the owls hooted, and she began to be very much
frightened. Then she saw in tile distance a light that twinkled between
the trees. 'There must be people living yonder,' she thought, 'who will
take me in for the night,' and she began walking towards it.

Not long afterwards she came to a house with lights in the windows.

She knocked at the door, and a gruff voice called, 'Come in!'

The girl stepped into the dark entrance, and tapped at the door of the
room.

'Just walk in,' cried the voice, and when she opened the door there sat
an old gray-haired man at the table. His face was resting on his hands,
and his white beard flowed over the table almost down to the ground.

By the stove lay three beasts, a hen, a cock, and a brindled cow. The
girl told the old man her story, and asked for a night's lodging.

The man said:

     Pretty cock,
     Pretty hen,
     And you, pretty brindled cow,
     What do you say now?

'Duks,' answered the beasts; and that must have meant, 'We are quite
willing,' for the old man went on, 'Here is abundance; go into the back
kitchen and cook us a supper.'

The girl found plenty of everything in the kitchen, and cooked a good
meal, but she did not think of the beasts.

She placed the full dishes on the table, sat down opposite the
gray-haired man, and ate till her hunger was appeased.

When she was satisfied, she said, 'But now I am so tired, where is a bed
in which I can sleep? '

The beasts answered:

     You have eaten with him,
     You have drunk with him,
     Of us you have not thought,
     Sleep then as you ought!

Then the old man said, 'Go upstairs, and there you will find a bedroom;
shake the bed, and put clean sheets on, and go to sleep.'

The maiden went upstairs, and when she had made the bed, she lay down.

After some time the gray-haired man came, looked at her by the light
of his candle, and shook his head. And when he saw that she was sound
asleep, he opened a trapdoor and let her fall into the cellar.

The woodcutter came home late in the evening, and reproached his wife
for leaving him all day without food.

'No, I did not,' she answered; 'the girl went off with your dinner. She
must have lost her way, but will no doubt come back to-morrow.'

But at daybreak the woodcutter started off into the wood, and this time
asked his second daughter to bring his food.

'I will take a bag of lentils,' said he; 'they are larger than millet,
and the girl will see them better and be sure to find her way.'

At midday the maiden took the food, but the lentils had all gone; as on
the previous day, the wood birds had eaten them all.

The maiden wandered about the wood till nightfall, when she came in
the same way to the old man's house, and asked for food and a night's
lodging.

The man with the white hair again asked the beasts:

     Pretty cock,
     Pretty hen,
     And you, pretty brindled cow,
     What do you say now?

The beasts answered, 'Duks,' and everything happened as on the former
day.

The girl cooked a good meal, ate and drank with the old man, and did not
trouble herself about the animals.

And when she asked for a bed, they replied:

     You have eaten with him
     You have drunk with him,
     Of us you have not thought,

Now sleep as you ought!

And when she was asleep, the old man shook his head over her, and let
her fall into the cellar.

On the third morning the woodcutter said to his wife, 'Send our youngest
child to-day with my dinner. She is always good and obedient, and will
keep to the right path, and not wander away like her sisters, idle
drones!'

But the mother said, 'Must I lose my dearest child too?'

'Do not fear,' he answered; 'she is too clever and intelligent to lose
her way. I will take plenty of peas with me and strew them along; they
are even larger than lentils, and will show her the way.'

But when the maiden started off with the basket on her arm, the wood
pigeons had eaten up the peas, and she did not know which way to go. She
was much distressed, and thought constantly of her poor hungry father
and her anxious mother. At last, when it grew dark, she saw the little
light, and came to the house in the wood. She asked prettily if she
might stay there for the night, and the man with the white beard asked
his beasts again:

     Pretty cock,
     Pretty hen,
     And you, pretty brindled cow,
     What do you say now?

'Duks,' they said. Then the maiden stepped up to the stove where the
animals were lying, and stroked the cock and the hen, and scratched the
brindled cow between its horns.

And when at the bidding of the old man she had prepared a good supper,
and the dishes were standing on the table, she said, 'Shall I have
plenty while the good beasts have nothing? There is food to spare
outside; I will attend to them first.'

Then she went out and fetched barley and strewed it before the cock and
hen, and brought the cow an armful of sweet-smelling hay.

'Eat that, dear beasts,' she said,' and when you are thirsty you shall
have a good drink.'

Then she fetched a bowl of water, and the cock and hen flew on to the
edge, put their beaks in, and then held up their heads as birds do when
they drink, and the brindled cow also drank her fill. When the beasts
were satisfied, the maiden sat down beside the old man at the table and
ate what was left for her. Soon the cock and hen began to tuck their
heads under their wings, and the brindled cow blinked its eyes, so the
maiden said, 'Shall we not go to rest now?'

     Pretty cock,
     Pretty hen,
     And you, pretty brindled cow,
     What do you say now?

The animals said, 'Duks:

     You have eaten with us,
     You have drunk with us,
     You have tended us right,
     So we wish you good night.'

The maiden therefore went upstairs, made the bed and put on clean sheets
and fell asleep. She slept peacefully till midnight, when there was such
a noise in the house that she awoke. Everything trembled and shook; the
animals sprang up and dashed themselves in terror against the wall; the
beams swayed as if they would be torn from their foundations, it seemed
as if the stairs were tumbling down, and then the roof fell in with a
crash. Then all became still, and as no harm came to the maiden she lay
down again and fell asleep. But when she awoke again in broad daylight,
what a sight met her eyes! She was lying in a splendid room furnished
with royal splendour; the walls were covered with golden flowers on a
green ground; the bed was of ivory and the counterpane of velvet, and on
a stool near by lay a pair of slippers studded with pearls. The maiden
thought she must be dreaming, but in came three servants richly dressed,
who asked what were her commands. 'Go,' said the maiden, 'I will get up
at once and cook the old man's supper for him, and then I will feed the
pretty cock and hen and the brindled cow.'

But the door opened and in came a handsome young man, who said, 'I am a
king's son, and was condemned by a wicked witch to live as an old man
in this wood with no company but that of my three servants, who were
transformed into a cock, a hen, and a brindled cow. The spell could only
be broken by the arrival of a maiden who should show herself kind
not only to men but to beasts. You are that maiden, and last night at
midnight we were freed, and this poor house was again transformed into
my royal palace.

As they stood there the king's son told his three servants to go and
fetch the maiden's parents to be present at the wedding feast.

'But where are my two sisters?' asked the maid.

'I shut them up in the cellar, but in the morning they shall be led
forth into the forest and shall serve a charcoal burner until they have
improved, and will never again suffer poor animals to go hungry.'