Read Ebook: The Little Match Man by Barzini Luigi Longstreet Hattie Illustrator Woodruff S F Translator

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Ebook has 172 lines and 19318 words, and 4 pages

"Thank you," he said to me, as he came back. "Now, listen to me. You must carry me always with you; you must never leave me; you must never give me to any one else."

"Don't be afraid. I shall put you in your little box. That will be your home. Does it please you?"

"Yes, although I have suffered so much in there, constantly afraid of being put to death. If I hadn't been found by you...."

"Thank you, my friend."

"And when you put me in there wrap up my head in cotton; have you any?"

"No. Let me see; wait. I will take some from the quilt. Will that be all right?"

"Yes; I'm so afraid of taking fire, you see. Imagine how scared you would be if your head were covered with phosphorus like mine."

"Don't speak of it. I can imagine it very well. It makes me shudder to think of it."

"Look out for fire, then. Don't mix me up with others; I mean with ordinary matches. Never smoke in my presence."

"No, no, I promise you, I won't."

"Now put me away; I need a little rest. All this has made me tired. Good-night."

"Good-night, little match."

I covered his head with a tuft of cotton which I took from the quilt on my bed, and placed my friend in the wooden box, on which was printed the picture of a dragon surrounded by Chinese words which meant "Matches made in Sweden."

HE CONFIDES IN ME

In this way I came to have a new companion and dear confidant with whom I lived happily for many months. I soon became accustomed to him, but I must own to you that during the first two or three days, when I wasn't looking at him, I still thought it all a dream. As soon as I had put him to rest I went to sleep myself , and when I awoke I was so sure that Fiam was a dream that I forgot him entirely. But the little boy was near me on the floor and before long I heard rapid tapping on the thin wooden sides. Fiam was knocking.

I opened his prison, and out he came. He took the cotton from his head carefully, so as not to break the phosphorus, and sat down on top of a slipper that was near him.

"Glad to see you," I said.

"Thank you," he replied in his feeble voice.

As I leaned toward him he shouted at me:

"Put me on your white wall; we can talk then more easily."

"What wall?" I asked, looking all around me. "I don't see any."

"I mean the battlement that defends your neck. Put me on top of that. I shall be near your ear."

Then I understood what the little match meant. The walls of the Japanese fortresses are painted white, and he had taken my collar for a bulwark to defend my neck. I explained, and put him astride of the collar.

"You are right," he said to me as he sat serenely on the edge. "I find now that it isn't a wall. But you see I don't know what is little and what is big. I am so small myself that I can't make things out. You seem to me larger than Fuji-Yama, the sacred mountain."

We began to chat. He talked so well that I listened enchanted. I already loved him. It gave me pleasure to feel on my neck the light touch of his little leg and the caress of his wooden arms on my ear calling my attention when he had something important to tell me. This little trick of his was the cause of some unfortunate incidents.

Occasionally when I was absent-minded and thinking of something else, I would feel my ear being tickled and I would wave my hand as if brushing away an insect, and that would throw poor Fiam to the floor from a height that was really dangerous to him.

That first day, sitting astride the "battlement," he gave me some confidences. He told about his past so sorrowfully that it made me very sad. It was the only time Fiam ever entertained me with the story of his life in the tree; but if I should live a thousand years I could never forget a single word of it.

ABOUT A STORK AND A BATTLE

This is what he told me.

"My father was the geni of a maple tree. My mother was the spirit of a birch tree. They died of old age when their trees withered. I was lively and vigorous. My tree was the first one to get its leaves in the spring and the last one to lose them in the autumn. I always tried to be faithful, and after a hundred years I hadn't a single dry branch, so attentive had I been in keeping my tree in good condition."

"Isn't it tiresome to be a tree and always stay still and be quiet?" I interrupted.

"Oh, no. I played with the wind, which would swing my branches, and I amused myself with the birds that came to me by the hundreds, and made their nests among my leaves. I was just a hundred and fifty years old when the quiet of the woods was broken by a great event. But I am afraid I am tiring you."

"No, no, go on, please tell me."

"Listen, then. One evening in May, a wonderful evening, my friend the stork arrived. He was always traveling around, and when he passed by the mountain Hamiyama he never failed to rest himself on my third branch toward the east. He was called To. He brought a lot of news from the other mountains and from the plains across which he had flown in his travels. This evening while he was still far off, he stopped in the air, poising on his wings, and looking about for his favorite branch began to cry, 'Mikara! terrible things are happening. It is a miracle that I am still alive.'

"'What is the matter?' I asked.

"He sat down, arranging the feathers on his breast, smoothing them with his beak, and all out of breath replied, 'Horrors, I have escaped from the midst of a cloud of arrows which flew hissing about me. Brrrr...!'"

Fiam paused, absorbed in his thoughts. Anxious to hear the rest, I said earnestly:

"And who shot the arrows?"

"Exactly the question I asked To.

"'Who? The men!' replied To. 'The valley is full of soldiers, who are fighting with bows and arrows, with lances and spears. There is war! They are killing each other; they pursue, they shout, they gallop on horseback; they are covered with shining armour. A great castle is burning, and all around the ground is covered with the dead. Listen,' added To, as he scratched his head with one of his long claws, as he always did when he was thinking. 'I must leave you. Don't be offended if I don't pass the night with you. I must go farther on. Not that I am afraid, you know, quite otherwise, but it is best to be careful. Lances and spears don't frighten me, but arrows--you never know. Adieu, Mikara,' and he drew in his claws and stretched his wings and swept away into the air just like an arrow himself, without giving me time to say good-bye. He said he wasn't afraid, but really he was trembling. Never believe in the courage of any one who boasts of not being afraid."

"And weren't you afraid?" I asked Fiam.

"To tell the truth, I wasn't any too brave. I kept thinking about the castle on fire. My father had often told me, when I was a little tree, that in war men burned the woods in order to drive out the enemy. If the war came near me and the woods were burned, poor me! You can imagine how anxiously I waited. I listened all night. When the wind blew I held my branches still so they wouldn't make a noise. At midnight a cuckoo came. As he was a good friend I begged him to keep quiet.

"'I can't,' he said; 'it is my duty to call "Cuckoo, cuckoo" a thousand times every night. That is my work. But if it will give you any pleasure I will go to another part of the mountain,' and so he did. The night passed peacefully. The dawn came, and then...."

"I beg of you, don't stop. What happened at dawn?"

"At dawn I heard some noises here and there. I raised my leaves to listen better and heard the sound of animals in flight.

"I waited to see some of them and to ask questions, and pretty soon out of a hole came a family of boars; father, mother and two sons. I didn't love wild boars; they are worthless and badly educated beasts that often came around to clean their tusks on my trunk, stripping off all my bark, but this time I forgot all about my hatred and tried to welcome them by holding out a branch. The father boar tore off some leaves and went on without even saying thank you, and all the family followed grunting.

"'They are coming here.'

"'Who?'

"'Armed men,' he said and scampered away.

"'And I must stay here,' I thought."

"Poor little match man!"

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