The Endless Story

       There was once a child who lived in a little hut, and in the hut there was nothing but a little bed, and a looking-glass which hung in a dark corner. Now the child cared nothing at all about the looking-glass, but as soon as the first sunbeam glided softly through the casement and kissed his eyelids, and the finch and the linnet waked him merrily with their morning songs, he jumped out of bed and, dressing quickly, ran out into the green meadow. There he begged flour of the primrose, and sugar of the violet, and butter of the buttercup; he shook the dewdrops from the cowslip into the cup of a harebell; spread out a large lime-leaf, set his breakfast upon it, and feasted daintily. Sometimes he invited a humming bee, oftener a gay butterfly, to share his feast; but his favorite guest was the blue dragonfly. The bee murmured a good deal, in a solemn tone, about his riches; but the child thought that if he were a bee, heaps of treasure would not make him gay and happy; and that it must be much more delightful and glorious to float about in the free and fresh breezes of spring, and to hum joyously in the web of the sunbeams, than, with heavy feet and heavy heart, to stow the silver wax and the golden honey into cells. 

        To this the butterfly agreed, and he told how, once on a time, he too had been greedy and sordid; how he had thought of nothing but eating, and had never once turned his eyes upwards to the blue heavens. At length, however, a complete change had come over him and, instead of crawling spiritless about the earth, half dreaming, he all at once awakened as out of a deep sleep. And now he could rise into the air and play with the light, reflect the heavens in the bright eyes of his wings, and listen to the soft language of the flowers, and catch their secrets. Such stories delighted the child, and his breakfast was the sweeter to him, and the sunshine on leaf and flower seemed to him more bright and cheering. But when the bee had flown off to beg from flower to flower, and the butterfly had fluttered away to his playfellows, the dragonfly still remained poised on a blade of grass. Her slender and burnished body, more brightly and deeply blue than the deep blue sky, glistened in the sunbeam, and her netlike wings laughed at the flowers because they could not fly, but must stand still and abide the wind and rain. The dragonfly sipped a little of the child's clear dewdrops and blue-violet honey, and then whispered her winged words. And the child made an end of his repast, closed his dark blue eyes, bent down his beautiful head, and listened to the sweet prattle. 

       Then the dragonfly told much of the merry life in the green wood — how sometimes she played hide-and-seek with her playfellows under the broad leaves of the oak and the beech trees or hunt-the-hare along the surface of the still waters, or sometimes quietly watched the sunbeams as they flew busily from moss to flower, and from flower to bush, and shed life and warmth over all. But at night, she said, the moonbeams Then the dragonfly told of the merry life in the green wood glided softly around the wood, and dropped dew into the mouths of all the thirsty plants ; and when the dawn pelted the slumberers with the soft roses of heaven, some of the flowers looked up and smiled, but most of them could not so much as raise their heads for a long, long time. 

       Such stories did the dragon-fly tell. And as the child sat motionless, with his eyes shut and his head rested on his little hand, she thought he had fallen asleep, so she poised her double wings and flew into the rustling wood. 

       But the child was only sunk into a dream of delight, and was wishing he were a sunbeam or a moonbeam; and he would have been glad to hear more and more, and forever. Then as all was still, he opened his eyes and looked around for his dear guest, but she had flown far away. He could not bear to sit there any longer alone, so he rose and went to the gurgling brook. It gushed and rolled so merrily, and tumbled so wildly along as it hurried to throw itself head-over-heels into the river, just as if the great massy rock out of which it sprang were close behind it, and could only be escaped by a break-neck leap. 

Then the dragonfly told of the merry life in
the green wood.

       Then the child began to talk to the little waves and asked them whence they came. They would not stay to give him an answer, but danced away, one over another, till at last, that the sweet child might not be grieved, a drop of water stopped behind a piece of rock. From her the child heard strange histories; but he could not understand them all, for she told him about her former life, about the depths of the mountain. 

       "A long while ago," said the drop of water, "I lived with my countless sisters in the great ocean, in peace and unity. We had all sorts of pastimes; sometimes we mounted up high on the crest of the wave and peeped at the stars; then we sank deep, deep below, and watched how the coral builders work till they are tired, that they may reach the light of day at last. But by and by I longed to go farther and to know all that lay beyond my ocean home. So one day, when the sun rose out of the sea, I clung fast to one of his hot beams, and thought that now I should reach the stars and become one of them. But I had not ascended far, when the sunbeam shook me off and, in spite of all I could say or do, let me fall into a dark cloud. Soon a flash of fire darted through the cloud, and now I thought I must surely die; but the whole cloud laid itself softly down on the top of a mountain, and so I escaped. Now I thought I should remain hidden, when all of a sudden I slipped over a round pebble, fell from one stone to another, down into the depths of the mountain; till at last it was pitch dark, and I could neither see nor hear anything. 

      "'What,' thought I, 'will become of me now? There is nothing here but death.' Yet soon I knew that all about me were other drops working in the darkness, moistening the dry earth. In the clouds I had learned humility, so now I learned how to work in the darkness and the hidden places. I saw little roots reaching down into the dark earth for moisture from which they could feed the flowers and trees. I learned that one may find life even in the dark. Then one day I found myself emerging into the free, cheerful air in a tiny woodland spring. Now the brook has tossed me here, and I wait until I am called to something better." 

       But hardly had she done, when the root of a forget-me-not caught the drop of water by her hair, and sucked her in, that she might become a floweret and twinkle brightly as a blue star on the green firmament of earth. by Friedrich Wilhelm Carove.