And full of faith, when at last she woke,
She stole to her shoe as the morning broke;
Such sounds of gladness filled all the air,
'T was plain St. Nicholas had been there!
In rushed Piccola sweet, half wild:
Never was seen such a joyful child.
"See what the good saint brought!" she cried,
And mother and father must peep inside.
Now such a story who ever heard?
There was a little shivering bird!
A sparrow, that in at the window flew,
Had crept into Piccola's tiny shoe!
"How good poor Piccola must have been!"
She cried, as happy as any queen,
While the starving sparrow she fed and
warmed,
And danced with rapture, she was so
charmed.
Children, this story I tell to you,
Of Piccola sweet and her bird, is true.
In the far-off land of France, they say,
Still do they live to this very day.
THE LITTLE FIR TREE
[When I was a very little girl some one,
probably my mother, read to me Hans
Christian Andersen's story of the Little Fir
Tree. It happened that I did not read it
for myself or hear it again during my
childhood. One Christmas day, when I was
grown up, I found myself at a loss for the
"one more" story called for by some little
children with whom I was spending the holiday.
In the mental search for buried treasure
which ensued, I came upon one or
two word-impressions of the experiences
of the Little Fir Tree, and forthwith wove
them into what I supposed to be something
of a reproduction of the original.
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