The Little Match Girl

It was terribly cold. Snow was falling, and the evening was drawing dark, for it was the very last evening of the old year. Through the cold streets walked a poor little girl with bare head and bare feet.

She had worn slippers when she left home, it's true — but they were her mother's old ones, far too big for her. As she darted across the road to escape two carriages rushing by, she lost them both. One could not be found again, and the other a boy snatched up, laughing, and ran off with. So the little girl walked on with her small feet bare, turned red and then blue with the cold.

In her old apron she carried a bundle of matches, and she held more of them in her hand, hoping to sell them. But all through the long day, no one had bought so much as a single match, and no one had given her a single coin. She was cold, and hungry, and so very tired.

Snowflakes settled on her long fair hair, which curled prettily about her neck, but she paid them no mind. From every window came warm light, and through the air drifted the smell of roast goose, for it was New Year's Eve. That much she remembered well.

In a little corner where two houses met, she sat down and curled herself up small, tucking her feet beneath her. But still she grew colder. She did not dare go home, for she had not sold a single match, and had not earned a single coin. Her father would be angry. And besides, home was hardly warmer — it was only a roof over their heads, with the wind whistling through the cracks, no matter how much straw and rags had been stuffed into them.

Her little hands were nearly frozen stiff. Oh, if only she dared light one match — just one — from her bundle, to warm her fingers, if only for a moment. So she drew one out. Scratch! How it sparked and flared! It burned with a warm little flame, like a tiny candle, and she cupped her hands around it. It seemed to her, in that small light, that she was sitting before a great iron stove, with shining brass feet and a brass ornament on top. How warm the fire glowed inside it! She stretched out her feet to warm them too — but just then the flame went out. The stove vanished. She was left holding nothing but a small burnt matchstick.

She struck a second match. As it flared, its light fell upon the wall and the wall seemed to melt away like a curtain, so that she could see straight into a warm room. There stood a table spread with a white cloth, set with fine china, and upon it a roast goose, steaming and stuffed with apples and plums. And more wonderful still, the goose hopped down from its dish and waddled right across the floor toward her, carrying its own knife and fork. Then the match went out, and there was nothing before her but the cold, damp wall.

She lit another match. Now she found herself beneath a magnificent Christmas tree, taller and more splendid than any she had ever glimpsed through a shop window. Its branches were hung with a thousand candles, and bright pictures looked down at her from among the green boughs. She reached up her hands toward them — and the match went out. The little lights climbed higher and higher into the sky, until she saw they had become the stars themselves. And just then, one star fell, trailing a long streak of light behind it.

"Someone is dying," the little girl thought, for her grandmother — the only person who had ever loved her, and who was gone now — had once told her that when a star falls, a soul is going up to God.

She struck another match against the wall, and in its glow she saw her grandmother standing there, so gentle, so full of love, shining bright and clear.

"Grandmother!" the little girl cried. "Oh, take me with you! I know you'll disappear when the match goes out, just like the warm stove, and the lovely goose, and the beautiful tree!" And quickly, quickly, she struck all the rest of the matches in the bundle at once, for she could not bear to let her grandmother go. The light blazed up brighter than daylight, and her grandmother had never looked so tall, so beautiful. She gathered the little girl into her arms, and together they rose up, up into the light and joy, far above the cold earth, to a place where there was no more hunger, no more fear, and no more cold at all.

When morning came, and the New Year's sun rose over the rooftops, people found the little girl still sitting in the corner between the two houses, her cheeks rosy, a small smile upon her lips. She had frozen quietly in the night, on the last evening of the old year, the burnt matches still in her lap.

"She must have been trying to keep warm," the people said, and went on their way.

None of them knew what beautiful things she had seen, nor how brightly she had gone, hand in hand with her grandmother, into the joy of the new year.