Showing results by narrator "Sam Kusi" in All Categories

There came a soldier marching down the high road-one, two! one, two! He had his knapsack on his back and his sword at his side as he came home from the wars. On the road he met a witch, an ugly old witch, a witch whose lower lip dangled right down on her chest.

"I'm going to be something!" said the eldest of five brothers. "I'm going to be useful in the world, however humble a position I hold; if that which I'm doing is useful, that will be Something. I'll make bricks; people can't do without bricks, so at least I'll do Something."

It is autumn. We stand on the ramparts, and look out over the sea. We look at the numerous ships, and at the Swedish coast on the opposite side of the sound, rising far above the surface of the waters which mirror the glow of the evening sky.

There is an old fairy tale: "The Thorny Road of Honor was trodden by a marksman named Bryde, to whom came great honor and dignity, but not until after manifold adversities and peril of life." More than one of us had heard that tale in childhood, and perhaps read it in later years, and thought of his own unsung "thorny road" and "manifold adversities." Romance and reality are very nearly alike, but romance has its harmonious ending here on earth, while reality more often delays it and leads us to time and eternity.

There were once five-and-twenty tin soldiers. They were all brothers, born of the same old tin spoon. They shouldered their muskets and looked straight ahead of them, splendid in their uniforms, all red and blue.

Between the Baltic and the North Sea there lies an old Swan's Nest, and it is called Denmark. In it have been born, and will be born hereafter, Swans whose names shall never die. - In the olden days, a flock of Swans from that nest flew over the Alps to the green plains of Milan, for it was wonderful to live there. These Swans were called Lombards.

A mother sat by her little child. She was so sad, so afraid he would die. The child's face was pallid. His little eyes were shut. His breath came faintly now, and then heavily as if he were sighing, and the mother looked more sadly at the dear little soul.

On the roof of the last house in a little village was a stork's nest. The mother stork sat in it with her four young ones, who stuck out their heads with their little black beaks. (You see, their beaks had not yet turned red as they would in time.) And a little way off, all alone on the ridge of the roof, stood Father Stork, very upright and stiff. He was really a sentry on guard but, so that he would not be entirely idle, he had drawn up one leg. My, how grand he looked, standing there on one leg! So still you might have thought he was carved from wood!

In the old days, when grandpapa was quite a little boy, and ran about in little red breeches and a red coat, and a feather in his cap—for that's the costume the little boys wore in his time when they were dressed in their best—many things were very different from what they are now.

The Snow Queen is an 1844 original fairy tale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published 21 December 1844 in New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Second Collection (Nye Eventyr. Første Bind. Anden Samling). The story centers on the struggle between good and evil as experienced by Gerda and her friend, Kai. Unlike Andersen's other stories, The Snow Queen is written in a novel-styled narrative, being divided into seven chapters.

We had such an excellent dinner yesterday," said an old mouse of the female sex to another who had not been present at the feast. "I sat number twenty-one below the mouse-king, which was not a bad place. Shall I tell you what we had? Everything was first rate.

Have you ever seen a very old chest, black with age, and covered with outlandish carved ornaments and curling leaves? Well, in a certain parlor there was just such a chest, handed down from some great-grandmother. Carved all up and down it, ran tulips and roses—odd-looking flourishes—and from fanciful thickets little stags stuck out their antlered heads.

There was once a perfect gentleman whose whole household goods consisted of one bootjack and a comb. But he also had one of the most remarkable shirt collars in the world. I'll tell you a story about it.

At dawn, when the clouds are red, a great star shines, the beautiful morning star. Her beams tremble on the white wall, as if she would like to write there the story of all she has seen during the thousands of years she has watched our revolving earth.

Around the garden ran a hedge of hazelnut bushes, and beyond it lay fields and meadows with cows and sheep; but in the middle of the garden stood a blooming Rosebush, and under it sat a Snail, who had a lot inside his shell - namely, himself.

A duck arrived from Portugal. Some people said she came from Spain, but that doesn't really matter. She was called the Portuguese; she laid eggs, and was killed and dressed and cooked; that's the story of her life. But all the ducklings that were hatched from her eggs were also called Portuguese, and there's some distinction in that. At last there was only one left of her whole family in the duck yard - a yard to which the hens also had access, and where the cock strutted about with endless arrogance.

Once there was a Prince who wanted to marry a Princess. Only a real one would do. So he traveled through all the world to find her, and everywhere things went wrong. There were Princesses aplenty, but how was he to know whether they were real Princesses? There was something not quite right about them all. So he came home again and was unhappy, because he did so want to have a real Princess.

It was wintertime; the air was cold, the wind sharp, but indoors all was snug and well. Indoors lay the flower; it lay in its bulb, under earth and snow.

There was once a shilling; it came out bright and shiny from the mint, and sprang up, shouting, "Hurrah! Now I'm going out into the wide world!" And into the wide world he went. The child held it with soft, tender hands; the miser clutched it with cold, clammy fingers; the old man turned it over many times before letting it go; while the youth immediately passed it along. The Shilling was of silver, with very little copper in it; already it had been in the world for a whole year now-that is, in the country where it was made.

"It's so bitterly cold that my whole body crackles!" said the Snow Man. "This wind can really blow life into you! And how that glaring thing up there glares at me!" He meant the sun; it was just setting. "She won't make me blink; I'll hold onto the pieces."