26 lines
1.7 KiB
Text
26 lines
1.7 KiB
Text
The Star-Money
|
|
|
|
There was once on a time a little girl whose father and mother were
|
|
dead, and she was so poor that she no longer had any little room to
|
|
live in, or bed to sleep in, and at last she had nothing else but the
|
|
clothes she was wearing and a little bit of bread in her hand which
|
|
some charitable soul had given her. She was, however, good and pious.
|
|
And as she was thus forsaken by all the world, she went forth into the
|
|
open country, trusting in the good God. Then a poor man met her, who
|
|
said, “Ah, give me something to eat, I am so hungry!” She reached him
|
|
the whole of her piece of bread, and said, “May God bless it to thy
|
|
use,” and went onwards. Then came a child who moaned and said, “My head
|
|
is so cold, give me something to cover it with.” So she took off her
|
|
hood and gave it to him; and when she had walked a little farther, she
|
|
met another child who had no jacket and was frozen with cold. Then she
|
|
gave it her own; and a little farther on one begged for a frock, and
|
|
she gave away that also. At length she got into a forest and it had
|
|
already become dark, and there came yet another child, and asked for a
|
|
little shirt, and the good little girl thought to herself, “It is a
|
|
dark night and no one sees thee, thou canst very well give thy little
|
|
shirt away,” and took it off, and gave away that also. And as she so
|
|
stood, and had not one single thing left, suddenly some stars from
|
|
heaven fell down, and they were nothing else but hard smooth pieces of
|
|
money, and although she had just given her little shirt away, she had a
|
|
new one which was of the very finest linen. Then she gathered together
|
|
the money into this, and was rich all the days of her life.
|