Funny Big Socks Being the Fifth Book of the Series

Excerpt

FIRST EVENING.

How it did rain, to be sure! Up the long street, and down the long street nothing was to be seen but large mud puddles, while the gutter ran like a little river, and gushed with a loud sound into the sewer mouth.

That was a rain indeed! but in the warm rooms it was comfortable enough. Books and pretty pictures lined the walls on all sides but one, where the large window was, the recess filled with blooming flowers; they smelt so sweetly!

There, at a table that was covered with a green cloth, sat a literary man. His head was bowed upon his arms; and when he raised his face, one saw that he was so sad and pale! The poor literary man was quite unhappy.

If one could have crept into his heart (like him who owned the "Galoshes of Fortune"), one would have seen that his thoughts ran, "Ah me! how unhappy I am. I write books about the good and the beautiful, but nobody buys them; no one cares to read of such things. If I could but tell them a tale, now, something lively or pathetic, like the poet Baggesen or our own Hoffman, that they all like. Nay, then, what a weary life it is!" and he leaned back in his arm chair, and closed his eyes.

Suddenly, something came hissing down the chimney into the stove. It was two or three rain drops driven in by the wind. Something else appeared to have entered with them, for there was a rustle and breeze in the chamber, and then the literary man heard a whisper quite close to his ear.

"Thou silly fellow!" cried the wind, for that it was, "to sit in thy chamber with closed doors, waiting for the story to come to thee! Nay, then, what is there in thy books half so clever or amusing as what one sees in real life? Listen, now, and I will tell thee what I saw one moonlight night as I blew over this wide German land."

THE STORY OF THE WIND.

In summer, all the world—of Leipsic—goes out of town, to Baden or Ems. Those who can afford it run over the Alps, to sunny Italy; but in winter—ah! then it is very different!

One is glad enough, then, to remain at home by the warm stove; or if one goes out, one must be well wrapped up in furs and cloaks.

The little boys slide and skate on the frozen river; the poorer folks go about in sledges, and the rich in splendid sleighs, with white fur robes and capering horses, which have little bells tied to their manes and tails.

Just such a sleigh as this stood, one bright moonlight night, before the door of the Burgomaster Von Geirstein, in the good town of Leipsic. The whole family were going in a body out of town, and now the hall door opened, and forth came the fat and stupid Burgomaster himself, with his fat and silly wife on his arm, followed by their pretty, blue-eyed daughter, Matilda, and her lover, Walther Von Blumenwald, a thriving young merchant. Her brother, Max, came last, a merry, good-natured young fellow, but who, certainly, was not very wise.

Max took the driver's place; the others seated themselves within the large sleigh, and tucked the warm fur robes around them, and then, with a crack of the whip, and a loud huzzah from the young men, the sleigh glided swiftly away....