to sing," said the Bottle-neck; that
is to say, it did not pronounce the words as we can speak them, for a
bottle-neck can't speak; but that's what he thought to himself in his
own mind, like when we people talk quietly to ourselves. "Yes, it's
all very well for you to sing, you that have all your limbs uninjured.
You ought to feel what it's like to lose one's body, and to have only
mouth and neck left, and to be hampered with work into the bargain, as
in my case; and then I'm sure you would not sing. But after all it is
well that there should be somebody at least who is merry. I've no
reason to sing, and, moreover, I can't sing. Yes, when I was a whole
bottle, I sung out well if they rubbed me with a cork. They used to
call me a perfect lark, a magnificent lark! Ah, when I was out at a
picnic with the tanner's family, and his daughter was betrothed! Yes,
I remember it as if it had happened only yesterday. I have gone
through a great deal, when I come to recollect. I've been in the fire
and the water, have been deep in the black earth, and have mounted
higher than most of the others; and now I'm hanging here, outside the
birdcage, in the air and the sunshine! Oh, it would be quite worth
while to hear my history; but I don't speak aloud of it, because I
can't."

And now the Bottle-neck told its story, which was sufficiently
remarkable. It told the story to itself, or only thought it in its own
mind; and the little bird sang his song merrily, and down in the
street there was driving and hurrying, and every one thought of his
own affairs, or perhaps of nothing at all; and only the Bottle-neck
thought. It thought of the flaming furnace in the manufactory, where
it had been blown into life; it still remembered that it had been
quite warm, that it had glanced into the hissing furnace, the home of
its origin, and had felt a great desire to leap directly back again;
but that gradually it had become cooler, and had been very comfortable
in the place to which it was taken. It had stood in a rank with a
whole regiment of brothers and sisters, all out of the same furnace;
some of them had certainly been blown into champagne bottles, and
others into beer bottles, and that makes a difference. Later, out in
the world, it may well happen that a beer bottle may contain the most
precious wine, and a champagne bottle be filled with blacking; but
even in decay there is always something left by which people can see
what one has been--nobil