go? Where were the clean, white pages,
as pure and beautiful as the snow when it first falls? Here was a page
with ugly, black spots and scratches upon it; while the very next page
showed a lovely little picture. Some pages were decorated with gold and
silver and gorgeous colors, others with beautiful flowers, and still
others with a rainbow of softest, most delicate brightness. Yet even on
the most beautiful of the pages there were ugly blots and scratches.

Carl and Philip looked up at the Fairy at last.

"Who did this?" they asked. "Every page was white and fair as we opened
to it; yet now there is not a single blank place in the whole book!"

"Shall I explain some of the pictures to you?" said the Fairy, smiling
at the two little boys.

"See, Philip, the spray of roses blossomed on this page when you let
the baby have your playthings; and this pretty bird, that looks as if it
were singing with all its might, would never have been on this page
if you had not tried to be kind and pleasant the other day, instead of
quarreling."

"But what makes this blot?" asked Philip.

"That," said the Fairy sadly; "that came when you told an untruth one
day, and this when you did not mind mamma. All these blots and scratches
that look so ugly, both in your book and in Carl's, were made when you
were naughty. Each pretty thing in your books came on its page when you
were good."

"Oh, if we could only have the books again!" said Carl and Philip.

"That cannot be," said the Fairy. "See! they are dated for this year,
and they must now go back into Father Time's bookcase, but I have
brought you each a new one. Perhaps you can make these more beautiful
than the others."

So saying, she vanished, and the boys were left alone, but each held in
his hand a new book open at the first page.

And on the back of this book was written in letters of gold, "For the
New Year."

THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL

BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (TRANSLATED)

It was very, very cold; it snowed and it grew dark; it was the last
evening of the year, New Year's Eve. In the cold and dark a poor little
girl, with bare head and bare feet, was walking through the streets.
When she left her own house she certainly had had slippers on; but what
could they do? They were very big slippers, and her mother had used them
till then, so big were they. The little maid lost them as she slipped
across the road, where two carriages were rattling by terribly fast. One