young trees were felled,
sometimes trees which were neither so old nor so large as this Fir
Tree, that never rested, but always wanted to go away. These young
trees, which were always the most beautiful, kept all their branches;
they were put upon wagons, and horses dragged them away out of the
wood.

"Where are they all going?" asked the Fir Tree. "They are not greater
than I--indeed, one of them was much smaller. Why do they keep all
their branches? Whither are they taken?"

"We know that! We know that!" chirped the Sparrows. "Yonder in the
town we looked in at the windows. We know where they go. Oh! they are
dressed up in the greatest pomp and splendor that can be imagined.
We have looked in at the windows, and have perceived that they are
planted in the middle of a warm room, and adorned with the most
beautiful things--gilt apples, honey-cakes, playthings, and many
hundred of candles."

"And then?" asked the Fir Tree, and trembled through all its branches.
"And then? What happens then?"

"Why, we have not seen anything more. But it was incomparable."

"Perhaps I may be destined to tread this glorious path one day!" cried
the Fir Tree, rejoicingly. "That is even better than traveling across
the sea. How painfully I long for it! If it were only Christmas now!
Now I am great and grown up, like the rest who were led away last
year. Oh, if I were only on the carriage! If I were only in the warm
room, among all the pomp and splendor! And then? Yes, then something
even better will come, something far more charming, or else why should
they adorn me so? There must be something grander, something greater
still to come; but what? Oh! I'm suffering, I'm longing! I don't know
myself what is the matter with me!"

"Rejoice in us," said Air and Sunshine. "Rejoice in thy fresh youth
here in the woodland."

But the Fir Tree did not rejoice at all, but it grew and grew; winter
and summer it stood there, green, dark green. The people who saw it
said, "That's a handsome tree!" and at Christmas time it was felled
before any one of the others. The axe cut deep into its marrow, and
the tree fell to the ground with a sigh; it felt a pain, a sensation
of faintness, and could not think at all of happiness, for it was sad
at parting from its home, from the place where it had grown up; it
knew that it should never again see the dear old companions, the
little bushes and flowers all around--perhaps not even the birds. The
parting was n