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The Dwarf

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The Dwarf's Nose

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IN a well-known town in Germany there lived for many years a shoemaker and his wife.    He mended boots and shoes and made new ones when he had money to buy the leather, and she sold fruit and vegetables which she grew in their little garden.    Many customers came to her stall in the market-place, being attracted by her neat appearance, and the way she arranged her wares.This worthy couple had one boy, named Jacob;   he was eight years old, handsome and well-grown.    He helped his mother at the stall and sometimes carried home the customers’ purchases.One day, as the shoemaker’s wife was sitting in the market-place, and little Jacob stood near calling out the prices of her vegetables, there came along an old woman, rather shabbily dressed, with a thin, pinched face, red eyes, and a long pointed nose.    She leant on a long staff, and hobbled and halted as if her feet were covered with corns, and she looked as if every moment she might tumble on her nose. Are you Hannah, the vegetable woman ?"    asked she, wagging her head.    "Let me see if you have what I want."    With her ugly brown hands she turned and tumbled the cabbages about, breaking their leaves;    with her long, skinny fingers she poked here and there.    When she had disarranged all the baskets, she grumbled "Bad stuff, wretched cabbages — much better to be had fifty years ago;   bad stuff !" These remarks made little Jacob angry, and he cried:    "Listen, you horrid old woman;    you call our vegetables ‘bad stuff,’ and with your long nose you sniff and smell at them so that no one else will care to buy them;    but all the same the Grand Duke’s cook buys all he wants of us !" The old woman looked at the bonny boy, and answered hotly:    "My lad, my nose seems to please you.    You shall have one like it, but longer still !"

   She picked over the cauliflowers again, and threw them back into the basket, muttering:    "Bad cauliflowers, bad stuff !" "Make up your mind what you want," returned the shoemaker’s wife, indignant at the waste of time.    "That were better than talking nonsense to my boy !" "I will take these six cauliflowers," said the old woman;    "but I cannot carry them home.    Let your boy come along with me and I will pay him for his trouble." The boy did not want to go;    but his mother persuaded him, for she thought it would be wrong to let the feeble old dame carry such a load, and half crying, Jacob went.

2 The old dame walked slowly, and it was quite an hour before they reached a little house outside the town.    She opened the door, and Jacob was quite surprised when he entered;    for inside the house was beautiful.    The walls and staircases were of marble, the furniture ebony inlaid with gold, the floors of glass so highly polished that Jacob slipped and fell.    The old woman took a whistle out of her pocket, blew it, and immediately some guinea-pigs came in, and Jacob noticed with amusement that they wore men’s clothes and walked on their hind legs."Where are my slippers ?"    shrieked the old woman, shaking her stick at them, so that they were quite frightened.    They came back again directly with two cocoa-nut shells soled with leather, and the old woman put them on.Now she began to bustle about.    She took Jacob by the hand and went quickly across the glass floor.    At last she took him into a room something like a kitchen.    "Sit down, little man," said she, pushing him into the corner of a couch.    "You have had a heavy load to carry.    Men’s heads are not light." "What do you mean ?"   cried the boy.    "They were cauliflowers I brought here." "Now you know that is a lie," laughed the old woman;    and took a man’s head out of the basket.    The boy was dreadfully frightened, for he thought if this got known his mother would be in sore trouble. "I must give you a little present," said the old woman;    "wait a moment and you shall have some delicious soup."    She whistled;    and there entered several guinea-pigs in men’s clothes, with aprons on and cooking spoons stuck through their waistbelts;    after them came several squirrels in white Turkish trousers;    they also walked on their hind legs and wore green velvet caps on their heads.  They bustled about and brought saucepans and dishes;    and the old woman ran hither and thither in her cocoa-nut slippers, and Jacob saw she was evidently going to give him something good to eat.    At last something in one of the pots began to boil over, and the smell filled the room.    She took it off the fire, poured the contents into a silver soup tureen, and said:    "Now, sonny, if you drink this soup, you will have all that you admire in me.    And you might also become an excellent cook, only that you will never be able to find the particular cabbage of which it is made.

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   Why does your mother not keep it on her stall ?" The boy hardly understood what she, meant;    but he drank the soup eagerly and it tasted delicious.    His mother had often made good things for him to eat, but nothing like this.    While he was drinking the last spoonful, the whistle sounded for the guinea-pigs, and thick clouds of smoke began to fill the room.    The fumes of the smoke confused little Jacob;    he wanted to get away;    he said he ought to’ be going back to his mother;    but he seemed unable to move, and fell back on the couch and went fast asleep. Wonderful dreams came to him.    It seemed to him that he was changed into a squirrel, and he went about with the squirrels and guinea-pigs and had his duties like the others.    At first he had to work as a shoemaker.    As he had often helped his father he did not find that difficult.    After a time, pleasanter work was given him.    He had to go with some of the squirrels to get sunberries.    The old dame preferred a certain sort;    and as she had no teeth, she made her dinner off bread and sunberries. After a year he was set to find drinking-water for the old woman.    This was done in many different ways.    The squirrels and Jacob had to fill the hazel nutshells with dew from the roses, and that was her drinking-water.    As she was always thirsty, her water-carriers had plenty to do. After another year he had indoors work to do;    chiefly to keep the glass floors clean.    He had to sweep them and then tie his feet up in cloths and so dust them. In four years’ time he was put in the kitchen, and Jacob, from being scullery boy, became head pastry-cook, and his skill was so great that he was sometimes surprised;    for pasties of two hundred different flavours, and the most delicate cabbage soups, he could make with greatest ease.After he had been seven years in the old woman’s service it happened one day, when she had gone out with basket and staff, that Jacob had to draw a fowl and stuff and roast it before she came back.    In the herb-room he suddenly noticed a cupboard he had not seen before.    He looked in it and found inside a great many baskets of herbs.    He opened one and found a herb of a quite different colour.    He looked carefully at it;    it smelt strong, and like the soup that the old woman had given to him on his first day there.    But the smell was so strong that he began to sneeze, and sneeze and sneeze, until at last — sneezing he awoke. He was lying on the old woman’s sofa and looked bewildered around."What strange things dreams are !"   said he.    "I could have sworn that I had been a squirrel;    and as squirrel a clever cook.    How my mother will laugh when I tell her :    but how she will scold me for sleeping away from home, instead of helping her. His limbs were stiff with long sleeping, and so was his neck, and every moment when he moved he either hit the wall with his nose, or when he turned over banged it against the doorpost.

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   The squirrels and guinea-pigs ran busily here and there as if they would accompany him, but they gave it up as they saw him leave the house, and took their nutshells inside and by-and-by he heard them chattering in the distance.    He felt very anxious as he got near the market.    His mother sat in her usual place and had plenty of vegetables in her baskets;    he could not have slept long;    but it seemed to him that she was very sad, for instead of calling to the passers-by, she sat with her head resting on her hand;    and as he came nearer, he saw she was looking paler than usual.    At last he plucked up heart and said, "Mother, are you angry with me ?" His mother turned round, and shrieked with fright. "Go away, horrid dwarf," said she;   "I do not like such jokes." "Dear little mother, look at me.   I am Jacob, your son !"

Now, this is really too much," cried Hannah;    "there stands a hideous dwarf, who says, ‘I am your son, your Jacob.’    For shame !" Then all the market-women came to try and comfort this poor Hannah, whose fine boy had been stolen seven years ago.Poor Jacob did not know what to think.    They called him a hideous dwarf and spoke of seven years ago !    What had happened to him ?When he saw that his mother would have nothing to do with him, he went with tears in his eyes to the booth where his father worked at his shoemaking, and stood by the door and looked in.    The master was so busy that he did not notice him, but chancing to look round he cried out, "Good heaven !    what is that ?    What is that ?" Good day," said Jacob, stepping in;    "how are you ?" "Badly, little man," answered his father to Jacob’s surprise, for it seemed he was not recognised.   "I am so lonely, and old, and weak." "Have you no one who can help you ?"  asked Jacob.    "Where is your son ?""God knows !"   answered the shoemaker.    "Seven years ago he was stolen from the market-place." "Seven years ago !"   cried Jacob.

"Yes, little man, seven years ago.    An ugly old woman came to the market, tumbled about my wife’s vegetables, and bought so many that she could not carry them herself.    My wife, good soul, sent our boy along with her — and we have never seen him.   since." "And is that seven years ago, do you say ?" "Seven years next spring.    We sought him everywhere the town crier ‘cried’ him, but all to no purpose." So spoke Jacob’s father, and returned to his last. The youth realised now that he had not been dreaming, but that for seven years he had worked as a squirrel for the old woman.    He stood for some time thinking over his strange fate, and then his father said:    "Do you want anything, young man ?    A pair of slippers, or a case for your nose ?" "What is the matter with my nose ?    Why should I want a case for my nose ?"   asked Jacob. "If I had such a horrible nose," said the shoemaker, "I should put a red patent leather cover over it.    You might do worse, little man !" Jacob was dumb with annoyance.    He felt his nose.    It was about eight inches long.    "Oh, for pity’s sake let me look in the glass," said he, "it is not for vanity’s sake."

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"I have not one, but if you want to look in a mirror, go over the way to Barber Urban, he has one as big as your head !" With these words he pushed the youth through the doorway, shut the door, and sat down to work.    The boy went sadly across to the barber, whom he knew in years gone by. "Good morning, Urban," cried he.   "Will you let me look in your looking-glass ?"

"With pleasure," laughed the barber.    "You are a handsome youth, and a little bit vain, I am thinking."As the barber spoke a ripple of laughter went round the saloon.    The dwarf, however, stepped to the glass and looked at himself.    Tears came into his eyes.    How dreadful he looked !    His eyes were little;    his nose hideous, it hung down over his mouth and chin;    his head was deep set between his shoulders;    his back and chest were humpy, like a well-filled sack.    His clumsy body had thin short legs, but his arms were long, his hands brown, his fingers thin and bony, and when he reached them out they touched the floor.    He was the most misshapen dwarf ever seen. "Have you gazed long enough, my prince ?"    said the barber, as he laughingly looked on.    "Come, enter my service, little man;    you shall have whatever you ask for, if you only stand at my doors every day and invite the people to step in.    I shall get more customers, and each will give you a present." Jacob was annoyed at this proposition, but it could not be helped.    He told the barber he had no time for such service and went away.    He intended, however, to pay a final visit to his mother. He went to the market and begged her to listen to him.    He reminded her of the past, and told her that the old woman had turned him into a squirrel, and had kept him there seven years.    The shoemaker’s wife knew not what to say to this, and thought she had better talk it over with her husband. She went with the dwarf to the shoemaker’s bench, and said :"Listen !   This dwarf says he is our long-lost son Jacob, and he has told me how he has been for seven years bewitched."

"Wait a moment," said the shoemaker.    "I told him all that an hour ago, and now he goes to you with the tale.    Take care, boy, or I will have you locked up !" Thus saying, he took a bundle of pieces he had just cut and beat the dwarf over the back and arms so severely that he screamed and ran outside. He found no one who pitied him or took compassion on him;    and had to sleep, that night, on the stone steps of the church.    When morning came he went into the church and prayed.    Then he suddenly remembered that he could easily earn a living as a cook, and that the Grand Duke was fond of eating, and loved a good table.    So he went to the Palace.

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