“It is delightful here in winter!” said the little maiden. And all the
trees were covered with hoar-frost; they looked like white corals; the
snow crackled under foot, as if one had new boots on; and one falling
star after the other was seen in the sky. The Christmas-tree was lighted
in the room; presents were there, and good-humor reigned. In the country
the violin sounded in the room of the peasant; the newly-baked cakes
were attacked; even the poorest child said, “It is really delightful
here in winter!”
Yes, it was delightful; and the little maiden showed the boy everything;
and the Elder Tree still was fragrant, and the red flag, with the white
cross, was still waving: the flag under which the old seaman in the New
Booths had sailed. And the boy grew up to be a lad, and was to go forth
in the wide world-far, far away to warm lands, where the coffee-tree
grows; but at his departure the little maiden took an Elder-blossom from
her bosom, and gave it him to keep; and it was placed between the leaves
of his Prayer-Book; and when in foreign lands he opened the book, it
was always at the place where the keepsake-flower lay; and the more he
looked at it, the fresher it became; he felt as it were, the fragrance
of the Danish groves; and from among the leaves of the flowers he could
distinctly see the little maiden, peeping forth with her bright blue
eyes--and then she whispered, “It is delightful here in Spring, Summer,
Autumn, and Winter”; and a hundred visions glided before his mind.
Thus passed many years, and he was now an old man, and sat with his old
wife under the blooming tree. They held each other by the hand, as the
old grand-father and grand-mother yonder in the New Booths did, and they
talked exactly like them of old times, and of the fiftieth anniversary
of their wedding. The little maiden, with the blue eyes, and with
Elder-blossoms in her hair, sat in the tree, nodded to both of them,
and said, “To-day is the fiftieth anniversary!” And then she took two
flowers out of her hair, and kissed them. First, they shone like silver,
then like gold; and when they laid them on the heads of the old people,
each flower became a golden crown. So there they both sat, like a king
and a queen, under the fragrant tree, that looked exactly like an elder:
the old man told his wife the story of “Old Nanny,” as it had been told
him when a boy. And it seemed to both of them it contained much that
resembled their own history; and those parts that were like it pleased
them best.
“Thus it is,” said the little maiden in the tree, “some call me 'Old
Nanny,' others a 'Dryad,' but, in reality, my name is 'Remembrance';
'tis I who sit in the tree that grows and grows! I can remember; I can
tell things! Let me see if you have my flower still?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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