We close the book, and open it again at another place. Here we meet with "The Leap-Frog." A brief and comprehensive treatise on life. The main characters are a Flea, a Grasshopper and a Leap-Frog, made of the breast-bone of a goose; the king's daughter is the prize for the highest jumper. "Pay heed, all of you," says the muse of the nursery story. "Spring with understanding. It is of no use to jump so high that no one can see you; for then the rabble will insist that it would have been as well not to have jumped at all. Only look at all the greatest minds, thinkers, poets, and men of science. For the multitude it is the same as though they had not jumped at all; they reap no harvest of reward, a body is needed for that. Neither is it of any use to spring high and well, for those who spring right into the face of the Powers that be. In this way, forsooth, a person would never make a career. No; take the Leap-Frog for a model. He is almost apoplectic; first of all he has the appearance of one that cannot jump at all, and many motions he certainly cannot make either; nevertheless, he makes--with the instinct of stupidity, with the dexterity of indolence--a little side-jump, into the lap of the princess. Take example from this; he has shown that he has understanding." What a pearl of a nursery story! and what a faculty for making psychological use of animals! It cannot be denied that the reader is at times inclined to cherish a doubt as to what this fancy of permitting animals to speak can signify. It is one thing whether we readers feel that it strikes home to us, and then whether the character of the animal is really hit, the animal that has not one human quality. Meanwhile, we can readily comprehend that it is impossible to speak of animals, even in a purely scientific way, without attributing to them qualities with which we are familiar through our own nature. How, for instance, could we avoid painting the wolf as cruel? Andersen's skill only consists in producing a poetic, a striking seeming conformity between the animal and its human attributes. How true it is when the cat says to little Rudy: "Come out upon the roof with me, little Rudy. It is all nonsense to fancy one must fall down; you won't fall unless you are afraid; come, set one of your paws here, the other there, and take care of yourself with the rest of your paws! Keep a sharp lookout, and be active in your limbs. If there be a hole, spring over it, and keep a firm footing as I do." How natural it is when the old snail says: "You need not be in a hurry--but you always hurry so, and the little one is beginning just the same way. Has he not been creeping up that stalk these three days? My head quite aches when I look up at him." What finer description of a lying-in room than the story of the hatching of the young duckling? What more probable than that the sparrows, when they want to abuse their neighbors, should call them "those thick-headed roses."[10]