The Little Glass Man, and Other StoriesHauff, Wilhelm
Science
The Little Glass Man, and Other Stories
Hauff, Wilhelm
Children's stories
'Germany is a wonderful country. It is very big as you know, and very
different in places; the parts I like best are the large forests which
extend uphill and downhill for many many miles. We all hope to go back
to Fairyland some day, but next to going there we could not do better
than settle in one of these German forests; with the squirrels playing
about, and the birds singing, and the little streams bubbling between
the moss-grown rocks, I really felt quite at home there. The folk live
in the queerest of houses, and are dressed in the queerest of clothes;
and there can be nothing funnier than the dear little children, who
come a long distance over the hills to school, walking barefoot, and
who sit down outside the schoolhouse and put on their stockings and
shoes before they go in, as if wearing shoes and stockings were part of
doing lessons. Well, I went to stay in the Black Forest first; Gogul
Mogul told me it was there I must go to hear about the Little Glass
Man. I believe he knew him as a boy when the Little Glass Man used to
visit in Fairyland. But I travelled about on coaches painted a bright
yellow, I stayed about in old-fashioned sunny village inns, I heard
about many wonderful things, but I could not find out anything about
the Little Glass Man. Had he left those parts, had people forgotten
about him?
'One afternoon I had been in a saw-mill watching the saw go up and
down through the long pine-wood trunk which slowly moved along to
meet it, to the sound of the splashing wheel outside going round and
round. Every time the saw had cut through the length of the trunk it
stopped, there was a great rush of water outside, a little bell was
set tinkling, and then the sawyer, or the saw-miller, as they call him
over there, wound the trunk back and set the saw so as to cut the next
plank, and then the whole thing was again set going. It was curious
watching the sawdust jerked up, and the huge block of timber cut
lengthwise into so many planks, and the miller going in and out over
the sawdust. I felt quite sorry when at last he stopped the little bell
without setting the saw going again, and came and stood by me.
'Then we talked about this and that, and I asked him about the Little
Glass Man; he must know so many woodmen who felled the trees and
brought the timber to the mill; had they ever met him?
'The miller was a big rough man with a stubbly beard; I don't know if
he was at all deaf, but when he spoke it was so loud that he must have
thought me dull of hearing.
'"Take my advice," he said, "if you want to know about the country go
into the town. Don't expect us to know about Little Glass Men, or other
little men; we don't care for such things. But in the town you are sure
to find all about it stored away in some book. Take my advice, go into
a town; it is there that you find out about things in the country."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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