Types of Children's Literature: A Collection of the World's Best Literature for Children, For Use in Colleges, Normal Schools and Library Schools
General
Types of Children's Literature: A Collection of the World's Best Literature for Children, For Use in Colleges, Normal Schools and Library Schools
Children's literature
"It does not matter where I got it from; you see the quern is good
and the mill stream is not likely to freeze," said the man. So he
ground food and drink and all good things during Christmas; and
the third day he invited his friends, as he wanted to give them a
feast. When the rich brother saw all that was in the house, he became
both angry and furious, for he begrudged his brother everything.
"On Christmas Eve he was so needy that he came to me and asked
for a trifle in heaven's name; and now he gives a feast, as if he were
both a count and a king," said the brother. "Where did you get
all your riches from?" he said to his brother.
"From just behind the door," he answered, for he did not care
to tell his brother much about it. But later in the evening, when
he had drunk a little freely, he could no longer resist, but brought
out the quern.
"There you see that which has brought me all my riches,"
he said, and so he let the quern grind first one thing and then
another.
When the brother saw this he was determined to have the quern
at all cost, and at last it was settled he should have it, but three
hundred dollars was to be the price of it. The brother was, however,
to keep it till the harvest began; "for if I keep it so long I
can grind out food for many years to come," he thought.
During that time you may be sure the quern did not rust, and
when the harvest began the rich brother got it; but the other had
taken great care not to show him how to use it.
It was evening when the rich brother got the quern home, and in
the morning he asked his wife to go out and help the haymakers;
he would get the breakfast ready for himself, he said.
When it was near breakfast time he put the quern on the breakfast
table.
"Grind herrings and broth, and do it quickly and well," said the
man, and the quern began to bring forth herrings and broth, and
first filled all the dishes and tubs, and afterward began flooding the
whole kitchen.
The man fiddled and fumbled and tried to stop the quern, but
however much he twisted and fingered it, the quern went on grinding,
and in a little while the broth reached so high that the man was
very near drowning. He then pulled open the parlor door, but it
was not very long before the quern had filled the parlor also, and
it was just in the very nick of time that the man put his hand down
into the broth and got hold of the latch, and when he had got the
door open, he was soon out of the parlor, you may be sure. He
rushed out, and the herrings and the broth came pouring out after
him, like a stream, down the fields and meadows.
The wife, who was out haymaking, now thought it took too long a
time to get the breakfast ready.
"If my husband doesn't call us soon we must go home whether
or no: I don't suppose he knows much about making broth, so I
must go and help him," said the wife to the haymakers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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