Butshe had the invisible thread, to which she could hold fast; and shepossessed a gift which all the others lacked. This was a determinationto throw herself entirely into whatever she undertook, and it made herfeel as if she had eyes even at the tips of her fingers, and couldhear down into her very heart. Quietly she went forth into thenoisy, bustling, wonderful world, and wherever she went the skies grewbright, and she felt the warm sunbeam, and a rainbow above in the blueheavens seemed to span the dark world. She heard the song of thebirds, and smelt the scent of the orange groves and apple orchardsso strongly that she seemed to taste it. Soft tones and charming songsreached her ear, as well as harsh sounds and rough words- thoughts andopinions in strange contradiction to each other. Into the deepestrecesses of her heart penetrated the echoes of human thoughts andfeelings. Now she heard the following words sadly sung,-
  "Life is a shadow that flits away
  In a night of darkness and woe."But then would follow brighter thoughts:
  "Life has the rose's sweet perfume
  With sunshine, light, and joy."And if one stanza sounded painfully-
  "Each mortal thinks of himself alone,
  Is a truth, alas, too clearly known;"Then, on the other hand, came the answer-
  "Love, like a mighty flowing stream,
  Fills every heart with its radiant gleam."She heard, indeed, such words as these-
  "In the pretty turmoil here below,
  All is a vain and paltry show.Then came also words of comfort-
  "Great and good are the actions done
  By many whose worth is never known."And if sometimes the mocking strain reached her-
  "Why not join in the jesting cry
  That contemns all gifts from the throne on high?"In the blind girl's heart a stronger voice repeated-
  "To trust in thyself and God is best,
  In His holy will forever to rest."
  But the evil spirit could not see this and remain contented. Hehas more cleverness than ten thousand men, and he found means tocompass his end. He betook himself to the marsh, and collected a fewlittle bubbles of stagnant water. Then he uttered over them the echoesof lying words that they might become strong. He mixed up togethersongs of praise with lying epitaphs, as many as he could find,boiled them in tears shed by envy; put upon them rouge, which he hadscraped from faded cheeks, and from these he produced a maiden, inform and appearance like the blind girl, the angel of completeness, asmen called her. The evil one's plot was successful. The world knew notwhich was the true, and indeed how should the world know?
  "To trust in thyself and God is best,
  In his Holy will forever to rest."So sung the blind girl in full faith. She had entrusted the four greenleaves from the Tree of the Sun to the winds, as letters of greetingto her brothers, and she had full confidence that the leaves wouldreach them. She fully believed that the jewel which outshines allthe glories of the world would yet be found, and that upon theforehead of humanity it would glitter even in the castle of herfather. "Even in my father's house," she repeated. "Yes, the placein which this jewel is to be found is earth, and I shall bring morethan the promise of it with me. I feel it glow and swell more and morein my closed hand. Every grain of truth which the keen wind carried upand whirled towards me I caught and treasured. I allowed it to bepenetrated with the fragrance of the beautiful, of which there is somuch in the world, even for the blind. I took the beatings of aheart engaged in a good action, and added them to my treasure. Allthat I can bring is but dust; still, it is a part of the jewel weseek, and there is plenty, my hand is quite full of it."
  She soon found herself again at home; carried thither in aflight of thought, never having loosened her hold of the invisiblethread fastened to her father's house. As she stretched out her handto her father, the powers of evil dashed with the fury of ahurricane over the Tree of the Sun; a blast of wind rushed through theopen doors, and into the sanctuary, where lay the Book of Truth.
  "It will be blown to dust by the wind," said the father, as heseized the open hand she held towards him.
  "No," she replied, with quiet confidence, "it is indestructible. Ifeel its beam warming my very soul."
  Then her father observed that a dazzling flame gleamed from thewhite page on which the shining dust had passed from her hand. Itwas there to prove the certainty of eternal life, and on the bookglowed one shining word, and only one, the word BELIEVE. And soonthe four brothers were again with the father and daughter. When thegreen leaf from home fell on the bosom of each, a longing had seizedthem to return. They had arrived, accompanied by the birds of passage,the stag, the antelope, and all the creatures of the forest who wishedto take part in their joy.
  We have often seen, when a sunbeam burst through a crack in thedoor into a dusty room, how a whirling column of dust seems tocircle round. But this was not poor, insignificant, common dust, whichthe blind girl had brought; even the rainbow's colors are dim whencompared with the beauty which shone from the page on which it hadfallen. The beaming word BELIEVE, from every grain of truth, had thebrightness of the beautiful and the good, more bright than themighty pillar of flame that led Moses and the children of Israel tothe land of Canaan, and from the word BELIEVE arose the bridge ofhope, reaching even to the unmeasurable Love in the realms of theinfinite.
  THE END.
  1872
  FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
  THE PHOENIX BIRD
  by Hans Christian Andersen
  IN the Garden of Paradise, beneath the Tree of Knowledge,bloomed a rose bush. Here, in the first rose, a bird was born. Hisflight was like the flashing of light, his plumage was beauteous,and his song ravishing. But when Eve plucked the fruit of the treeof knowledge of good and evil, when she and Adam were driven fromParadise, there fell from the flaming sword of the cherub a spark intothe nest of the bird, which blazed up forthwith. The bird perishedin the flames; but from the red egg in the nest there flutteredaloft a new one- the one solitary Phoenix bird. The fable tells thathe dwells in Arabia, and that every hundred years, he burns himself todeath in his nest; but each time a new Phoenix, the only one in theworld, rises up from the red egg.
  The bird flutters round us, swift as light, beauteous in color,charming in song. When a mother sits by her infant's cradle, he standson the pillow, and, with his wings, forms a glory around theinfant's head. He flies through the chamber of content, and bringssunshine into it, and the violets on the humble table smell doublysweet.
  But the Phoenix is not the bird of Arabia alone. He wings hisway in the glimmer of the Northern Lights over the plains ofLapland, and hops among the yellow flowers in the short Greenlandsummer. Beneath the copper mountains of Fablun, and England's coalmines, he flies, in the shape of a dusty moth, over the hymnbookthat rests on the knees of the pious miner. On a lotus leaf hefloats down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eye of the Hindoomaid gleams bright when she beholds him.
  The Phoenix bird, dost thou not know him?