not suit the music. You all stood looking very grave, although it was very
difficult to do so, but I laughed so to myself that I fell down from the table,
and got a bruise, which is there still; I know it was not right to laugh. So all
this, and everything else that I have seen, keeps running in my head, and
these must be the old recollections that bring so many thoughts with them.
Tell me whether you still sing on Sundays, and tell me about your little
sister Maria, and how my old comrade is, the other tin soldier. Ah, really he
must be very happy; I cannot endure this life.”
“You are given away,” said the little boy; “you must stay. Don’t you see
that?” Then the old man came in, with a box containing many curious
things to show him. Rouge-pots, scent-boxes, and old cards, so large and so
richly gilded, that none are ever seen like them in these days. And there
were smaller boxes to look at, and the piano was opened, and inside the lid
were painted landscapes. But when the old man played, the piano sounded
quite out of tune. Then he looked at the picture he had bought at the
broker’s, and his eyes sparkled brightly as he nodded at it, and said, “Ah,
she could sing that tune.”
“I will go to the wars! I will go to the wars!” cried the tin soldier as loud
as he could, and threw himself down on the floor. Where could he have
fallen? The old man searched, and the little boy searched, but he was gone,
and could not be found. “I shall find him again,” said the old man, but he
did not find him. The boards of the floor were open and full of holes. The
tin soldier had fallen through a crack between the boards, and lay there now
in an open grave. The day went by, and the little boy returned home; the
week passed, and many more weeks. It was winter, and the windows were
quite frozen, so the little boy was obliged to breathe on the panes, and rub a
hole to peep through at the old house. Snow drifts were lying in all the
scrolls and on the inscriptions, and the steps were covered with snow as if
no one were at home. And indeed nobody was home, for the old man was
dead. In the evening, a hearse stopped at the door, and the old man in his
coffin was placed in it. He was to be taken to the country to be buried there
in his own grave; so they carried him away; no one followed him, for all his
