The Toad Page #2

"The Toad" is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen that tells the journey of a female toad who dreams of something bigger for her son. The ambitious mother wishes something grand for her toad-son so she plans for him to marry the king's daughter. The story features an enchanted butterfly and an evil snake, woven in an intriguing plot involving magical transformations, danger, courage, and love, ultimately teaching important lessons about ambition, presumption, and the true nature of beauty.

• Children

								

jewel; not that I cry about that--no, I must go higher up, into
splendor and joy! I feel so confident, and yet I am afraid. It's a
difficult step to take, and yet it must be taken. Onward, therefore,
straight onward!"

She took a few steps, such as a crawling animal may take, and soon
found herself on a road beside which people dwelt; but there were
flower gardens as well as kitchen gardens. And she sat down to rest by
a kitchen garden.

"What a number of different creatures there are that I never knew!
and how beautiful and great the world is! But one must look round in
it, and not stay in one spot." And then she hopped into the kitchen
garden. "How green it is here! how beautiful it is here!"

"I know that," said the Caterpillar, on the leaf, "my leaf is
the largest here. It hides half the world from me, but I don't care
for the world."

"Cluck, cluck!" And some fowls came. They tripped about in the
cabbage garden. The Fowl who marched at the head of them had a long
sight, and she spied the Caterpillar on the green leaf, and pecked
at it, so that the Caterpillar fell on the ground, where it twisted
and writhed.

The Fowl looked at it first with one eye and then with the
other, for she did not know what the end of this writhing would be.

"It doesn't do that with a good will," thought the Fowl, and
lifted up her head to peck at the Caterpillar.

The Toad was so horrified at this, that she came crawling straight
up towards the Fowl.

"Aha, it has allies," quoth the Fowl. "Just look at the crawling
thing!" And then the Fowl turned away. "I don't care for the little
green morsel; it would only tickle my throat." The other fowls took
the same view of it, and they all turned away together.

"I writhed myself free," said the Caterpillar. "What a good
thing it is when one has presence of mind! But the hardest thing
remains to be done, and that is to get on my leaf again. Where is it?"

And the little Toad came up and expressed her sympathy. She was
glad that in her ugliness she had frightened the fowls.

"What do you mean by that?" cried the Caterpillar. "I wriggled
myself free from the Fowl. You are very disagreeable to look at.
Cannot I be left in peace on my own property? Now I smell cabbage; now
I am near my leaf. Nothing is so beautiful as property. But I must
go higher up."

"Yes, higher up," said the little Toad; "higher-up! She feels just
as I do; but she's not in a good humor to-day. That's because of the
fright. We all want to go higher up." And she looked up as high as
ever she could.

The stork sat in his nest on the roof of the farm-house. He
clapped with his beak, and the Mother-stork clapped with hers.

"How high up they live!" thought the Toad. "If one could only
get as high as that!"

In the farm-house lived two young students; the one was a poet and
the other a scientific searcher into the secrets of nature. The one
sang and wrote joyously of everything that God had created, and how it
was mirrored in his heart. He sang it out clearly, sweetly, richly, in
well-sounding verses; while the other investigated created matter
itself, and even cut it open where need was. He looked upon God's
creation as a great sum in arithmetic--subtracted, multiplied, and
tried to know it within and without, and to talk with understanding
concerning it; and that was a very sensible thing; and he spoke
joyously and cleverly of it. They were good, joyful men, those two.

"There sits a good specimen of a toad," said the naturalist. "I
must have that fellow in a bottle of spirits."

"You have two of them already," replied the poet. "Let the thing
sit there and enjoy its life."

"But it's so wonderfully ugly," persisted the first.

"Yes, if we could find the jewel in its head," said the poet, "I
too should be for cutting it open.'

"A jewel!" cried the naturalist. "You seem to know a great deal
about natural history."

"But is there not something beautiful in the popular belief that
just as the toad is the ugliest of animals, it should often carry
the most precious jewel in its head? Is it not just the same thing
with men? What a jewel that was that Aesop had, and still more,
Socrates!"

The Toad did not hear any more, nor did she understand half of
what she had heard. The two friends walked on, and thus she escaped
the fate of being bottled up in spirits.

"Those two also were speaking of the jewel," said the Toad to
herself. "What a good thing that I have not got it! I might have
been in a very disagreeable position."

Now there was a clapping on the roof of the farm-house.
Father-Stork was making a speech to his family, and his family was
glancing down at the two young men in the kitchen garden.

"Man is the most conceited creature!" said the Stork. "Listen
how their jaws are wagging; and for all that they can't clap properly.
They boast of their gifts of eloquence and their language! Yes, a fine
language truly! Why, it changes in every day's journey we make. One of
them doesn't understand another. Now, we can speak our language over
the whole earth--up in the North and in Egypt. And then men are not
able to fly, moreover. They rush along by means of an invention they
call 'railway;' but they often break their necks over it. It makes
my beak turn cold when I think of it. The world could get on without
men. We could do without them very well, so long as we only keep frogs
and earth-worms."

"That was a powerful speech," thought the little Toad. "What a
great man that is yonder! and how high he sits! Higher than ever I saw
any one sit yet; and how he can swim!" she cried, as the Stork
soared away through the air with outspread pinions.

And the Mother-Stork began talking in the nest, and told about
Egypt and the waters of the Nile, and the incomparable mud that was to
be found in that strange land; and all this sounded new and very
charming to the little Toad.

"I must go to Egypt!" said she. "If the Stork or one of his
young ones would only take me! I would oblige him in return. Yes, I
shall get to Egypt, for I feel so happy! All the longing and all the
pleasure that I feel is much better than having a jewel in one's
head."

And it was just she who had the jewel. That jewel was the
continual striving and desire to go upward--ever upward. It gleamed in
her head, gleamed in joy, beamed brightly in her longing.

Then, suddenly, up came the Stork. He had seen the Toad in the
grass, and stooped down and seized the little creature anything but
gently. The Stork's beak pinched her, and the wind whistled; it was
not exactly agreeable, but she was going upward--upward towards
Egypt--and she knew it; and that was why her eyes gleamed, and a spark
seemed to fly out of them.

"Quunk!--ah!"

The body was dead--the Toad was killed! But the spark that had
shot forth from her eyes; what became of that?

The sunbeam took it up; the sunbeam carried the jewel from the
head of the toad. Whither?

Ask not the naturalist; rather ask the poet. He will tell it
thee under the guise of a fairy tale; and the Caterpillar on the
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