The fire burned with such blessed influence it warmed so delightfully. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. "Rischt!" how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. Oh! a match might afford her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. Her little hands were almost numbed with cold.
Her little feet she had drawn close up to her, but she grew colder and colder, and to go home she did not venture, for she had not sold any matches and could not bring a farthing of money: from her father she would certainly get blows, and at home it was cold too, for above her she had only the roof, through which the wind whistled, even though the largest cracks were stopped up with straw and rags. In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the other, she seated herself down and cowered together. From all the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt so deliciously of roast goose, for you know it was New Year's Eve yes, of that she thought. The flakes of snow covered her long fair hair, which fell in beautiful curls around her neck but of that, of course, she never once now thought. She crept along trembling with cold and hunger-a very picture of sorrow, the poor little thing!
Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day no one had given her a single farthing. She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. One slipper was nowhere to be found the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn so large were they and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet.
Most terribly cold it was it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening- the last evening of the year. An illustration for the story The Little Match Girl by the author Hans Christian Andersen
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