marches,
(or rather is carried swiftly onward by the tide of war), triumphantly
through them all. He falls desperately in love with a fair paper little
lady dancer, who stretched out both her arms, and lifted her tiny
dancing leg so high that the tin soldier lost sight of it, and
therefore concluded that she had only one, like himself. After giving
dire offence to a cruel gnome in a snuff-box, be gets blown out from a
window, three storeys high, into a gutter of rushing water, during a
torrent of rain. Some mischievous boys rescue him, only to send him
adrift again on the perilous stream in a paper boat, which presently
suSers shipwreck. Our ill-starred metal warrior is swallowed up by a
voracious fish, which in its turn becomes caught, taken to market,
sold, and cut open by the cook. Lo, and behold ! there are the same
room, the same children, and the same playthings from which he started.
There, too, was the noble castle of pasteboard, and the elegant little
dancer, still on one leg; she was likewise constant; but, sad to tell
was their final fate ! One of the children (impelled no doubt by the
spiteful gnome) flung the helpless soldier into the burning stove. Just
at the same time the room door opened, the draught blew in, the paper
lady fluttered like a sylph right into the stove beside the tin
soldier, and was instantly consumed by the flames. The tin soldier
melted down to a lump ; and, next day, when the maid raked out the
ashes, she found him in the shape of a little tin Heart. Of the dancer
nothing remained but the tinsel rose she had worn at her waist, and
that was as black as a cinder.
When
the good, honest, burly Yorkshireman, John Browdie, had married Tilda
Price, the bosom friend of Miss Squeers, (an unwilling spinster, doing
her best to
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