on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and cold she sat, with the
matches, one bundle of which was burned.

"She wanted to warm herself, poor little thing," people said. No one
imagined what sweet visions she had had, or how gloriously she had
gone with her grandmother to enter upon the joys of a new year.

[*] From "Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales." By permission of
publishers--Ginn & Company.




LITTLE PICCOLA[*]

Suggested by One of Mrs. Celia Thaxter's Poems

"Story-telling is a real strengthening spirit-bath."--_Froebel._


Piccola lived in Italy, where the oranges grow, and where all the year
the sun shines warm and bright. I suppose you think Piccola a very
strange name for a little girl; but in her country it was not strange
at all, and her mother thought it the sweetest name a little girl ever
had.

Piccola had no kind father, no big brother or sister, and no sweet
baby to play with and love. She and her mother lived all alone in an
old stone house that looked on a dark, narrow street. They were very
poor, and the mother was away from home almost every day, washing