delicate, so exquisite, so pretty, and so lively and full of spirit,
that from the age of two years she became the object of general
admiration. She was not more than one inch in height, and her
mother, who had prepared the cradle and baby linen for a child of
the usual size, was puzzled to know what to do. Finally, the half of
a cocoanut shell, lined, and furnished with soft cushions of thistle
down, made a good bed for the little wonder; and the nursery maid,
wife of a neighboring clockmaker, and a person of ingenuity,
conceived the admirable idea of suspending the cocoanut cradle from
the pendulum of a great clock, in order that the infant might be
rocked all the time. Madam Tom Thumb was enchanted with the
invention. She adhered to the old-fashioned notions, and could not
suppose it possible that her little one could sleep without rocking.
What the good little mother found the most trouble from, in the
extreme smallness and delicacy of the limbs of her new-born doll
baby, was the impossibility of swathing and dressing it. So she was
forced to resign herself to doing as the birds do, and bring up her
little one on a bed of moss and down. She hardly dared to put upon
the little arm, smaller than her own little finger, a little shift
made of the fine white skin of the inside of an eggshell. The boots
of the little one had soles cut out of the inside husks of the corn;
a poppy leaf made her an ample bonnet. The spider's web which the
dew whitens, and the wind winds up in balls, seemed too coarse too
weave her sheets with, and the cup of an acorn was big enough for
Piccolissima. Her parents obtained all her wardrobe, and all the
small furniture for her use from those thousands of skilful
laborers, so adroit, and yet of whom we think so little, who hide
themselves in all the walls, in the leaves of the trees turned up
like horns, under the bark of the trees; in short, that are found in
all the corners and crevices of creation.