The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories by Lydia Maria Francis Child
page 17 of 158 (10%)
page 17 of 158 (10%)
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could only be loosened by dipping it into a hidden fountain. What
fountain it is I do not know; but some old priest, who lives in a town on the mouth of a river, knows." This was discouraging for Rosamond, there are so many towns and rivers, and so many old priests, in the world. She looked on the map, and thought it must be Paris, for that is not so very far from the sea, and there they know every thing. So, with her mother's leave, and some jewels she gave her, she went off to Paris, taking a bit of the mirror set in a gilt frame. When she arrived there, what was her surprise to find the city entirely inhabited by birds and animals! Parrots and peacocks prevailed, but ospreys and jackdaws, vultures and cormorants, crows and cockerels, and many, many other kinds of birds were also fluttering about, making a perpetual whizzing. Then there were hundreds of monkeys, all jauntily dressed, with little canes in their hands, and a great many camels and spaniels, and other animals, wild and tame, in neat linen blouses. What bewildered her still more, was to see that they were all skating about on the thinnest possible ice. Why it did not crack, to let them all through, she could not imagine. At first she was afraid even to set her foot upon it, but soon found herself skating merrily about, enjoying it as much as any of them. Another queer thing was, that, reflected in the ice, all these birds and animals appeared to be men and women; and she saw that in her own reflection she was a nice little girl. She wondered how she looked in her mirror, and took it out to see. "What kind of an animal am I?" she exclaimed. "O, I see--an ibex. What neat little horns, and how bright my eyes are! What would Alfred say if he knew I was an ibex?" She called out to the skaters to ask them if they would look into her |
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