"
To this, again, the King consented, and the peasants were first given
trial.
They sprang through the hoop, indeed, but so clumsily that they fell,
breaking their arms and legs.
Upon which the lovely lady whom Dummling had brought home, leapt through
as lightly as a fawn, and this put an end to all contention.
So the crown came to Dummling, who lived long, and ruled his people
temperately and justly.
LITTLE SNOW WHITE
It was in the middle of winter, when the broad flakes of snow were
falling around, that a certain queen sat working at her window, the
frame of which was made of fine black ebony; and, as she was looking out
upon the snow, she pricked her finger, and three drops of blood fell
upon it. Then she gazed thoughtfully down on the red drops which
sprinkled the white snow and said, "Would that my little daughter may be
as white as that snow, as red as the blood, and as black as the ebony
window-frame!" And so the little girl grew up; her skin was a white as
snow, her cheeks as rosy as blood, and her hair as black as ebony; and
she was called Snow-White.
But this queen died; and the king soon married another wife, who was
very beautiful, but so proud that she could not bear to think that any
one could surpass her. She had a magical looking-glass, to which she
used to go and gaze upon herself in it, and say--
"Tell me, glass, tell me true!
Of all the ladies in the land,
Who is fairest? tell me who?"
And the glass answered, "Thou, Queen, art fairest in the land"
But Snow-White grew more and more beautiful; and when she was seven
years old, she was as bright as the day, and fairer than the queen
herself.
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