The Snowdrop

The Flower thought that it had all of a sudden come into midsummer.

The daughter of the house was a lovely little girl who had just been confirmed. And she had a dear boy friend; he also had been confirmed, and was studying to equip himself for earning a living. "He shall be my snowdrop!" she told herself. Then she took the lovely Flower and laid it on a scented piece of paper that had a verse written on it, a verse about the Flower, beginning with "snowdrop" and ending with "snowdrop." "Little sweetheart, be my snowdrop, my winter fool!"-thus she had playfully mocked him with the summer. Yes, that was written in the verses. And it was then folded up like a letter, with the Flower placed inside; it was dark in there where it lay, as dark as when it had been in the bulb. The Flower was sent on a journey; it lay in a mail sack, was pressed and squeezed, and that was not at all pleasant, but finally this came to an end.

When the journey was over, the letter was opened and read by her dear friend. He was so delighted that he kissed the Flower. And then it was locked up, with the poem around it, in a drawer where there lay many charming letters, though none had a flower in it. Here, too, it was the first, the only one, as the Sunbeams had called it, and that was pleasant to think about.

It had a long period of leisure in which to think about it; it thought while the summer passed, and the long winter passed, and then when it was summer again, it was brought forth from the drawer. But this time the young man was not at all happy. He seized up the letters very harshly, and flung away the poem, so that the Flower fell onto the floor. It had become flattened and withered, but that was no reason to throw it onto the floor, though it was better off lying there than in the fire, where poems and letters were blazing. What had happened? What so often happens. The Flower had mocked him, and that was a joke; the girl had mocked him, but that was no joke; she had chosen another boy friend this midsummer.