The Fir-tree; Revised Version
(Too Long after Hans Andersen)
Once upon a time there grew a fir-tree in a great Newfoundland forest.
It had a delightful life; the rain fell on it and nourished its roots; the sun shone on it and warmed its heart; now and then came a great jolly wind to wrestle with it and try its strength. The peasant children would sit at its foot and play their games and sing their little songs, and the birds roosted or sheltered in its branches. Often the squirrels frolicked there.
But the tree, although everything was so happy in its surroundings, was not satisfied. It longed to be something else. It longed to be, as it said, important in the world.
“Well,” said the next tree to it, “you will be important; we all shall. Nothing is so important as the mast of a ship.”
But the tree would not have it. “The mast of a ship!” he said. “Pooh! I hope to be something better than that.”
Every year the surveyors came and marked a number of the taller trees, and then wood-cutters arrived and cut them down and lopped off their branches and dragged them away to the ship-builders. The tree disdainfully watched them go.
And then one day the surveyor came and made a mark on its bark.