The Little Glass Man, and Other Stories

by Wilhelm Hauff

With these words his father pushed him gently out of the stall, locked the door after him, and sat down again to his work. The little dwarf, much cast down, went over the way to the barber, whom he well remembered in former times.

‘Good morning, Urban,’ said he to him, ‘I come to beg a favour of you; be so kind as to let me look a moment in your looking-glass.’

‘With pleasure,’ cried the barber laughing; ‘there it is,’ and his customers who were about to be shaved laughed heartily with him. ‘You are rather a pretty fellow, slim and genteel; you have a neck like a swan, hands like a queen, and a turn-up nose, such as one seldom sees excelled. A little vain you are of it, no doubt; but no matter, look at yourself; people shall not say that envy prevented me from allowing you to see yourself in my glass.’

Thus spoke the barber, and a yell of laughter resounded through the room. In the meantime the dwarf had stepped to the glass and looked at himself. The tears came in his eyes while saying to himself: ‘Yes, dear mother, thus you could not indeed recognise your Jacob; he did not look like this in the days of your happiness, when you delighted to show him off before the people?’ His eyes had become little, like those of a pig; his nose was immense, hanging over his mouth down to his chin; his neck seemed to have been taken away altogether, for his head sat low between his shoulders, and it was only with the greatest pain that he could move it to the right or left; his body was still the same size as it had been seven years ago, when he was twelve years old, so that he had grown in width what others do in height between the ages of twelve and twenty. His back and chest stood out like two short, well-filled bags; and this thick-set body was supported by small thin legs, which seemed hardly sufficient to support their burden; but so much the larger were his arms, which hung down from his body, being of the size of those of a full-grown man; his hands were coarse, and of a brownish hue, his fingers long, like spiders’ legs, and when he stretched them to their full extent he could touch the ground without stooping. Such was little Jacob’s appearance, now that he had been turned into an ugly dwarf. He remembered the morning on which the old woman had stopped before his mother’s baskets. All that he then had found fault with in her—viz., her long nose and ugly fingers—all these she had given him, only omitting her long, palsied neck.

‘Well, my prince, have you looked enough at yourself now?’ said the barber, stepping up to him, and surveying him with a laugh. ‘Truly, if we wished to dream of such a figure, we could hardly see one so comical. Nevertheless I will make you a proposition, my little man. My shaving-room is tolerably well frequented, but yet not so much as I could wish. That arises from my neighbour, the barber Schaum, having discovered a giant, who attracts much custom to his house. Now, to become a giant is no great thing, after all, but to be such a little man as you is indeed a different thing. Enter my service, little man; you shall have board and lodging, clothes, and everything; for this you shall stand in my doorway in the morning, and invite people to come in; you shall beat the lather, hand the towel to the customers, and you may be sure that we shall both make it answer; I shall get more customers through you than my neighbour by his giant, and you will get many presents.’

The little man felt quite indignant at the proposal of serving as a decoy to a barber. But was he not obliged to submit patiently to this insulting offer? He therefore quietly told the barber he had no time for such services, and went away.

Although the evil hag had thus stunted his growth, yet she had had no power to affect his mind, as he felt full well; for he no longer thought and felt as he did seven years since, and believed that he had become wiser and more sensible in the interval. He did not mourn for the loss of his beauty, nor for his ugly appearance, but only that he was driven from his father’s door like a dog. However, he resolved to make another trial with his mother.

He went again to her in the market, and entreated her to listen to him patiently. He reminded her of the day on which he had gone with the old woman; he called to her mind all the particular incidents of his childhood, told her then how he had served seven years as a squirrel with the fairy, and how she had changed him because he had then ridiculed her person.

The cobbler’s wife did not know what to think of all this. All that he related of his childhood agreed with her own recollections, but when he talked of serving seven years as a squirrel she said, ‘It is impossible; there are no fairies;’ and when she looked at him she felt a horror at the ugly dwarf, and would not believe that he could be her son. At length she thought it would be best to talk the matter over with her husband; therefore she took up her baskets and bade him go with her.

On arriving at the cobbler’s stall she said: ‘Look, this fellow pretends to be our lost Jacob. He has told me all the circumstances; how he was stolen from us seven years since, and how he was enchanted by a fairy.’