Once upon a time...
'How astonishingly cold it is! My body is cracking all over!' said the Snow-man. 'The wind is really cutting one's very life out! And how that fiery thing up there glares!' He meant the sun, which was just setting. 'It sha'n't make me blink, though, and I shall keep quite cool and collected.'
Instead of eyes he had two large three-cornered pieces of slate in his head; his mouth consisted of an old rake, so that he had teeth as well. He was born amidst the shouts and laughter of the boys, and greeted by the jingling bells and cracking whips of the sledges.
The sun went down, and the full moon rose, large, round, clear and beautiful, in the dark blue sky.
'There it is again on the other side!' said the Snow-man, thinking the sun had reappeared. 'I have become quite accustomed to its glaring. I wish I knew how to change my position. I should very much like to move about. If I only could, I would glide up and down the ice as I saw the boys doing.'
'Bow-wow!' barked the old yard-dog; he was rather hoarse. 'The sun will soon teach you to run! I saw that with your predecessor! They have all run away!'
'I don't understand you, my friend,' said the Snow-man, looking at the moon. 'That thing up there is to teach me to run?'
'You know nothing at all,' said the yard-dog. 'That is the moon. The sun will come up again tomorrow and will soon teach you how to run away down the gutter. The weather is going to change.'
'I can't understand him,' said the Snow-man; 'but I have an idea he is speaking of something unpleasant. That glaring thing, the sun, is not my friend. I know that by instinct.'
The yard-dog walked three times round himself and then crept into his kennel to sleep.
The weather really did change. Towards morning a dense damp fog lay over the whole neighbourhood; later came an icy wind. But when the sun rose, it was a glorious sight. The trees and shrubs were covered with rime, and looked like a wood of coral. The most delicate twigs, lost among the foliage in summer, came now into prominence, like a spider's web of glistening white. When the sun shone, everything glittered as if sprinkled with diamond dust.
'Isn't it wonderful?' exclaimed a girl walking with a young man in the garden. They stopped near the Snow-man. 'Summer cannot show a more beautiful sight,' she said.
'And one can't get a fellow like this in summer either,' said the young man, pointing to the Snow-man. 'He's a beauty!'
The girl laughed, nodded to the Snow-man, and then they both danced away over the snow.
'Who were those two?' asked the Snow-man of the yard-dog.
'Lovers!' replied the yard-dog. 'They will go into one kennel and gnaw the same bone! They are our masters.'
'The cold is splendid,' said the Snow-man. 'Tell me more. But don't rattle your chain so, it makes me crack!'
The yard-dog told his story: 'I was once a pretty little fellow, lying in a velvet chair. My mistress called me her dear little Alice! But I grew too big and was given to the housekeeper. I went into the kitchen. There was a stove, the most beautiful thing in the world. I used to creep right under it. Ah me! I often dream of that stove still!'
'Is a stove so beautiful?' asked the Snow-man. 'Is it anything like me?'
'It is just the opposite! It is coal-black, has a long neck with a brass pipe, and fire spouts from its mouth. You can see it through the window.'
The Snow-man looked and saw a smooth polished object with a brass pipe. The flicker from the fire reached him. A wonderful feeling came over him which he could not express.
'Why did you leave her?' asked the Snow-man, feeling the stove must be a lady.
'I had to!' said the yard-dog. 'They turned me out and chained me here after I bit a boy who took my bone. I lost my voice. That was the end of happiness!'
The Snow-man was no longer listening; he was gazing into the room where the stove stood. 'How something is cracking inside me!' he said. 'I must get there and lean against the stove, even if I have to break the window!'
'You will never get inside,' said the yard-dog; 'and if you reach the stove, you will disappear.'
'I'm as good as gone already!' answered the Snow-man. 'I believe I'm breaking up!'
The whole day he looked through the window. Towards dusk, the room grew more inviting; the stove gave out a mild light. When the door opened, it flared up—one of its peculiarities—and flickered red upon the Snow-man's white face.
'I can't stand it any longer!' he said. 'How beautiful it looks!'
It was a long night, but he stood wrapt in pleasant thoughts which froze, so that he cracked.
Next morning, the panes of the kitchen window were covered with beautiful ice-flowers, but they blotted out the stove. He couldn't see it. There was cracking inside him and all around.
'Yours is a bad illness for a Snow-man!' said the yard-dog. 'The weather is going to change!'
The weather did change. There came a thaw.
The Snow-man set off. He did not say anything or complain. One morning he broke up altogether. Where he had stood, there remained only the upright broomstick round which the boys had built him.
'Ah! Now I understand,' said the yard-dog. 'That is the raker used to clean the stove! The Snow-man had a stove-raker in his body! And now it's all over with him!'
And before long, it was all over with the winter too.
But the young girl sang:
Woods, your bright green garments don!
Willows, your woolly gloves put on!
Lark and cuckoo, daily sing—
February has brought the spring!
My heart joins in your song so sweet;
Come out, dear sun, the world to greet!
And no one thought of the Snow-man.