The Story Without an End by Friedrich Wilhelm Carové

THERE was once a Child who lived in a little hut, and in the hut there was nothing but a little bed and a looking-glass which hung in a dark corner. Now the Child cared nothing at all about the looking-glass; but as soon as the first sunbeam glided softly through the casement and kissed his sweet eyelids, and the finch and the linnet waked him merrily with their morning songs, he arose, and went out into the green meadow. And he begged flour of the primrose, and sugar of the violet, and butter of the butter-cup; he shook dew-drops from the cowslip into the cup of a harebell; spread out a large lime leaf, set his little breakfast upon it, and feasted daintily. Sometimes he invited a humming bee, oftener a gay butterfly, to partake his feast; but his favourite guest was the blue dragonfly. The bee murmured a great deal, in a solemn tone, about his riches: but the Child thought that if he were a bee heaps of treasure would not make him gay and happy; and that it must be much more delightful and glorious to float about in the free and fresh breezes of spring, and to hum joyously in the web of the sunbeams, than, with heavy feet and heavy heart, to stow the silver wax and the golden honey into cells.