Page:Fairy Tales for Worker's Children.djvu/23

 said with a sweet smile, "I want to go away little mother, far away. To foreign lands where it is always summer."

"But son of my heart, you know that even the stupid children of men learn in their schools that the Sparrow is not a migratory bird."

"What is that to me? I can't stand it here any longer. Always seeing the same things; in the distance the old church steeple, here before our noses the farm-house, and the dung-hill. No, I want to go away, far away."

At that he spread out his wings and pushed himself head first out of the nest into space. It seemed very dangerous, but his wings carried him safely thru the air.

But the young Sparrow was by no means as joyous and lighthearted as he seemed to be. The words of his parents had aroused all sorts of doubts in his mind. "Mother was really right," he said to himself. "The Sparrow is not a migratory bird. No one has ever heard of a Sparrow that has flown across the great ocean and gone to foreign lands. But why shouldn't I be the first one to do this?" he asked himself, with defiant courage. "Some one must always be the first one. If my venture succeeds, I will have proven to all the Sparrow folk that they need not freeze and starve in the winter-time, but can move to the warm countries and live happily. Certainly, the ocean" The young Sparrow's heart lost courage, he thought of what his teacher, the Swallow had once told him about the great, wild water that never seemed to end, about the angry frothy waves over which one had to fly daily. If one's wings lost their strength, one fell down and was lost. One was swallowed by the waves.

At these thoughts the Sparrow almost wanted to give up the idea. He shrank together and began shivering. Then suddenly he thought how in past hard winters many wretched Sparrows had died of hunger and cold. 17