THE LOOKING GLASS
A Fable
There was once a dreadfully wicked
hobgoblin. One day he had a simply marvelous idea. He was going to make a
looking glass that would reflect everything that was good and beautiful in such
a way that it would look dreadful or at least not very important. When you
looked in it, you would not be able to see any of the good or the beautiful in
yourself or in the world. Instead, this looking glass would reflect everything
that was bad or ugly and make it look very important. The most beautiful
landscapes would look like heaps of garbage, and the best people would look
repulsive or would seem stupid. People's faces would be so changed that they
could not be recognized, and if there was anything that a person was ashamed of
or wanted to hide, you could be sure that this would be just the thing that the
looking glass emphasized.
The hobgoblin set about making
this looking glass, and when he was finished, he was delighted with what he had
done. Anyone who looked into it could only see the bad and the ugly, and all
that was good and beautiful in the world was distorted beyond recognition.
One day, the hobgoblin's
assistants decided to carry the looking glass up to the heavens so that even
the angels would look into it and see themselves as ugly and stupid. They hoped
that perhaps even God himself would look into it! But, as they reached the
heavens, a great invisible force stopped them and they dropped the dreadful
looking glass. And as it fell, it broke into millions of pieces.
And now came the greatest
misfortune of all. Each of the pieces was hardly as large as a grain of sand,
and they flew about all over the world. If anyone got a bit of glass in his eye
there it stayed, and then he would see everything as ugly or distressing.
Everything good would look stupid. For every tiny splinter of the glass
possessed the same power that the whole glass had!
Some people got a splinter in
their hearts, and that was dreadful, too, for then their hearts turned into
lumps of ice and could no longer feel love.
The hobgoblin watched all this and
he laughed until his sides ached. And still the tiny bits of glass flew about.
Adapted from “The Snow Queen,” by
Hans Christian Andersen
Keith and Marnie
Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site
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