The Original: http://books.google.com/books?id=Avgv-Y ... rl&f=false
Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Match Girl from the father's point of view.
I acknowledge the fact that I am cruel, but you must sympathize with me. I was fired from my job only two months after getting it, you see, and I had worked for twelve years, as my daughter was growing up, to find an employer. It is the Great Depression, and jobs are being lost all over the place.
I am a very sensitive man, although I may not seem so. It's just that I take my sadness out in anger, and I take that anger out on my little girl. I would love for my child to have an education, but I don't have the money necessary to buy her books for school. I don't even have the money to buy her decent clothes.
Although it pained me greatly to do so, I had to give my daughter, at a young age, a few boxes of matches, and send her out the door and downtown. There, for a few hours each day, she would attempt to sell matches to pedestrians. I know she must have been very cold in winter, but I figured that she was young, and, quite selfishly, I thought that she would hold up better than I would, with my arthritis-stricken bones.
I was wrong, and I admit it. I admit that, when she came home in the evening, not having sold any matches, I would beat her. She was my only refuge, and I know I can't take away what I did.
But, my friend, it is not as though she didn't take little breaks all throughout the day. She, surely, would have gone into various downtown shops to warm up, perhaps trying on sweaters in the meantime. If she didn't, how could she not have sold any matches?
Yes, Reader, I admit that I made home, for her, a very hostile environment. I made her sell the matches for her own good, that she might someday go to school like the other little girls, and wear pretty sweaters like the other little girls. But she never did, and she never will.
At first, when my dearest little one wasn't home by dusk, I though it was just because she was taking her time trying to sell matches, like the good little girl she was. I even thought, "It serves her right, working for an extra hour or two."
But after those first couple of hours, I did begin to worry, and even started to cry. My poor little match girl was gone.
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