January Twenty-Third

SHE GREW more and more fond of human beings, wishing more and more that she could go up among them. Their world seemed much greater than hers. They could speed across the sea in ships, climb lofty mountains high up above the clouds; and the countries they owned stretched, as forests and fields, farther than she could see. There was so much she wondered about; but her sisters didn't know the answers to all her questions, and so she asked her old grandmother. She knew all about the upper world, as she very properly called the lands above the sea.
'When human beings don't drown,' asked the little mermaid, 'can they live for ever? Don't they die, like us down here below?'
'Oh yes!' said the old lady. 'They too have to die, and their life is even shorter than ours. We can grow to be three hundred years old; but when our life here comes to an end, we become nothing but foam on the water and never even have a grave down among our loved ones. We have no immortal soul; we never have another life. We are like the green rush; once it is cut, it can never grow green again! Human beings, however, have a soul which lives for ever, lives after the body has turned to dust. It soars up into the bright sky, up to all the shining stars! As we rise to the surface to see human countries, they rise to lovely unknown places, places we shall never see.'
'Why weren't we given an immortal soul?' asked the little mermaid sadly. 'I'd give all my hundreds of years just to be a human being for one day and then get a place in this heavenly world!'
'You mustn't go thinking such things!' said the old lady. 'We are much happier and much better off than the human beings up there.'
'And so I am to die and float like foam on the sea, never hearing the music of the waves, or seeing the lovely flowers and the red sun! Is there nothing I can do to win an eternal soul?'
'No!' said the old lady. 'Only if a human being were to love you so dearly that you were more to him than father and mother; if he were to cling to you, with all his thoughts and affections ... .'

-- THE LITTLE MERMAID by Hans Christian Andersen