Read "The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean" by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
In a village dwelt a poor old woman, who had gathered together a dish of beans and wanted to cook them. So she made a fire on her hearth, and that it might burn the quicker, she lighted it with a handful of straw. When she was emptying the beans into the pan, one dropped without her observing it, and lay on the ground beside a straw, and soon afterwards a burning coal from the fire leapt down to the two. Then the straw began and said, "Dear friends, from whence do you come here? " The coal replied, "I fortunately sprang out of the fire, and if I had not escaped by main force, my death would have been certain,-I should have been burnt to ashes. " The bean said, "I too have escaped with a whole skin, but if the old woman had got me into the pan, I should have been made into broth without any mercy, like my comrades. " "And would a better fate have fallen to my lot? " said the straw. "The old woman has destroyed all my brethren in fire and smoke; she seized sixty of them at once, and took their lives. I luckily slipped through her fingers."
"But what are we to do now? " said the coal.