Read "Queenie's Whim, Volume 1" by Rosa Nouchette Carey online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"A little way, a very little way / (Life is so short), they dig into the rind, / And they are very sorry, so they say, -- / Sorry for what they find. " -- _Jean Ingelow._
I have always thought the history of the ugly duckling one of the / truest and most pathetic of all stories. It commences in the sad / minor key, a long prelude of oppression, of misunderstanding. The / unknown creature, sombre of plumage, makes no way among its / companions; its folded-up beauties remain hidden. The duck-pond / represents the world. Amidst plenty of quackery and folly the weaker / goes to the wall. By and by the key changes; the long neck arches / above the weeds; amid a burst of triumph the ugly duckling sails away / into fairy-land a beautiful swan.