Explore "Pictures of Sweden" by Hans Christian Andersen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On the lake there glided a boat, and the party within it sang Swedish and Danish songs; but by the shore, under that tall, hanging birch, sat four young girls -- so pretty -- so sylph-like! and they each plucked up from the grass four long straws, and bound these straws two and two together, at the top and the bottom.
"We shall now see if they will come together in a square," said the girls: "if it be so, then that which I think of will be fulfilled," and they bound them, and they thought.