Explore "Two Maidens" by Hans Christian Andersen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Have you ever seen a maiden? I mean what our paviours call a maiden, a thing with which they ram down the paving-stones in the roads. A maiden of this kind is made altogether of wood, broad below, and girt round with iron rings; at the top she is narrow, and has a stick passed across through her waist; and this stick forms the arms of the maiden.
In the shed stood two maidens of this kind. They had their place among shovels, hand-carts, wheelbarrows, and measuring tapes; and to all this company the news had come that the maidens were no longer to be called "maidens," but "hand-rammers; " which word was the newest and the only correct designation among the paviours for the thing we all know from the old times by the name of "the maiden."