Read "On the Heights" by Berthold Auerbach online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Strange things were always happening during the days and nights of Christmas week. Some mortals maintain that the kingdom of the fairies has vanished, but it still exists.
In a large building, standing back from the king's street, there are silent workmen, placing strange wedges side by side, which wedges are afterward handed over to a huge monster. It is still at rest, but as soon as it receives them, it suddenly moves, creaks, groans and puffs, and, in an instant, hundreds of human beings are, as it were, created anew. -- In other words, it is the government printing-office, and they are printing the official gazette, which at the beginning of every year, announces the promotion and the orders conferred upon hundreds of individuals.