Explore "The Metal Pig" by Hans Christian Andersen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
IN THE city of Florence, not far from the Piazza del Granduca, runs a little cross street called Porta Rosa. In this street, just in front of the market place where vegetables are sold, stands a pig, made of brass and curiously formed. The color has been changed by age to dark green, but clear, fresh water pours from the snout, which shines as if it had been polished -- and so indeed it has, for hundreds of poor people and children seize it in their hands as they place their mouths close to the mouth of the animal to drink. It is quite a picture to see a half-naked boy clasping the well-formed creature by the head as he presses his rosy lips against its jaws. Every one who visits Florence can very quickly find the place; he has only to ask the first beggar he meets for the Metal Pig, and he will be told where it is.
It was late on a winter evening. The mountains were covered with snow, but the moon shone brightly, and moonlight in Italy is as good as the light of gray winter's day in the north. Indeed, it is better, for the clear air seems to raise us above the earth; while in the north a cold, gray, leaden sky appears to press us down to earth, even as the cold, damp earth shall one day press on us in the grave.