Chapter 18 goose girl ossa and little matts

In the year that Nils Hogelsson followed the wild geese, two children, a boy and a girl, also wandered from the south of Sweden to Lapland in the north.They are Osa the goose girl and her little brother Mats.They are from Sonnerb County, Småland Province.Originally, they lived with their parents and four other brothers and sisters in a small hut on a large desert.My father is a craftsman, and my mother and children help my father with his work. From morning till night, life is very pleasant.Although they are very poor, the small hut is often full of joyful laughter. Osa and Mats Jr. remember a poor homeless woman knocking on the door one night and begging for a place to stay.Although the hut was so small that even her own family could hardly squeeze in, her parents let her in.Mom built a bed on the ground for her to sleep on.During the night, she coughed constantly, very badly.The next morning, she couldn't get out of bed, and it was impossible to wander outside again.

Papa and Mama tried their best to help and take care of her. They gave her their own bed while they slept on the floor, and Papa went to the doctor and bought her medicine.But her illness became more and more serious.In the end, she begged her parents to carry her from the hut to the desert to die there.She told her parents that she was the daughter of a yeoman who had been wandering around with a group of vagrants for the last few years.She believed that she had been afflicted by a vagabond who had a grudge against her, and who had said that anyone who stayed with her and showed kindness to her would suffer as badly as she did, so she begged Her parents kicked her out of the hut, and she didn't want to bring disaster to kind people like them.The parents might have been terrified, but they were not the type to throw a dying poor person out of their home, so they kept her anyway.

Since the poor tramp woman came to their house and soon died, disasters began to befall their family.Osa and Mats Jr. remember there were always funerals at home, and one by one their siblings died and were buried in the grave one by one.In all, they had four siblings and had four funerals.Finally, the little hut became lifeless. After the third funeral, the father said that he really couldn't understand why such a disaster had happened to them. After all, they had done a good deed by helping the sick woman. Could it be that things had turned upside down?Has evil outstripped good in this world?

A day or two later, my father disappeared, because when he saw that his eldest sister was about to die, he had no choice but to run away from home to escape all troubles.On the same day after the eldest sister was buried, the mother closed the door of the hut, took the two remaining children, Osa and Mats, and left the house.She was a strong person who worked on the farm, worked in the sugar factory, and supported her two children.But soon, the disease came to the mother.She left home at the beginning of summer, and before autumn, she left behind her two helpless children and left the world.

The mother told the two children several times during her illness that they should remember that she had never regretted having that patient in their home.My mother said that everyone is going to die, and no one can escape it. However, whether to die with a clear conscience or with sin, you can choose. Before the mother died, she managed to make a little arrangement for her two children.She asked the landlord to allow the children to continue living in the house where the three of them lived for the summer.The children are still too young, the girl is ten years old and the boy is only nine years old, but she believes that as long as the children have a place to live, they will not be a burden to others, and they will support themselves, which she knows.

The children agreed to release geese for the landlord as a condition of continuing to live in the house.They really supported themselves as their mother said.Girls boiled sugar, boys whittled wooden toys, and then went to sell them in the streets.The girl was competent, taciturn, and serious, while the boy was lively and eloquent, and his sister used to say that he croaked with geese in the fields. One night after the children lived there for two or three years, a report meeting was held in the school.The speaker was talking about the severe tuberculosis disease that kills many people every year in Sweden.When the report was over, Osa and Mats stood outside the school gate and waited for the speaker to come out.The children told the reporter what had happened in their home, and asked the reporter if he thought that the mother and their brothers and sisters died of the disease he just mentioned. He replied: Very likely, it seems It will not be any other disease.

The children also asked if the parents had burned the clothes of the homeless woman, if they had cleaned the hut thoroughly, and had not used the quilts covered by the sick, would it be possible for all their relatives to still be alive? live.The reporter said that no one can give an affirmative answer to this, but he believes that if their relatives knew how to prevent infection at that time, then they would not have this disease. The children asked the reporter the most important question: Did the vagrant use some magical power to bring the disease to them, was there something special that made them lose their lives?Oh no, the reporter can assure them that this is not the case.No one has the magic power to transmit a disease to another person in this way.The reporter again explained to them that the disease was prevalent all over Sweden, and had come to almost every household, although the disease did not kill as many people as it did in their home.

The children said thanks and walked home.That night, the siblings talked for a long time.The next day, they quit their jobs and decided to go find their father.They should go and tell him that his mother and brothers and sisters died of a common disease, and that it was not some evil man who had betrothed some special thing upon them. The children first came to their little home in the desert of Sonneb County, and to their surprise the little hut was reduced to a heap of ashes.Then they walked to the pastor's manor and learned from a worker that his father worked in a mine in Lapland.The pastor advised them not to go because it was too far away.But the children said that the father ran away because he believed something that wasn't true, and they must run and tell him he was mistaken.

Although they had saved up some money, they didn't want to use the money to buy train tickets, but decided to go on foot. Before they left Småland, one day they walked into a farm to buy something to eat.The farm wife is a cheerful and kind person.When she knew the children's experience, she sighed: "Oh, what a pity!" Then, she enthusiastically prepared a lot of delicious food for the children, and did not charge them money.She asked the children if they would like to spend the night with her brother in the next parish, and the children were of course very happy and asked for it.

"Say hello to him for me, and tell him in detail what happened in your family." The peasant woman urged. The children came to her brother's house according to the peasant woman's instructions, and they were also well taken care of.He gave the children a ride in his car to a place in the next parish, where they too were well received.Every time they left a farm, the master always said: If you go in this direction, go to any house and tell them what happened in your house! On the farm to which they directed the children there was a patient with consumptive disease, and the two children traveled the country on foot, unknowingly educating the people, what kind of disease is this disease that sneaks into every house How can we fight against such a terrible and dangerous disease more effectively.

Everywhere they went, they said to people: "We can't be satisfied with just raking the yard and mopping the floor. We also need to pick up dusters, brushes, and use detergent and soap to clean the inside and outside of the door. And you have to wash yourself clean, only in this way, you will control and overcome this disease in the end." These two 12- and 13-year-old children traveled all over the country to teach people how to prevent this serious and dangerous disease. It is really touching and surprising. The goose-herding girl Osa and her younger brother finally arrived in the far north——Lapland Province after a long journey through untold hardships.Before they came here, they passed through a large stretch of forest area that stretches as far as the eye can see. For several days, they could see neither arable land nor farms, but only small and simple inns. Came to a large parish village.The village has a church, railway station, courthouse, bank, pharmacy and hotel.The parish village is located at the foot of a high mountain. Although it was midsummer when the children wandered to the parish village, there was still snow on the mountain.But to find their father, they had to travel further north to the Malmberg mines. They came to the mines of Malmberg, which was not as neat and tidy as the Archdiocese Village.The whole area is disorganized, with small shacks built from tree trunks with bark, and simple huts built by stacking wooden boxes and empty explosive boxes as bricks.There are also many decent houses built here. There are large residential areas with beautiful structures, and there are elegant villas where mining owners and engineers live, but there are messy low-rise huts among them.There are railways, electric lights, and large machine rooms. People can take trams, pass through tunnels illuminated by small electric bulbs, and go straight to the mines in the mountains.There is a busy scene everywhere here, trains full of ore leave from the station one after another, but there is a large wasteland around the mining area, no one is farming, no one is building houses, there are only Lapps here, they are They drive deer herds to nomad for a living. When Osa and little Mats went to the mining area to inquire about a worker named Ron Axelson with two eyebrows connected together, they soon learned that his father had worked in the Malmberg mining area for several years, but Now he's out and about.It was not uncommon for him to wander out sometimes when he got annoyed.Where he had gone no one knew, but it was assumed he would be back in a few weeks.Since they were Ron Axelsen's children, they could live in the hut where their father lived and wait for his return.No one was surprised that they had come, nor that Father had gone wandering in the wilderness.It's no surprise that things go their own way in this far north. One afternoon shortly after Mats arrived in the mine, he was walking around in the mine. When the mine was blasted, he stood too close to a large open pit, and several flying rocks hit him.At that time, he was alone and lay on the ground for a long time after passing out. No one knew that the accident had happened.Later, some people who worked in the open-pit mine heard someone shouting to them from the edge of the mine. It turned out to be a small person who was not as tall as a raised palm.He told them to hurry and save little Mats lying on the top of the mine, bleeding profusely.After these people learned about it from this strange way, they immediately ran to the top of the mine.Then little Mats was carried home and bandaged; but it was too late, and he had lost too much blood to save him.Little Mats died.Those who had seen him alive and well a few hours earlier could hardly believe it, but it was the truth. Little Mats died early the next morning, with no one around except his sister Osa, who was in the house watching him die. "I'm glad I didn't die of that disease, Osa," said Matz Jr. "Aren't you happy for that too?" Orsa was speechless.He went on: "I don't think it matters much if you die, as long as you don't die like your mother and your brothers and sisters. Now you can surely convince your father that it was just a common disease that took their lives." , you will see that." After little Mats took his last breath, Osa sat in a daze for a long time, thinking about everything that his brother Mats had experienced when he was alive.She thought little Mats had gone through all kinds of hardships like an adult, and she thought about his last words before he died. He was as brave and strong as ever.She must arrange a decent and decent funeral for her brother.The coffin will be brought to the church in a carriage, followed by a long funeral procession of miners. Next to the cemetery, there will be a band playing music and a chorus singing.After the burial, all those who attended the church were invited to the school for coffee.This is roughly what Osa, the goose girl, is going to do for her younger brother Mats. She and little Mats had amassed a lot of money, and she could afford to give him a funeral as grand as she wished, but she knew that grown-ups would never want to do things according to a child's ideas. It is very difficult, but she must do this, for the sake of little Mats, she must do her best to do it. Miss Herma, the nurse, came into the hut to see Osa, not knowing how to comfort the poor little girl.Osa didn't cry or complain, but silently helped her do what she needed to do.The nurse was very surprised. "When I have to think about what to do with a guy like Mats," said Orsa, trying to make her words a little more dignified and grown-up, "the first thing I think about is to have a funeral." A funeral that honors him, and I'm capable of that. There's plenty of time to be sad and cry after the funeral is over." She asked the lady nurse to help her arrange a decent funeral.The nurse thought it would be a good thing if the lonely and poor child could find comfort in a decent funeral.She promised to help her. The nurse accompanied Osa to the miners' homes and asked them to attend the funeral for little Mats next Sunday, and very few people refused to attend. "Of course we're going, because the nurse has invited us," they answered. The nurse also arranged very well for a quartet of brass band and small choir to play by the cemetery.She didn't borrow the school's venue, because the weather was warm in summer and didn't change much, so the funeral guests could drink coffee in the open air.They could borrow tables and chairs from the Temperance Hall and glasses from the store.For the sake of the nurses, the wives of several miners were willing to take out some beautiful tablecloths and prepared to spread them on the coffee table. She also ordered crunchy bread and pretzels from a bakery and black and white candies from a candy store. The fact that Osa was going to give such a grand funeral for her brother Mats the Great attracted so much attention that it was discussed throughout the Malmberg mines, and finally the mine owner himself found out about it. When the owner of the mine heard that fifty miners were going to attend the funeral of a wandering beggar, a boy of twelve, he thought it was absurd, and he sent for the nurse, and asked her to make all the arrangements. Cancel. "It's such a pity that such a poor little girl is wasting money like this," he said. "It's not okay for a child to have a whim and adults follow suit." The mine owners have no ill intentions.The nurse didn't say a word against the mine owner either, partly out of respect for him, partly because she really felt in her heart that he was right.Such extravagance was too much for a beggar boy. The nurse came out of the mine owner's dacha feeling sad, but had to go to the shack to tell Osa that she couldn't give little Mats a proper funeral.The nurse also told the wives of the miners her troubles and helplessness, but they thought the mine owners were right.It is inappropriate to have a great funeral for a beggar child. When the nurse told Osa what the mine owner had said, she didn't cry or complain, but she just didn't want to change her mind.She said she did not ask the mine owner for any favors and that he had nothing to do with the matter.Nor could he forbid her to bury her brother as she wished. When several women explained to her that none of them would go to the funeral if the owner of the mine didn't agree, she understood that his permission was necessary.Osa the goose girl sat silently for a while, then stood up quickly. "Where are you going?" the nurse asked. "I'm going to go to the mine owner and talk to him face to face," Osa said. Osa, the goose girl, knew that it would be difficult to change the opinion of the most authoritative person in the Malmberg mining area, the mine owner, but for her brother, she had to go to the mine owner.The nurse and the other women, wanting to know what was going on, kept their distance and followed her. Osa, the goose girl, had a large black silk cloth left by her mother wrapped around her head. She held a folded handkerchief in one hand and a basket in the other, which contained little Mats. wooden toys.She went forward with the solemn dignity of a girl going to church for the first communion. The children playing on the road were shocked when they heard that she was going to find the mine owner, and a group of children followed to see how things were going. It was around six o'clock in the afternoon, which happened to be the time when the mine was off work.Hundreds of workers just came home from get off work. When some workers learned what Osa was going to do, they thought it was brave for a child to do such a thing, and they wanted to follow her to see what would happen to her. Osa walked to the office building and saw the mine owner wearing a top hat and holding a cane, preparing to go back to the residence for dinner. "Who are you looking for?" He asked when he saw the little girl with a silk cloth on her head and a serious look holding a folded handkerchief in her hand. "I'm looking for the mine owner himself," Osa replied. "Oh, please come in." The mine owner said, and walked into the house.He left the door open because he thought a little girl wouldn't have anything to spend time talking about.In this way, those who followed the goose girl could stand in the hall and on the steps and hear what they had to say in the office. When Osa the goose girl went in, she first straightened herself up, pushed back her kerchief, and looked at the mine owner with round, childish eyes.Her eyes were stern enough to pierce the heart. "The thing is, my brother Mats Jr. is dead," she said.Upon hearing these words the mine owner knew whom he was talking to. "Oh, you're the girl who proposed a big funeral," he said kindly. "You don't want to do that, boy, it's too much money for you. If I had heard it earlier, I would have stopped it immediately." of." The girl's face twitched, but she didn't cry. "I want to ask the mine owner if I can tell you something about Mats," Osa said. "I've heard all about you," said the mine owner kindly, "I'm just thinking about you!" At this time, the goose girl straightened her body up a little more, and said in a clear and loud voice: "Little Matz has had neither a father nor a mother since he was nine years old, and he has to feed himself like an adult." Himself. He would not beg for a meal, but pay for it himself. He always said it was not for a man to beg for food. He went about the country buying eggs and butter like a A businessman of his age is good at running a business. When little Mats was herding geese, he was still doing farm work in the fields, diligently, just like an adult. When little Mats was traveling from village to village in the south of Scone, Farmers used to entrust him with large sums of money because they knew they could trust him as much as they could trust themselves, so it would be wrong to say that little Mats was only a child, because there weren't many grown-ups... " Osa originally felt that she had a lot to say about Mats, but now, she didn't know how to make her meaning clear so that the mine owner could understand.The mine owner stood there, listening to her without saying a word.Osa wondered if his words had had an effect on the mine owner. "Come to think of it, now that I'm willing to pay for the entire burial myself..." Osa said, and she fell silent again. At this moment, the mine owner looked at Osa and thought that she must be a great person who has suffered the pain of losing her family, parents and brothers and sisters, but still stands strong.I can't add any more pain to her.It can be seen that she loves her brother very much, and I cannot answer such a love with rejection. "Then, do as you think," said the mine owner.