Grimm's Fairy Tales (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Master Cobblersawl ^y was a small, meagre, but very active man, who had no rest in him. His face, whose only prominent feature was a turned-up nose, was seamed and deadly pale; his hair was grey and rough; his eyes small, but they peered right and left in a piercing way. He observed everything, found fault with everything, knew everything better and did it better than any one else in his own estimation. When he walked in the streets he swung his two arms about in such a hasty fashion, that once he knocked the pail, which a girl was carrying, so high into the air that the water fell all over him. “Sheep’s head!” he exclaimed, shaking himself, “could you not see that I was following you?” By trade he was a shoemaker; and when he was at work, he pulled his thread out so hastily, that nobody went near him for fear of his elbows poking into their sides. No comrade remained with him longer than a month, for he had always something to remark upon in the best work. Either the stitches were not even, or one shoe was longer than the other, or one heel higher than the other, or the leather was not drawn sufficiently tight. “Wait,” he would say to a young hand, “wait, and I will show you how one can whiten the skin!” and so saying, he would fetch a strap and lay it across the shoulders of his victim. He called everybody idle and lazy; but still he did not do much for himself, because he could not sit quiet two quarters of an hour together. If his wife got up early in the morning and lighted a fire, he would jump out of bed and run barefeet into the kitchen, crying out, “Do you want to burn the house down? there is a fire fit for any one to roast an ox at! Wood costs money.”

If the maid, while standing at the washtub, laughed and repeated to herself what she had heard, he would scold her, and say, “There stands a goose, chattering and forgetting her work with her gossip.” “Of what use is that fresh soap? shameful waste and a disgraceful dirtiness, for she wants to spare her hands by not properly rubbing out the stains!” So saying, he would jump up and throw down a whole pailful of water, so as to set the kitchen a swimming!

Once they were building a new house near him, and he ran to his window to look on. “There! they are using that red sandstone again which never dries,” he said; “nobody in that house will be healthy. And see how quickly the fellows are laying on the stones! The mortar too is not properly mixed; gravel should be put in, not sand. I expect the house will fall some day on the heads of its owners.” So saying, he sat down again, and did another stitch or so; but soon he sprang up, and throwing away his apron exclaimed, “I will go and speak to those men myself.” The carpenters were at work just then. “How is this?” he asked; “you are not cutting by line. Do you think the beams will lay straight? no, they will come all away from the joists.” Then he snatched an axe out of the hand of one of the carpenters to show him how he should cut; but just then a waggon laden with clay chanced to be going past, so Master Cobblersawl threw away the axe, and cried to the peasant who was with it, “You are not rightly humane! who would harness young horses to a heavily laden waggon? the poor beasts will fall down presently.”

The peasant, however, gave him no answer, and so he went back to his workshop in a passion. Just as he was about to commence again the job which he had left, his apprentice handed him a shoe. “What is this, again?” exclaimed Master Cobblersawl; “have I not told you often and often not to stitch your shoes so wide. Who will buy a shoe like this with scarce any sole at all to it? I desire that you will follow my commands to the letter.”

A night or two afterwards Master Cobblersawl dreamed that he was dead and on the way to heaven. When he arrived there and knocked at the door, the Apostle Peter opened it to see who desired to enter. “Ah, is it you, Master Cobblersawl?” said the Saint, “I will let you in certainly; but I warn you not to interfere with what you may observe in heaven, or it will be the worse for you.”

“You might have spared yourself the trouble of saying that,” replied Cobblersawl; “I know very well, how to behave myself; and here, thank God, there is nothing to blame, as there is on earth.” So saying, he stepped in and walked up and down over the wide expanse of heaven, looking about him right and left, and now and then shaking his head or muttering to himself. Presently he perceived two angels carrying a beam, the same which a certain one once had in his own eye when he perceived the mote in his brother’s eye.^z But they were carrying the beam not longways but crossways, and this caused Master Cobblersawl to say to himself, “Did ever anybody see such stupidity?” Still he held his tongue, thinking that after all it was no matter whether the beam were carried straight or not, provided it did not interfere with anybody. Soon afterwards he saw two angels pouring water out of a spring into a tub which was full of holes, so that the water escaped on all sides. They were watering the earth with rain. “Blast you!” exclaimed he suddenly; but recollecting himself, he kept his opinions to himself, and thought, “Perhaps it is mere pastime, and intended for a joke, so that one may do idle things here in heaven as well as upon earth.” So he went onwards and saw a waggon stuck fast in a deep rut. “No wonder,” said he to the person in charge; “who would have filled it so extravagantly? what have you there?”

Just then an angel did really come and harnessed horses to the waggon. “Quite right,” thought Cobblersawl; “but two horses are not enough to pull the waggon out: there must be four horses at the least.” Presently came a second angel, leading two more horses, but he did not harness them before, but behind. Now this was too much for Master Cobblersawl. “Tallpatsch!” he exclaimed aloud, “what are you about? Did anybody ever as long as the world has stood pull a waggon in that way up this road? You think you know better than I in your conceited pride!” and he would have said more, but one of the inhabitants of heaven caught him by the neck and shoved him out of the place with a stern push. Just outside the gate Master Cobblersawl turned his head round, and saw the waggon raised up by four winged horses.

At the same moment he awoke. “Things are certainly somewhat different in heaven to what they are on earth,” he said to himself, “and much may therefore be excused; but who could patiently see two horses harnessed behind a waggon and two before? Certainly they had wings, but I did not observe that at first. However, it is a great absurdity that a horse with four good legs must have wings too! But I must get up, or else they will make further mistakes about that house. Still, after all, it is a very lucky thing that I am not dead.”