STRIKE A MATCH TO YOUR EMOTIONS--LIVE LIFE!

A SHORT STORY FULL OF WISDOM


The Matchstick girl

    Once, a while back not really too long ago, people didn’t have gas and electricity in their homes. They used stick matches to light fires in their ovens or wood burning stoves, and that‘s how they kept warm. Mary’s family was very poor. It had been several years since she seen papa, and mama was having a hard time caring for the new baby.

   The month of December was just beginning and a real definite chill filled the air. School let out and as Mary walked through the field toward their hovel home where mama nursed the sick baby, she picked up small twigs and branches to start the fire to keep the house warm. Right then she remember. Mama had given her a nickel to buy some stick matches. So Mary ran back to old Mr. Smith’s store.

   “Why hello, Mary.” Mr. Smith declared.

   Mary smiled. Old Mr. Smith was blind as a bat. She didn’t know how he recognized her without his thick glasses.

   Lifting his glasses over his big nose. Mr. Smith laughed. “Little Mary,” he said. “You look so sweet in your white dress with that red ribbon tied like that in your hair.”

He opened the large glass jar on the counter. “Would you like a licorice?”

   “Oh yes, thank you. But here is a nickel. I would have some stick matches please.”

   “Very good,” he said, and handed her a black piece of candy. “Did you know how I got in business?” he asked.

    She shook her head.

   “I were about your age and I would buy a box of twenty matches like this one here, and I’d take them down the street to where the gentlemen all gather to smoke their pipes and I’d sell them one by one for a penny. I’d buy em for a nickel and sell em for twenty cents and make four times my money.” He paused and a broad smile broke on his face. “I had a lot of fun. Do you think you could do that?”

   “I don’t know.” Mary replied. She stood up on the stool next to Mr. Smith and gave him a kiss on his cheek. He blushed like a turnip.

   “Well, I never. Ain’t you sweet.”

   Across the field, over the path to home, Mary noticed a big gray cloud form. It was starting to get dark as she ran in the house, hugged her mother, and ran to light the fire with the matches.

  “Mary,” lamented her mother, “We haven’t any meat. We are out of vegetables. There is just enough wood to warm us for tonight, and I’m so tired I must sleep. I’m sorry.” She gave Mary the heal from an old dried loaf of bread. “Tomorrow is another day, everything will be better tomorrow.”

   Mary shivered. At least the fire warmed her, but how would they get money for food? She sat by the fire and thought and thought and then an idea came to her. “Mama?” she asked, but her mother had fallen asleep with the baby in her arms, and so Mary decided it was up to her. With a determined look on her face, she wrapped herself in a shall and took the box of matches. She wasn’t afraid of the dark and all the people of the town loved her. She would sell matches one by one and buy more at Mr. Smith’s shop until she had enough nickels to get meat and vegetables.

    There was a chill in the air. She shivered as she sat down under near the smoking club where gentlemen would buy her matches. Right then young Mr. Dartain, who seemed a little shaky on his feet, walked by.

   “Why Mary,” asked Dartain. “What are you doing out here?”

    “I’m selling matches. Would you like to buy one?”

    Dartain got a sly smile on his face. “Do they strike.”

   Mary struck one on the cold rough stone at their feet. “Of course!” She said, and how the fire warmed her hands and felt so good on her face. The night had begun to chill off and little flecks of snow filled the air. “Will you buy a match?”

   “Oh no, “ replied Dartain. “I’m so full of liquor and smoke I might explode.”

   Now Mary sat alone in the shadows and the chill was unbearable. She struck another match. How good it felt and how it filled her with warmth for now it had begun to snow.

   She struck another. Oh, it felt so good. Each match warmed her hands and her face. She decided to strike one more. A little later she felt so cold, she struck one more. 

   The next day they found her frozen stiff body covered in snow and all the burned matches in a little pile.

YOU CAN STRIKE A MATCH TO YOUR EMOTIONS IF YOU LIGHT A FIRE IN YOUR HEART THIS CHRISTMAS. 

      

 Me, Ashley, and Vince by a fire on the beach in Santa Barbara. Join us.