The dwarf's spectacles, and other fairy tales

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"The dwarf's spectacles, and other fairy tales" by Max Simon Nordau is a collection of fairy tales written in the early 20th century. Framed as gentle bedtime fables for a child, the stories feature animals, toys, and humble folk whose misadventures teach clear moral lessons about kindness, humility, gratitude, and prudence. Expect vignettes about a sorrowing nightingale, a world‑weary fly, a proud doll, grateful sparrows, steadfast glow‑worms, and a country lad named Michel, all rendered with warm, simple charm.

The opening of the collection presents a sequence of brief, moral tales: a nightingale loses her brood to a cat, whereupon the rose‑bush grows thorns to protect future nests—and the bird’s song turns forever wistful; Buzz‑Buzz the fly survives winter only to be rejected by heedless youths and drifts into a painless death, underscoring the cycle of life; a girl’s cherished white mouse fears her giant “monster” touch until a fairy lets the child hear the mice speak, teaching that creatures seek their own kind; Aennchen’s grand doll Kunigunde scorns humbler companions and meets a sordid end, a warning against pride; a little girl who feeds sparrows is thrice saved by them—from poisoned sweets, a runaway horse, and even gypsies who abduct her—after which her family honors the birds; six glow‑worms kidnapped to light an owl student’s studies are freed by the very youth, and the meadow revelers rejoice as the owl stops forcing scholarship; and, at the start of the title tale, the honest farmhand Michel is twice swindled on the road, helps a stranded dwarf across a river, receives spectacles that reveal human thoughts, and immediately uses them to avoid undercutting local laborers, who in turn feed and clothe him.