The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen. Short summary

5 seconds

The little beggar tried to keep warm by lighting one match after another. As she drifts to her death, she sees all the joys she was deprived of — the stove, the delicious food, the Christmas tree, the loving grandmother.

1 minute

On New Year’s Eve, a little girl was walking down the street. She didn’t dare go home, afraid of her father. She hadn’t sold a single box of matches and hadn’t made a penny.

The girl was barefoot, poorly dressed, and completely stiff. She peered through the windows, saw the people’s preparations for the feast.
The poor girl sat down behind a ledge of the wall to hide from the wind. Trying to keep warm, she lit a match. It seemed to her that she was sitting by a real stove, where the wood was crackling.

But the match burned out. The girl lit a second match. She saw a stuffed goose, but even that vision was short-lived. From the third match, a beautifully decorated Christmas tree appeared before her.

As the match went out, a star fell in the sky. «Someone is dying,» thought the girl, not realizing that she was the one who was freezing. She struck another match. Her deceased grandmother, the only person who had ever loved her, appeared before her.

To hold that vision, the girl lit the whole box. The grandmother took her granddaughter in her arms and flew off to heaven. And in the morning they found the girl’s stiffened corpse.