Little Sunny Stories/Singing Thread

In a drawer of a sewing machine, there were a number of spools of thread.

All were of shiny silk except one spool of heavy linen thread. The spools of shiny silk thread did not like the spool of linen thread, for he was white and coarse. “Look at my beautiful purple silk!” cried one. “See the lustre of my crimson coat!” cried another.

“Now if you were only a lovely emerald green like me!” exclaimed a third. And so it went on ​day after day, the silken spools letting the spool of linen feel how ordinary he was.

“Pooh!” cried one, “You are only used to sew on pants buttons while we are used on the very prettiest dresses and hats!”

“I am sorry!” replied the spool of linen thread one day, ‘But this is the way I was made and I can not change myself!”

“You are practically good for nothing! We wish you would be taken from the drawer and never returned!” the silken spools all cried. And after that they would have nothing to do with the ordinary spool of linen thread.

One day a little brown hand reached amongst the spools and picked up the white spool of linen thread and took it from the drawer.

“Oh Goody! Goody!” cried all the silken spools,

The little brown hand put the spool of linen thread in a dark pocket and it was carried to the bank of the brook. There another little brown hand helped the first brown hand to unwind a long piece of the strong linen thread.

Then the spool of linen thread was placed in another pocket, but in this pocket there was a window. The window was a hole and the spool of linen thread, as it was jiggled around in the dark pocket, finally fell through the window and rolled to the ground, unobserved by the owner of the two little brown hands.

The spool of linen thread lay under the flowers until darkness came. A fire-fly creeping up out of the grass climbed upon it and threw the light of his tiny lantern upon the spool.

​“I must let them know!” the fire-fly cried, as he flew from the spool of white linen thread.

“Oh dear!” thought the spool, “He will tell the other spools of beautiful silk that I am here and I will be taken back to listen to their jeers!” And the poor little spool of linen thread tried to roll away.

Presently the fire-fly returned and with him two little elves. “Just what we have wanted!” cried the two little elves as they clapped their tiny hands, and they gathered up the spool of linen thread and flew to a tall tree where they unwound the thread from the spool and stretched it tightly from one twig to another until the linen thread was stretched in a great number of strings across the twigs and branches of the tree. As the last string was stretched

Soon a gentle breeze blew through the tree and and as it blew stronger and stronger it touched the linen threads stretched between the twigs and branches and played a beautiful melody on them. And, as the elves had stretched the thread in different lengths between the branches, each little thread gave forth a different tone and all of the different tones blended into beautiful song. The sounds from his own thread touched the little wooden spool and made him thrill with joyousness and pleasure, “I am of some use after all; I am made for beauty!” he thought, but he could not speak for he was full of the music played upon his own coarse white linen threads.

Other little elves, fairies and wood creatures, attracted by the wonderful harmony, came and ​sat upon the branches of the tree and did not speak, for they, too, were filled with the joyousness of the soft music. And so the hours passed swiftly away and melted into days and weeks and still the little spool upon the twig in the old tree listened to the melodies of his own threads as the wind breathed upon them and caressed them.

One day a little elf pointed to the spool and said to his brothers enjoying the music, “The roughest coat may hide the noblest heart; the homeliest may be the most beautiful within.”

And the wind came up fresher and stronger and played upon the linen threads until the swelling notes reached the silken spools far away in the machine drawer.

“Ah, listen to the beautiful harmony!” they said to one another.

​“We are glad the spool of coarse linen thread is not with us to spoil our pleasure, for he would not be able to enjoy the music!”