A Beautiful Message

Getting ready for the garage sale that we'll be having over the next couple days, I found The Little Mermaid and The Snow Queen in our boxes. I pulled them out, because as a kid I loved the images and the original stories by Hans Christian Andersen. I want to keep the books for my children so I can share it with them. Anyway, rereading The Little Mermaid today I came across a passage I thought worth sharing.

"The little mermaid grew to love humans more and more. She wished she could live among them. Their world was much larger than hers. Their countries stretched over forest and field farther than she could see. There was so much she wished to know. Her sisters could not answer all her questions, so she asked her grandmother, 'If humans do not drown, do they go on living? Do they ever die as we do here in the sea?'
'Yes, they must also die,' answered her grandmother, 'and their lifetime is shorter than ours. We live to be three hundred years old, but when we die we have no graves among our loved ones. We become foam on the ocean. We have no eternal soul which can go on living. But humans have a soul which lives forever. It rises through the air to the shining stars, to unknown, wonderful places which we will never see.'"