Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who
was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother,
and there was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave
her a little riding hood of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would
never wear anything else; so she was always called 'Little Red Riding Hood.'
One day her mother said to
her: 'Come, Little Red Riding Hood, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of
wine; take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her
good. Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk nicely and
quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and
then your grandmother will get nothing; and when you go into her room, don't
forget to say, "Good morning", and don't peep into every corner
before you do it.'
'I will take great care,'
said Little Red Riding Hood to her mother, and gave her hand on it.
The grandmother lived out
in the wood, half a league from the village, and just as Little Red Riding Hood
entered the wood, a wolf met her. Red Riding Hood did not know what a wicked
creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him.
'Good day, Little Red
Riding Hood,' said he.
'Thank you kindly, wolf.'
'Wither away so early,
Little Red Riding Hood?'
'To my grandmother's.'
'What have you got in your
apron?'
'Cake and wine; yesterday
was baking-day, so poor sick grandmother is to have something good, to make her
stronger.'
'Where does your
grandmother live, Little Red Riding Hood?'
'A good quarter of a
league farther on in the wood; her house stands under the three large
oak-trees, the nut-trees are just below; you surely must know it,' replied
Little Red Riding Hood.
The wolf thought to
himself: 'What a tender young creature! What a nice plump mouthful - she will
be better to eat than the old woman. I must act craftily, so as to catch both.'
So he walked for a short
time by the side of Little Red Riding Hood, and then he said: 'See, Little Red
Riding Hood, how pretty the flowers are about here - why do you not look round?
I believe, too, that you do not hear how sweetly the little birds are singing;
you walk gravely along as if you were going to school, while everything else
out here in the wood is merry.'
Little Red Riding Hood raised
her eyes, and when she saw the sunbeams dancing here and there through the
trees, and pretty flowers growing everywhere, she thought: 'Suppose I take
grandmother a fresh nosegay; that would please her too. It is so early in the
day that I shall still get there in good time.'
So she ran from the path
into the wood to look for flowers. And whenever she had picked one, she fancied
that she saw a still prettier one farther on, and ran after it, and so got
deeper and deeper into the wood.
Meanwhile the wolf ran
straight to the grandmother's house and knocked at the door.
'Who is there?'
'Little Red Riding Hood,'
replied the wolf. 'She is bringing cake and wine; open the door.'
'Lift the latch,' called
out the grandmother, 'I am too weak, and cannot get up.'
The wolf lifted the latch,
the door sprang open, and without saying a word he went straight to the
grandmother's bed, and devoured her. Then he put on her clothes, dressed
himself in her cap, laid himself in bed and drew the curtains.
Little Red Riding Hood,
however, had been running about picking flowers, and when she had gathered so
many that she could carry no more, she remembered her grandmother, and set out
on the way to her.
She was surprised to find
the cottage-door standing open, and when she went into the room, she had such a
strange feeling that she said to herself: 'Oh dear! How uneasy I feel today,
and at other times I like being with grandmother so much.' She called out:
'Good morning,' but received no answer; so she went to the bed and drew back
the curtains. There lay her grandmother with her cap pulled far over her face,
and looking very strange.
'Oh! Grandmother,' she
said, 'what big ears you have!'
'All the better to hear
you with, my child,' was the reply.
'But, grandmother, what
big eyes you have!' she said.
'All the better to see you
with, my dear.'
'But, grandmother, what
large hands you have!'
'All the better to hug you
with.'
'Oh! But, grandmother,
what a terrible big mouth you have!'
'All the better to eat you
with!'
And scarcely had the wolf
said this, than with one bound he was out of bed and swallowed up Red Riding
Hood.
When the wolf had appeased
his appetite, he lay down again in the bed, fell asleep and began to snore very
loud.
The huntsman was just
passing the house, and thought to himself: 'How the old woman is snoring! I
must just see if she wants anything.' So he went into the room, and when he
came to the bed, he saw that the wolf was lying in it.
'Do I find you here, you
old sinner!' said he. 'I have long sought you!' But just as he was going to
fire at him, it occurred to him that the wolf might have devoured the
grandmother, and that she might still be saved, so he did not fire, but took a
pair of scissors, and began to cut open the stomach of the sleeping wolf.
When he had made two
snips, he saw the little red riding hood shining, and then he made two snips
more, and the little girl sprang out, crying: 'Ah, how frightened I have been!
How dark it was inside the wolf.'
After that the aged
grandmother came out alive also, but scarcely able to breathe. Red Riding Hood,
however, quickly fetched great stones with which they filled the wolf's belly,
and when he awoke, he wanted to run away, but the stones were so heavy that he
collapsed at once, and fell dead.
Then all three were
delighted. The huntsman drew off the wolf's skin and went home with it; the
grandmother ate the cake and drank the wine which Red Riding Hood had brought,
and revived. But Red Riding Hood thought to herself: 'As long as I live, I will
never leave the path by myself to run into the wood, when my mother has
forbidden me to do so.'
It is also related that once, when Red Riding Hood
was again taking cakes to the old grandmother, another wolf spoke to her, and
tried to entice her from the path. Red Riding Hood, however, was on her guard,
and went straight forward on her way, and told her grandmother that she had met
the wolf, and that he had said 'good morning' to her, but with such a wicked
look in his eyes, that if they had not been on the public road she was certain
he would have eaten her up.
'Well,' said the
grandmother, 'we will shut the door, so that he cannot come in.'
Soon afterwards the wolf
knocked, and cried: 'Open the door, grandmother, I am Little Red Riding Hood,
and am bringing you some cakes.'
But they did not speak, or
open the door, so the grey-beard stole twice or thrice round the house, and at
last jumped on the roof, intending to wait until Red Riding Hood went home in
the evening, and then to steal after her and devour her in the darkness. But
the grandmother saw what was in his thoughts.
In front of the house was
a great stone trough, so she said to the child: 'Take the pail, Red Riding
Hood; I made some sausages yesterday, so carry the water in which I boiled them
to the trough.'
Red Riding Hood carried
until the great trough was quite full. Then the smell of the sausages reached
the wolf, and he sniffed and peeped down, and at last stretched out his neck so
far that he could no longer keep his footing and began to slip, and slipped
down from the roof straight into the great trough, and was drowned. But Red
Riding Hood went joyously home, and no one ever did anything to harm her again.
Apple held a special event yesterday, the 10th of September, to unveil their new iPhones - the 5C and 5S. A lot of leaked images and rumours showered the web before the launch, most of which happened to be true. Most surprisingly, the iPhone 5 has now been dropped from Apple's iPhone line-up.
It comes in three cool colours: silver, gold and space grey. As speculated, the iPhone 5S has the same 4-inch Retina display. It's 123.8 mm tall, 58.6 mm wide, 7.6 mm thin and weighs only 112 grams. The iPhone 5S features a super fast 64-bit A7 chip and an M7 motion coprocessor. The A7 chip is claimed to be up to twice as fast as the previous chip; and the CPU performance has apparently risen by 40x since the first iPhone - half of that increase coming from the A7. The graphics have risen by an astonishing 56x since the first iPhone, and once again half of that increase comes with the A7. The new M7 motion coprocessor "takes advantage of all the sensors and continuously measures the data coming from the gyroscope, accelerometer and compass without having to wake up the A7." This presumably saves battery life. Speaking of which, it is equal or greater than the iPhone 5's.
