"The woman with the eggs" by H.C. Andersen

A woman lived at the country side, in her clever hen she took very great pride.
This hen laid an egg every blessed day, which was more than it’s duty, one would say, and when her harvest one day she counted to two scores of eggs, it then amounted.

With gentle hand she put them down, and off she went to the nearest town.
As fast as she could, her basket on head, along on her lonely journey she sped.
And while she was walking thus on the road, she constantly thought of her precious load, and she kept on saying to herself---“I bet that for these eggs a nice little sum I’ll get.

Two more hens I can buy me then, and three I’ll have in my chicken pen.
Each of them of course will begin to lay, and then I’ll sell again some day,
and get plenty of money to buy three more, that will make six with the three before.

Half of the eggs good money will fetch, the rest be put under a hen to hatch.
A chicken yard I shall get by and by, and it will grow, and the profit---oh my!
Good lord what richness will be in store, and time will bring me more and more.

I shall buy two geese and a little sheep, and quite a business I shall keep
with eggs and with hens, with feathers and wool, and soon my pocketbook will be full. I shall buy a cow, yes maybe two and a little pig would also do.

See this makes money, and in a year I shall have a farm and cattle---oh dear!
Then a suitor will come into my life, he will kiss my hand and make me his wife.
And he has a farm much bigger than mine. I shall be so distinguished, so proud and so fine.

I will not stand for the least bit of slander, but toss my head wherever I wander”.
And bang! – when she said it, she also did it. With this disaster her happiness fled—and perhaps as well, when all’s done and said.