安徒生童话 The Happy Family — Part 1

　　THE HAPPY FAMILY 幸福的家庭（一）

　　Really, the largest green leaf in this country is a dock-leaf; if one holds it before one, it is like a whole apron, and if one holds it over one"s head in rainy weather, it is almost as good as an umbrella, for it is so immensely large. The burdock never grows alone, but where there grows one there always grow several: it is a great delight, and all this delightfulness is snails" food. The great white snails which persons of quality in former times made fricassees of, ate, and said, "Hem, hem! how delicious!" for they thought it tasted so delicate--lived on dock-leaves, and therefore burdock seeds were sown.

　　Now, there was an old manor-house, where they no longer ate snails, they were quite extinct; but the burdocks were not extinct, they grew and grew all over the walks and all the beds; they could not get the mastery over them--it was a whole forest of burdocks. Here and there stood an apple and a plum-tree, or else ne never would have thought that it was a garden; all was burdocks, and there lived the two last venerable old snails.

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