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In a village dwelt a poor old woman, who had gathered together a

dish of beans and wanted to cook them. So she made a fire on her

hearth, and that it might burn the quicker, she lighted it with a

handful of straw. When she was emptying the beans into the pan,

one dropped without her observing it, and lay on the ground

beside a straw, and soon afterwards a burning coal from the fire

leapt down to the two. Then the straw began and said: 'Dear

friends, from whence do you come here?' The coal replied: 'I

fortunately sprang out of the fire, and if I had not escaped by

sheer force, my death would have been certain,--I should have

been burnt to ashes.' The bean said: 'I too have escaped with a

whole skin, but if the old woman had got me into the pan, I

should have been made into broth without any mercy, like my

comrades.' 'And would a better fate have fallen to my lot?' said

the straw.