YEARS ago there was a little girl who lived with her mother in a small house on the edge of a forest. They were very poor, and at length there came a time when they had nothing left to eat. One day the little girl went into the forest to get a few sticks with which to make a fire, and there she met an old woman who gave her a small pot, and said: “This pot will supply you with food, and you need never be hungry again. You have only to say, ‘Boil, little pot, boil!’ and it will cook you as much nice, sweet porridge as you can wish for. Just watch it, and when the porridge inside has increased to the amount you want, say, ‘Stop, little pot,’ and the boiling will immediately cease.”
The little girl thanked the old woman, and carried the pot home to her mother. After that they had plenty to eat, for the pot supplied them with sweet porridge as often as they pleased.
Everything prospered with them until one afternoon the little girl went for a walk in the fields outside of the village. She was gone so long that her mother became hungry, and said to the pot, “Boil, little pot, boil.”
At once the cooking began, but when the porridge in the pot had increased to enough for a meal, she could not think of the magic words to stop the boiling process. So the pot soon began to overflow, and it continued to boil and boil till the porridge filled the kitchen. In a little while the entire house was filled, and still the pot boiled. The porridge now commenced to stream out at the doors and windows and chimney. It filled the yard and the garden, it engulfed the next house, and the next, and soon the street was filled. The people fled before it, and it covered the whole village out of sight. It seemed likely to furnish food for all the world, and there is no knowing what might have happened if the little girl had not returned and called to the pot to stop.
Then it left off cooking; but for many a long day the people who wished to get into the village had to eat their way through a great mass of sweet porridge.