On a cold and snowy New Year’s Eve, a little girl walks the city streets barefoot and without a hat. Earlier in the day, the girl lost her slippers (which were too big for her) when she ran across the street to avoid two carriages that were going “awfully fast.” She couldn’t find one slipper, and the other was taken by a boy who—while laughing—said he could use it as a cradle for his own children someday. Without slippers, the girl’s feet are “swollen and red” from the cold. She is trying to sell matches, but nobody has bought any all day—she is “cowed by life, the poor thing!”
