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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales, by
+Hans Christian Andersen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales
+
+Author: Hans Christian Andersen
+
+Illustrator: A. W. Bayes, and Brothers Dalziel (Engravers)
+
+Translator: H. W. Dulcken
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2008 [EBook #27000]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT THE MOON SAW: AND OTHER TALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Mark C. Orton, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       [Illustration: WALDEMAR DAA AND HIS DAUGHTERS. p. 122.]
+
+
+
+                          WHAT THE MOON SAW:
+
+                           AND OTHER TALES.
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                          HANS C. ANDERSEN.
+
+
+                            TRANSLATED BY
+
+                         H. W. DULCKEN, PH.D.
+
+
+              WITH EIGHTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. W. BAYES,
+
+                  ENGRAVED BY THE BROTHERS DALZIEL.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                               LONDON:
+
+                      GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
+
+                       BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL.
+
+                                1866.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_Uniform with_ "WHAT THE MOON SAW, and Other Tales," _price 5s.,
+extra cloth, on fine toned paper_,
+
+STORIES AND TALES
+
+BY
+
+HANS C. ANDERSEN.
+
+TRANSLATED BY H. W. DULCKEN, PH.D.
+
+EIGHTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. W. BAYES.
+
+ENGRAVED BY THE BROTHERS DALZIEL.
+
+*** _The two volumes,_ "STORIES AND TALES" _and_ "WHAT THE MOON SAW,"
+_form the most complete collection of_ HANS C. ANDERSEN'S _Tales
+published in this country._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The present book is put forth as a sequel to the volume of HANS C.
+ANDERSEN'S "Stories and Tales," published in a similar form in the
+course of 1864. It contains tales and sketches various in character;
+and following, as it does, an earlier volume, care has been taken to
+intersperse with the children's tales stories which, by their graver
+character and deeper meaning, are calculated to interest those
+"children of a larger growth" who can find instruction as well as
+amusement in the play of fancy and imagination, though the realm be
+that of fiction, and the instruction be conveyed in a simple form.
+
+The series of sketches of "What the Moon Saw," with which the present
+volume opens, arose from the experiences of ANDERSEN, when as a youth
+he went to seek his fortune in the capital of his native land; and the
+story entitled "Under the Willow Tree" is said likewise to have its
+foundation in fact; indeed, it seems redolent of the truth of that
+natural human love and suffering which is so truly said to "make the
+whole world kin."
+
+On the preparation and embellishment of the book, the same care and
+attention have been lavished as on the preceding volume. The pencil of
+Mr. BAYES and the graver of the BROTHERS DALZIEL have again been
+employed in the work of illustration; and it is hoped that the favour
+bestowed by the public on the former volume may be extended to this
+its successor.
+
+H. W. D.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                         PAGE
+
+What the Moon Saw                                          1
+
+The Story of the Year                                     40
+
+She was Good for Nothing                                  48
+
+"There is a Difference"                                   55
+
+Everything in its Right Place                             59
+
+The Goblin and the Huckster                               66
+
+In a Thousand Years                                       70
+
+The Bond of Friendship                                    72
+
+Jack the Dullard. An Old Story told Anew                  81
+
+Something                                                 86
+
+Under the Willow Tree                                     92
+
+The Beetle                                               107
+
+What the Old Man does is always Right                    114
+
+The Wind tells about Waldemar Daa and his Daughters      120
+
+Ib and Christine                                         130
+
+Ole the Tower-Keeper                                     142
+
+The Bottle-Neck                                          151
+
+Good Humour                                              161
+
+A Leaf from the Sky                                      165
+
+The Dumb Book                                            168
+
+The Jewish Girl                                          171
+
+The Thorny Road of Honour                                176
+
+The Old Gravestone                                       180
+
+The Old Bachelor's Nightcap                              184
+
+The Marsh King's Daughter                                196
+
+The Last Dream of the Old Oak Tree. A Christmas Tale     238
+
+The Bell-deep                                            244
+
+The Puppet Showman                                       247
+
+The Pigs                                                 251
+
+Anne Lisbeth                                             254
+
+Charming                                                 265
+
+In the Duck-yard                                         272
+
+The Girl who Trod on the Loaf                            277
+
+A Story from the Sand-dunes                              285
+
+The Bishop of Boerglum and his Warriors                   316
+
+The Snow Man                                             323
+
+Two Maidens                                              328
+
+The Farmyard Cock and the Weathercock                    330
+
+The Pen and Inkstand                                     332
+
+The Child in the Grave                                   334
+
+Soup on a Sausage-Peg                                    339
+
+The Stone of the Wise Men                                353
+
+The Butterfly                                            367
+
+In the Uttermost Parts of the Sea                        369
+
+The Phoenix Bird                                       371
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+WHAT THE MOON SAW.
+
+[Illustration: MY POST OF OBSERVATION.]
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+It is a strange thing, that when I feel most fervently and most
+deeply, my hands and my tongue seem alike tied, so that I cannot
+rightly describe or accurately portray the thoughts that are rising
+within me; and yet I am a painter: my eye tells me as much as that,
+and all my friends who have seen my sketches and fancies say the same.
+
+I am a poor lad, and live in one of the narrowest of lanes; but I do
+not want for light, as my room is high up in the house, with an
+extensive prospect over the neighbouring roofs. During the first few
+days I went to live in the town, I felt low-spirited and solitary
+enough. Instead of the forest and the green hills of former days, I
+had here only a forest of chimney-pots to look out upon. And then I
+had not a single friend; not one familiar face greeted me.
+
+So one evening I sat at the window, in a desponding mood; and
+presently I opened the casement and looked out. Oh, how my heart
+leaped up with joy! Here was a well-known face at last--a round,
+friendly countenance, the face of a good friend I had known at home.
+In, fact it was the MOON that looked in upon me. He was quite
+unchanged, the dear old Moon, and had the same face exactly that he
+used to show when he peered down upon me through the willow trees on
+the moor. I kissed my hand to him over and over again, as he shone far
+into my little room; and he, for his part, promised me that every
+evening, when he came abroad, he would look in upon me for a few
+moments. This promise he has faithfully kept. It is a pity that he can
+only stay such a short time when he comes. Whenever he appears, he
+tells me of one thing or another that he has seen on the previous
+night, or on that same evening. "Just paint the scenes I describe to
+you"--this is what he said to me--"and you will have a very pretty
+picture-book." I have followed his injunction for many evenings. I
+could make up a new "Thousand and One Nights," in my own way, out of
+these pictures, but the number might be too great, after all. The
+pictures I have here given have not been chosen at random, but follow
+in their proper order, just as they were described to me. Some great
+gifted painter, or some poet or musician, may make something more of
+them if he likes; what I have given here are only hasty sketches,
+hurriedly put upon the paper, with some of my own thoughts
+interspersed; for the Moon did not come to me every evening--a cloud
+sometimes hid his face from me.
+
+[Illustration: THE INDIAN GIRL.]
+
+
+FIRST EVENING.
+
+"Last night"--I am quoting the Moon's own words--"last night I was
+gliding through the cloudless Indian sky. My face was mirrored in the
+waters of the Ganges, and my beams strove to pierce through the thick
+intertwining boughs of the bananas, arching beneath me like the
+tortoise's shell. Forth from the thicket tripped a Hindoo maid, light
+as a gazelle, beautiful as Eve. Airy and ethereal as a vision, and yet
+sharply defined amid the surrounding shadows, stood this daughter of
+Hindostan: I could read on her delicate brow the thought that had
+brought her hither. The thorny creeping plants tore her sandals, but
+for all that she came rapidly forward. The deer that had come down to
+the river to quench their thirst, sprang by with a startled bound, for
+in her hand the maiden bore a lighted lamp. I could see the blood in
+her delicate finger tips, as she spread them for a screen before the
+dancing flame. She came down to the stream, and set the lamp upon the
+water, and let it float away. The flame flickered to and fro, and
+seemed ready to expire; but still the lamp burned on, and the girl's
+black sparkling eyes, half veiled behind their long silken lashes,
+followed it with a gaze of earnest intensity. She knew that if the
+lamp continued to burn so long as she could keep it in sight, her
+betrothed was still alive; but if the lamp was suddenly extinguished,
+he was dead. And the lamp burned bravely on, and she fell on her
+knees, and prayed. Near her in the grass lay a speckled snake, but she
+heeded it not--she thought only of Bramah and of her betrothed. 'He
+lives!' she shouted joyfully, 'he lives!' And from the mountains the
+echo came back upon her, 'he lives!'"
+
+[Illustration: THE LITTLE GIRL AND THE CHICKENS.]
+
+
+SECOND EVENING.
+
+"Yesterday," said the Moon to me, "I looked down upon a small
+courtyard surrounded on all sides by houses. In the courtyard sat a
+clucking hen with eleven chickens; and a pretty little girl was
+running and jumping around them. The hen was frightened, and screamed,
+and spread out her wings over the little brood. Then the girl's father
+came out and scolded her; and I glided away and thought no more of
+the matter.
+
+"But this evening, only a few minutes ago, I looked down into the same
+courtyard. Everything was quiet. But presently the little girl came
+forth again, crept quietly to the hen-house, pushed back the bolt, and
+slipped into the apartment of the hen and chickens. They cried out
+loudly, and came fluttering down from their perches, and ran about in
+dismay, and the little girl ran after them. I saw it quite plainly,
+for I looked through a hole in the hen-house wall. I was angry with
+the wilful child, and felt glad when her father came out and scolded
+her more violently than yesterday, holding her roughly by the arm: she
+held down her head, and her blue eyes were full of large tears. 'What
+are you about here?' he asked. She wept and said, 'I wanted to kiss
+the hen and beg her pardon for frightening her yesterday; but I was
+afraid to tell you.'
+
+"And the father kissed the innocent child's forehead, and I kissed her
+on the mouth and eyes."
+
+
+THIRD EVENING.
+
+"In the narrow street round the corner yonder--it is so narrow that my
+beams can only glide for a minute along the walls of the house, but in
+that minute I see enough to learn what the world is made of--in that
+narrow street I saw a woman. Sixteen years ago that woman was a child,
+playing in the garden of the old parsonage, in the country. The hedges
+of rose-bush were old, and the flowers were faded. They straggled wild
+over the paths, and the ragged branches grew up among the boughs of
+the apple trees; here and there were a few roses still in bloom--not
+so fair as the queen of flowers generally appears, but still they had
+colour and scent too. The clergyman's little daughter appeared to me a
+far lovelier rose, as she sat on her stool under the straggling hedge,
+hugging and caressing her doll with the battered pasteboard cheeks.
+
+"Ten years afterwards I saw her again. I beheld her in a splendid
+ball-room: she was the beautiful bride of a rich merchant. I rejoiced
+at her happiness, and sought her on calm quiet evenings--ah, nobody
+thinks of my clear eye and my silent glance! Alas! my rose ran wild,
+like the rose bushes in the garden of the parsonage. There are
+tragedies in every-day life, and to-night I saw the last act of one.
+
+"She was lying in bed in a house in that narrow street: she was sick
+unto death, and the cruel landlord came up, and tore away the thin
+coverlet, her only protection against the cold. 'Get up!' said he;
+'your face is enough to frighten one. Get up and dress yourself, give
+me money, or I'll turn you out into the street! Quick--get up!' She
+answered, 'Alas! death is gnawing at my heart. Let me rest.' But he
+forced her to get up and bathe her face, and put a wreath of roses in
+her hair; and he placed her in a chair at the window, with a candle
+burning beside her, and went away.
+
+"I looked at her, and she was sitting motionless, with her hands in
+her lap. The wind caught the open window and shut it with a crash, so
+that a pane came clattering down in fragments; but still she never
+moved. The curtain caught fire, and the flames played about her face;
+and I saw that she was dead. There at the open window sat the dead
+woman, preaching a sermon against _sin_--my poor faded rose out of the
+parsonage garden!"
+
+
+FOURTH EVENING.
+
+"This evening I saw a German play acted," said the Moon. "It was in a
+little town. A stable had been turned into a theatre; that is to say,
+the stable had been left standing, and had been turned into private
+boxes, and all the timber work had been covered with coloured paper. A
+little iron chandelier hung beneath the ceiling, and that it might be
+made to disappear into the ceiling, as it does in great theatres, when
+the _ting-ting_ of the prompter's bell is heard, a great inverted tub
+had been placed just above it.
+
+"'_Ting-ting!_' and the little iron chandelier suddenly rose at least
+half a yard and disappeared in the tub; and that was the sign that the
+play was going to begin. A young nobleman and his lady, who happened
+to be passing through the little town, were present at the
+performance, and consequently the house was crowded. But under the
+chandelier was a vacant space like a little crater: not a single soul
+sat there, for the tallow was dropping, drip, drip! I saw everything,
+for it was so warm in there that every loophole had been opened. The
+male and female servants stood outside, peeping through the chinks,
+although a real policeman was inside, threatening them with a stick.
+Close by the orchestra could be seen the noble young couple in two old
+arm-chairs, which were usually occupied by his worship the mayor and
+his lady; but these latter were to-day obliged to content themselves
+with wooden forms, just as if they had been ordinary citizens; and the
+lady observed quietly to herself, 'One sees, now, that there is rank
+above rank;' and this incident gave an air of extra festivity to the
+whole proceedings. The chandelier gave little leaps, the crowd got
+their knuckles rapped, and I, the Moon, was present at the performance
+from beginning to end."
+
+[Illustration: THE PLAY IN A STABLE.]
+
+
+FIFTH EVENING.
+
+"Yesterday," began the Moon, "I looked down upon the turmoil of Paris.
+My eye penetrated into an apartment of the Louvre. An old grandmother,
+poorly clad--she belonged to the working class--was following one of
+the under-servants into the great empty throne-room, for this was the
+apartment she wanted to see--that she was resolved to see; it had cost
+her many a little sacrifice, and many a coaxing word, to penetrate
+thus far. She folded her thin hands, and looked round with an air of
+reverence, as if she had been in a church.
+
+"'Here it was!' she said, 'here!' And she approached the throne, from
+which hung the rich velvet fringed with gold lace. 'There,' she
+exclaimed, 'there!' and she knelt and kissed the purple carpet. I
+think she was actually weeping.
+
+"'But it was not _this very_ velvet!' observed the footman, and a
+smile played about his mouth. 'True, but it was this very place,'
+replied the woman, 'and it must have looked just like this.' 'It
+looked so, and yet it did not,' observed the man: 'the windows were
+beaten in, and the doors were off their hinges, and there was blood
+upon the floor.' 'But for all that you can say, my grandson died upon
+the throne of France. Died!' mournfully repeated the old woman. I do
+not think another word was spoken, and they soon quitted the hall. The
+evening twilight faded, and my light shone doubly vivid upon the rich
+velvet that covered the throne of France.
+
+"Now, who do you think this poor woman was? Listen, I will tell you a
+story.
+
+"It happened, in the Revolution of July, on the evening of the most
+brilliantly victorious day, when every house was a fortress, every
+window a breastwork. The people stormed the Tuileries. Even women and
+children were to be found among the combatants. They penetrated into
+the apartments and halls of the palace. A poor half-grown boy in a
+ragged blouse fought among the older insurgents. Mortally wounded with
+several bayonet thrusts, he sank down. This happened in the
+throne-room. They laid the bleeding youth upon the throne of France,
+wrapped the velvet around his wounds, and his blood streamed forth
+upon the imperial purple. There was a picture! the splendid hall, the
+fighting groups! A torn flag lay upon the ground, the tricolor was
+waving above the bayonets, and on the throne lay the poor lad with the
+pale glorified countenance, his eyes turned towards the sky, his limbs
+writhing in the death agony, his breast bare, and his poor tattered
+clothing half hidden by the rich velvet embroidered with silver
+lilies. At the boy's cradle a prophecy had been spoken: 'He will die
+on the throne of France!' The mother's heart dreamt of a second
+Napoleon.
+
+"My beams have kissed the wreath of _immortelles_ on his grave, and
+this night they kissed the forehead of the old grandame, while in a
+dream the picture floated before her which thou mayest draw--the poor
+boy on the throne of France."
+
+
+SIXTH EVENING.
+
+"I've been in Upsala," said the Moon: "I looked down upon the great
+plain covered with coarse grass, and upon the barren fields. I
+mirrored my face in the Tyris river, while the steamboat drove the
+fish into the rushes. Beneath me floated the waves, throwing long
+shadows on the so-called graves of Odin, Thor, and Friga. In the
+scanty turf that covers the hill-side names have been cut.[1] There is
+no monument here, no memorial on which the traveller can have his name
+carved, no rocky wall on whose surface he can get it painted; so
+visitors have the turf cut away for that purpose. The naked earth
+peers through in the form of great letters and names; these form a
+network over the whole hill. Here is an immortality, which lasts till
+the fresh turf grows!
+
+[Footnote 1: Travellers on the Continent have frequent opportunities
+of seeing how universally this custom prevails among travellers. In
+some places on the Rhine, pots of paint and brushes are offered by the
+natives to the traveller desirous of "immortalising" himself.]
+
+"Up on the hill stood a man, a poet. He emptied the mead horn with the
+broad silver rim, and murmured a name. He begged the winds not to
+betray him, but I heard the name. I knew it. A count's coronet
+sparkles above it, and therefore he did not speak it out. I smiled,
+for I knew that a poet's crown adorns his own name. The nobility of
+Eleanora d'Este is attached to the name of Tasso. And I also know
+where the Rose of Beauty blooms!"
+
+Thus spake the Moon, and a cloud came between us. May no cloud
+separate the poet from the rose!
+
+
+SEVENTH EVENING.
+
+"Along the margin of the shore stretches a forest of firs and beeches,
+and fresh and fragrant is this wood; hundreds of nightingales visit it
+every spring. Close beside it is the sea, the ever-changing sea, and
+between the two is placed the broad high-road. One carriage after
+another rolls over it; but I did not follow them, for my eye loves
+best to rest upon one point. A Hun's Grave[2] lies there, and the sloe
+and blackthorn grow luxuriantly among the stones. Here is true poetry
+in nature.
+
+[Footnote 2: Large mounds similar to the "barrows" found in Britain,
+are thus designated in Germany and the North.]
+
+"And how do you think men appreciate this poetry? I will tell you what
+I heard there last evening and during the night.
+
+"First, two rich landed proprietors came driving by. 'Those are
+glorious trees!' said the first. 'Certainly; there are ten loads of
+firewood in each,' observed the other: 'it will be a hard winter, and
+last year we got fourteen dollars a load'--and they were gone. 'The
+road here is wretched,' observed another man who drove past. 'That's
+the fault of those horrible trees,' replied his neighbour; 'there is
+no free current of air; the wind can only come from the sea'--and they
+were gone. The stage coach went rattling past. All the passengers were
+asleep at this beautiful spot. The postillion blew his horn, but he
+only thought, 'I can play capitally. It sounds well here. I wonder if
+those in there like it?'--and the stage coach vanished. Then two young
+fellows came gallopping up on horseback. There's youth and spirit in
+the blood here! thought I; and, indeed, they looked with a smile at
+the moss-grown hill and thick forest. 'I should not dislike a walk
+here with the miller's Christine,' said one--and they flew past.
+
+"The flowers scented the air; every breath of air was hushed: it
+seemed as if the sea were a part of the sky that stretched above the
+deep valley. A carriage rolled by. Six people were sitting in it. Four
+of them were asleep; the fifth was thinking of his new summer coat,
+which would suit him admirably; the sixth turned to the coachman and
+asked him if there were anything remarkable connected with yonder heap
+of stones. 'No,' replied the coachman, 'it's only a heap of stones;
+but the trees are remarkable.' 'How so?' 'Why, I'll tell you how they
+are very remarkable. You see, in winter, when the snow lies very deep,
+and has hidden the whole road so that nothing is to be seen, those
+trees serve me for a landmark. I steer by them, so as not to drive
+into the sea; and you see that is why the trees are remarkable.'
+
+"Now came a painter. He spoke not a word, but his eyes sparkled. He
+began to whistle. At this the nightingales sang louder than ever.
+'Hold your tongues!' he cried testily; and he made accurate notes of
+all the colours and transitions--blue, and lilac, and dark brown.
+'That will make a beautiful picture,' he said. He took it in just as a
+mirror takes in a view; and as he worked he whistled a march of
+Rossini. And last of all came a poor girl. She laid aside the burden
+she carried, and sat down to rest upon the Hun's Grave. Her pale
+handsome face was bent in a listening attitude towards the forest. Her
+eyes brightened, she gazed earnestly at the sea and the sky, her hands
+were folded, and I think she prayed, 'Our Father.' She herself could
+not understand the feeling that swept through her, but I know that
+this minute, and the beautiful natural scene, will live within her
+memory for years, far more vividly and more truly than the painter
+could portray it with his colours on paper. My rays followed her till
+the morning dawn kissed her brow."
+
+[Illustration: THE POOR GIRL RESTS ON THE HUN'S GRAVE.]
+
+
+EIGHTH EVENING.
+
+Heavy clouds obscured the sky, and the Moon did not make his
+appearance at all. I stood in my little room, more lonely than ever,
+and looked up at the sky where he ought to have shown himself. My
+thoughts flew far away, up to my great friend, who every evening told
+me such pretty tales, and showed me pictures. Yes, he has had an
+experience indeed. He glided over the waters of the Deluge, and smiled
+on Noah's ark just as he lately glanced down upon me, and brought
+comfort and promise of a new world that was to spring forth from the
+old. When the Children of Israel sat weeping by the waters of Babylon,
+he glanced mournfully upon the willows where hung the silent harps.
+When Romeo climbed the balcony, and the promise of true love fluttered
+like a cherub toward heaven, the round Moon hung, half hidden among
+the dark cypresses, in the lucid air. He saw the captive giant at St.
+Helena, looking from the lonely rock across the wide ocean, while
+great thoughts swept through his soul. Ah! what tales the Moon can
+tell. Human life is like a story to him. To-night I shall not see thee
+again, old friend. To-night I can draw no picture of the memories of
+thy visit. And, as I looked dreamily towards the clouds, the sky
+became bright. There was a glancing light, and a beam from the Moon
+fell upon me. It vanished again, and dark clouds flew past; but still
+it was a greeting, a friendly good-night offered to me by the Moon.
+
+
+NINTH EVENING.
+
+The air was clear again. Several evenings had passed, and the Moon was
+in the first quarter. Again he gave me an outline for a sketch. Listen
+to what he told me.
+
+"I have followed the polar bird and the swimming whale to the eastern
+coast of Greenland. Gaunt ice-covered rocks and dark clouds hung over
+a valley, where dwarf willows and barberry bushes stood clothed in
+green. The blooming lychnis exhaled sweet odours. My light was faint,
+my face pale as the water lily that, torn from its stem, has been
+drifting for weeks with the tide. The crown-shaped Northern Light
+burned fiercely in the sky. Its ring was broad, and from its
+circumference the rays shot like whirling shafts of fire across the
+whole sky, flashing in changing radiance from green to red. The
+inhabitants of that icy region were assembling for dance and
+festivity; but, accustomed to this glorious spectacle, they scarcely
+deigned to glance at it. 'Let us leave the souls of the dead to their
+ball-play with the heads of the walruses,' they thought in their
+superstition, and they turned their whole attention to the song and
+dance. In the midst of the circle, and divested of his furry cloak,
+stood a Greenlander, with a small pipe, and he played and sang a song
+about catching the seal, and the chorus around chimed in with, '_Eia,
+Eia, Ah._' And in their white furs they danced about in the circle,
+till you might fancy it was a polar bear's ball.
+
+"And now a Court of Judgment was opened. Those Greenlanders who had
+quarrelled stepped forward, and the offended person chanted forth the
+faults of his adversary in an extempore song, turning them sharply
+into ridicule, to the sound of the pipe and the measure of the dance.
+The defendant replied with satire as keen, while the audience laughed,
+and gave their verdict. The rocks heaved, the glaciers melted, and
+great masses of ice and snow came crashing down, shivering to
+fragments as they fell: it was a glorious Greenland summer night. A
+hundred paces away, under the open tent of hides, lay a sick man. Life
+still flowed through his warm blood, but still he was to die--he
+himself felt it, and all who stood round him knew it also; therefore
+his wife was already sowing round him the shroud of furs, that she
+might not afterwards be obliged to touch the dead body. And she asked,
+'Wilt thou be buried on the rock, in the firm snow? I will deck the
+spot with thy _kayak_, and thy arrows, and the _angekokk_ shall dance
+over it. Or wouldst thou rather be buried in the sea?' 'In the sea,'
+he whispered, and nodded with a mournful smile. 'Yes, it is a pleasant
+summer tent, the sea,' observed the wife. 'Thousands of seals sport
+there, the walrus shall lie at thy feet, and the hunt will be safe and
+merry!' And the yelling children tore the outspread hide from the
+window-hole, that the dead man might be carried to the ocean, the
+billowy ocean, that had given him food in life, and that now, in
+death, was to afford him a place of rest. For his monument, he had the
+floating, ever-changing icebergs, whereon the seal sleeps, while the
+storm bird flies round their gleaming summits!"
+
+
+TENTH EVENING.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD MAID.]
+
+"I knew an old maid," said the Moon. "Every winter she wore a wrapper
+of yellow satin, and it always remained new, and was the only fashion
+she followed. In summer she always wore the same straw hat, and I
+verily believe the very same grey-blue dress.
+
+"She never went out, except across the street to an old female friend;
+and in later years she did not even take this walk, for the old friend
+was dead. In her solitude my old maid was always busy at the window,
+which was adorned in summer with pretty flowers, and in winter with
+cress, grown upon felt. During the last months I saw her no more at
+the window, but she was still alive. I knew that, for I had not yet
+seen her begin the 'long journey,' of which she often spoke with her
+friend. 'Yes, yes,' she was in the habit of saying, 'when I come to
+die, I shall take a longer journey than I have made my whole life
+long. Our family vault is six miles from here. I shall be carried
+there, and shall sleep there among my family and relatives.' Last
+night a van stopped at the house. A coffin was carried out, and then I
+knew that she was dead. They placed straw round the coffin, and the
+van drove away. There slept the quiet old lady, who had not gone out
+of her house once for the last year. The van rolled out through the
+town-gate as briskly as if it were going for a pleasant excursion. On
+the high-road the pace was quicker yet. The coachman looked nervously
+round every now and then--I fancy he half expected to see her sitting
+on the coffin, in her yellow satin wrapper. And because he was
+startled, he foolishly lashed his horses, while he held the reins so
+tightly that the poor beasts were in a foam: they were young and
+fiery. A hare jumped across the road and startled them, and they
+fairly ran away. The old sober maiden, who had for years and years
+moved quietly round and round in a dull circle, was now, in death,
+rattled over stock and stone on the public highway. The coffin in its
+covering of straw tumbled out of the van, and was left on the
+high-road, while horses, coachman, and carriage flew past in wild
+career. The lark rose up carolling from the field, twittering her
+morning lay over the coffin, and presently perched upon it, picking
+with her beak at the straw covering, as though she would tear it up.
+The lark rose up again, singing gaily, and I withdrew behind the red
+morning clouds."
+
+
+ELEVENTH EVENING.
+
+"I will give you a picture of Pompeii," said the Moon. "I was in the
+suburb in the Street of Tombs, as they call it, where the fair
+monuments stand, in the spot where, ages ago, the merry youths, their
+temples bound with rosy wreaths, danced with the fair sisters of Lais.
+Now, the stillness of death reigned around. German mercenaries, in the
+Neapolitan service, kept guard, played cards, and diced; and a troop
+of strangers from beyond the mountains came into the town, accompanied
+by a sentry. They wanted to see the city that had risen from the grave
+illumined by my beams; and I showed them the wheel-ruts in the streets
+paved with broad lava slabs; I showed them the names on the doors, and
+the signs that hung there yet: they saw in the little courtyard the
+basins of the fountains, ornamented with shells; but no jet of water
+gushed upwards, no songs sounded forth from the richly-painted
+chambers, where the bronze dog kept the door.
+
+"It was the City of the Dead; only Vesuvius thundered forth his
+everlasting hymn, each separate verse of which is called by men an
+eruption. We went to the temple of Venus, built of snow-white marble,
+with its high altar in front of the broad steps, and the weeping
+willows sprouting freshly forth among the pillars. The air was
+transparent and blue, and black Vesuvius formed the background, with
+fire ever shooting forth from it, like the stem of the pine tree.
+Above it stretched the smoky cloud in the silence of the night, like
+the crown of the pine, but in a blood-red illumination. Among the
+company was a lady singer, a real and great singer. I have witnessed
+the homage paid to her in the greatest cities of Europe. When they
+came to the tragic theatre, they all sat down on the amphitheatre
+steps, and thus a small part of the house was occupied by an audience,
+as it had been many centuries ago. The stage still stood unchanged,
+with its walled side-scenes, and the two arches in the background,
+through which the beholders saw the same scene that had been exhibited
+in the old times--a scene painted by nature herself, namely, the
+mountains between Sorento and Amalfi. The singer gaily mounted the
+ancient stage, and sang. The place inspired her, and she reminded me
+of a wild Arab horse, that rushes headlong on with snorting nostrils
+and flying mane--her song was so light and yet so firm. Anon I thought
+of the mourning mother beneath the cross at Golgotha, so deep was the
+expression of pain. And, just as it had done thousands of years ago,
+the sound of applause and delight now filled the theatre. 'Happy,
+gifted creature!' all the hearers exclaimed. Five minutes more, and
+the stage was empty, the company had vanished, and not a sound more
+was heard--all were gone. But the ruins stood unchanged, as they will
+stand when centuries shall have gone by, and when none shall know of
+the momentary applause and of the triumph of the fair songstress; when
+all will be forgotten and gone, and even for me this hour will be but
+a dream of the past."
+
+
+TWELFTH EVENING.
+
+"I looked through the windows of an editor's house," said the Moon.
+"It was somewhere in Germany. I saw handsome furniture, many books,
+and a chaos of newspapers. Several young men were present: the editor
+himself stood at his desk, and two little books, both by young
+authors, were to be noticed. 'This one has been sent to me,' said he.
+'I have not read it yet; what think _you_ of the contents?' 'Oh,' said
+the person addressed--he was a poet himself--'it is good enough; a
+little broad, certainly; but, you see, the author is still young. The
+verses might be better, to be sure; the thoughts are sound, though
+there is certainly a good deal of commonplace among them. But what
+will you have? You can't be always getting something new. That he'll
+turn out anything great I don't believe, but you may safely praise
+him. He is well read, a remarkable Oriental scholar, and has a good
+judgment. It was he who wrote that nice review of my 'Reflections on
+Domestic Life.' We must be lenient towards the young man.'
+
+"'But he is a complete hack!' objected another of the gentlemen.
+'Nothing is worse in poetry than mediocrity, and he certainly does not
+go beyond this.'
+
+"'Poor fellow,' observed a third, 'and his aunt is so happy about him.
+It was she, Mr. Editor, who got together so many subscribers for your
+last translation.'
+
+"'Ah, the good woman! Well, I have noticed the book briefly. Undoubted
+talent--a welcome offering--a flower in the garden of poetry--prettily
+brought out--and so on. But this other book--I suppose the author
+expects me to purchase it? I hear it is praised. He has genius,
+certainly; don't you think so?'
+
+"'Yes, all the world declares as much,' replied the poet, 'but it has
+turned out rather wildly. The punctuation of the book, in particular,
+is very eccentric.'
+
+"'It will be good for him if we pull him to pieces, and anger him a
+little, otherwise he will get too good an opinion of himself.'
+
+"'But that would be unfair,' objected the fourth. 'Let us not carp at
+little faults, but rejoice over the real and abundant good that we
+find here: he surpasses all the rest.'
+
+"'Not so. If he is a true genius, he can bear the sharp voice of
+censure. There are people enough to praise him. Don't let us quite
+turn his head.'
+
+"'Decided talent,' wrote the editor, 'with the usual carelessness.
+That he can write incorrect verses may be seen in page 25, where there
+are two false quantities. We recommend him to study the ancients,
+etc.'
+
+"I went away," continued the Moon, "and looked through the windows in
+the aunt's house. There sat the be-praised poet, the _tame_ one; all
+the guests paid homage to him, and he was happy.
+
+"I sought the other poet out, the _wild_ one; him also I found in a
+great assembly at his patron's, where the tame poet's book was being
+discussed.
+
+"'I shall read yours also,' said Maecenas; 'but to speak honestly--you
+know I never hide my opinion from you--I don't expect much from it,
+for you are much too wild, too fantastic. But it must be allowed that,
+as a man, you are highly respectable.'
+
+"A young girl sat in a corner; and she read in a book these words:
+
+    "'In the dust lies genius and glory,
+        But ev'ry-day talent will _pay_.
+      It's only the old, old story,
+        But the piece is repeated each day.'"
+
+
+THIRTEENTH EVENING.
+
+The Moon said, "Beside the woodland path there are two small
+farmhouses. The doors are low, and some of the windows are placed
+quite high, and others close to the ground; and whitethorn and
+barberry bushes grow around them. The roof of each house is overgrown
+with moss and with yellow flowers and houseleek. Cabbage and potatoes
+are the only plants cultivated in the gardens, but out of the hedge
+there grows a willow tree, and under this willow tree sat a little
+girl, and she sat with her eyes fixed upon the old oak tree between
+the two huts.
+
+"It was an old withered stem. It had been sawn off at the top, and a
+stork had built his nest upon it; and he stood in this nest clapping
+with his beak. A little boy came and stood by the girl's side: they
+were brother and sister.
+
+"'What are you looking at?' he asked.
+
+"'I'm watching the stork,' she replied: 'our neighbours told me that
+he would bring us a little brother or sister to-day; let us watch to
+see it come!'
+
+"'The stork brings no such things,' the boy declared, 'you may be sure
+of that. Our neighbour told me the same thing, but she laughed when
+she said it, and so I asked her if she could say 'On my honour,' and
+she could not; and I know by that that the story about the storks is
+not true, and that they only tell it to us children for fun.'
+
+"'But where do the babies come from, then?' asked the girl.
+
+"'Why, an angel from heaven brings them under his cloak, but no man
+can see him; and that's why we never know when he brings them.'
+
+"At that moment there was a rustling in the branches of the willow
+tree, and the children folded their hands and looked at one another:
+it was certainly the angel coming with the baby. They took each
+other's hand, and at that moment the door of one of the houses opened,
+and the neighbour appeared.
+
+[Illustration: WATCHING THE STORK.]
+
+"'Come in, you two,' she said. 'See what the stork has brought. It is
+a little brother.'
+
+"And the children nodded gravely at one another, for they had felt
+quite sure already that the baby was come."
+
+
+FOURTEENTH EVENING.
+
+"I was gliding over the Lueneburg Heath," the Moon said. "A lonely hut
+stood by the wayside, a few scanty bushes grew near it, and a
+nightingale who had lost his way sang sweetly. He died in the coldness
+of the night: it was his farewell song that I heard.
+
+"The morning dawn came glimmering red. I saw a caravan of emigrant
+peasant families who were bound to Hamburgh, there to take ship for
+America, where fancied prosperity would bloom for them. The mothers
+carried their little children at their backs, the elder ones tottered
+by their sides, and a poor starved horse tugged at a cart that bore
+their scanty effects. The cold wind whistled, and therefore the little
+girl nestled closer to the mother, who, looking up at my decreasing
+disc, thought of the bitter want at home, and spoke of the heavy taxes
+they had not been able to raise. The whole caravan thought of the same
+thing; therefore, the rising dawn seemed to them a message from the
+sun, of fortune that was to gleam brightly upon them. They heard the
+dying nightingale sing: it was no false prophet, but a harbinger of
+fortune. The wind whistled, therefore they did not understand that the
+nightingale sung, 'Fare away over the sea! Thou hast paid the long
+passage with all that was thine, and poor and helpless shalt thou
+enter Canaan. Thou must sell thyself, thy wife, and thy children. But
+your griefs shall not last long. Behind the broad fragrant leaves
+lurks the goddess of Death, and her welcome kiss shall breathe fever
+into thy blood. Fare away, fare away, over the heaving billows.' And
+the caravan listened well pleased to the song of the nightingale,
+which seemed to promise good fortune. Day broke through the light
+clouds; country people went across the heath to church: the
+black-gowned women with their white head-dresses looked like ghosts
+that had stepped forth from the church pictures. All around lay a wide
+dead plain, covered with faded brown heath, and black charred spaces
+between the white sand hills. The women carried hymn books, and walked
+into the church. Oh, pray, pray for those who are wandering to find
+graves beyond the foaming billows."
+
+[Illustration: PULCINELLA ON COLUMBINE'S GRAVE.]
+
+
+FIFTEENTH EVENING.
+
+"I know a Pulcinella,"[3] the Moon told me. "The public applaud
+vociferously directly they see him. Every one of his movements is
+comic, and is sure to throw the house into convulsions of laughter;
+and yet there is no art in it all--it is complete nature. When he was
+yet a little boy, playing about with other boys, he was already
+Punch. Nature had intended him for it, and had provided him with a
+hump on his back, and another on his breast; but his inward man, his
+mind, on the contrary, was richly furnished. No one could surpass him
+in depth of feeling or in readiness of intellect. The theatre was his
+ideal world. If he had possessed a slender well-shaped figure, he
+might have been the first tragedian on any stage: the heroic, the
+great, filled his soul; and yet he had to become a Pulcinella. His
+very sorrow and melancholy did but increase the comic dryness of his
+sharply-cut features, and increased the laughter of the audience, who
+showered plaudits on their favourite. The lovely Columbine was indeed
+kind and cordial to him; but she preferred to marry the Harlequin. It
+would have been too ridiculous if beauty and ugliness had in reality
+paired together.
+
+[Footnote 3: The comic or grotesque character of the Italian ballet,
+from which the English "Punch" takes his origin.]
+
+"When Pulcinella was in very bad spirits, she was the only one who
+could force a hearty burst of laughter, or even a smile from him:
+first she would be melancholy with him, then quieter, and at last
+quite cheerful and happy. 'I know very well what is the matter with
+you,' she said; 'yes, you're in love!' And he could not help laughing.
+'I and Love!' he cried, 'that would have an absurd look. How the
+public would shout!' 'Certainly, you are in love,' she continued; and
+added with a comic pathos, 'and I am the person you are in love with.'
+You see, such a thing may be said when it is quite out of the
+question--and, indeed, Pulcinella burst out laughing, and gave a leap
+into the air, and his melancholy was forgotten.
+
+"And yet she had only spoken the truth. He _did_ love her, love her
+adoringly, as he loved what was great and lofty in art. At her wedding
+he was the merriest among the guests, but in the stillness of night he
+wept: if the public had seen his distorted face then, they would have
+applauded rapturously.
+
+"And a few days ago, Columbine died. On the day of the funeral,
+Harlequin was not required to show himself on the boards, for he was a
+disconsolate widower. The director had to give a very merry piece,
+that the public might not too painfully miss the pretty Columbine and
+the agile Harlequin. Therefore Pulcinella had to be more boisterous
+and extravagant than ever; and he danced and capered, with despair in
+his heart; and the audience yelled, and shouted '_bravo, bravissimo!_'
+Pulcinella was actually called before the curtain. He was pronounced
+inimitable.
+
+"But last night the hideous little fellow went out of the town, quite
+alone, to the deserted churchyard. The wreath of flowers on
+Columbine's grave was already faded, and he sat down there. It was a
+study for a painter. As he sat with his chin on his hands, his eyes
+turned up towards me, he looked like a grotesque monument--a Punch on
+a grave--peculiar and whimsical! If the people could have seen their
+favourite, they would have cried as usual, '_Bravo, Pulcinella; bravo,
+bravissimo!_'"
+
+
+SIXTEENTH EVENING.
+
+Hear what the Moon told me. "I have seen the cadet who had just been
+made an officer put on his handsome uniform for the first time; I have
+seen the young bride in her wedding dress, and the princess girl-wife
+happy in her gorgeous robes; but never have I seen a felicity equal to
+that of a little girl of four years old, whom I watched this evening.
+She had received a new blue dress, and a new pink hat, the splendid
+attire had just been put on, and all were calling for a candle, for my
+rays, shining in through the windows of the room, were not bright
+enough for the occasion, and further illumination was required. There
+stood the little maid, stiff and upright as a doll, her arms stretched
+painfully straight out away from the dress, and her fingers apart; and
+oh, what happiness beamed from her eyes, and from her whole
+countenance! 'To-morrow you shall go out in your new clothes,' said
+her mother; and the little one looked up at her hat, and down at her
+frock, and smiled brightly. 'Mother,' she cried, 'what will the little
+dogs think, when they see me in these splendid new things?'"
+
+
+SEVENTEENTH EVENING.
+
+"I have spoken to you of Pompeii," said the Moon; "that corpse of a
+city, exposed in the view of living towns: I know another sight still
+more strange, and this is not the corpse, but the spectre of a city.
+Whenever the jetty fountains splash into the marble basins, they seem
+to me to be telling the story of the floating city. Yes, the spouting
+water may tell of her, the waves of the sea may sing of her fame! On
+the surface of the ocean a mist often rests, and that is her widow's
+veil. The bridegroom of the sea is dead, his palace and his city are
+his mausoleum! Dost thou know this city? She has never heard the
+rolling of wheels or the hoof-tread of horses in her streets, through
+which the fish swim, while the black gondola glides spectrally over
+the green water. I will show you the place," continued the Moon, "the
+largest square in it, and you will fancy yourself transported into the
+city of a fairy tale. The grass grows rank among the broad flagstones,
+and in the morning twilight thousands of tame pigeons flutter around
+the solitary lofty tower. On three sides you find yourself surrounded
+by cloistered walks. In these the silent Turk sits smoking his long
+pipe, the handsome Greek leans against the pillar and gazes at the
+upraised trophies and lofty masts, memorials of power that is gone.
+The flags hang down like mourning scarves. A girl rests there: she has
+put down her heavy pails filled with water, the yoke with which she
+has carried them rests on one of her shoulders, and she leans against
+the mast of victory. That is not a fairy palace you see before you
+yonder, but a church: the gilded domes and shining orbs flash back my
+beams; the glorious bronze horses up yonder have made journeys, like
+the bronze horse in the fairy tale: they have come hither, and gone
+hence, and have returned again. Do you notice the variegated splendour
+of the walls and windows? It looks as if Genius had followed the
+caprices of a child, in the adornment of these singular temples. Do
+you see the winged lion on the pillar? The gold glitters still, but
+his wings are tied--the lion is dead, for the king of the sea is dead;
+the great halls stand desolate, and where gorgeous paintings hung of
+yore, the naked wall now peers through. The _lazzarone_ sleeps under
+the arcade, whose pavement in old times was to be trodden only by the
+feet of high nobility. From the deep wells, and perhaps from the
+prisons by the Bridge of Sighs, rise the accents of woe, as at the
+time when the tambourine was heard in the gay gondolas, and the golden
+ring was cast from the _Bucentaur_ to Adria, the queen of the seas.
+Adria! shroud thyself in mists; let the veil of thy widowhood shroud
+thy form, and clothe in the weeds of woe the mausoleum of thy
+bridegroom--the marble, spectral Venice."
+
+
+EIGHTEENTH EVENING.
+
+"I looked down upon a great theatre," said the Moon. "The house was
+crowded, for a new actor was to make his first appearance that night.
+My rays glided over a little window in the wall, and I saw a painted
+face with the forehead pressed against the panes. It was the hero of
+the evening. The knightly beard curled crisply about the chin; but
+there were tears in the man's eyes, for he had been hissed off, and
+indeed with reason. The poor Incapable! But Incapables cannot be
+admitted into the empire of Art. He had deep feeling, and loved his
+art enthusiastically, but the art loved not him. The prompter's bell
+sounded; '_the hero enters with a determined air_,' so ran the stage
+direction in his part, and he had to appear before an audience who
+turned him into ridicule. When the piece was over, I saw a form
+wrapped in a mantle, creeping down the steps: it was the vanquished
+knight of the evening. The scene-shifters whispered to one another,
+and I followed the poor fellow home to his room. To hang one's self is
+to die a mean death, and poison is not always at hand, I know; but he
+thought of both. I saw how he looked at his pale face in the glass,
+with eyes half closed, to see if he should look well as a corpse. A
+man may be very unhappy, and yet exceedingly affected. He thought of
+death, of suicide; I believe he pitied himself, for he wept bitterly,
+and when a man has had his cry out he doesn't kill himself.
+
+"Since that time a year had rolled by. Again a play was to be acted,
+but in a little theatre, and by a poor strolling company. Again I saw
+the well-remembered face, with the painted cheeks and the crisp beard.
+He looked up at me and smiled; and yet he had been hissed off only a
+minute before--hissed off from a wretched theatre, by a miserable
+audience. And to-night a shabby hearse rolled out of the town-gate. It
+was a suicide--our painted, despised hero. The driver of the hearse
+was the only person present, for no one followed except my beams. In a
+corner of the churchyard the corpse of the suicide was shovelled into
+the earth, and nettles will soon be growing rankly over his grave, and
+the sexton will throw thorns and weeds from the other graves upon it."
+
+
+NINETEENTH EVENING.
+
+"I come from Rome," said the Moon. "In the midst of the city, upon one
+of the seven hills, lie the ruins of the imperial palace. The wild fig
+tree grows in the clefts of the wall, and covers the nakedness thereof
+with its broad grey-green leaves; trampling among heaps of rubbish,
+the ass treads upon green laurels, and rejoices over the rank
+thistles. From this spot, whence the eagles of Rome once flew abroad,
+whence they 'came, saw, and conquered,' our door leads into a little
+mean house, built of clay between two pillars; the wild vine hangs
+like a mourning garland over the crooked window. An old woman and her
+little granddaughter live there: they rule now in the palace of the
+Caesars, and show to strangers the remains of its past glories. Of the
+splendid throne-hall only a naked wall yet stands, and a black cypress
+throws its dark shadow on the spot where the throne once stood. The
+dust lies several feet deep on the broken pavement; and the little
+maiden, now the daughter of the imperial palace, often sits there on
+her stool when the evening bells ring. The keyhole of the door close
+by she calls her turret window; through this she can see half Rome, as
+far as the mighty cupola of St. Peter's.
+
+"On this evening, as usual, stillness reigned around; and in the full
+beam of my light came the little granddaughter. On her head she
+carried an earthen pitcher of antique shape filled with water. Her
+feet were bare, her short frock and her white sleeves were torn. I
+kissed her pretty round shoulders, her dark eyes, and black shining
+hair. She mounted the stairs; they were steep, having been made up of
+rough blocks of broken marble and the capital of a fallen pillar. The
+coloured lizards slipped away, startled, from before her feet, but she
+was not frightened at them. Already she lifted her hand to pull the
+door-bell--a hare's foot fastened to a string formed the bell-handle
+of the imperial palace. She paused for a moment--of what might she be
+thinking? Perhaps of the beautiful Christ-child, dressed in gold and
+silver, which was down below in the chapel, where the silver
+candlesticks gleamed so bright, and where her little friends sung the
+hymns in which she also could join? I know not. Presently she moved
+again--she stumbled; the earthen vessel fell from her head, and broke
+on the marble steps. She burst into tears. The beautiful daughter of
+the imperial palace wept over the worthless broken pitcher; with her
+bare feet she stood there weeping, and dared not pull the string, the
+bell-rope of the imperial palace!"
+
+
+TWENTIETH EVENING.
+
+It was more than a fortnight since the Moon had shone. Now he stood
+once more, round and bright, above the clouds, moving slowly onward.
+Hear what the Moon told me.
+
+"From a town in Fezzan I followed a caravan. On the margin of the
+sandy desert, in a salt plain, that shone like a frozen lake, and was
+only covered in spots with light drifting sand, a halt was made. The
+eldest of the company--the water gourd hung at his girdle, and on his
+head was a little bag of unleavened bread--drew a square in the sand
+with his staff, and wrote in it a few words out of the Koran, and then
+the whole caravan passed over the consecrated spot. A young merchant,
+a child of the East, as I could tell by his eye and his figure, rode
+pensively forward on his white snorting steed. Was he thinking,
+perchance, of his fair young wife? It was only two days ago that the
+camel, adorned with furs and with costly shawls, had carried her, the
+beauteous bride, round the walls of the city, while drums and cymbals
+had sounded, the women sang, and festive shots, of which the
+bridegroom fired the greatest number, resounded round the camel; and
+now he was journeying with the caravan across the desert.
+
+"For many nights I followed the train. I saw them rest by the
+well-side among the stunted palms; they thrust the knife into the
+breast of the camel that had fallen, and roasted its flesh by the
+fire. My beams cooled the glowing sands, and showed them the black
+rocks, dead islands in the immense ocean of sand. No hostile tribes
+met them in their pathless route, no storms arose, no columns of sand
+whirled destruction over the journeying caravan. At home the beautiful
+wife prayed for her husband and her father. 'Are they dead?' she asked
+of my golden crescent; 'Are they dead?' she cried to my full disc. Now
+the desert lies behind them. This evening they sit beneath the lofty
+palm trees, where the crane flutters round them with its long wings,
+and the pelican watches them from the branches of the mimosa. The
+luxuriant herbage is trampled down, crushed by the feet of elephants.
+A troop of negroes are returning from a market in the interior of the
+land: the women, with copper buttons in their black hair, and decked
+out in clothes dyed with indigo, drive the heavily-laden oxen, on
+whose backs slumber the naked black children. A negro leads a young
+lion which he has bought, by a string. They approach the caravan; the
+young merchant sits pensive and motionless, thinking of his beautiful
+wife, dreaming, in the land of the blacks, of his white fragrant lily
+beyond the desert. He raises his head, and----" But at this moment a
+cloud passed before the Moon, and then another. I heard nothing more
+from him this evening.
+
+
+TWENTY-FIRST EVENING.
+
+[Illustration: THE LITTLE GIRL'S TROUBLE.]
+
+"I saw a little girl weeping," said the Moon; "she was weeping over
+the depravity of the world. She had received a most beautiful doll as
+a present. Oh, that was a glorious doll, so fair and delicate! She did
+not seem created for the sorrows of this world. But the brothers of
+the little girl, those great naughty boys, had set the doll high up in
+the branches of a tree, and had run away.
+
+"The little girl could not reach up to the doll, and could not help
+her down, and that is why she was crying. The doll must certainly have
+been crying too; for she stretched out her arms among the green
+branches, and looked quite mournful. Yes, these are the troubles of
+life of which the little girl had often heard tell. Alas, poor doll!
+it began to grow dark already; and suppose night were to come on
+completely! Was she to be left sitting there alone on the bough all
+night long? No, the little maid could not make up her mind to that.
+'I'll stay with you,' she said, although she felt anything but happy
+in her mind. She could almost fancy she distinctly saw little gnomes,
+with their high-crowned hats, sitting in the bushes; and further back
+in the long walk, tall spectres appeared to be dancing. They came
+nearer and nearer, and stretched out their hands towards the tree on
+which the doll sat; they laughed scornfully, and pointed at her with
+their fingers. Oh, how frightened the little maid was! 'But if one has
+not done anything wrong,' she thought, 'nothing evil can harm one. I
+wonder if I have done anything wrong?' And she considered. 'Oh, yes!
+I laughed at the poor duck with the red rag on her leg; she limped
+along so funnily, I could not help laughing; but it's a sin to laugh
+at animals.' And she looked up at the doll. 'Did you laugh at the duck
+too?' she asked; and it seemed as if the doll shook her head."
+
+
+TWENTY-SECOND EVENING.
+
+"I looked down upon Tyrol," said the Moon, "and my beams caused the
+dark pines to throw long shadows upon the rocks. I looked at the
+pictures of St. Christopher carrying the Infant Jesus that are painted
+there upon the walls of the houses, colossal figures reaching from the
+ground to the roof. St. Florian was represented pouring water on the
+burning house, and the Lord hung bleeding on the great cross by the
+wayside. To the present generation these are old pictures, but I saw
+when they were put up, and marked how one followed the other. On the
+brow of the mountain yonder is perched, like a swallow's nest, a
+lonely convent of nuns. Two of the sisters stood up in the tower
+tolling the bell; they were both young, and therefore their glances
+flew over the mountain out into the world. A travelling coach passed
+by below, the postillion wound his horn, and the poor nuns looked
+after the carriage for a moment with a mournful glance, and a tear
+gleamed in the eyes of the younger one. And the horn sounded faint and
+more faintly, and the convent bell drowned its expiring echoes."
+
+
+TWENTY-THIRD EVENING.
+
+Hear what the Moon told me. "Some years ago, here in Copenhagen, I
+looked through the window of a mean little room. The father and mother
+slept, but the little son was not asleep. I saw the flowered cotton
+curtains of the bed move, and the child peep forth. At first I thought
+he was looking at the great clock, which was gaily painted in red and
+green. At the top sat a cuckoo, below hung the heavy leaden weights,
+and the pendulum with the polished disc of metal went to and fro, and
+said 'tick, tick.' But no, he was not looking at the clock, but at his
+mother's spinning wheel, that stood just underneath it. That was the
+boy's favourite piece of furniture, but he dared not touch it, for if
+he meddled with it he got a rap on the knuckles. For hours together,
+when his mother was spinning, he would sit quietly by her side,
+watching the murmuring spindle and the revolving wheel, and as he sat
+he thought of many things. Oh, if he might only turn the wheel
+himself! Father and mother were asleep; he looked at them, and looked
+at the spinning wheel, and presently a little naked foot peered out of
+the bed, and then a second foot, and then two little white legs. There
+he stood. He looked round once more, to see if father and mother were
+still asleep--yes, they slept; and now he crept _softly_, _softly_, in
+his short little nightgown, to the spinning wheel, and began to spin.
+The thread flew from the wheel, and the wheel whirled faster and
+faster. I kissed his fair hair and his blue eyes, it was such a pretty
+picture.
+
+"At that moment the mother awoke. The curtain shook, she looked forth,
+and fancied she saw a gnome or some other kind of little spectre. 'In
+Heaven's name!' she cried, and aroused her husband in a frightened
+way. He opened his eyes, rubbed them with his hands, and looked at the
+brisk little lad. 'Why, that is Bertel,' said he. And my eye quitted
+the poor room, for I have so much to see. At the same moment I looked
+at the halls of the Vatican, where the marble gods are enthroned. I
+shone upon the group of the Laocoon; the stone seemed to sigh. I
+pressed a silent kiss on the lips of the Muses, and they seemed to
+stir and move. But my rays lingered longest about the Nile group with
+the colossal god. Leaning against the Sphinx, he lies there thoughtful
+and meditative, as if he were thinking on the rolling centuries; and
+little love-gods sport with him and with the crocodiles. In the horn
+of plenty sat with folded arms a little tiny love-god, contemplating
+the great solemn river-god, a true picture of the boy at the spinning
+wheel--the features were exactly the same. Charming and life-like
+stood the little marble form, and yet the wheel of the year has turned
+more than a thousand times since the time when it sprang forth from
+the stone. Just as often as the boy in the little room turned the
+spinning wheel had the great wheel murmured, before the age could
+again call forth marble gods equal to those he afterwards formed.
+
+"Years have passed since all this happened," the Moon went on to say.
+"Yesterday I looked upon a bay on the eastern coast of Denmark.
+Glorious woods are there, and high trees, an old knightly castle with
+red walls, swans floating in the ponds, and in the background appears,
+among orchards, a little town with a church. Many boats, the crews all
+furnished with torches, glided over the silent expanse--but these
+fires had not been kindled for catching fish, for everything had a
+festive look. Music sounded, a song was sung, and in one of the boats
+the man stood erect to whom homage was paid by the rest, a tall sturdy
+man, wrapped in a cloak. He had blue eyes and long white hair. I knew
+him, and thought of the Vatican, and of the group of the Nile, and
+the old marble gods. I thought of the simple little room where little
+Bertel sat in his night-shirt by the spinning wheel. The wheel of time
+has turned, and new gods have come forth from the stone. From the
+boats there arose a shout: 'Hurrah, hurrah for Bertel Thorwaldsen!'"
+
+[Illustration: LITTLE BERTEL'S AMBITION.]
+
+
+TWENTY-FOURTH EVENING.
+
+"I will now give you a picture from Frankfort," said the Moon. "I
+especially noticed one building there. It was not the house in which
+Goethe was born, nor the old Council House, through whose grated
+windows peered the horns of the oxen that were roasted and given to
+the people when the emperors were crowned. No, it was a private house,
+plain in appearance, and painted green. It stood near the old Jews'
+Street. It was Rothschild's house.
+
+"I looked through the open door. The staircase was brilliantly
+lighted: servants carrying wax candles in massive silver candlesticks
+stood there, and bowed low before an old woman, who was being brought
+downstairs in a litter. The proprietor of the house stood bare-headed,
+and respectfully imprinted a kiss on the hand of the old woman. She
+was his mother. She nodded in a friendly manner to him and to the
+servants, and they carried her into the dark narrow street, into a
+little house, that was her dwelling. Here her children had been born,
+from hence the fortune of the family had arisen. If she deserted the
+despised street and the little house, fortune would also desert her
+children. That was her firm belief."
+
+The Moon told me no more; his visit this evening was far too short.
+But I thought of the old woman in the narrow despised street. It would
+have cost her but a word, and a brilliant house would have arisen for
+her on the banks of the Thames--a word, and a villa would have been
+prepared in the Bay of Naples.
+
+"If I deserted the lowly house, where the fortunes of my sons first
+began to bloom, fortune would desert them!" It was a superstition, but
+a superstition of such a class, that he who knows the story and has
+seen this picture, need have only two words placed under the picture
+to make him understand it; and these two words are: "A mother."
+
+
+TWENTY-FIFTH EVENING.
+
+"It was yesterday, in the morning twilight"--these are the words the
+Moon told me--"in the great city no chimney was yet smoking--and it
+was just at the chimneys that I was looking. Suddenly a little head
+emerged from one of them, and then half a body, the arms resting on
+the rim of the chimney-pot. 'Ya-hip! ya-hip!' cried a voice. It was
+the little chimney-sweeper, who had for the first time in his life
+crept through a chimney, and stuck out his head at the top. 'Ya-hip!
+ya-hip!' Yes, certainly that was a very different thing to creeping
+about in the dark narrow chimneys! the air blew so fresh, and he could
+look over the whole city towards the green wood. The sun was just
+rising. It shone round and great, just in his face, that beamed with
+triumph, though it was very prettily blacked with soot.
+
+"'The whole town can see me now,' he exclaimed, 'and the moon can see
+me now, and the sun too. Ya-hip! ya-hip!' And he flourished his broom
+in triumph."
+
+[Illustration: PRETTY PU.]
+
+
+TWENTY-SIXTH EVENING.
+
+"Last night I looked down upon a town in China," said the Moon. "My
+beams irradiated the naked walls that form the streets there. Now and
+then, certainly, a door is seen; but it is locked, for what does the
+Chinaman care about the outer world? Close wooden shutters covered the
+windows behind the walls of the houses; but through the windows of
+the temple a faint light glimmered. I looked in, and saw the quaint
+decorations within. From the floor to the ceiling pictures are
+painted, in the most glaring colours, and richly gilt--pictures
+representing the deeds of the gods here on earth. In each niche
+statues are placed, but they are almost entirely hidden by the
+coloured drapery and the banners that hang down. Before each idol (and
+they are all made of tin) stood a little altar of holy water, with
+flowers and burning wax lights on it. Above all the rest stood Fo, the
+chief deity, clad in a garment of yellow silk, for yellow is here the
+sacred colour. At the foot of the altar sat a living being, a young
+priest. He appeared to be praying, but in the midst of his prayer he
+seemed to fall into deep thought, and this must have been wrong, for
+his cheeks glowed and he held down his head. Poor Soui-hong! Was he,
+perhaps, dreaming of working in the little flower garden behind the
+high street wall? And did that occupation seem more agreeable to him
+than watching the wax lights in the temple? Or did he wish to sit at
+the rich feast, wiping his mouth with silver paper between each
+course? Or was his sin so great that, if he dared utter it, the
+Celestial Empire would punish it with death? Had his thoughts ventured
+to fly with the ships of the barbarians, to their homes in far distant
+England? No, his thoughts did not fly so far, and yet they were
+sinful, sinful as thoughts born of young hearts, sinful here in the
+temple, in the presence of Fo and the other holy gods.
+
+"I know whither his thoughts had strayed. At the farther end of the
+city, on the flat roof paved with porcelain, on which stood the
+handsome vases covered with painted flowers, sat the beauteous Pu, of
+the little roguish eyes, of the full lips, and of the tiny feet. The
+tight shoe pained her, but her heart pained her still more. She lifted
+her graceful round arm, and her satin dress rustled. Before her stood
+a glass bowl containing four gold-fish. She stirred the bowl carefully
+with a slender lacquered stick, very slowly, for she, too, was lost in
+thought. Was she thinking, perchance, how the fishes were richly
+clothed in gold, how they lived calmly and peacefully in their crystal
+world, how they were regularly fed, and yet how much happier they
+might be if they were free? Yes, that she could well understand, the
+beautiful Pu. Her thoughts wandered away from her home, wandered to
+the temple, but not for the sake of holy things. Poor Pu! Poor
+Soui-hong!
+
+"Their earthly thoughts met, but my cold beam lay between the two,
+like the sword of the cherub."
+
+
+TWENTY-SEVENTH EVENING.
+
+"The air was calm," said the Moon; "the water was transparent as the
+purest ether through which I was gliding, and deep below the surface I
+could see the strange plants that stretched up their long arms towards
+me like the gigantic trees of the forest. The fishes swam to and fro
+above their tops. High in the air a flight of wild swans were winging
+their way, one of which sank lower and lower, with wearied pinions,
+his eyes following the airy caravan, that melted farther and farther
+into the distance. With outspread wings he sank slowly, as a soap
+bubble sinks in the still air, till he touched the water. At length
+his head lay back between his wings, and silently he lay there, like a
+white lotus flower upon the quiet lake. And a gentle wind arose, and
+crisped the quiet surface, which gleamed like the clouds that poured
+along in great broad waves; and the swan raised his head, and the
+glowing water splashed like blue fire over his breast and back. The
+morning dawn illuminated the red clouds, the swan rose strengthened,
+and flew towards the rising sun, towards the bluish coast whither the
+caravan had gone; but he flew alone, with a longing in his breast.
+Lonely he flew over the blue swelling billows."
+
+
+TWENTY-EIGHTH EVENING.
+
+"I will give you another picture of Sweden," said the Moon. "Among
+dark pine woods, near the melancholy banks of the Stoxen, lies the old
+convent church of Wreta. My rays glided through the grating into the
+roomy vaults, where kings sleep tranquilly in great stone coffins. On
+the wall, above the grave of each, is placed the emblem of earthly
+grandeur, a kingly crown; but it is made only of wood, painted and
+gilt, and is hung on a wooden peg driven into the wall. The worms have
+gnawed the gilded wood, the spider has spun her web from the crown
+down to the sand, like a mourning banner, frail and transient as the
+grief of mortals. How quietly they sleep! I can remember them quite
+plainly. I still see the bold smile on their lips, that so strongly
+and plainly expressed joy or grief. When the steamboat winds along
+like a magic snail over the lakes, a stranger often comes to the
+church, and visits the burial vault; he asks the names of the kings,
+and they have a dead and forgotten sound. He glances with a smile at
+the worm-eaten crowns, and if he happens to be a pious, thoughtful
+man, something of melancholy mingles with the smile. Slumber on, ye
+dead ones! The Moon thinks of you, the Moon at night sends down his
+rays into your silent kingdom, over which hangs the crown of pine
+wood."
+
+
+TWENTY-NINTH EVENING.
+
+"Close by the high-road," said the Moon, "is an inn, and opposite to
+it is a great waggon-shed, whose straw roof was just being
+re-thatched. I looked down between the bare rafters and through the
+open loft into the comfortless space below. The turkey-cock slept on
+the beam, and the saddle rested in the empty crib. In the middle of
+the shed stood a travelling carriage; the proprietor was inside, fast
+asleep, while the horses were being watered. The coachman stretched
+himself, though I am very sure that he had been most comfortably
+asleep half the last stage. The door of the servants' room stood open,
+and the bed looked as if it had been turned over and over; the candle
+stood on the floor, and had burnt deep down into the socket. The wind
+blew cold through the shed: it was nearer to the dawn than to
+midnight. In the wooden frame on the ground slept a wandering family
+of musicians. The father and mother seemed to be dreaming of the
+burning liquor that remained in the bottle. The little pale daughter
+was dreaming too, for her eyes were wet with tears. The harp stood at
+their heads, and the dog lay stretched at their feet."
+
+
+THIRTIETH EVENING.
+
+[Illustration: THE BEAR PLAYING AT SOLDIERS WITH THE CHILDREN.]
+
+"It was in a little provincial town," the Moon said; "it certainly happened
+last year, but that has nothing to do with the matter. I saw it quite
+plainly. To-day I read about it in the papers, but there it was not half so
+clearly expressed. In the taproom of the little inn sat the bear leader,
+eating his supper; the bear was tied up outside, behind the wood pile--poor
+Bruin, who did nobody any harm, though he looked grim enough. Up in the
+garret three little children were playing by the light of my beams; the
+eldest was perhaps six years old, the youngest certainly not more than two.
+'Tramp, tramp'--somebody was coming upstairs: who might it be? The door was
+thrust open--it was Bruin, the great, shaggy Bruin! He had got tired of
+waiting down in the courtyard, and had found his way to the stairs. I saw
+it all," said the Moon. "The children were very much frightened at first at
+the great shaggy animal; each of them crept into a corner, but he found
+them all out, and smelt at them, but did them no harm. 'This must be a
+great dog,' they said, and began to stroke him. He lay down upon the
+ground, the youngest boy clambered on his back, and bending down a little
+head of golden curls, played at hiding in the beast's shaggy skin.
+Presently the eldest boy took his drum, and beat upon it till it rattled
+again; the bear rose upon his hind legs, and began to dance. It was a
+charming sight to behold. Each boy now took his gun, and the bear was
+obliged to have one too, and he held it up quite properly. Here was a
+capital playmate they had found; and they began marching--one, two; one,
+two.
+
+"Suddenly some one came to the door, which opened, and the mother of
+the children appeared. You should have seen her in her dumb terror,
+with her face as white as chalk, her mouth half open, and her eyes
+fixed in a horrified stare. But the youngest boy nodded to her in
+great glee, and called out in his infantile prattle, 'We're playing at
+soldiers.' And then the bear leader came running up."
+
+
+THIRTY-FIRST EVENING.
+
+The wind blew stormy and cold, the clouds flew hurriedly past; only
+for a moment now and then did the Moon become visible. He said, "I
+looked down from the silent sky upon the driving clouds, and saw the
+great shadows chasing each other across the earth. I looked upon a
+prison. A closed carriage stood before it; a prisoner was to be
+carried away. My rays pierced through the grated window towards the
+wall: the prisoner was scratching a few lines upon it, as a parting
+token; but he did not write words, but a melody, the outpouring of his
+heart. The door was opened, and he was led forth, and fixed his eyes
+upon my round disc. Clouds passed between us, as if he were not to see
+my face, nor I his. He stepped into the carriage, the door was closed,
+the whip cracked, and the horses galloped off into the thick forest,
+whither my rays were not able to follow him; but as I glanced through
+the grated window, my rays glided over the notes, his last farewell
+engraved on the prison wall--where words fail, sounds can often speak.
+My rays could only light up isolated notes, so the greater part of
+what was written there will ever remain dark to me. Was it the
+death-hymn he wrote there? Were these the glad notes of joy? Did he
+drive away to meet death, or hasten to the embraces of his beloved?
+The rays of the Moon do not read all that is written by mortals."
+
+
+THIRTY-SECOND EVENING.
+
+"I love the children," said the Moon, "especially the quite little
+ones--they are so droll. Sometimes I peep into the room, between the
+curtain and the window frame, when they are not thinking of me. It
+gives me pleasure to see them dressing and undressing. First, the
+little round naked shoulder comes creeping out of the frock, then the
+arm; or I see how the stocking is drawn off, and a plump little white
+leg makes its appearance, and a white little foot that is fit to be
+kissed, and I kiss it too.
+
+"But about what I was going to tell you. This evening I looked through
+a window, before which no curtain was drawn, for nobody lives
+opposite. I saw a whole troop of little ones, all of one family, and
+among them was a little sister. She is only four years old, but can
+say her prayers as well as any of the rest. The mother sits by her bed
+every evening, and hears her say her prayers; and then she has a kiss,
+and the mother sits by the bed till the little one has gone to sleep,
+which generally happens as soon as ever she can close her eyes.
+
+"This evening the two elder children were a little boisterous. One of
+them hopped about on one leg in his long white nightgown, and the
+other stood on a chair surrounded by the clothes of all the children,
+and declared he was acting Grecian statues. The third and fourth laid
+the clean linen carefully in the box, for that is a thing that has to
+be done; and the mother sat by the bed of the youngest, and announced
+to all the rest that they were to be quiet, for little sister was
+going to say her prayers.
+
+"I looked in, over the lamp, into the little maiden's bed, where she
+lay under the neat white coverlet, her hands folded demurely and her
+little face quite grave and serious. She was praying the Lord's prayer
+aloud. But her mother interrupted her in the middle of her prayer.
+'How is it,' she asked, 'that when you have prayed for daily bread,
+you always add something I cannot understand? You must tell me what
+that is.' The little one lay silent, and looked at her mother in
+embarrassment. 'What is it you say after _our daily bread_?' 'Dear
+mother, don't be angry: I only said, _and plenty of butter on it_.'"
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE YEAR.
+
+
+It was far in January, and a terrible fall of snow was pelting down.
+The snow eddied through the streets and lanes; the window-panes seemed
+plastered with snow on the outside; snow plumped down in masses from
+the roofs: and a sudden hurry had seized on the people, for they ran,
+and flew, and fell into each others' arms, and as they clutched each
+other fast for a moment, they felt that they were safe at least for
+that length of time. Coaches and horses seemed frosted with sugar. The
+footmen stood with their backs against the carriages, so as to turn
+their faces from the wind. The foot passengers kept in the shelter of
+the carriages, which could only move slowly on in the deep snow; and
+when the storm at last abated, and a narrow path was swept clean
+alongside the houses, the people stood still in this path when they
+met, for none liked to take the first step aside into the deep snow to
+let the other pass him. Thus they stood silent and motionless, till,
+as if by tacit consent, each sacrificed one leg, and stepping aside,
+buried it in the deep snow-heap.
+
+Towards evening it grew calm. The sky looked as if it had been swept,
+and had become more lofty and transparent. The stars looked as if they
+were quite new, and some of them were amazingly bright and pure. It
+froze so hard that the snow creaked, and the upper rind of snow might
+well have grown hard enough to bear the sparrows in the morning dawn.
+These little birds hopped up and down where the sweeping had been
+done; but they found very little food, and were not a little cold.
+
+"Piep!" said one of them to another; "they call this a new year, and
+it is worse than the last! We might just as well have kept the old
+one. I'm dissatisfied, and I've a right to be so."
+
+"Yes; and the people ran about and fired off shots to celebrate the
+new year," said a little shivering sparrow; "and they threw pans and
+pots against the doors, and were quite boisterous with joy, because
+the old year was gone. I was glad of it too, because I hoped we should
+have had warm days; but that has come to nothing--it freezes much
+harder than before. People have made a mistake in reckoning the time!"
+
+"That they have!" a third put in, who was old, and had a white poll;
+"they've something they call the calendar--it's an invention of their
+own--and everything is to be arranged according to that; but it won't
+do. When spring comes, then the year begins, and I reckon according to
+that."
+
+"But when will spring come?" the others inquired.
+
+"It will come when the stork comes back. But his movements are very
+uncertain, and here in town no one knows anything about it: in the
+country they are better informed. Shall we fly out there and wait?
+There, at any rate, we shall be nearer to spring."
+
+"Yes, that may be all very well," observed one of the sparrows, who
+had been hopping about for a long time, chirping, without saying
+anything decided. "I've found a few comforts here in town, which I am
+afraid I should miss out in the country. Near this neighbourhood, in a
+courtyard, there lives a family of people, who have taken the very
+sensible notion of placing three or four flower-pots against the wall,
+with their mouths all turned inwards, and the bottom of each pointing
+outwards. In each flower-pot a hole has been cut, big enough for me to
+fly in and out at it. I and my husband have built a nest in one of
+those pots, and have brought up our young family there. The family of
+people of course made the whole arrangement that they might have the
+pleasure of seeing us, or else they would not have done it. To please
+themselves they also strew crumbs of bread; and so we have food, and
+are in a manner provided for. So I think my husband and I will stay
+where we are, although we are very dissatisfied--but we shall stay."
+
+"And we will fly into the country to see if spring is not coming!" And
+away they flew.
+
+Out in the country it was hard winter, and the glass was a few degrees
+lower than in the town. The sharp winds swept across the snow-covered
+fields. The farmer, muffled in warm mittens, sat in his sledge, and
+beat his arms across his breast to warm himself, and the whip lay
+across his knees. The horses ran till they smoked again. The snow
+creaked, and the sparrows hopped about in the ruts, and shivered,
+"Piep! when will spring come? it is very long in coming!"
+
+"Very long," sounded from the next snow-covered hill, far over the
+field. It might be the echo which was heard; or perhaps the words were
+spoken by yonder wonderful old man, who sat in wind and weather high
+on the heap of snow. He was quite white, attired like a peasant in a
+coarse white coat of frieze; he had long white hair, and was quite
+pale, with big blue eyes.
+
+"Who is that old man yonder?" asked the sparrows.
+
+"I know who he is," quoth an old raven, who sat on the fence-rail, and
+was condescending enough to acknowledge that we are all like little
+birds in the sight of Heaven, and therefore was not above speaking to
+the sparrows, and giving them information. "I know who the old man is.
+It is Winter, the old man of last year. He is not dead, as the
+calendar says, but is guardian to little Prince Spring, who is to
+come. Yes, Winter bears sway here. Ugh! the cold makes you shiver,
+does it not, you little ones?"
+
+"Yes. Did I not tell the truth?" said the smallest sparrow: "the
+calendar is only an invention of man, and is not arranged according to
+nature! They ought to leave these things to us, who are born cleverer
+than they."
+
+And one week passed away, and two passed away. The frozen lake lay
+hard and stiff, looking like a sheet of lead, and damp icy mists lay
+brooding over the land; the great black crows flew about in long rows,
+but silently; and it seemed as if nature slept. Then a sunbeam glided
+along over the lake, and made it shine like burnished tin. The snowy
+covering on the field and on the hill did not glitter as it had done;
+but the white form, Winter himself, still sat there, his gaze fixed
+unswervingly upon the south. He did not notice that the snowy carpet
+seemed to sink as it were into the earth, and that here and there a
+little grass-green patch appeared, and that all these patches were
+crowded with sparrows.
+
+"Kee-wit! kee-wit! Is spring coming now?"
+
+"Spring!" The cry resounded over field and meadow, and through the
+black-brown woods, where the moss still glimmered in bright green upon
+the tree trunks; and from the south the first two storks came flying
+through the air. On the back of each sat a pretty little child--one
+was a girl and the other a boy. They greeted the earth with a kiss,
+and wherever they set their feet, white flowers grew up from beneath
+the snow. Then they went hand in hand to the old ice man, Winter,
+clung to his breast embracing him, and in a moment they, and he, and
+all the region around were hidden in a thick damp mist, dark and
+heavy, that closed over all like a veil. Gradually the wind rose, and
+now it rushed roaring along, and drove away the mist with heavy blows,
+so that the sun shone warmly forth, and Winter himself vanished, and
+the beautiful children of Spring sat on the throne of the year.
+
+"That's what I call spring," cried each of the sparrows. "Now we shall
+get our rights, and have amends for the stern winter."
+
+Wherever the two children turned, green buds burst forth on bushes and
+trees, the grass shot upwards, and the corn-fields turned green and
+became more and more lovely. And the little maiden strewed flowers all
+around. Her apron, which she held up before her, was always full of
+them; they seemed to spring up there, for her lap continued full,
+however zealously she strewed the blossoms around; and in her
+eagerness she scattered a snow of blossoms over apple trees and peach
+trees, so that they stood in full beauty before their green leaves had
+fairly come forth.
+
+And she clapped her hands, and the boy clapped his, and then flocks of
+birds came flying up, nobody knew whence, and they all twittered and
+sang, "Spring has come."
+
+[Illustration: THE STORKS BRINGING BACK THE SPRING.]
+
+That was beautiful to behold. Many an old granny crept forth over the
+threshold into the sunshine, and tripped gleefully about, casting a
+glance at the yellow flowers which shone everywhere in the fields,
+just as they used to do when she was young. The world grew young again
+to her, and she said, "It is a blessed day out here to-day!"
+
+The forest still wore its brown-green dress, made of buds; but the
+thyme was already there, fresh and fragrant; there were violets in
+plenty, anemones and primroses came forth, and there was sap and
+strength in every blade of grass. That was certainly a beautiful
+carpet on which no one could resist sitting down, and there
+accordingly the young spring pair sat hand in hand, and sang and
+smiled, and grew on.
+
+A mild rain fell down upon them from the sky, but they did not notice
+it, for the rain-drops were mingled with their own tears of joy. They
+kissed each other, and were betrothed as people that should marry, and
+in the same moment the verdure of the woods was unfolded, and when the
+sun rose, the forest stood there arrayed in green.
+
+And hand in hand the betrothed pair wandered under the fresh pendent
+ocean of leaves, where the rays of the sun gleamed through the
+interstices in lovely, changing hues. What virgin purity, what
+refreshing balm in the delicate leaves! The brooks and streams rippled
+clearly and merrily among the green velvety rushes and over the
+coloured pebbles. All nature seemed to say, "There is plenty, and
+there shall be plenty always!" And the cuckoo sang and the lark
+carolled: it was a charming spring; but the willows had woolly gloves
+over their blossoms: they were desperately careful, and that is
+wearisome.
+
+And days went by and weeks went by, and the heat came as it were
+whirling down. Hot waves of air came through the corn, that became
+yellower and yellower. The white water-lily of the north spread its
+great green leaves over the glassy mirror of the woodland lakes, and
+the fishes sought out the shady spots beneath; and at the sheltered
+side of the wood, where the sun shone down upon the walls of the
+farmhouse, warming the blooming roses, and the cherry trees, which
+hung full of juicy black berries, almost hot with the fierce beams,
+there sat the lovely wife of Summer, the same being whom we have seen
+as a child and as a bride; and her glance was fixed upon the black
+gathering clouds, which in wavy outlines--blue-black and heavy--were
+piling themselves up, like mountains, higher and higher. They came
+from three sides, and growing like a petrified sea, they came swooping
+towards the forest, where every sound had been silenced as if by
+magic. Every breath of air was hushed, every bird was mute. There was
+a seriousness--a suspense throughout all nature; but in the highways
+and lanes, foot passengers, and riders, and men in carriages were
+hurrying on to get under shelter. Then suddenly there was a flashing
+of light, as if the sun were burst forth--flaming, burning,
+all-devouring! And the darkness returned amid a rolling crash. The
+rain poured down in streams, and there was alternate darkness and
+blinding light; alternate silence and deafening clamour. The young,
+brown, feathery reeds on the moor moved to and fro in long waves, the
+twigs of the woods were hidden in a mist of waters, and still came
+darkness and light, and still silence and roaring followed one
+another; grass and corn lay beaten down and swamped, looking as though
+they could never raise themselves again. But soon the rain fell only
+in gentle drops, the sun peered through the clouds, the water-drops
+glittered like pearls on the leaves, the birds sang, the fishes leaped
+up from the surface of the lake, the gnats danced in the sunshine, and
+yonder on the rock, in the salt, heaving sea water, sat Summer
+himself--a strong man with sturdy limbs and long dripping hair--there
+he sat, strengthened by the cool bath, in the warm sunshine. All
+nature round about was renewed, everything stood luxuriant, strong and
+beautiful; it was summer, warm, lovely summer.
+
+[Illustration: SUMMER TIME.]
+
+And pleasant and sweet was the fragrance that streamed upwards from
+the rich clover-field, where the bees swarmed round the old ruined
+place of meeting: the bramble wound itself around the altar stone,
+which, washed by the rain, glittered in the sunshine; and thither flew
+the queen-bee with her swarm, and prepared wax and honey. Only Summer
+saw it, he and his strong wife; for them the altar table stood covered
+with the offerings of nature.
+
+And the evening sky shone like gold, shone as no church dome can
+shine; and in the interval between the evening and the morning red,
+there was moonlight: it was summer.
+
+And days went by, and weeks went by. The bright scythes of the reapers
+gleamed in the corn-fields; the branches of the apple trees bent down,
+heavy with red-and-yellow fruit. The hops smelt sweetly, hanging in
+large clusters; and under the hazel bushes where hung great bunches of
+nuts, rested a man and woman--Summer and his quiet consort.
+
+"What wealth!" exclaimed the woman: "all around a blessing is
+diffused, everywhere the scene looks homelike and good; and yet--I
+know not why--I long for peace and rest--I know not how to express it.
+Now they are already ploughing again in the field. The people want to
+gain more and more. See, the storks flock together, and follow at a
+little distance behind the plough--the bird of Egypt that carried us
+through the air. Do you remember how we came as children to this land
+of the North? We brought with us flowers, and pleasant sunshine, and
+green to the woods; the wind has treated them roughly, and they have
+become dark and brown like the trees of the South, but they do not,
+like them, bear fruit."
+
+"Do you wish to see the golden fruit?" said the man: "then rejoice."
+And he lifted his arm, and the leaves of the forest put on hues of red
+and gold, and beauteous tints spread over all the woodland. The rose
+bush gleamed with scarlet hips; the elder branches hung down with
+great heavy bunches of dark berries; the wild chestnuts fell ripe from
+their dark husks; and in the depths of the forests the violets bloomed
+for the second time.
+
+But the Queen of the Year became more and more silent, and paler and
+paler. "It blows cold," she said, "and night brings damp mists. I long
+for the land of my childhood."
+
+And she saw the storks fly away, one and all; and she stretched forth
+her hands towards them. She looked up at the nests, which stood empty.
+In one of them the long-stalked cornflower was growing; in another,
+the yellow mustard-seed, as if the nest were only there for its
+protection and comfort; and the sparrows were flying up into the
+storks' nests.
+
+"Piep! where has the master gone? I suppose he can't bear it when the
+wind blows, and that therefore he has left the country. I wish him a
+pleasant journey!"
+
+The forest leaves became more and more yellow, leaf fell down upon
+leaf, and the stormy winds of autumn howled. The year was far
+advanced, and the Queen of the Year reclined upon the fallen yellow
+leaves, and looked with mild eyes at the gleaming star, and her
+husband stood by her. A gust swept through the leaves; they fell again
+in a shower, and the Queen was gone, but a butterfly, the last of the
+season, flew through the cold air.
+
+The wet fogs came, an icy wind blew, and the long dark nights drew on
+apace. The Ruler of the Year stood there with locks white as snow, but
+he knew not it was his hair that gleamed so white--he thought
+snow-flakes were falling from the clouds; and soon a thin covering of
+snow was spread over the fields.
+
+And then the church bells rang for the Christmas time.
+
+"The bells ring for the new-born," said the Ruler of the Year. "Soon
+the new king and queen will be born; and I shall go to rest, as my
+wife has done--to rest in the gleaming star."
+
+And in the fresh green fir wood, where the snow lay, stood the Angel
+of Christmas, and consecrated the young trees that were to adorn his
+feast.
+
+"May there be joy in the room, and under the green boughs," said the
+Ruler of the Year. In a few weeks he had become a very old man, white
+as snow. "My time for rest draws near, and the young pair of the year
+shall now receive my crown and sceptre."
+
+"But the might is still thine," said the Angel of Christmas; "the
+might and not the rest. Let the snow lie warmly upon the young seed.
+Learn to bear it, that another receives homage while thou yet
+reignest. Learn to bear being forgotten while thou art yet alive. The
+hour of thy release will come when spring appears."
+
+"And when will spring come?" asked Winter.
+
+"It will come when the stork returns."
+
+And with white locks and snowy beard, cold, bent, and hoary, but
+strong as the wintry storm, and firm as ice, old Winter sat on the
+snowy drift on the hill, looking towards the south, where he had
+before sat and gazed. The ice cracked, the snow creaked, the skaters
+skimmed to and fro on the smooth lakes, ravens and crows contrasted
+picturesquely with the white ground, and not a breath of wind stirred.
+And in the quiet air old Winter clenched his fists, and the ice was
+fathoms thick between land and land.
+
+Then the sparrows came again out of the town, and asked, "Who is that
+old man yonder?" And the raven sat there again, or a son of his, which
+comes to quite the same thing, and answered them and said, "It is
+Winter, the old man of last year. He is not dead, as the almanack
+says, but he is the guardian of Spring, who is coming."
+
+"When will spring come?" asked the sparrows. "Then we shall have good
+times, and a better rule. The old one was worth nothing."
+
+And Winter nodded in quiet thought at the leafless forest, where every
+tree showed the graceful form and bend of its twigs; and during the
+winter sleep the icy mists of the clouds came down, and the ruler
+dreamed of his youthful days, and of the time of his manhood; and
+towards the morning dawn the whole wood was clothed in glittering hoar
+frost. That was the summer dream of winter, and the sun scattered the
+hoar frost from the boughs.
+
+"When will spring come?" asked the sparrows.
+
+"The spring!" sounded like an echo from the hills on which the snow
+lay. The sun shone warmer, the snow melted, and the birds twittered,
+"Spring is coming!"
+
+And aloft through the air came the first stork, and the second
+followed him. A lovely child sat on the back of each, and they
+alighted on the field, kissed the earth, and kissed the old silent
+man, and he disappeared, shrouded in the cloudy mist. And the story of
+the year was done.
+
+"That is all very well," said the sparrows; "it is very beautiful too,
+but it is not according to the almanack, and therefore it is
+irregular."
+
+
+
+
+SHE WAS GOOD FOR NOTHING.
+
+
+The mayor stood at the open window. His shirt-frill was very fine, and
+so were his ruffles; he had a breast-pin stuck in his frill, and was
+uncommonly smooth-shaven--all his own work; certainly he had given
+himself a slight cut, but he had stuck a bit of newspaper on the
+place. "Hark 'ee, youngster!" he cried.
+
+The youngster in question was no other than the son of the poor
+washerwoman, who was just going past the house; and he pulled off his
+cap respectfully. The peak of the said cap was broken in the middle,
+for the cap was arranged so that it could be rolled up and crammed
+into his pocket. In his poor, but clean and well-mended attire, with
+heavy wooden shoes on his feet, the boy stood there, as humble and
+abashed as if he stood opposite the king himself.
+
+[Illustration: THE MAYOR AND THE WASHERWOMAN'S SON.]
+
+"You're a good boy," said Mr. Mayor. "You're a civil boy. I suppose
+your mother is rinsing clothes down yonder in the river? I suppose you
+are to carry that thing to your mother that you have in your pocket?
+That's a bad affair with your mother. How much have you got in it?"
+
+"Half a quartern," stammered the boy, in a frightened voice.
+
+"And this morning she had just as much," the mayor continued.
+
+"No," replied the boy, "it was yesterday."
+
+"Two halves make a whole. She's good for nothing! It's a sad thing
+with that kind of people! Tell your mother that she ought to be
+ashamed of herself; and mind you don't become a drunkard--but you will
+become one, though. Poor child--there, go!"
+
+Accordingly the boy went on his way. He kept his cap in his hand, and
+the wind played with his yellow hair, so that great locks of it stood
+up straight. He turned down by the street corner, into the little lane
+that led to the river, where his mother stood by the washing bench,
+beating the heavy linen with the mallet. The water rolled quickly
+along, for the flood-gates at the mill had been drawn up, and the
+sheets were caught by the stream, and threatened to overturn the
+bench. The washerwoman was obliged to lean against the bench, to
+support it.
+
+"I was very nearly sailing away," she said. "It is a good thing that
+you are come, for I have need to recruit my strength a little. For six
+hours I've been standing in the water. Have you brought anything for
+me?"
+
+The boy produced the bottle, and the mother put it to her mouth, and
+took a little.
+
+"Ah, how that revives one!" she said: "how it warms! It is as good as
+a hot meal, and not so dear. And you, my boy! you look quite pale. You
+are shivering in your thin clothes--to be sure it is autumn. Ugh! how
+cold the water is! I hope I shall not be ill. But no, I shall not be
+that! Give me a little more, and you may have a sip too, but only a
+little sip, for you must not accustom yourself to it, my poor dear
+child!"
+
+And she stepped up to the bridge on which the boy stood, and came
+ashore. The water dripped from the straw matting she had wound round
+her, and from her gown.
+
+"I work and toil as much as ever I can," she said, "but I do it
+willingly, if I can only manage to bring you up honestly and well, my
+boy."
+
+As she spoke, a somewhat older woman came towards them. She was poor
+enough to behold, lame of one leg, and with a large false curl hanging
+down over one of her eyes, which was a blind one. The curl was
+intended to cover the eye, but it only made the defect more striking.
+This was a friend of the laundress. She was called among the
+neighbours, "Lame Martha with the curl."
+
+"Oh, you poor thing! How you work, standing there in the water!" cried
+the visitor. "You really require something to warm you; and yet
+malicious folks cry out about the few drops you take!" And in a few
+minutes' time the mayor's late speech was reported to the laundress;
+for Martha had heard it all, and she had been angry that a man could
+speak as he had done to a woman's own child, about the few drops the
+mother took: and she was the more angry, because the mayor on that
+very day was giving a great feast, at which wine was drunk by the
+bottle--good wine, strong wine. "A good many will take more than they
+need--but that's not called drinking. _They_ are good; but _you_ are
+good for nothing!" cried Martha, indignantly.
+
+"Ah, so he spoke to you, my child?" said the washerwoman; and her lips
+trembled as she spoke. "So he says you have a mother who is good for
+nothing? Well, perhaps he's right, but he should not have said it to
+the child. Still, I have had much misfortune from that house."
+
+"You were in service there when the mayor's parents were alive, and
+lived in that house. That is many years ago: many bushels of salt have
+been eaten since then, and we may well be thirsty;" and Martha smiled.
+"The mayor has a great dinner party to-day. The guests were to have
+been put off, but it was too late, and the dinner was already cooked.
+The footman told me about it. A letter came a little while ago, to say
+that the younger brother had died in Copenhagen."
+
+"Died!" repeated the laundress--and she became pale as death.
+
+"Yes, certainly," said Martha. "Do you take that so much to heart?
+Well, you must have known him years ago, when you were in service in
+the house."
+
+"Is he dead? He was such a good, worthy man! There are not many like
+him." And the tears rolled down her cheeks. "Good heavens! everything
+is whirling around me--it was too much for me. I feel quite ill." And
+she leaned against the plank.
+
+"Good heavens, you are ill indeed!" exclaimed the other woman. "Come,
+come, it will pass over presently. But no, you really look seriously
+ill. The best thing will be for me to lead you home."
+
+"But my linen yonder--"
+
+"I will take care of that. Come, give me your arm. The boy can stay
+here and take care of it, and I'll come back and finish the washing;
+that's only a trifle."
+
+The laundress's limbs shook under her. "I have stood too long in the
+cold water," she said faintly, "and I have eaten and drunk nothing
+since this morning. The fever is in my bones. O kind Heaven, help me
+to get home! My poor child!" and she burst into tears. The boy wept
+too, and soon he was sitting alone by the river, beside the damp
+linen. The two women could make only slow progress. The laundress
+dragged her weary limbs along, and tottered through the lane and round
+the corner into the street where stood the house of the mayor; and
+just in front of his mansion she sank down on the pavement. Many
+people assembled round her, and Lame Martha ran into the house to get
+help. The mayor and his guests came to the window.
+
+"That's the washerwoman!" he said. "She has taken a glass too much.
+She is good for nothing. It's a pity for the pretty son she has. I
+really like the child very well; but the mother is good for nothing."
+
+Presently the laundress came to herself, and they led her into her
+poor dwelling, and put her to bed. Kind Martha heated a mug of beer
+for her, with butter and sugar, which she considered the best
+medicine; and then she hastened to the river, and rinsed the
+linen--badly enough, though her will was good. Strictly speaking, she
+drew it ashore, wet as it was, and laid it in a basket.
+
+Towards evening she was sitting in the poor little room with the
+laundress. The mayor's cook had given her some roasted potatoes and a
+fine fat piece of ham, for the sick woman, and Martha and the boy
+discussed these viands while the patient enjoyed the smell, which she
+pronounced very nourishing.
+
+And presently the boy was put to bed, in the same bed in which his
+mother lay; but he slept at her feet, covered with an old quilt made
+up of blue and white patches.
+
+Soon the patient felt a little better. The warm beer had strengthened
+her, and the fragrance of the provisions pleased her also. "Thanks,
+you kind soul," she said to Martha. "I will tell you all when the boy
+is asleep. I think he has dropped off already. How gentle and good he
+looks, as he lies there with his eyes closed. He does not know what
+his mother has suffered, and Heaven grant he may never know it. I was
+in service at the councillor's, the father of the mayor. It happened
+that the youngest of the sons, the student, came home. I was young
+then, a wild girl, but honest, that I may declare in the face of
+Heaven. The student was merry and kind, good and brave. Every drop of
+blood in him was good and honest. I have not seen a better man on this
+earth. He was the son of the house, and I was only a maid, but we
+formed an attachment to each other, honestly and honourably. And he
+told his mother of it, for she was in his eyes as a Deity on earth;
+and she was wise and gentle. He went away on a journey, but before he
+started he put his gold ring on my finger; and directly he was gone
+my mistress called me. With a firm yet gentle seriousness she spoke to
+me, and it seemed as if Wisdom itself were speaking. She showed me
+clearly, in spirit and in truth, the difference there was between him
+and me.
+
+"'Now he is charmed with your pretty appearance,' she said, 'but your
+good looks will leave you. You have not been educated as he has. You
+are not equals in mind, and there is the misfortune. I respect the
+poor,' she continued; 'in the sight of God they may occupy a higher
+place than many a rich man can fill; but here on earth we must beware
+of entering a false track as we go onward, or our carriage is upset,
+and we are thrown into the road. I know that a worthy man wishes to
+marry you--an artisan--I mean Erich the glovemaker. He is a widower
+without children, and is well to do. Think it over.'
+
+"Every word she spoke cut into my heart like a knife, but I knew that
+my mistress was right, and that knowledge weighed heavily upon me. I
+kissed her hand, and wept bitter tears, and I wept still more when I
+went into my room and threw myself on my bed. It was a heavy night
+that I had to pass through. Heaven knows what I suffered and how I
+wrestled! The next Sunday I went to the Lord's house, to pray for
+strength and guidance. It seemed like a Providence, that as I stepped
+out of church Erich came towards me. And now there was no longer a
+doubt in my mind. We were suited to each other in rank and in means,
+and he was even then a thriving man. Therefore I went up to him, took
+his hand, and said, 'Are you still of the same mind towards me?' 'Yes,
+ever and always,' he replied. 'Will you marry a girl who honours and
+respects, but who does not love you--though that may come later?' I
+asked again. 'Yes, it will come!' he answered; and upon this we joined
+hands. I went home to my mistress. I wore the gold ring that the son
+had given me at my heart. I could not put it on my finger in the
+daytime, but only in the evening when I went to bed. I kissed the ring
+again and again, till my lips almost bled, and then I gave it to my
+mistress, and told her the banns were to be put up next week for me
+and the glovemaker. Then my mistress put her arms round me and kissed
+me. _She_ did not say that I was good for nothing; but perhaps I was
+better then than I am now, though the misfortunes of life had not yet
+found me out. In a few weeks we were married; and for the first year
+the world went well with us: we had a journeyman and an apprentice,
+and you, Martha, lived with us as our servant."
+
+"Oh, you were a dear, good mistress," cried Martha. "Never shall I
+forget how kind you and your husband were!"
+
+"Yes, those were our good years, when you were with us. We had not
+any children yet. The student I never saw again.--Yes, though, I saw
+him, but he did not see me. He was here at his mother's funeral. I saw
+him stand by the grave. He was pale as death, and very downcast, but
+that was for his mother; afterwards, when his father died, he was away
+in a foreign land, and did not come back hither. I know that he never
+married; I believe he became a lawyer. He had forgotten me; and even
+if he had seen me again, he would not have known me, I look so ugly.
+And that is very fortunate."
+
+And then she spoke of her days of trial, and told how misfortune had
+come as it were swooping down upon them.
+
+"We had five hundred dollars," she said; "and as there was a house in
+the street to be bought for two hundred, and it would pay to pull it
+down and build a new one, it was bought. The builder and carpenter
+calculated the expense, and the new house was to cost ten hundred and
+twenty! Erich had credit, and borrowed the money in the chief town,
+but the captain who was to bring it was shipwrecked, and the money was
+lost with him."
+
+"Just at that time my dear sweet boy who is sleeping yonder was born.
+My husband was struck down by a long heavy illness: for three quarters
+of a year I was compelled to dress and undress him. We went back more
+and more, and fell into debt. All that we had was sold, and my husband
+died. I have worked, and toiled, and striven, for the sake of the
+child, and scrubbed staircases, washed linen, clean and coarse alike,
+but I was not to be better off, such was God's good will. But He will
+take me to Himself in His own good time, and will not forsake my boy."
+And she fell asleep.
+
+Towards morning she felt much refreshed, and strong enough, as she
+thought, to go back to her work. She had just stepped again into the
+cold water, when a trembling and faintness seized her: she clutched at
+the air with her hand, took a step forward, and fell down. Her head
+rested on the bank, and her feet were still in the water: her wooden
+shoes, with a wisp of straw in each, which she had worn, floated down
+the stream, and thus Martha found her on coming to bring her some
+coffee.
+
+In the meantime a messenger from the mayor's house had been dispatched
+to her poor lodging to tell her "to come to the mayor immediately, for
+he had something to tell her." It was too late! A barber-surgeon was
+brought to open a vein in her arm; but the poor woman was dead.
+
+"She has drunk herself to death!" said the mayor.
+
+In the letter that brought the news of his brother's death, the
+contents of the will had been mentioned, and it was a legacy of six
+hundred dollars to the glovemaker's widow, who had once been his
+mother's maid. The money was to be paid, according to the mayor's
+discretion, in larger or smaller sums, to her or to her child.
+
+"There was some fuss between my brother and her," said the mayor.
+"It's a good thing that she is dead; for now the boy will have the
+whole, and I will get him into a house among respectable people. He
+may turn out a reputable working man."
+
+And Heaven gave its blessing to these words.
+
+So the mayor sent for the boy, promised to take care of him, and added
+that it was a good thing the lad's mother was dead, inasmuch as she
+had been good for nothing.
+
+They bore her to the churchyard, to the cemetery of the poor, and
+Martha strewed sand upon her grave, and planted a rose tree upon it,
+and the boy stood beside her.
+
+"My dear mother!" he cried, as the tears fell fast. "Is it true what
+they said: that she was good for nothing?" "No, she was good for
+much!" replied the old servant, and she looked up indignantly. "I knew
+it many a year ago, and more than all since last night. I tell you she
+was worth much, and the Lord in heaven knows it is true, let the world
+say as much as it chooses, 'She was good for nothing.'"
+
+
+
+
+"THERE IS A DIFFERENCE."
+
+
+It was in the month of May. The wind still blew cold, but bushes and
+trees, field and meadow, all alike said the spring had come. There was
+store of flowers even in the wild hedges; and there spring carried on
+his affairs, and preached from a little apple tree, where one branch
+hung fresh and blooming, covered with delicate pink blossoms that were
+just ready to open. The apple tree branch knew well enough how
+beautiful he was, for the knowledge is inherent in the leaf as well as
+in the blood; and consequently the branch was not surprised when a
+nobleman's carriage stopped opposite to him on the road, and the young
+countess said that an apple branch was the loveliest thing one could
+behold, a very emblem of spring in its most charming form. And the
+branch was most carefully broken off, and she held it in her delicate
+hand, and sheltered it with her silk parasol. Then they drove to the
+castle, where there were lofty halls and splendid apartments. Pure
+white curtains fluttered round the open windows, and beautiful flowers
+stood in shining transparent vases; and in one of these, which looked
+as if it had been cut out of fresh-fallen snow, the apple branch was
+placed among some fresh light twigs of beech. It was charming to
+behold.
+
+But the branch became proud; and this was quite like human nature.
+
+People of various kinds came through the room, and according to their
+rank they might express their admiration. A few said nothing at all,
+and others again said too much, and the apple tree branch soon got to
+understand that there was a difference among plants. "Some are created
+for beauty, and some for use; and there are some which one can do
+without altogether," thought the apple branch; and as he stood just in
+front of the open window, from whence he could see into the garden and
+across the fields, he had flowers and plants enough to contemplate and
+to think about, for there were rich plants and humble plants--some
+very humble indeed.
+
+"Poor despised herbs!" said the apple branch. "There is certainly a
+difference! And how unhappy they must feel, if indeed that kind can
+feel like myself and my equals. Certainly there is a difference, and
+distinctions must be made, or we should all be equal."
+
+And the apple branch looked down with a species of pity, especially
+upon a certain kind of flower of which great numbers are found in the
+fields and in ditches. No one bound them into a nosegay, they were too
+common; for they might be found even among the paving-stones, shooting
+up everywhere like the rankest weeds, and they had the ugly name of
+"dandelion," or "dog-flower."
+
+"Poor despised plants!" said the apple branch. "It is not your fault
+that you received the ugly name you bear. But it is with plants as
+with men--there must be a difference!"
+
+"A difference?" said the sunbeam; and he kissed the blooming apple
+branch, and saluted in like manner the yellow dandelions out in the
+field--all the brothers of the sunbeam kissed them, the poor flowers
+as well as the rich.
+
+Now the apple branch had never thought of the boundless beneficence of
+Providence in creation towards everything that lives and moves and has
+its being; he had never thought how much that is beautiful and good
+may be hidden, but not forgotten; but that, too, was quite like human
+nature.
+
+The sunbeam, the ray of light, knew better; and said, "You don't see
+far, and you don't see clearly. What is the despised plant that you
+especially pity?"
+
+"The dandelion," replied the apple branch. "It is never received into
+a nosegay; it is trodden under foot. There are too many of them; and
+when they run to seed, they fly away like little pieces of wool over
+the roads, and hang and cling to people's dress. They are nothing but
+weeds--but it is right there should be weeds too. Oh, I'm really very
+thankful that I was not created one of those flowers."
+
+[Illustration: THE CHILDREN AND THE DANDELIONS.]
+
+But there came across the fields a whole troop of children; the
+youngest of whom was so small that it was carried by the rest, and
+when it was set down in the grass among the yellow flowers it laughed
+aloud with glee, kicked out with its little legs, rolled about and
+plucked the yellow flowers, and kissed them in its pretty innocence.
+The elder children broke off the flowers with their tall stalks, and
+bent the stalks round into one another, link by link, so that a whole
+chain was made; first a necklace, and then a scarf to hang over their
+shoulders and tie round their waists, and then a chaplet to wear on
+the head: it was quite a gala of green links and yellow flowers. The
+eldest children carefully gathered the stalks on which hung the white
+feathery ball, formed by the flower that had run to seed; and this
+loose, airy wool-flower, which is a beautiful object, looking like the
+finest snowy down, they held to their mouths, and tried to blow away
+the whole head at one breath: for their grandmother had said that
+whoever could do this would be sure to get new clothes before the year
+was out. So on this occasion the despised flower was actually raised
+to the rank of a prophet or augur.
+
+"Do you see?" said the sunbeam. "Do you see the beauty of those
+flowers? do you see their power?"
+
+"Yes, over children," replied the apple branch.
+
+And now an old woman came into the field, and began to dig with a
+blunt shaftless knife round the root of the dandelion plant, and
+pulled it up out of the ground. With some of the roots she intended to
+make tea for herself; others she was going to sell for money to the
+druggist.
+
+"But beauty is a higher thing!" said the apple tree branch. "Only the
+chosen few can be admitted into the realm of beauty. There is a
+difference among plants, just as there is a difference among men."
+
+And then the sunbeam spoke of the boundless love of the Creator, as
+manifested in the creation, and of the just distribution of things in
+time and in eternity.
+
+"Yes, yes, that is your opinion," the apple branch persisted.
+
+But now some people came into the room, and the beautiful young
+countess appeared, the lady who had placed the apple branch in the
+transparent vase in the sunlight. She carried in her hand a flower, or
+something of the kind. The object, whatever it might be, was hidden by
+three or four great leaves, wrapped around it like a shield, that no
+draught or gust of wind should injure it; and it was carried more
+carefully than the apple bough had ever been. Very gently the large
+leaves were now removed, and lo, there appeared the fine feathery seed
+crown of the despised dandelion! This it was that the lady had plucked
+with the greatest care, and had carried home with every precaution, so
+that not one of the delicate feathery darts that form its downy ball
+should be blown away. She now produced it, quite uninjured, and
+admired its beautiful form, its peculiar construction, and its airy
+beauty, which was to be scattered by the wind.
+
+"Look, with what singular beauty Providence has invested it," she
+said. "I will paint it, together with the apple branch, whose beauty
+all have admired; but this humble flower has received just as much
+from Heaven in a different way; and, various as they are, both are
+children of the kingdom of beauty."
+
+And the sunbeam kissed the humble flower, and he kissed the blooming
+apple branch, whose leaves appeared covered with a roseate blush.
+
+
+
+
+EVERYTHING IN ITS RIGHT PLACE.
+
+
+It is more than a hundred years ago.
+
+Behind the wood, by the great lake, stood the old baronial mansion.
+Round about it lay a deep moat, in which grew reeds and grass. Close
+by the bridge, near the entrance-gate, rose an old willow tree that
+bent over the reeds.
+
+Up from the hollow lane sounded the clang of horns and the trampling
+of horses; therefore the little girl who kept the geese hastened to
+drive her charges away from the bridge, before the hunting company
+should come gallopping up. They drew near with such speed that the
+girl was obliged to climb up in a hurry, and perch herself on the
+coping-stone of the bridge, lest she should be ridden down. She was
+still half a child, and had a pretty light figure, and a gentle
+expression in her face, with two clear blue eyes. The noble baron took
+no note of this, but as he gallopped past the little goose-herd, he
+reversed the whip he held in his hand, and in rough sport gave her
+such a push in the chest with the butt-end, that she fell backwards
+into the ditch.
+
+"Everything in its place," he cried; "into the puddle with you!" And
+he laughed aloud, for this was intended for wit, and the company
+joined in his mirth: the whole party shouted and clamoured, and the
+dogs barked their loudest.
+
+Fortunately for herself, the poor girl in falling seized one of the
+hanging branches of the willow tree, by means of which she kept
+herself suspended over the muddy water, and as soon as the baron and
+his company had disappeared through the castle-gate, the girl tried to
+scramble up again; but the bough broke off at the top, and she would
+have fallen backward among the reeds, if a strong hand from above had
+not at that moment seized her. It was the hand of a pedlar, who had
+seen from a short distance what had happened, and who now hurried up
+to give aid.
+
+"Everything in its right place," he said, mimicking the gracious
+baron; and he drew the little maiden up to the firm ground. He would
+have restored the broken branch to the place from which it had been
+torn, but "everything in its place" cannot always be managed, and
+therefore he stuck the piece in the ground. "Grow and prosper till you
+can furnish a good flute for them up yonder," he said; for he would
+have liked to play the "rogue's march" for my lord the baron, and my
+lord's whole family. And then he betook himself to the castle, but not
+into the ancestral hall, he was too humble for that! He went to the
+servants' quarters, and the men and maids turned over his stock of
+goods, and bargained with him; and from above, where the guests were
+at table, came a sound of roaring and screaming that was intended for
+song, and indeed they did their best. Loud laughter, mingled with the
+barking and howling of dogs, sounded through the windows, for there
+was feasting and carousing up yonder. Wine and strong old ale foamed
+in the jugs and glasses, and the dogs sat with their masters and dined
+with them. They had the pedlar summoned upstairs, but only to make fun
+of him. The wine had mounted into their heads, and the sense had flown
+out. They poured wine into a stocking, that the pedlar might drink
+with them, but that he must drink quickly; that was considered a rare
+jest, and was a cause of fresh laughter. And then whole farms, with
+oxen and peasants too, were staked on a card, and won and lost.
+
+"Everything in its right place!" said the pedlar, when he had at last
+made his escape out of what he called "the Sodom and Gomorrah up
+yonder." "The open high-road is my right place," he said; "I did not
+feel at all happy there." And the little maiden who sat keeping the
+geese nodded at him in a friendly way, as he strode along beside the
+hedges.
+
+And days and weeks went by; and it became manifest that the willow
+branch which the pedlar had stuck into the ground by the castle moat
+remained fresh and green, and even brought forth new twigs. The little
+goose-girl saw that the branch must have taken root, and rejoiced
+greatly at the circumstance; for this tree, she said, was now her
+tree.
+
+The tree certainly came forward well; but everything else belonging to
+the castle went very rapidly back, what with feasting and
+gambling--for these two things are like wheels, upon which no man can
+stand securely.
+
+Six years had not passed away before the noble lord passed out of the
+castle-gate, a beggared man, and the mansion was bought by a rich
+dealer; and this purchaser was the very man who had once been made a
+jest of there, for whom wine had been poured into a stocking; but
+honesty and industry are good winds to speed a vessel; and now the
+dealer was possessor of the baronial estate. But from that hour no
+more card-playing was permitted there. "That is bad reading," said he:
+"when the Evil One saw a Bible for the first time, he wanted to put a
+bad book against it, and invented card-playing."
+
+The new proprietor took a wife; and who might that be but the
+goose-girl, who had always been faithful and good, and looked as
+beautiful and fine in her new clothes as if she had been born a great
+lady. And how did all this come about? That is too long a story for
+our busy time, but it really happened, and the most important part is
+to come.
+
+It was a good thing now to be in the old mansion. The mother managed
+the domestic affairs, and the father superintended the estate, and it
+seemed as if blessings were streaming down. Where rectitude enters in,
+prosperity is sure to follow. The old house was cleaned and painted,
+the ditches were cleared and fruit trees planted. Everything wore a
+bright cheerful look, and the floors were as polished as a draught
+board. In the long winter evenings the lady sat at the spinning-wheel
+with her maids, and every Sunday evening there was a reading from the
+Bible, by the Councillor of Justice himself--this title the dealer had
+gained, though it was only in his old age. The children grew up--for
+children had come--and they received the best education, though all
+had not equal abilities, as we find indeed in all families.
+
+In the meantime the willow branch at the castle-gate had grown to be a
+splendid tree, which stood there free and self-sustained. "That is our
+genealogical tree," the old people said, and the tree was to be
+honoured and respected--so they told all the children, even those who
+had not very good heads.
+
+And a hundred years rolled by.
+
+It was in our own time. The lake had been converted to moorland, and
+the old mansion had almost disappeared. A pool of water and the ruins
+of some walls, this was all that was left of the old baronial castle,
+with its deep moat; and here stood also a magnificent old willow, with
+pendent boughs, which seemed to show how beautiful a tree may be if
+left to itself. The main stem was certainly split from the root to the
+crown, and the storm had bowed the noble tree a little; but it stood
+firm for all that, and from every cleft into which wind and weather
+had carried a portion of earth, grasses and flowers sprang forth:
+especially near the top, where the great branches parted, a sort of
+hanging garden had been formed of wild raspberry bush, and even a
+small quantity of mistletoe had taken root, and stood, slender and
+graceful, in the midst of the old willow which was mirrored in the
+dark water. A field-path led close by the old tree.
+
+High by the forest hill, with a splendid prospect in every direction,
+stood the new baronial hall, large and magnificent, with panes of
+glass so clearly transparent, that it looked as if there were no panes
+there at all. The grand flight of steps that led to the entrance
+looked like a bower of roses and broad-leaved plants. The lawn was as
+freshly green as if each separate blade of grass were cleaned morning
+and evening. In the hall hung costly pictures; silken chairs and sofas
+stood there, so easy that they looked almost as if they could run by
+themselves; there were tables of great marble slabs, and books bound
+in morocco and gold. Yes, truly, wealthy people lived here, people of
+rank: the baron with his family.
+
+All things here corresponded with each other. The motto was still
+"Everything in its right place;" and therefore all the pictures which
+had been put up in the old house for honour and glory, hung now in the
+passage that led to the servants' hall: they were considered as old
+lumber, and especially two old portraits, one representing a man in a
+pink coat and powdered wig, the other a lady with powdered hair and
+holding a rose in her hand, and each surrounded with a wreath of
+willow leaves. These two pictures were pierced with many holes,
+because the little barons were in the habit of setting up the old
+people as a mark for their cross-bows. The pictures represented the
+Councillor of Justice and his lady, the founders of the present
+family.
+
+"But they did not properly belong to our family," said one of the
+little barons. "He was a dealer, and she had kept the geese. They were
+not like papa and mamma."
+
+The pictures were pronounced to be worthless; and as the motto was
+"Everything in its right place," the great-grandmother and
+great-grandfather had been sent into the passage that led to the
+servants' hall.
+
+The son of the neighbouring clergyman was tutor in the great house.
+One day he was out walking with his pupils, the little barons and
+their eldest sister, who had just been confirmed; they came along the
+field-path, past the old willow, and as they walked on the young lady
+bound a wreath of field flowers, "Everything in its right place," and
+the flowers formed a pretty whole. At the same time she heard every
+word that was spoken, and she liked to hear the clergyman's son talk
+of the power of nature and of the great men and women in history. She
+had a good hearty disposition, with true nobility of thought and
+soul, and a heart full of love for all that God hath created.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD WILLOW TREE.]
+
+The party came to a halt at the old willow tree. The youngest baron
+insisted on having such a flute cut for him from it as he had had made
+of other willows. Accordingly the tutor broke off a branch.
+
+"Oh, don't do that!" cried the young baroness; but it was done
+already. "That is our famous old tree," she continued, "and I love it
+dearly. They laugh at me at home for this, but I don't mind. There is
+a story attached to this tree."
+
+And she told what we all know about the tree, about the old mansion,
+the pedlar and the goose-girl, who had met for the first time in this
+spot, and had afterwards become the founders of the noble family to
+which the young barons belonged.
+
+"They would not be ennobled, the good old folks!" she said. "They kept
+to the motto 'Everything in its right place;' and accordingly they
+thought it would be out of place for them to purchase a title with
+money. My grandfather, the first baron, was their son: he is said to
+have been a very learned man, very popular with princes and
+princesses, and a frequent guest at the court festivals. The others at
+home love him best; but, I don't know how, there seems to me something
+about that first pair that draws my heart towards them. How
+comfortable, how patriarchal it must have been in the old house, where
+the mistress sat at the spinning-wheel among her maids, and the old
+master read aloud from the Bible!"
+
+"They were charming, sensible people," said the clergyman's son; and
+with this the conversation naturally fell upon nobles and citizens.
+The young man scarcely seemed to belong to the citizen class, so well
+did he speak concerning the purpose and meaning of nobility. He said,
+
+"It is a great thing to belong to a family that has distinguished
+itself, and thus to have, as it were, in one's blood, a spur that
+urges one on to make progress in all that is good. It is delightful to
+have a name that serves as a card of admission into the highest
+circles. Nobility means that which is great and noble: it is a coin
+that has received a stamp to indicate what it is worth. It is the
+fallacy of the time, and many poets have frequently maintained this
+fallacy, that nobility of birth is accompanied by foolishness, and
+that the lower you go among the poor, the more does everything around
+shine. But that is not my view, for I consider it entirely false. In
+the higher classes many beautiful and kindly traits are found. My
+mother told me one of this kind, and I could tell you many others.
+
+"My mother was on a visit to a great family in town. My grandmother, I
+think, had been housekeeper to the count's mother. The great nobleman
+and my mother were alone in the room, when the former noticed that an
+old woman came limping on crutches into the courtyard. Indeed, she was
+accustomed to come every Sunday, and carry away a gift with her. 'Ah,
+there is the poor old lady,' said the nobleman: 'walking is a great
+toil to her;' and before my mother understood what he meant, he had
+gone out of the room and run down the stairs, to save the old woman
+the toilsome walk, by carrying to her the gift she had come to
+receive.
+
+"Now, that was only a small circumstance, but, like the widow's two
+mites in the Scripture, it has a sound that finds an echo in the
+depths of the heart in human nature; and these are the things the poet
+should show and point out; especially in these times should he sing of
+it, for that does good, and pacifies and unites men. But where a bit
+of mortality, because it has a genealogical tree and a coat of arms,
+rears up like an Arabian horse, and prances in the street, and says in
+the room, 'People out of the street have been here,' when a commoner
+has been--that is nobility in decay, and become a mere mask--a mask of
+the kind that Thespis created; and people are glad when such an one is
+turned into satire."
+
+This was the speech of the clergyman's son. It was certainly rather
+long, but then the flute was being finished while he made it.
+
+At the castle there was a great company. Many guests came from the
+neighbourhood and from the capital. Many ladies, some tastefully, and
+others tastelessly dressed, were there, and the great hall was quite
+full of people. The clergymen from the neighbourhood stood
+respectfully congregated in a corner, which made it look almost as if
+there were to be a burial there. But it was not so, for this was a
+party of pleasure, only that the pleasure had not yet begun.
+
+A great concert was to be performed, and consequently the little baron
+had brought in his willow flute; but he could not get a note out of
+it, nor could his papa, and therefore the flute was worth nothing.
+There was instrumental music and song, both of the kind that delight
+the performers most--quite charming!
+
+"You are a performer?" said a cavalier--his father's son and nothing
+else--to the tutor. "You play the flute and make it too--that's
+genius. That should command, and should have the place of honour!"
+
+"No indeed," replied the young man, "I only advance with the times, as
+every one is obliged to do."
+
+"Oh, you will enchant us with the little instrument, will you not?"
+And with these words he handed to the clergyman's son the flute cut
+from the willow tree by the pool, and announced aloud that the tutor
+was about to perform a solo on that instrument.
+
+Now, they only wanted to make fun of him, that was easily seen; and
+therefore the tutor would not play, though indeed he could do so very
+well; but they crowded round him and importuned him so strongly, that
+at last he took the flute and put it to his lips.
+
+That was a wonderful flute! A sound, as sustained as that which is
+emitted by the whistle of a steam engine, and much stronger, echoed
+far over courtyard, garden, and wood, miles away into the country;
+and simultaneously with the tone came a rushing wind that roared,
+"Everything in its right place!" And papa flew as if carried by the
+wind straight out of the hall and into the shepherd's cot; and the
+shepherd flew, not into the hall, for there he could not come--no, but
+into the room of the servants, among the smart lacqueys who strutted
+about there in silk stockings; and the proud servants were struck
+motionless with horror at the thought that such a personage dared to
+sit down to table with them.
+
+But in the hall the young baroness flew up to the place of honour at
+the top of the table, where she was worthy to sit; and the young
+clergyman's son had a seat next to her; and there the two sat as if
+they were a newly-married pair. An old count of one of the most
+ancient families in the country remained untouched in his place of
+honour; for the flute was just, as men ought to be. The witty
+cavalier, the son of his father and nothing else, who had been the
+cause of the flute-playing, flew head-over-heels into the
+poultry-house--but not alone.
+
+For a whole mile round about the sounds of the flute were heard, and
+singular events took place. A rich banker's family, driving along in a
+coach and four, was blown quite out of the carriage, and could not
+even find a place on the footboard at the back. Two rich peasants who
+in our times had grown too high for their corn-fields, were tumbled
+into the ditch. It was a dangerous flute, that: luckily, it burst at
+the first note, and that was a good thing, for then it was put back
+into the owner's pocket. "Everything in its right place."
+
+The day afterwards not a word was said about this marvellous event;
+and thence has come the expression "pocketing the flute." Everything
+was in its usual order, only that the two old portraits of the dealer
+and the goose-girl hung on the wall in the banqueting hall. They had
+been blown up yonder, and as one of the real connoisseurs said they
+had been painted by a master's hand, they remained where they were,
+and were restored. "Everything in its right place."
+
+And to that it will come; for _hereafter_ is long--longer than this
+story.
+
+
+
+
+THE GOBLIN AND THE HUCKSTER.
+
+
+There was once a regular student: he lived in a garret, and nothing at
+all belonged to him; but there was also once a regular huckster: he
+lived on the ground floor, and the whole house was his; and the
+goblin kept with him, for on the huckster's table on Christmas Eve
+there was always a dish of plum porridge, with a great piece of butter
+floating in the middle. The huckster could accomplish that; and
+consequently the goblin stuck to the huckster's shop, and that was
+very interesting.
+
+[Illustration: THE STUDENT'S BARGAIN.]
+
+One evening the student came through the back door to buy candles and
+cheese for himself. He had no one to send, and that's why he came
+himself. He procured what he wanted and paid for it, and the huckster
+and his wife both nodded a "good evening" to him; and the woman was
+one who could do more than merely nod--she had an immense power of
+tongue! And the student nodded too, and then suddenly stood still,
+reading the sheet of paper in which the cheese had been wrapped. It
+was a leaf torn out of an old book, a book that ought not to have been
+torn up, a book that was full of poetry.
+
+"Yonder lies some more of the same sort," said the huckster: "I gave
+an old woman a little coffee for the books; give me two groschen, and
+you shall have the remainder."
+
+"Yes," said the student, "give me the book instead of the cheese: I
+can eat my bread and butter without cheese. It would be a sin to tear
+the book up entirely. You are a capital man, a practical man, but you
+understand no more about poetry than does that cask yonder."
+
+Now, that was an insulting speech, especially towards the cask; but
+the huckster laughed and the student laughed, for it was only said in
+fun. But the goblin was angry that any one should dare to say such
+things to a huckster who lived in his own house and sold the best
+butter.
+
+When it was night, and the shop was closed and all were in bed, the
+goblin came forth, went into the bedroom, and took away the good
+lady's tongue; for she did not want that while she was asleep; and
+whenever he put this tongue upon any object in the room, the said
+object acquired speech and language, and could express its thoughts
+and feelings as well as the lady herself could have done; but only one
+object could use it at a time, and that was a good thing, otherwise
+they would have interrupted each other.
+
+And the goblin laid the tongue upon the cask in which the old
+newspapers were lying.
+
+"Is it true," he asked, "that you don't know what poetry means?"
+
+"Of course I know it," replied the cask: "poetry is something that
+always stands at the foot of a column in the newspapers, and is
+sometimes cut out. I dare swear I have more of it in me than the
+student, and I'm only a poor tub compared to the huckster."
+
+Then the goblin put the tongue upon the coffee-mill, and, mercy! how
+it began to go! And he put it upon the butter-cask, and on the
+cash-box: they were all of the waste-paper cask's opinion, and the
+opinion of the majority must be respected.
+
+"Now I shall tell it to the student!" And with these words the goblin
+went quite quietly up the back stairs to the garret, where the student
+lived. The student had still a candle burning, and the goblin peeped
+through the keyhole, and saw that he was reading in the torn book that
+he had carried up out of the shop downstairs.
+
+But how light it was in his room! Out of the book shot a clear beam,
+expanding into a thick stem, and into a mighty tree, which grew
+upward and spread its branches far over the student. Each leaf was
+fresh, and every blossom was a beautiful female head, some with dark
+sparkling eyes, others with wonderfully clear blue orbs; every fruit
+was a gleaming star, and there was a glorious sound of song in the
+student's room.
+
+Never had the little goblin imagined such splendour, far less had he
+ever seen or heard anything like it. He stood still on tiptoe, and
+peeped in till the light went out in the student's garret. Probably
+the student blew it out, and went to bed; but the little goblin
+remained standing there nevertheless, for the music still sounded on,
+soft and beautiful--a splendid cradle song for the student who had
+lain down to rest.
+
+"This is an incomparable place," said the goblin: "I never expected
+such a thing! I should like to stay here with the student." And then
+the little man thought it over--and he was a sensible little man
+too--but he sighed, "The student has no porridge!" And then he went
+down again to the huckster's shop: and it was a very good thing that
+he got down there again at last, for the cask had almost worn out the
+good woman's tongue, for it had spoken out at one side everything that
+was contained in it, and was just about turning itself over, to give
+it out from the other side also, when the goblin came in, and restored
+the tongue to its owner. But from that time forth the whole shop, from
+the cash-box down to the firewood, took its tone from the cask, and
+paid him such respect, and thought so much of him, that when the
+huckster afterwards read the critical articles on theatricals and art
+in the newspaper, they were all persuaded the information came from
+the cask itself.
+
+But the goblin could no longer sit quietly and contentedly listening
+to all the wisdom down there: so soon as the light glimmered from the
+garret in the evening he felt as if the rays were strong cables
+drawing him up, and he was obliged to go and peep through the keyhole;
+and there a feeling of greatness rolled around him, such as we feel
+beside the ever-heaving sea when the storm rushes over it, and he
+burst into tears! He did not know himself why he was weeping, but a
+peculiar feeling of pleasure mingled with his tears. How wonderfully
+glorious it must be to sit with the student under the same tree! But
+that might not be, he was obliged to be content with the view through
+the keyhole, and to be glad of that. There he stood on the cold
+landing-place, with the autumn wind blowing down from the loft-hole:
+it was cold, very cold; but the little mannikin only felt that when
+the light in the room was extinguished, and the tones in the tree died
+away. Ha! then he shivered, and crept down again to his warm corner,
+where it was homely and comfortable.
+
+And when Christmas came, and brought with it the porridge and the
+great lump of butter, why, then he thought the huckster the better
+man.
+
+But in the middle of the night the goblin was awaked by a terrible
+tumult and beating against the window shutters. People rapped noisily
+without, and the watchman blew his horn, for a great fire had broken
+out--the whole street was full of smoke and flame. Was it in the house
+itself, or at a neighbour's? Where was it? Terror seized on all. The
+huckster's wife was so bewildered that she took her gold earrings out
+of her ears and put them in her pocket, that at any rate she might
+save something; the huckster ran for his share-papers; and the maid
+for her black silk mantilla, for she had found means to purchase one.
+Each one wanted to save the best thing they had; the goblin wanted to
+do the same thing, and in a few leaps he was up the stairs, and into
+the room of the student, who stood quite quietly at the open window,
+looking at the conflagration that was raging in the house of the
+neighbour opposite. The goblin seized upon the wonderful book which
+lay upon the table, popped it into his red cap, and held the cap tight
+with both hands. The great treasure of the house was saved; and now he
+ran up and away, quite on to the roof of the house, on to the chimney.
+There he sat, illuminated by the flames of the burning house opposite,
+both hands pressed tightly over his cap, in which the treasure lay;
+and now he knew the real feelings of his heart, and knew to whom it
+really belonged. But when the fire was extinguished, and the goblin
+could think calmly again, why, then....
+
+"I must divide myself between the two," he said; "I can't quite give
+up the huckster, because of the porridge!"
+
+Now, that was spoken quite like a human creature. We all of us visit
+the huckster for the sake of the porridge.
+
+
+
+
+IN A THOUSAND YEARS.
+
+
+Yes, in a thousand years people will fly on the wings of steam through
+the air, over the ocean! The young inhabitants of America will become
+visitors of old Europe. They will come over to see the monuments and
+the great cities, which will then be in ruins, just as we in our time
+make pilgrimages to the tottering splendours of Southern Asia. In a
+thousand years they will come!
+
+The Thames, the Danube, and the Rhine still roll their course, Mont
+Blanc stands firm with its snow-capped summit, and the Northern Lights
+gleam over the lands of the North; but generation after generation has
+become dust, whole rows of the mighty of the moment are forgotten,
+like those who already slumber under the hill on which the rich trader
+whose ground it is has built a bench, on which he can sit and look out
+across his waving corn-fields.
+
+"To Europe!" cry the young sons of America; "to the land of our
+ancestors, the glorious land of monuments and fancy--to Europe!"
+
+The ship of the air comes. It is crowded with passengers, for the
+transit is quicker than by sea. The electro-magnetic wire under the
+ocean has already telegraphed the number of the aerial caravan. Europe
+is in sight: it is the coast of Ireland that they see, but the
+passengers are still asleep; they will not be called till they are
+exactly over England. There they will first step on European shore, in
+the land of Shakespeare as the educated call it; in the land of
+politics, the land of machines, as it is called by others.
+
+Here they stay a whole day. That is all the time the busy race can
+devote to the whole of England and Scotland. Then the journey is
+continued through the tunnel under the English Channel, to France, the
+land of Charlemagne and Napoleon. Moliere is named: the learned men
+talk of the classic school of remote antiquity: there is rejoicing and
+shouting for the names of heroes, poets, and men of science, whom our
+time does not know, but who will be born after our time in Paris, the
+crater of Europe.
+
+The air steamboat flies over the country whence Columbus went forth,
+where Cortez was born, and where Calderon sang dramas in sounding
+verse. Beautiful black-eyed women live still in the blooming valleys,
+and the oldest songs speak of the Cid and the Alhambra.
+
+Then through the air, over the sea, to Italy, where once lay old,
+everlasting Rome. It has vanished! The Campagna lies desert: a single
+ruined wall is shown as the remains of St. Peter's, but there is a
+doubt if this ruin be genuine.
+
+Next to Greece, to sleep a night in the grand hotel at the top of
+Mount Olympus, to say that they have been there; and the journey is
+continued to the Bosphorus, to rest there a few hours, and see the
+place where Byzantium lay; and where the legend tells that the harem
+stood in the time of the Turks, poor fishermen are now spreading their
+nets.
+
+Over the remains of mighty cities on the broad Danube, cities which we
+in our time know not, the travellers pass; but here and there, on the
+rich sites of those that time shall bring forth, the caravan sometimes
+descends, and departs thence again.
+
+Down below lies Germany, that was once covered with a close net of
+railways and canals, the region where Luther spoke, where Goethe sang,
+and Mozart once held the sceptre of harmony! Great names shine there,
+in science and in art, names that are unknown to us. One day devoted
+to seeing Germany, and one for the North, the country of Oersted and
+Linnaeus, and for Norway, the land of the old heroes and the young
+Normans. Iceland is visited on the journey home: the geysers burn no
+more, Hecla is an extinct volcano, but the rocky island is still fixed
+in the midst of the foaming sea, a continual monument of legend and
+poetry.
+
+"There is really a great deal to be seen in Europe," says the young
+American, "and we have seen it in a week, according to the directions
+of the great traveller" (and here he mentions the name of one of his
+contemporaries) "in his celebrated work, 'How to See all Europe in a
+Week.'"
+
+
+
+
+THE BOND OF FRIENDSHIP.
+
+
+We have just taken a little journey, and already we want to take a
+longer one. Whither? To Sparta, to Mycene, to Delphi? There are a
+hundred places at whose names the heart beats with the desire of
+travel. On horseback we go up the mountain paths, through brake and
+through brier. A single traveller makes an appearance like a whole
+caravan. He rides forward with his guide, a pack-horse carries trunks,
+a tent, and provisions, and a few armed soldiers follow as a guard. No
+inn with warm beds awaits him at the end of his tiring day's journey:
+the tent is often his dwelling-place. In the great wild region the
+guide cooks him a pillan of rice, fowls, and curry for his supper. A
+thousand gnats swarm round the tent. It is a boisterous night, and
+to-morrow the way will lead across swollen streams; take care you are
+not washed away!
+
+What is your reward for undergoing these hardships? The fullest,
+richest reward. Nature manifests herself here in all her greatness;
+every spot is historical, and the eye and the thoughts are alike
+delighted. The poet may sing it, the painter portray it in rich
+pictures; but the air of reality which sinks deep into the soul of the
+spectator, and remains there, neither painter nor poet can produce.
+
+In many little sketches I have endeavoured to give an idea of a small
+part of Athens and its environs; but how colourless the picture seems!
+How little does it exhibit Greece, the mourning genius of beauty,
+whose greatness and whose sorrow the stranger never forgets!
+
+The lonely herdsman yonder on the hills would, perhaps, by a simple
+recital of an event in his life, better enlighten the stranger who
+wishes in a few features to behold the land of the Hellenes, than any
+picture could do.
+
+"Then," says my Muse, "let him speak." A custom, a good, peculiar
+custom, shall be the subject of the mountain shepherd's tale. It is
+called
+
+
+THE BOND OF FRIENDSHIP.
+
+
+Our rude house was put together of clay; but the door-posts were
+columns of fluted marble found near the spot where the house was
+erected. The roof reached almost down to the ground. It was now dark
+brown and ugly, but it had originally consisted of blooming olive and
+fresh laurel branches brought from beyond the mountain. Around our
+dwelling was a narrow gorge, whose walls of rock rose steeply upwards,
+and showed naked and black, and round their summits often hung clouds,
+like white living figures. Never did I hear a singing bird there,
+never did the men there dance to the sound of the bagpipe; but the
+spot was sacred from the old times: even its name reminded of this,
+for it was called Delphi! The dark solemn mountains were all covered
+with snow; the highest, which gleamed the longest in the red light of
+evening, was Parnassus; the brook which rolled from it near our house
+was once sacred also. Now the ass sullies it with its feet, but the
+stream rolls on and on, and becomes clear again. How I can remember
+every spot in the deep holy solitude! In the midst of the hut a fire
+was kindled, and when the hot ashes lay there red and glowing, the
+bread was baked in them. When the snow was piled so high around our
+hut as almost to hide it, my mother appeared most cheerful: then she
+would hold my head between her hands, and sing the songs she never
+sang at other times, for the Turks our masters would not allow it. She
+sang:
+
+"On the summit of Olympus, in the forest of dwarf firs, lay an old
+stag. His eyes were heavy with tears; he wept blue and even red
+tears; and there came a roebuck by, and said, 'What ails thee, that
+thou weepest those blue and red tears?' And the stag answered, 'The
+Turk has come to our city: he has wild dogs for the chase, a goodly
+pack.' 'I will drive them away across the islands,' cried the young
+roebuck, 'I will drive them away across the islands into the deep
+sea!' But before evening sank down the roebuck was slain, and before
+night the stag was hunted and dead."
+
+And when my mother sang thus, her eyes became moist, and on the long
+eyelashes hung a tear; but she hid it, and baked our black bread in
+the ashes. Then I would clench my fist and cry, "We will kill the
+Turks!" but she repeated from the song the words, "I will drive them
+across the islands into the deep sea. But before evening sank down the
+roebuck was slain, and before the night came the stag was hunted and
+dead."
+
+For several days and nights we had been lonely in our hut, when my
+father came home. I knew he would bring me shells from the Gulf of
+Lepanto, or perhaps even a bright gleaming knife. This time he brought
+us a child, a little half-naked girl, that he brought under his
+sheepskin cloak. It was wrapped in a fur, and all that the little
+creature possessed when this was taken off, and she lay in my mother's
+lap, were three silver coins, fastened in her dark hair. My father
+told us that the Turks had killed the child's parents; and he told so
+much about them, that I dreamed of the Turks all night. He himself had
+been wounded, and my mother bound up his arm. The wound was deep, and
+the thick sheepskin was stiff with frozen blood. The little maiden was
+to be my sister. How radiantly beautiful she looked! Even my mother's
+eyes were not more gentle than hers. Anastasia, as she was called, was
+to be my sister, because her father had been united to mine by the old
+custom which we still keep. They had sworn brotherhood in their youth,
+and chosen the most beautiful and virtuous girl in the neighbourhood
+to consecrate their bond of friendship. I often heard of the strange
+good custom.
+
+So now the little girl was my sister. She sat in my lap, and I brought
+her flowers and the feathers of the mountain birds: we drank together
+of the waters of Parnassus, and dwelt together for many a year under
+the laurel roof of the hut, while my mother sang winter after winter
+of the stag who wept red tears. But as yet I did not understand that
+it was my own countrymen whose many sorrows were mirrored in those
+tears.
+
+One day there came three Frankish men. Their dress was different from
+ours. They had tents and beds with them on their horses, and more
+than twenty Turks, all armed with swords and muskets, accompanied
+them; for they were friends of the pacha, and had letters from him
+commanding an escort for them. They only came to see our mountains, to
+ascend Parnassus amid the snow and the clouds, and to look at the
+strange black steep rock near our hut. They could not find room in it,
+nor could they endure the smoke that rolled along the ceiling and
+found its way out at the low door; therefore they pitched their tents
+on the small space outside our dwelling, roasted lambs and birds, and
+poured out strong sweet wine, of which the Turks were not allowed to
+partake.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREEK MOTHER'S SONG.]
+
+When they departed, I accompanied them for some distance, carrying my
+little sister Anastasia, wrapped in a goatskin, on my back. One of the
+Frankish gentlemen made me stand in front of a rock, and drew me, and
+her too, as we stood there, so that we looked like one creature. I
+never thought of it; but Anastasia and I were really one. She was
+always sitting in my lap or riding in the goatskin at my back; and
+when I dreamed, she appeared in my dreams.
+
+Two nights afterwards, other men, armed with knives and muskets, came
+into our tent. They were Albanians, brave men, my mother told me. They
+only stayed a short time. My sister Anastasia sat on the knee of one
+of them, and when they were gone she had not three, but only two
+silver coins in her hair. They wrapped tobacco in strips of paper and
+smoked it. I remember they were undecided as to the road they were to
+take.
+
+But they had to make a choice. They went, and my father went with
+them. Soon afterwards we heard the sound of firing. The noise was
+renewed, and soldiers rushed into our hut, and took my mother, and
+myself, and my sister Anastasia prisoners. They declared that the
+robbers had been entertained by us, and that my father had acted as
+the robbers' guide, and therefore we must go with them. Presently I
+saw the corpses of the robbers brought in; I saw my father's corpse
+too. I cried and cried till I fell asleep. When I awoke, we were in
+prison, but the room was not worse than ours in our own house. They
+gave me onions to eat, and musty wine poured from a tarry cask, but we
+had no better fare at home.
+
+How long we were kept prisoners I do not know; but many days and
+nights went by. When we were set free it was the time of the holy
+Easter feast. I carried Anastasia on my back, for my mother was ill,
+and could only move slowly, and it was a long way till we came down to
+the sea, to the Gulf of Lepanto. We went into a church that gleamed
+with pictures painted on a golden ground. They were pictures of
+angels, and very beautiful; but it seemed to me that our little
+Anastasia was just as beautiful. In the middle of the floor stood a
+coffin filled with roses. "The Lord Christ is pictured there in the
+form of a beautiful rose," said my mother; and the priest announced,
+"Christ is risen!" All the people kissed each other: each one had a
+burning taper in his hand, and I received one myself, and so did
+little Anastasia. The bagpipes sounded, men danced hand in hand from
+the church, and outside the women were roasting the Easter lamb. We
+were invited to partake, and I sat by the fire; a boy, older than
+myself, put his arms round my neck, kissed me, and said, "Christ is
+risen!" and thus it was that for the first time I met Aphtanides.
+
+My mother could make fishermen's nets, for which there was a good
+demand here in the bay, and we lived a long time by the side of the
+sea, the beautiful sea, that tasted like tears, and in its colours
+reminded me of the song of the stag that wept--for sometimes its
+waters were red, and sometimes green or blue.
+
+[Illustration: THE FRIENDS AT LEPANTO.]
+
+Aphtanides knew how to manage our boat, and I often sat in it, with my
+little Anastasia, while it glided on through the water, swift as a
+bird flying through the air. Then, when the sun sank down, the
+mountains were tinted with a deeper and deeper blue, one range seemed
+to rise behind the other, and behind them all stood Parnassus with its
+snow-crowned summit. The mountain-top gleamed in the evening rays like
+glowing iron, and it seemed as though the light came from within it;
+for long after the sun had set, the mountain still shone through the
+clear blue air. The white water birds touched the surface of the sea
+with their wings, and all here was as calm and quiet as among the
+black rocks at Delphi. I lay on my back in the boat, Anastasia leaned
+against me, and the stars above us shone brighter than the lamps in
+our church. They were the same stars, and they stood exactly in the
+same positions above me, as when I had sat in front of our hut at
+Delphi; and at last I almost fancied I was there. Suddenly there was a
+splash in the water, and the boat rocked violently. I cried out in
+horror, for Anastasia had fallen into the water: but in a moment
+Aphtanides had sprung in after her, and was holding her up to me! We
+dried her clothes as well as we could, remaining on the water till
+they were dry; for no one was to know what a fright we had had for our
+little adopted sister, in whose life Aphtanides now had a part.
+
+The summer came. The sun burned so hot that the leaves turned yellow
+on the trees. I thought of our cool mountains, and of the fresh water
+they contained; my mother, too, longed for them; and one evening we
+wandered home. What peace, what silence! We walked on through the
+thick thyme, still fragrant though the sun had scorched its leaves.
+Not a single herdsman did we meet, not one solitary hut did we pass.
+Everything was quiet and deserted; but a shooting star announced that
+in heaven there was yet life. I know not if the clear blue air gleamed
+with light of its own, or if the radiance came from the stars; but we
+could see the outlines of the mountains quite plainly. My mother
+lighted a fire, roasted some roots she had brought with her, and I and
+my little sister slept among the thyme, without fear of the ugly
+Smidraki,[4] from whose throat fire spurts forth, or of the wolf and
+jackal; for my mother sat beside us, and I considered her presence
+protection enough for us.
+
+We reached our old home; but the hut was a heap of ruins, and a new
+one had to be built. A few women lent my mother their aid, and in a
+few days walls were raised, and covered with a new roof of olive
+branches. My mother made many bottle cases of bark and skins; I kept
+the little flock of the priests,[5] and Anastasia and the little
+tortoises were my playmates.
+
+[Footnote 4: According to the Greek superstition, this is a monster
+generated from the unopened entrails of slaughtered sheep, which are
+thrown away in the fields.]
+
+[Footnote 5: A peasant who can read often becomes a priest; he is then
+called "very holy Sir," and the lower orders kiss the ground on which
+he has stepped.]
+
+Once we had a visit from our beloved Aphtanides, who said he had
+greatly longed to see us, and who stayed with us two whole happy days.
+
+A month afterwards he came again, and told us that he was going in a
+ship to Corfu and Patras, but must bid us good-bye first; and he had
+brought a large fish for our mother. He had a great deal to tell, not
+only of the fishermen yonder in the Gulf of Lepanto, but also of
+kings and heroes, who had once possessed Greece, just as the Turks
+possess it now.
+
+I have seen a bud on a rose-bush gradually unfold in days and weeks,
+till it became a rose, and hung there in its beauty, before I was
+aware how large and beautiful and red it had become; and the same
+thing I now saw in Anastasia. She was now a beautiful grown girl, and
+I had become a stout stripling. The wolf-skins that covered my
+mother's and Anastasia's bed, I had myself taken from wolves that had
+fallen beneath my shots.
+
+Years had gone by, when one evening Aphtanides came in, slender as a
+reed, strong and brown. He kissed us all, and had much to tell of the
+fortifications of Malta, of the great ocean, and of the marvellous
+sepulchres of Egypt. It sounded strange as a legend of the priests,
+and I looked up to him with a kind of veneration.
+
+"How much you know!" I exclaimed; "what wonders you can tell of!"
+
+"But you have told me the finest thing, after all," he replied. "You
+told me of a thing that has never been out of my thoughts--of the good
+old custom of the bond of friendship, a custom I should like to
+follow. Brother, let you and I go to church, as your father and
+Anastasia's went before us: your sister Anastasia is the most
+beautiful and most innocent of girls; she shall consecrate us! No
+people has such grand old customs as we Greeks."
+
+Anastasia blushed like a young rose, and my mother kissed Aphtanides.
+
+A couple of miles from our house there, where loose earth lies on the
+hill, and a few scattered trees give a shelter, stood the little
+church; a silver lamp hung in front of the altar.
+
+I had put on my best clothes: the white fustanella fell in rich folds
+around my hips, the red jacket fitted tight and close, the tassel on
+my fez cap was silver, and in my girdle gleamed a knife and my
+pistols. Aphtanides was clad in the blue garb worn by Greek sailors;
+on his chest hung a silver plate with the figure of the Virgin Mary;
+his scarf was as costly as those worn by rich lords. Every one could
+see that we were about to go through a solemn ceremony. We stepped
+into the little simple church, where the evening sunlight, streaming
+through the door, gleamed on the burning lamp and the pictures on
+golden ground. We knelt down on the altar steps, and Anastasia came
+before us. A long white garment hung loose over her graceful form; on
+her white neck and bosom hung a chain, covered with old and new coins,
+forming a kind of collar. Her black hair was fastened in a knot, and
+confined by a head-dress made of silver and gold coins that had been
+found in an old temple. No Greek girl had more beautiful ornaments
+than she. Her countenance glowed, and her eyes were like two stars.
+
+We all three prayed silently; and then she said to us, "Will you be
+friends in life and in death?" "Yes," we replied. "Will you, whatever
+may happen, remember this--my brother is a part of myself. My secret
+is his, my happiness is his. Self-sacrifice, patience--everything in
+me belongs to him as to me?" And we again answered, "Yes."
+
+Then she joined our hands and kissed us on the forehead, and we again
+prayed silently. Then the priest came through the door near the altar,
+and blessed us all three; and a song, sung by the other holy men,
+sounded from behind the altar screen, and the bond of eternal
+friendship was concluded. When we rose, I saw my mother standing by
+the church door weeping heartily.
+
+How cheerful it was now, in our little hut, and by the springs of
+Delphi! On the evening before his departure, Aphtanides sat thoughtful
+with me on the declivity of a mountain; his arm was flung round my
+waist, and mine was round his neck: we spoke of the sorrows of Greece,
+and of the men whom the country could trust. Every thought of our
+souls lay clear before each of us, and I seized his hand.
+
+"One thing thou must still know, one thing that till now has been a
+secret between myself and Heaven. My whole soul is filled with love!
+with a love stronger than the love I bear to my mother and to thee!"
+
+"And whom do you love?" asked Aphtanides, and his face and neck grew
+red as fire.
+
+"I love Anastasia," I replied--and his hand trembled in mine, and he
+became pale as a corpse. I saw it; I understood the cause; and I
+believe _my_ hand trembled. I bent towards him, kissed his forehead,
+and whispered, "I have never spoken of it to her, and perhaps she does
+not love me. Brother, think of this: I have seen her daily; she has
+grown up beside me, and has become a part of my soul!"
+
+"And she shall be thine!" he exclaimed, "thine! I may not deceive
+thee, nor will I do so. I also love her; but to-morrow I depart. In a
+year we shall see each other once more, and then you will be married,
+will you not? I have a little gold of my own: it shall be thine. Thou
+must, thou shalt take it."
+
+And we wandered home silently across the mountains. It was late in the
+evening when we stood at my mother's door.
+
+Anastasia held the lamp upwards as we entered; my mother was not
+there. She gazed at Aphtanides with a beautifully mournful gaze.
+"To-morrow you are going from us," she said: "I am very sorry for
+it."
+
+"Sorry!" he repeated, and in his voice there seemed a trouble as great
+as the grief I myself felt. I could not speak, but he seized her hand
+and said, "Our brother yonder loves you, and he is dear to you, is he
+not? His very silence is a proof of his affection."
+
+Anastasia trembled and burst into tears. Then I saw no one but her,
+thought of none but her, and threw my arms round her, and said, "I
+love thee!" She pressed her lips to mine, and flung her arms round my
+neck; but the lamp had fallen to the ground, and all was dark around
+us--dark as in the heart of poor Aphtanides.
+
+Before daybreak he rose, kissed us all, said farewell, and went away.
+He had given all his money to my mother for us. Anastasia was my
+betrothed, and a few days afterwards she became my wife.
+
+
+
+
+JACK THE DULLARD.
+
+AN OLD STORY TOLD ANEW.
+
+
+Far in the interior of the country lay an old baronial hall, and in it
+lived an old proprietor, who had two sons, which two young men thought
+themselves too clever by half. They wanted to go out and woo the
+king's daughter; for the maiden in question had publicly announced
+that she would choose for her husband that youth who could arrange his
+words best.
+
+So these two geniuses prepared themselves a full week for the
+wooing--this was the longest time that could be granted them; but it
+was enough, for they had had much preparatory information, and
+everybody knows how useful that is. One of them knew the whole Latin
+dictionary by heart, and three whole years of the daily paper of the
+little town into the bargain; and so well, indeed, that he could
+repeat it all either backwards or forwards, just as he chose. The
+other was deeply read in the corporation laws, and knew by heart what
+every corporation ought to know; and accordingly he thought he could
+talk of affairs of state, and put his spoke in the wheel in the
+council. And he knew one thing more: he could embroider braces with
+roses and other flowers, and with arabesques, for he was a tasty,
+light-fingered fellow.
+
+"I shall win the princess!" So cried both of them. Therefore their old
+papa gave to each a handsome horse. The youth who knew the dictionary
+and newspaper by heart had a black horse, and he who knew all about
+the corporation laws received a milk-white steed. Then they rubbed the
+corners of their mouths with fish-oil, so that they might become very
+smooth and glib. All the servants stood below in the courtyard, and
+looked on while they mounted their horses; and just by chance the
+third son came up. For the proprietor had really three sons, though
+nobody counted the third with his brothers, because he was not so
+learned as they, and indeed he was generally known as "Jack the
+Dullard."
+
+"Hallo!" said Jack the Dullard, "where are you going? I declare you
+have put on your Sunday clothes!"
+
+"We're going to the king's court, as suitors to the king's daughter.
+Don't you know the announcement that has been made all through the
+country?" And they told him all about it.
+
+"My word! I'll be in it too!" cried Jack the Dullard; and his two
+brothers burst out laughing at him, and rode away.
+
+"Father dear," said Jack, "I must have a horse too. I do feel so
+desperately inclined to marry! If she accepts me, she accepts me; and
+if she won't have me, I'll have her; but she _shall_ be mine!"
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," replied the old gentleman. "You shall have no
+horse from me. You don't know how to speak--you can't arrange your
+words. Your brothers are very different fellows from you."
+
+"Well," quoth Jack the Dullard, "if I can't have a horse, I'll take
+the billy-goat, who belongs to me, and he can carry me very well!"
+
+And so said, so done. He mounted the billy-goat, pressed his heels
+into its sides, and gallopped down the high street like a hurricane.
+
+"Hei, houp! that was a ride! Here I come!" shouted Jack the Dullard,
+and he sang till his voice echoed far and wide.
+
+But his brothers rode slowly on in advance of him. They spoke not a
+word, for they were thinking about all the fine extempore speeches
+they would have to bring out, and all these had to be cleverly
+prepared beforehand.
+
+"Hallo!" shouted Jack the Dullard. "Here am I! Look what I have found
+on the high-road." And he showed them what it was, and it was a dead
+crow.
+
+"Dullard!" exclaimed the brothers, "what are you going to do with
+that?"
+
+"With the crow? why, I am going to give it to the princess."
+
+"Yes, do so," said they; and they laughed, and rode on.
+
+"Hallo, here I am again! Just see what I have found now: you don't
+find that on the high-road every day!"
+
+And the brothers turned round to see what he could have found now.
+
+[Illustration: JACK'S INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCESS.]
+
+"Dullard!" they cried, "that is only an old wooden shoe, and the upper
+part is missing into the bargain; are you going to give that also to
+the princess?"
+
+"Most certainly I shall," replied Jack the Dullard; and again the
+brothers laughed and rode on, and thus they got far in advance of him;
+but----
+
+"Hallo--hop rara!" and there was Jack the Dullard again. "It is
+getting better and better," he cried. "Hurrah! it is quite famous."
+
+"Why, what have you found this time?" inquired the brothers.
+
+"Oh," said Jack the Dullard, "I can hardly tell you. How glad the
+princess will be!"
+
+"Bah!" said the brothers; "that is nothing but clay out of the ditch."
+
+"Yes, certainly it is," said Jack the Dullard; "and clay of the finest
+sort. See, it is so wet, it runs through one's fingers." And he filled
+his pocket with the clay.
+
+But his brothers gallopped on till the sparks flew, and consequently
+they arrived a full hour earlier at the town-gate than could Jack. Now
+at the gate each suitor was provided with a number, and all were
+placed in rows immediately on their arrival, six in each row, and so
+closely packed together that they could not move their arms; and that
+was a prudent arrangement, for they would certainly have come to
+blows, had they been able, merely because one of them stood before the
+other.
+
+All the inhabitants of the country round about stood in great crowds
+around the castle, almost under the very windows, to see the princess
+receive the suitors; and as each stepped into the hall, his power of
+speech seemed to desert him, like the light of a candle that is blown
+out. Then the princess would say, "He is of no use! away with him out
+of the hall!"
+
+At last the turn came for that brother who knew the dictionary by
+heart; but he did not know it now; he had absolutely forgotten it
+altogether; and the boards seemed to re-echo with his footsteps, and
+the ceiling of the hall was made of looking-glass, so that he saw
+himself standing on his head; and at the window stood three clerks and
+a head clerk, and every one of them was writing down every single word
+that was uttered, so that it might be printed in the newspapers, and
+sold for a penny at the street corners. It was a terrible ordeal, and
+they had moreover made such a fire in the stove, that the room seemed
+quite red hot.
+
+"It is dreadfully hot here!" observed the first brother.
+
+"Yes," replied the princess, "my father is going to roast young
+pullets to-day."
+
+"Baa!" there he stood like a baa-lamb. He had not been prepared for a
+speech of this kind; and had not a word to say, though he intended to
+say something witty. "Baa!"
+
+"He is of no use!" said the princess. "Away with him."
+
+And he was obliged to go accordingly. And now the second brother came
+in.
+
+"It is terribly warm here!" he observed.
+
+"Yes, we're roasting pullets to-day," replied the princess.
+
+"What--what were you--were you pleased to ob----" stammered he--and
+all the clerks wrote down, "pleased to ob----"
+
+"He is of no use!" said the princess. "Away with him!"
+
+Now came the turn of Jack the Dullard. He rode into the hall on his
+goat.
+
+"Well, it's most abominably hot here."
+
+"Yes, because I'm roasting young pullets," replied the princess.
+
+"Ah, that's lucky!" exclaimed Jack the Dullard, "for I suppose you'll
+let me roast my crow at the same time?"
+
+"With the greatest pleasure," said the princess. "But have you
+anything you can roast it in? for I have neither pot nor pan."
+
+"Certainly I have!" said Jack. "Here's a cooking utensil with a tin
+handle." And he brought out the old wooden shoe, and put the crow into
+it.
+
+"Well, that _is_ a famous dish!" said the princess. "But what shall we
+do for sauce?"
+
+"Oh, I have that in my pocket," said Jack: "I have so much of it, that
+I can afford to throw some away;" and he poured some of the clay out
+of his pocket.
+
+"I like that!" said the princess. "You can give an answer, and you
+have something to say for yourself, and so you shall be my husband.
+But are you aware that every word we speak is being taken down, and
+will be published in the paper to-morrow? Look yonder, and you will
+see in every window three clerks and a head clerk; and the old head
+clerk is the worst of all, for he can't understand anything." But she
+only said this to frighten Jack the Dullard: and the clerks gave a
+great crow of delight, and each one spurted a blot out of his pen on
+to the floor.
+
+"Oh, those are the gentlemen, are they?" said Jack; "then I will give
+the best I have to the head clerk." And he turned out his pockets, and
+flung the wet clay full in the head clerk's face.
+
+"That was very cleverly done," observed the princess. "I could not
+have done that; but I shall learn in time."
+
+And accordingly Jack the Dullard was made a king, and received a crown
+and a wife, and sat upon a throne. And this report we have wet from
+the press of the head clerk and the corporation of printers--but they
+are not to be depended upon in the least!
+
+
+
+
+SOMETHING.
+
+
+"I want to be something!" said the eldest of five brothers. "I want to
+do something in the world. I don't care how humble my position may be
+in society, if I only effect some good, for that will really be
+something. I'll make bricks, for they are quite indispensable things,
+and then I shall truly have done something."
+
+"But that _something_ will not be enough!" quoth the second brother.
+"What you intend doing is just as much as nothing at all. It is
+journeyman's work, and can be done by a machine. No, I would rather be
+a bricklayer at once, for that _is_ something real; and that's what I
+will be. That brings rank; as a bricklayer one belongs to a guild, and
+is a citizen, and has one's own flag and one's own house of call. Yes,
+and if all goes well, I will keep journeymen. I shall become a master
+bricklayer, and my wife will be a master's wife--that is what _I_ call
+something."
+
+"That's nothing at all!" said the third. "That is beyond the pale of
+the guild, and there are many of those in a town that stand far above
+the mere master artizan. You may be an honest man; but as a 'master'
+you will after all only belong to those who are ranked among common
+men. I know something better than that. I will be an architect, and
+will thus enter into the territory of art and speculation. I shall be
+reckoned among those who stand high in point of intellect. I shall
+certainly have to serve up from the pickaxe, so to speak; so I must
+begin as a carpenter's apprentice, and must go about as an assistant,
+in a cap, though I am accustomed to wear a silk hat. I shall have to
+fetch beer and spirits for the common journeymen, and they will call
+me 'thou,' and that is insulting! But I shall imagine to myself that
+the whole thing is only acting, and a kind of masquerade.
+To-morrow--that is to say, when I have served my time--I shall go my
+own way, and the others will be nothing to me. I shall go to the
+academy, and get instructions in drawing, and shall be called an
+architect. _That's something!_ I may get to be called 'sir,' and even
+'worshipful sir,' or even get a handle at the front or at the back of
+my name, and shall go on building and building, just as those before
+me have built. That will always be a thing to remember, and that's
+what I call something!"
+
+"But I don't care at all for _that_ something," said the fourth. "_I_
+won't sail in the wake of others, and be a copyist. I will be a
+genius; and will stand up greater than all the rest of you together. I
+shall be the creator of a new style, and will give the plan of a
+building suitable to the climate and the material of the country, for
+the nationality of the people, for the development of the age--and an
+additional storey for my own genius."
+
+"But supposing the climate and the material are bad," said the fifth,
+"that would be a disastrous circumstance, for these two exert a great
+influence! Nationality, moreover, may expand itself until it becomes
+affectation, and the development of the century may run wild with your
+work, as youth often runs wild. I quite realise the fact that none of
+you will be anything real, however much you may believe in yourselves.
+But, do what you like, I will not resemble you: I shall keep on the
+outside of things, and criticise whatever you produce. To every work
+there is attached something that is not right--something that has gone
+wrong; and I will ferret that out and find fault with it; and _that_
+will be doing _something_!"
+
+And he kept his word; and everybody said concerning this fifth
+brother, "There is certainly something in him; he has a good head; but
+he does nothing." And by that very means they thought _something_ of
+him!
+
+Now, you see, this is only a little story; but it will never end so
+long as the world lasts.
+
+But what became of the five brothers? Why, this is _nothing_, and not
+_something_.
+
+Listen, it is a capital story.
+
+The eldest brother, he who manufactured bricks, soon became aware of
+the fact that every brick, however small it might be, produced for him
+a little coin, though this coin was only copper; and many copper
+pennies laid one upon the other can be changed into a shining dollar;
+and wherever one knocks with such a dollar in one's hand, whether at
+the baker's, or the butcher's, or the tailor's--wherever it may be,
+the door flies open, and the visitor is welcomed, and gets what he
+wants. You see that is what comes of bricks. Some of those belonging
+to the eldest brother certainly crumbled away, or broke in two, but
+there was a use even for these.
+
+On the high rampart, the wall that kept out the sea, Margaret, the
+poor woman, wished to build herself a little house. All the faulty
+bricks were given to her, and a few perfect ones into the bargain, for
+the eldest brother was a good-natured man, though he certainly did not
+achieve anything beyond the manufacture of bricks. The poor woman put
+together the house for herself. It was little and narrow, and the
+single window was quite crooked. The door was too low, and the
+thatched roof might have shown better workmanship. But after all it
+was a shelter; and from the little house you could look far across the
+sea, whose waves broke vainly against the protecting rampart on which
+it was built. The salt billows spurted their spray over the whole
+house, which was still standing when he who had given the bricks for
+its erection had long been dead and buried.
+
+The second brother knew better how to build a wall, for he had served
+an apprenticeship to it. When he had served his time and passed his
+examination he packed his knapsack and sang the journeyman's song:
+
+    "While I am young I'll wander, from place to place I'll roam,
+    And everywhere build houses, until I come back home;
+    And youth will give me courage, and my true love won't forget:
+    Hurrah then for a workman's life! I'll be a master yet!"
+
+And he carried his idea into effect. When he had come home and become
+a master, he built one house after another in the town. He built a
+whole street; and when the street was finished and became an ornament
+to the place, the houses built a house for him in return, that was to
+be his own. But how can houses build a house? If you ask them they
+will not answer you, but people will understand what is meant by the
+expression, and say, 'certainly, it was the street that built his
+house for him.' It was little, and the floor was covered with clay;
+but when he danced with his bride upon this clay floor, it seemed to
+become polished oak; and from every stone in the wall sprang forth a
+flower, and the room was gay, as if with the costliest paper-hanger's
+work. It was a pretty house, and in it lived a happy pair. The flag of
+the guild fluttered before the house, and the journeymen and
+apprentices shouted hurrah! Yes, he certainly was _something_! And at
+last he died; and _that_ was something too.
+
+Now came the architect, the third brother, who had been at first a
+carpenter's apprentice, had worn a cap, and served as an errand boy,
+but had afterwards gone to the academy, and risen to become an
+architect, and to be called "honoured sir." Yes, if the houses of the
+street had built a house for the brother who had become a bricklayer,
+the street now received its name from the architect, and the
+handsomest house in it became his property. _That_ was something, and
+_he_ was something; and he had a long title before and after his name.
+His children were called _genteel_ children, and when he died his
+widow was "a widow of rank," and _that_ is something!--and his name
+always remained at the corner of the street, and lived on in the
+mouth of every one as the street's name--and _that_ was something!
+
+Now came the genius of the family, the fourth brother, who wanted to
+invent something new and original, and an additional storey on the top
+of it for himself. But the top storey tumbled down, and he came
+tumbling down with it, and broke his neck. Nevertheless he had a
+splendid funeral, with guild flags and music; poems in the papers, and
+flowers strewn on the paving-stones in the street; and three funeral
+orations were held over him, each one longer than the last, which
+would have rejoiced him greatly, for he always liked it when people
+talked about him; a monument also was erected over his grave. It was
+only one storey high, but still it was _something_.
+
+Now he was dead like the three other brothers; but the last, the one
+who was a critic, outlived them all: and that was quite right, for by
+this means he got the last word, and it was of great importance to him
+to have the last word. The people always said he had a good head of
+his own. At last his hour came, and he died, and came to the gates of
+Paradise. There souls always enter two and two, and he came up with
+another soul that wanted to get into Paradise too; and who should this
+be but old dame Margaret from the house upon the sea wall.
+
+"I suppose this is done for the sake of contrast, that I and this
+wretched soul should arrive here at exactly the same time!" said the
+critic. "Pray who are you, my good woman?" he asked. "Do you want to
+get in here too?"
+
+And the old woman curtsied as well as she could: she thought it must
+be St. Peter himself talking to her.
+
+"I'm a poor old woman of a very humble family," she replied. "I'm old
+Margaret that lived in the house on the sea wall."
+
+"Well, and what have you done? what have you accomplished down there?"
+
+"I have really accomplished nothing at all in the world: nothing that
+I can plead to have the doors here opened to me. It would be a real
+mercy to allow me to slip in through the gate."
+
+"In what manner did you leave the world?" asked he, just for the sake
+of saying something; for it was wearisome work standing there and
+saying nothing.
+
+"Why, I really don't know how I left it. I was sick and miserable
+during my last years, and could not well bear creeping out of bed, and
+going out suddenly into the frost and cold. It was a hard winter, but
+I have got out of it all now. For a few days the weather was quite
+calm, but very cold, as your honour must very well know. The sea was
+covered with ice as far as one could look. All the people from the
+town walked out upon the ice, and I think they said there was a dance
+there, and skating. There was beautiful music and a great feast there
+too; the sound came into my poor little room, where I lay ill. And it
+was towards the evening; the moon had risen beautifully, but was not
+yet in its full splendour; I looked from my bed out over the wide sea,
+and far off, just where the sea and sky join, a strange white cloud
+came up. I lay looking at the cloud, and I saw a little black spot in
+the middle of it, that grew larger and larger; and now I knew what it
+meant, for I am old and experienced, though this token is not often
+seen. I knew it, and a shuddering came upon me. Twice in my life I
+have seen the same thing; and I knew there would be an awful tempest,
+and a spring flood, which would overwhelm the poor people who were now
+drinking and dancing and rejoicing--young and old, the whole city had
+issued forth--who was to warn them, if no one saw what was coming
+yonder, or knew, as I did, what it meant? I was dreadfully alarmed,
+and felt more lively than I had done for a long time. I crept out of
+bed, and got to the window, but could not crawl farther, I was so
+exhausted. But I managed to open the window. I saw the people outside
+running and jumping about on the ice; I could see the beautiful flags
+that waved in the wind. I heard the boys shouting 'hurrah!' and the
+servant men and maids singing. There were all kinds of merriment going
+on. But the white cloud with the black spot! I cried out as loud as I
+could, but no one heard me; I was too far from the people. Soon the
+storm would burst, and the ice would break, and all who were upon it
+would be lost without remedy. They could not hear me, and I could not
+come out to them. Oh, if I could only bring them ashore! Then kind
+Heaven inspired me with the thought of setting fire to my bed, and
+rather to let the house burn down, than that all those people should
+perish so miserably. I succeeded in lighting up a beacon for them. The
+red flame blazed up on high, and I escaped out of the door, but fell
+down exhausted on the threshold, and could get no farther. The flames
+rushed out towards me, flickered through the window, and rose high
+above the roof. All the people on the ice yonder beheld it, and ran as
+fast as they could, to give aid to a poor old woman who, they thought,
+was being burned to death. Not one remained behind. I heard them
+coming; but I also became aware of a rushing sound in the air; I heard
+a rumbling like the sound of heavy artillery; the spring-flood was
+lifting the covering of ice, which presently cracked and burst into a
+thousand fragments. But the people succeeded in reaching the
+sea-wall--I saved them all! But I fancy I could not bear the cold and
+the fright, and so I came up here to the gates of Paradise. I am told
+they are opened to poor creatures like me--and now I have no house
+left down upon the rampart: not that I think this will give me
+admission here."
+
+Then the gates of heaven were opened, and the angel led the old woman
+in. She left a straw behind her, a straw that had been in her bed when
+she set it on fire to save the lives of many; and this straw had been
+changed into the purest gold--into gold that grew and grew, and spread
+out into beauteous leaves and flowers.
+
+[Illustration: DAME MARGERY FIRES HER BED FOR A BEACON.]
+
+"Look, this is what the poor woman brought," said the angel to the
+critic. "What dost _thou_ bring? I know that thou hast accomplished
+nothing--thou hast not made so much as a single brick. Ah, if thou
+couldst only return, and effect at least so much as that! Probably the
+brick, when thou hadst made it, would not be worth much; but if it
+were made with good-will, it would at least be _something_. But thou
+canst not go back, and I can do nothing for thee!"
+
+Then the poor soul, the old dame who had lived on the dyke, put in a
+petition for him. She said,
+
+"His brother gave me the bricks and the pieces out of which I built up
+my house, and that was a great deal for a poor woman like me. Could
+not all those bricks and pieces be counted as a single brick in his
+favour? It was an act of mercy. He wants it now; and is not this the
+very fountain of mercy?"
+
+Then the angel said:
+
+"Thy brother, him whom thou hast regarded as the least among you all,
+he whose honest industry seemed to thee as the most humble, hath given
+thee this heavenly gift. Thou shalt not be turned away. It shall be
+vouchsafed to thee to stand here without the gate, and to reflect, and
+repent of thy life down yonder; but thou shalt not be admitted until
+thou hast in real earnest accomplished _something_."
+
+"I could have said that in better words!" thought the critic, but he
+did not find fault aloud; and for him, after all, that was
+"SOMETHING!"
+
+
+
+
+UNDER THE WILLOW TREE.
+
+
+The region round the little town of Kjoege is very bleak and bare. The
+town certainly lies by the sea shore, which is always beautiful, but
+just there it might be more beautiful than it is: all around are flat
+fields, and it is a long way to the forest. But when one is very much
+at home in a place, one always finds something beautiful, and
+something that one longs for in the most charming spot in the world
+that is strange to us. We confess that, by the utmost boundary of the
+little town, where some humble gardens skirt the streamlet that falls
+into the sea, it must be very pretty in summer; and this was the
+opinion of the two children from neighbouring houses, who were playing
+there, and forcing their way through the gooseberry bushes, to get to
+one another. In one of the gardens stood an elder tree, and in the
+other an old willow, and under the latter the children were especially
+very fond of playing; they were allowed to play there, though, indeed,
+the tree stood close beside the stream, and they might easily have
+fallen into the water. But the eye of God watches over the little
+ones; if it did not, they would be badly off. And, moreover, they were
+very careful with respect to the water; in fact, the boy was so much
+afraid of it, that they could not lure him into the sea in summer,
+when the other children were splashing about in the waves.
+Accordingly, he was famously jeered and mocked at, and had to bear
+the jeering and mockery as best he could. But once Joanna, the
+neighbour's little girl, dreamed she was sailing in a boat, and Knud
+waded out to join her till the water rose, first to his neck, and
+afterwards closed over his head, so that he disappeared altogether.
+From the time when little Knud heard of this dream, he would no longer
+bear the teasing of the other boys. He might go into the water now, he
+said, for Joanna had dreamed it. He certainly never carried the idea
+into practice, but the dream was his great guide for all that.
+
+Their parents, who were poor people, often took tea together, and Knud
+and Joanna played in the gardens and on the high-road, where a row of
+willows had been planted beside the skirting ditch; these trees, with
+their polled tops, certainly did not look beautiful, but they were not
+put there for ornament, but for use. The old willow tree in the garden
+was much handsomer, and therefore the children were fond of sitting
+under it. In the town itself there was a great market-place, and at
+the time of the fair this place was covered with whole streets of
+tents and booths, containing silk ribbons, boots, and everything that
+a person could wish for. There was great crowding, and generally the
+weather was rainy; but it did not destroy the fragrance of the
+honey-cakes and the gingerbread, of which there was a booth quite
+full; and the best of it was, that the man who kept this booth came
+every year to lodge during the fair-time in the dwelling of little
+Knud's father. Consequently there came a present of a bit of
+gingerbread every now and then, and of course Joanna received her
+share of the gift. But, perhaps the most charming thing of all was
+that the gingerbread dealer knew all sorts of tales, and could even
+relate histories about his own gingerbread cakes; and one evening, in
+particular, he told a story about them which made such a deep
+impression on the children that they never forgot it; and for that
+reason it is perhaps advisable that we should hear it too, more
+especially as the story is not long.
+
+"On the shop-board," he said, "lay two gingerbread cakes, one in the
+shape of a man with a hat, the other of a maiden without a bonnet;
+both their faces were on the side that was uppermost, for they were to
+be looked at on that side, and not on the other; and, indeed, most
+people have a favourable side from which they should be viewed. On the
+left side the man wore a bitter almond--that was his heart; but the
+maiden, on the other hand, was honey-cake all over. They were placed
+as samples on the shop-board, and remaining there a long time, at last
+they fell in love with one another, but neither told the other, as
+they should have done if they had expected anything to come of it.
+
+"'He is a man, and therefore he must speak first,' she thought; but
+she felt quite contented, for she knew her love was returned.
+
+"His thoughts were far more extravagant, as is always the case with a
+man. He dreamed that he was a real street boy, that he had four
+pennies of his own, and that he purchased the maiden, and ate her up.
+So they lay on the shop-board for weeks and weeks, and grew dry and
+hard, but the thoughts of the maiden became ever more gentle and
+maidenly.
+
+"'It is enough for me that I have lived on the same table with him,'
+she said, and crack! she broke in two.
+
+"'If she had only known of my love, she would have kept together a
+little longer,' he thought.
+
+"And that is the story, and here they are, both of them," said the
+baker in conclusion. "They are remarkable for their curious history,
+and for their silent love, which never came to anything. And there
+they are for you!" and, so saying, he gave Joanna the man who was yet
+entire, and Knud got the broken maiden; but the children had been so
+much impressed by the story that they could not summon courage to eat
+the lovers up.
+
+On the following day they went out with them to the churchyard, and
+sat down by the church wall, which is covered, winter and summer, with
+the most luxuriant ivy as with a rich carpet. Here they stood the two
+cake figures up in the sunshine among the green leaves, and told the
+story to a group of other children; they told them of the silent love
+which led to nothing. It was called _love_ because the story was so
+lovely, on that they all agreed. But when they turned to look again at
+the gingerbread pair, a big boy, out of mischief, had eaten up the
+broken maiden. The children cried about this, and afterwards--probably
+that the poor lover might not be left in the world lonely and
+desolate--they ate him up too; but they never forgot the story.
+
+The children were always together by the elder tree and under the
+willow, and the little girl sang the most beautiful songs with a voice
+that was clear as a bell. Knud, on the other hand, had not a note of
+music in him, but he knew the words of the songs, and that, at least,
+was something. The people of Kjoege, even to the rich wife of the
+fancy-shop keeper, stood still and listened when Joanna sang. "She has
+a very sweet voice, that little girl," they said.
+
+Those were glorious days, but they could not last for ever. The
+neighbours were neighbours no longer. The little maiden's mother was
+dead, and the father intended to marry again, in the capital, where he
+had been promised a living as a messenger, which was to be a very
+lucrative office. And the neighbours separated regretfully, the
+children weeping heartily, but the parents promised that they should
+at least write to one another once a year.
+
+[Illustration: THE NAUGHTY BOY WHO ATE THE GINGERBREAD MAIDEN.]
+
+And Knud was bound apprentice to a shoemaker, for the big boy could
+not be allowed to run wild any longer; and moreover he was confirmed.
+
+Ah, how gladly on that day of celebration would he have been in
+Copenhagen with little Joanna! but he remained in Kjoege, and had never
+yet been to Copenhagen, though the little town is only five Danish
+miles distant from the capital; but far across the bay, when the sky
+was clear, Knud had seen the towers in the distance, and on the day of
+his confirmation he could distinctly see the golden cross on the
+principal church glittering in the sun.
+
+Ah, how often his thoughts were with Joanna! Did she think of him?
+Yes. Towards Christmas there came a letter from her father to the
+parents of Knud, to say that they were getting on very well in
+Copenhagen, and especially might Joanna look forward to a brilliant
+future on the strength of her fine voice. She had been engaged in the
+theatre in which people sing, and was already earning some money, out
+of which she sent her dear neighbours of Kjoege a dollar for the merry
+Christmas Eve. They were to drink her health, she had herself added in
+a postscript, and in the same postscript there stood further, "A kind
+greeting to Knud."
+
+The whole family wept: and yet all this was very pleasant; those were
+joyful tears that they shed. Knud's thoughts had been occupied every
+day with Joanna; and now he knew that she also thought of him: and the
+nearer the time came when his apprenticeship would be over, the more
+clearly did it appear to him that he was very fond of Joanna, and that
+she must be his wife; and when he thought of this, a smile came upon
+his lips, and he drew the thread twice as fast as before, and pressed
+his foot hard against the knee-strap. He ran the awl far into his
+finger, but he did not care for that. He determined not to play the
+dumb lover, as the two gingerbread cakes had done: the story should
+teach him a lesson.
+
+And now he was a journeyman, and his knapsack was packed ready for his
+journey: at length, for the first time in his life, he was to go to
+Copenhagen, where a master was already waiting for him. How glad
+Joanna would be! She was now seventeen years old, and he nineteen.
+
+Already in Kjoege he had wanted to buy a gold ring for her; but he
+recollected that such things were to be had far better in Copenhagen.
+And now he took leave of his parents, and on a rainy day, late in the
+autumn, went forth on foot out of the town of his birth. The leaves
+were falling down from the trees, and he arrived at his new master's
+in the metropolis wet to the skin. Next Sunday he was to pay a visit
+to Joanna's father. The new journeyman's clothes were brought forth,
+and the new hat from Kjoege was put on, which became Knud very well,
+for till this time he had only worn a cap. And he found the house he
+sought, and mounted flight after flight of stairs until he became
+almost giddy. It was terrible to him to see how people lived piled up
+one over the other in the dreadful city.
+
+Everything in the room had a prosperous look, and Joanna's father
+received him very kindly. To the new wife he was a stranger, but she
+shook hands with him, and gave him some coffee.
+
+"Joanna will be glad to see you," said the father: "you have grown
+quite a nice young man. You shall see her presently. She is a girl who
+rejoices my heart, and, please God, she will rejoice it yet more. She
+has her own room now, and pays us rent for it." And the father knocked
+quite politely at the door, as if he were a visitor, and then they
+went in.
+
+But how pretty everything was in that room! such an apartment was
+certainly not to be found in all Kjoege: the queen herself could not be
+more charmingly lodged. There were carpets, there were window curtains
+quite down to the floor, and around were flowers and pictures, and a
+mirror into which there was almost danger that a visitor might step,
+for it was as large as a door; and there was even a velvet chair.
+
+Knud saw all this at a glance: and yet he saw nothing but Joanna. She
+was a grown maiden, quite different from what Knud had fancied her,
+and much more beautiful. In all Kjoege there was not a girl like her.
+How graceful she was, and with what an odd unfamiliar glance she
+looked at Knud! But that was only for a moment, and then she rushed
+towards him as if she would have kissed him. She did not really do so,
+but she came very near it. Yes, she was certainly rejoiced at the
+arrival of the friend of her youth! The tears were actually in her
+eyes; and she had much to say, and many questions to put concerning
+all, from Knud's parents down to the elder tree and the willow, which
+she called Elder-mother and Willow-father, as if they had been human
+beings; and indeed they might pass as such, just as well as the
+gingerbread cakes; and of these she spoke too, and of their silent
+love, and how they had lain upon the shop-board and split in two--and
+then she laughed very heartily; but the blood mounted into Knud's
+cheeks, and his heart beat thick and fast. No, she had not grown proud
+at all. And it was through her--he noticed it well--that her parents
+invited him to stay the whole evening with them; and she poured out
+the tea and gave him a cup with her own hands; and afterwards she took
+a book and read aloud to them, and it seemed to Knud that what she
+read was all about himself and his love, for it matched so well with
+his thoughts; and then she sang a simple song, but through her singing
+it became like a history, and seemed to be the outpouring of her very
+heart. Yes, certainly she was fond of Knud. The tears coursed down his
+cheeks--he could not restrain them, nor could he speak a single word:
+he seemed to himself as if he were struck dumb; and yet she pressed
+his hand, and said,
+
+"You have a good heart, Knud--remain always as you are now."
+
+That was an evening of matchless delight to Knud; to sleep after it
+was impossible, and accordingly Knud did not sleep.
+
+At parting, Joanna's father had said, "Now, you won't forget us
+altogether! Don't let the whole winter go by without once coming to
+see us again;" and therefore he could very well go again the next
+Sunday, and resolved to do so. But every evening when working hours
+were over--and they worked by candlelight there--Knud went out through
+the town: he went into the street in which Joanna lived, and looked up
+at her window; it was almost always lit up, and one evening he could
+see the shadow of her face quite plainly on the curtain--and that was
+a grand evening for him. His master's wife did not like his
+gallivanting abroad every evening, as she expressed it; and she shook
+her head; but the master only smiled.
+
+"He is only a young fellow," he said.
+
+But Knud thought to himself: "On Sunday I shall see her, and I shall
+tell her how completely she reigns in my heart and soul, and that she
+must be my little wife. I know I am only a poor journeyman shoemaker,
+but I shall work and strive--yes, I shall tell her so. Nothing comes
+of silent love: I have learned that from the cakes."
+
+And Sunday came round, and Knud sallied forth; but, unluckily, they
+were all invited out for that evening, and were obliged to tell him
+so. Joanna pressed his hand and said,
+
+"Have you ever been to the theatre? You must go once. I shall sing on
+Wednesday, and if you have time on that evening, I will send you a
+ticket; my father knows where your master lives."
+
+How kind that was of her! And on Wednesday at noon he received a
+sealed paper, with no words written in it; but the ticket was there,
+and in the evening Knud went to the theatre for the first time in his
+life. And what did he see? He saw Joanna, and how charming and how
+beautiful she looked! She was certainly married to a stranger, but
+that was all in the play--something that was only make-believe, as
+Knud knew very well. If it had been real, he thought, she would never
+have had the heart to send him a ticket that he might go and see it.
+And all the people shouted and applauded, and Knud cried out "hurrah!"
+
+Even the king smiled at Joanna, and seemed to delight in her. Ah, how
+small Knud felt! but then he loved her so dearly, and thought that
+she loved him too; but it was for the man to speak the first word, as
+the gingerbread maiden in the child's story had taught him: and there
+was a great deal for him in that story.
+
+So soon as Sunday came, he went again. He felt as if he were going
+into a church. Joanna was alone, and received him--it could not have
+happened more fortunately. "It is well that you are come," she said.
+
+[Illustration: KNUD'S DISAPPOINTMENT.]
+
+"I had an idea of sending my father to you, only I felt a presentiment
+that you would be here this evening; for I must tell you that I start
+for France on Friday: I must go there, if I am to become efficient."
+
+It seemed to Knud as if the whole room were whirling round and round
+with him. He felt as if his heart would presently burst: no tear rose
+to his eyes, but still it was easy to see how sorrowful he was.
+
+"You honest, faithful soul!" she exclaimed; and these words of hers
+loosened Knud's tongue. He told her how constantly he loved her, and
+that she must become his wife; and as he said this, he saw Joanna
+change colour and turn pale. She let his hand fall, and answered,
+seriously and mournfully,
+
+"Knud, do not make yourself and me unhappy. I shall always be a good
+sister to you, one in whom you may trust, but I shall never be
+anything more." And she drew her white hand over his hot forehead.
+"Heaven gives us strength for much," she said, "if we only endeavour
+to do our best."
+
+At that moment the stepmother came into the room; and Joanna said
+quickly,
+
+"Knud is quite inconsolable because I am going away. Come, be a man,"
+she continued, and laid her hand upon his shoulder; and it seemed as
+if they had been talking of the journey, and nothing else. "You are a
+child," she added; "but now you must be good and reasonable, as you
+used to be under the willow tree, when we were both children."
+
+But Knud felt as if the whole world had slid out of its course, and
+his thoughts were like a loose thread fluttering to and fro in the
+wind. He stayed, though he could not remember if she had asked him to
+stay; and she was kind and good, and poured out his tea for him, and
+sang to him. It had not the old tone, and yet it was wonderfully
+beautiful, and made his heart feel ready to burst. And then they
+parted. Knud did not offer her his hand, but she seized it, and said,
+
+"Surely you will shake hands with your sister at parting, old
+playfellow!"
+
+And she smiled through the tears that were rolling over her cheeks,
+and she repeated the word "brother"--and certainly there was good
+consolation in that--and thus they parted.
+
+She sailed to France, and Knud wandered about the muddy streets of
+Copenhagen. The other journeymen in the workshop asked him why he went
+about so gloomily, and told him he should go and amuse himself with
+them, for he was a young fellow.
+
+And they went with him to the dancing-rooms. He saw many handsome
+girls there, but certainly not one like Joanna; and here, where he
+thought to forget her, she stood more vividly than ever before the
+eyes of his soul. "Heaven gives us strength for a great deal, if we
+only try to do our best," she had said; and holy thoughts came into
+his mind, and he folded his hands. The violins played, and the girls
+danced round in a circle; and he was quite startled, for it seemed to
+him as if he were in a place to which he ought not to have brought
+Joanna--for she was there with him, in his heart; and accordingly he
+went out. He ran through the streets, and passed by the house where
+she had dwelt: it was dark there, dark everywhere, and empty, and
+lonely. The world went on its course, but Knud pursued his lonely way,
+unheedingly.
+
+The winter came, and the streams were frozen. Everything seemed to be
+preparing for a burial. But when spring returned, and the first
+steamer was to start, a longing seized him to go away, far, far into
+the world, but not to France. So he packed his knapsack, and wandered
+far into the German land, from city to city, without rest or peace;
+and it was not till he came to the glorious old city of Nuremberg that
+he could master his restless spirit; and in Nuremberg, therefore, he
+decided to remain.
+
+Nuremberg is a wonderful old city, and looks as if it were cut out of
+an old picture-book. The streets seem to stretch themselves along just
+as they please. The houses do not like standing in regular ranks.
+Gables with little towers, arabesques, and pillars, start out over the
+pathway, and from the strange peaked roofs water-spouts, formed like
+dragons or great slim dogs, extend far over the street.
+
+Here in the market-place stood Knud, with his knapsack on his back. He
+stood by one of the old fountains that are adorned with splendid
+bronze figures, scriptural and historical, rising up between the
+gushing jets of water. A pretty servant-maid was just filling her
+pails, and she gave Knud a refreshing draught; and as her hand was
+full of roses, she gave him one of the flowers, and he accepted it as
+a good omen.
+
+From the neighbouring church the strains of the organ were sounding:
+they seemed to him as familiar as the tones of the organ at home at
+Kjoege; and he went into the great cathedral. The sunlight streamed in
+through the stained glass windows, between the two lofty slender
+pillars. His spirit became prayerful, and peace returned to his soul.
+
+And he sought and found a good master in Nuremberg, with whom he
+stayed, and in whose house he learned the German language.
+
+The old moat round the town has been converted into a number of little
+kitchen gardens; but the high walls are standing yet, with their heavy
+towers. The ropemaker twists his ropes on a gallery or walk built of
+wood, inside the town wall, where elder bushes grow out of the clefts
+and cracks, spreading their green twigs over the little low houses
+that stand below; and in one of these dwelt the master with whom Knud
+worked; and over the little garret window at which Knud sat the elder
+waved its branches.
+
+Here he lived through a summer and a winter; but when the spring came
+again he could bear it no longer. The elder was in blossom, and its
+fragrance reminded him so of home, that he fancied himself back in the
+garden at Kjoege; and therefore Knud went away from his master, and
+dwelt with another, farther in the town, over whose house no elder
+bush grew.
+
+His workshop was quite close to one of the old stone bridges, by a low
+water-mill, that rushed and foamed always. Without, rolled the roaring
+stream, hemmed in by houses, whose old decayed gables looked ready to
+topple down into the water. No elder grew here--there was not even a
+flower-pot with its little green plant; but just opposite the workshop
+stood a great old willow tree, that seemed to cling fast to the house,
+for fear of being carried away by the water, and which stretched forth
+its branches over the river, just as the willow at Kjoege spread its
+arms across the streamlet by the gardens there.
+
+Yes, he had certainly gone from the "Elder-mother" to the
+"Willow-father." The tree here had something, especially on moonlight
+evenings, that went straight to his heart--and that something was not
+in the moonlight, but in the old tree itself.
+
+Nevertheless, he could not remain. Why not? Ask the willow tree, ask
+the blooming elder! And therefore he bade farewell to his master in
+Nuremberg, and journeyed onward.
+
+To no one did he speak of Joanna--in his secret heart he hid his
+sorrow; and he thought of the deep meaning in the old childish story
+of the two cakes. Now he understood why the man had a bitter almond in
+his breast--he himself felt the bitterness of it; and Joanna, who was
+always so gentle and kind, was typified by the honey-cake. The strap
+of his knapsack seemed so tight across his chest that he could
+scarcely breathe; he loosened it, but was not relieved. He saw but
+half the world around him; the other half he carried about him, and
+within himself. And thus it stood with him.
+
+Not till he came in sight of the high mountains did the world appear
+freer to him; and now his thoughts were turned without, and tears came
+into his eyes.
+
+The Alps appeared to him as the folded wings of the earth; how if they
+were to unfold themselves, and display their variegated pictures of
+black woods, foaming waters, clouds, and masses of snow? At the last
+day, he thought, the world will lift up its great wings, and mount
+upwards towards the sky, and burst like a soap-bubble in the glance of
+the Highest!
+
+"Ah," sighed he, "that the Last Day were come!"
+
+Silently he wandered through the land, that seemed to him as an
+orchard covered with soft turf. From the wooden balconies of the
+houses the girls who sat busy with their lace-making nodded at him;
+the summits of the mountains glowed in the red sun of the evening;
+and when he saw the green lakes gleaming among the dark trees, he
+thought of the coast by the Bay of Kjoege, and there was a longing in
+his bosom, but it was pain no more.
+
+There where the Rhine rolls onward like a great billow, and bursts,
+and is changed into snow-white, gleaming, cloud-like masses, as if
+clouds were being created there, with the rainbow fluttering like a
+loose band above them; there he thought of the water-mill at Kjoege,
+with its rushing, foaming water.
+
+Gladly would he have remained in the quiet Rhenish town, but here too
+were too many elder trees and willows, and therefore he journeyed on,
+over the high, mighty mountains, through shattered walls of rock, and
+on roads that clung like swallows' nests to the mountain-side. The
+waters foamed on in the depths, the clouds were below him, and he
+strode on over thistles, Alpine roses, and snow, in the warm summer
+sun; and saying farewell to the lands of the North, he passed on under
+the shade of blooming chestnut trees, and through vineyards and fields
+of maize. The mountains were a wall between him and all his
+recollections; and he wished it to be so.
+
+Before him lay a great glorious city which they called _Milano_, and
+here he found a German master who gave him work. They were an old
+pious couple, in whose workshop he now laboured. And the two old
+people became quite fond of the quiet journeyman, who said little, but
+worked all the more, and led a pious Christian life. To himself also
+it seemed as if Heaven had lifted the heavy burden from his heart.
+
+His favourite pastime was to mount now and then upon the mighty marble
+church, which seemed to him to have been formed of the snow of his
+native land, fashioned into roofs, and pinnacles, and decorated open
+halls: from every corner and every point the white statues smiled upon
+him. Above him was the blue sky, below him the city and the
+wide-spreading Lombard plains, and towards the north the high
+mountains clad with perpetual snow; and he thought of the church at
+Kjoege, with its red, ivy-covered walls, but he did not long to go
+thither: here, beyond the mountains, he would be buried.
+
+He had dwelt here a year, and three years had passed away since he
+left his home, when one day his master took him into the city, not to
+the circus where riders exhibited, but to the opera, where was a hall
+worth seeing. There were seven storeys, from each of which beautiful
+silken curtains hung down, and from the ground to the dizzy height of
+the roof sat elegant ladies, with bouquets of flowers in their hands,
+as if they were at a ball, and the gentlemen were in full dress, and
+many of them decorated with gold and silver. It was as bright there as
+in the brilliant sunshine, and the music rolled gloriously through
+the building. Everything was much more splendid than in the theatre at
+Copenhagen, but then Joanna had been there, and----could it be? Yes,
+it was like magic--she was here also! for the curtain rose, and Joanna
+appeared, dressed in silk and gold, with a crown upon her head: she
+sang as he thought none but angels could sing, and came far forward,
+quite to the front of the stage, and smiled as only Joanna could
+smile, and looked straight down at Knud. Poor Knud seized his master's
+hand, and called out aloud, "Joanna!" but no one heard but the master,
+who nodded his head, for the loud music sounded above everything.
+"Yes, yes, her name is Joanna," said the master; and he drew forth a
+printed playbill, and showed Knud her name--for the full name was
+printed there.
+
+No, it was not a dream! All the people applauded, and threw wreaths
+and flowers to her, and every time she went away they called her back,
+so that she was always going and coming.
+
+In the street the people crowded round her carriage, and drew it away
+in triumph. Knud was in the foremost row, and shouted as joyously as
+any; and when the carriage stopped before her brilliantly lighted
+house, Knud stood close beside the door of the carriage. It flew open,
+and she stepped out: the light fell upon her dear face, as she smiled,
+and made a kindly gesture of thanks, and appeared deeply moved. Knud
+looked straight into her face, and she looked into his, but she did
+not know him. A man, with a star glittering on his breast, gave her
+his arm--and it was whispered about that the two were engaged.
+
+Then Knud went home and packed his knapsack. He was determined to go
+back to his own home, to the elder and the willow tree--ah, under the
+willow tree! A whole life is sometimes lived through in a single hour.
+
+The old couple begged him to remain, but no words could induce him to
+stay. It was in vain they told him that winter was coming, and pointed
+out that snow had already fallen in the mountains; he said he could
+march on, with his knapsack on his back, in the wake of the
+slow-moving carriage, for which they would have to clear a path.
+
+So he went away towards the mountains, and marched up them and down
+them. His strength was giving way, but still he saw no village, no
+house; he marched on towards the north. The stars gleamed above him,
+his feet stumbled, and his head grew dizzy. Deep in the valley stars
+were shining too, and it seemed as if there were another sky below
+him. He felt he was ill. The stars below him became more and more
+numerous, and glowed brighter and brighter, and moved to and fro. It
+was a little town whose lights beamed there; and when he understood
+that, he exerted the remains of his strength, and at last reached the
+shelter of a humble inn.
+
+That night and the whole of the following day he remained there, for
+his body required rest and refreshment. It was thawing; there was rain
+in the valley. But early on the second morning came a man with an
+organ, who played a tune of home; and now Knud could stay no longer.
+He continued his journey towards the north, marching onward for many
+days with haste and hurry, as if he were trying to get home before all
+were dead there; but to no one did he speak of his longing, for no one
+would have believed in the sorrow of his heart, the deepest a human
+heart can feel. Such a grief is not for the world, for it is not
+amusing; nor is it even for friends; and moreover he had no friends--a
+stranger, he wandered through strange lands towards his home in the
+north.
+
+It was evening. He was walking on the public high-road. The frost
+began to make itself felt, and the country soon became flatter,
+containing mere field and meadow. By the road-side grew a great willow
+tree. Everything reminded him of home, and he sat down under the tree:
+he felt very tired, his head began to nod, and his eyes closed in
+slumber, but still he was conscious that the tree stretched its arms
+above him; and in his wandering fancy the tree itself appeared to be
+an old, mighty man--it seemed as if the "Willow-father" himself had
+taken up his tired son in his arms, and were carrying him back into
+the land of home, to the bare bleak shore of Kjoege, to the garden of
+his childhood. Yes, he dreamed it was the willow tree of Kjoege that
+had travelled out into the world to seek him, and that now had found
+him, and had led him back into the little garden by the streamlet, and
+there stood Joanna, in all her splendour, with the golden crown on her
+head, as he had seen her last, and she called out "welcome" to him.
+
+And before him stood two remarkable shapes, which looked much more
+human than he remembered them to have been in his childhood: they had
+changed also, but they were still the two cakes that turned the right
+side towards him, and looked very well.
+
+"We thank you," they said to Knud. "You have loosened our tongues, and
+have taught us that thoughts should be spoken out freely, or nothing
+will come of them; and now something has indeed come of it--we are
+betrothed."
+
+Then they went hand in hand through the streets of Kjoege, and they
+looked very respectable in every way: there was no fault to find with
+_them_. And they went on, straight towards the church, and Knud and
+Joanna followed them; they also were walking hand in hand; and the
+church stood there as it had always stood, with its red walls, on
+which the green ivy grew; and the great door of the church flew open,
+and the organ sounded, and they walked up the long aisle of the
+church. "Our master first," said the cake-couple, and made room for
+Joanna and Knud, who knelt by the altar, and she bent her head over
+him, and tears fell from her eyes, but they were icy cold, for it was
+the ice around her heart that was melting--melting by his strong love;
+and the tears fell upon his burning cheeks, and he awoke, and was
+sitting under the old willow tree in the strange land, in the cold
+wintry evening: an icy hail was falling from the clouds and beating on
+his face.
+
+[Illustration: KNUD AT REST--UNDER THE WILLOW TREE.]
+
+"That was the most delicious hour of my life!" he said, "and it was
+but a dream. Oh, let me dream again!" And he closed his eyes once
+more, and slept and dreamed.
+
+Towards morning there was a great fall of snow. The wind drifted the
+snow over him, but he slept on. The villagers came forth to go to
+church, and by the road-side sat a journeyman. He was dead--frozen to
+death under the willow tree!
+
+
+
+
+THE BEETLE.
+
+
+The emperor's favourite horse was shod with gold. It had a golden shoe
+on each of its feet.
+
+And why was this?
+
+He was a beautiful creature, with delicate legs, bright intelligent
+eyes, and a mane that hung down over his neck like a veil. He had
+carried his master through the fire and smoke of battle, and heard the
+bullets whistling around him, had kicked, bitten, and taken part in
+the fight when the enemy advanced, and had sprung with his master on
+his back over the fallen foe, and had saved the crown of red gold, and
+the life of the emperor, which was more valuable than the red gold;
+and that is why the emperor's horse had golden shoes.
+
+And a beetle came creeping forth.
+
+"First the great ones," said he, "and then the little ones; but
+greatness is not the only thing that does it." And so saying, he
+stretched out his thin legs.
+
+"And pray what do you want?" asked the smith.
+
+"Golden shoes, to be sure," replied the beetle.
+
+"Why, you must be out of your senses," cried the smith. "Do you want
+to have golden shoes too?"
+
+"Golden shoes? certainly," replied the beetle. "Am I not just as good
+as that big creature yonder, that is waited on, and brushed, and has
+meat and drink put before him? Don't I belong to the imperial stable?"
+
+"But _why_ is the horse to have golden shoes? Don't you understand
+that?" asked the smith.
+
+"Understand? I understand that it is a personal slight offered to
+myself," cried the beetle. "It is done to annoy me, and therefore I am
+going into the world to seek my fortune."
+
+"Go along!" said the smith.
+
+"You're a rude fellow!" cried the beetle; and then he went out of the
+stable, flew a little way, and soon afterwards found himself in a
+beautiful flower garden, all fragrant with roses and lavender.
+
+"Is it not beautiful here?" asked one of the little lady-birds that
+flew about, with their delicate wings and their red-and-black shields
+on their backs. "How sweet it is here--how beautiful it is!"
+
+"I'm accustomed to better things," said the beetle. "Do you call
+_this_ beautiful? Why, there is not so much as a dung-heap."
+
+Then he went on, under the shadow of a great stack, and found a
+caterpillar crawling along.
+
+"How beautiful the world is!" said the caterpillar: "the sun is so
+warm, and everything so enjoyable! And when I go to sleep, and die, as
+they call it, I shall wake up as a butterfly, with beautiful wings to
+fly with."
+
+"How conceited you are!" exclaimed the stag-beetle. "Fly about as a
+butterfly, indeed! I've come out of the stable of the emperor, and no
+one there, not even the emperor's favourite horse--that by the way
+wears my cast-off golden shoes--has any such idea. To have wings to
+fly! why, we can fly now;" and he spread his wings and flew away. "I
+don't want to be annoyed, and yet I am annoyed," he said, as he flew
+off.
+
+Soon afterwards he fell down upon a great lawn. For awhile he lay
+there and feigned slumber; at last he fell asleep in earnest.
+
+Suddenly a heavy shower of rain came falling from the clouds. The
+beetle woke up at the noise, and wanted to escape into the earth, but
+could not. He was tumbled over and over; sometimes he was swimming on
+his stomach, sometimes on his back, and as for flying, that was out of
+the question; he doubted whether he should escape from the place with
+his life. He therefore remained lying where he was.
+
+When the weather had moderated a little, and the beetle had rubbed the
+water out of his eyes, he saw something gleaming. It was linen that
+had been placed there to bleach. He managed to make his way up to it,
+and crept into a fold of the damp linen. Certainly the place was not
+so comfortable to lie in as the warm stable; but there was no better
+to be had, and therefore he remained lying there for a whole day and a
+whole night, and the rain kept on during all the time. Towards morning
+he crept forth: he was very much out of temper about the climate.
+
+On the linen two frogs were sitting. Their bright eyes absolutely
+gleamed with pleasure.
+
+"Wonderful weather this!" one of them cried. "How refreshing! And the
+linen keeps the water together so beautifully. My hind legs seem to
+quiver as if I were going to swim."
+
+"I should like to know," said the second, "if the swallow, who flies
+so far round, in her many journeys in foreign lands ever meets with a
+better climate than this. What delicious dampness! It is really as if
+one were lying in a wet ditch. Whoever does not rejoice in this,
+certainly does not love his fatherland."
+
+"Have you been in the emperor's stable?" asked the beetle: "there the
+dampness is warm and refreshing. That's the climate for me; but I
+cannot take it with me on my journey. Is there never a muck-heap, here
+in the garden, where a person of rank, like myself, can feel himself
+at home, and take up his quarters?"
+
+But the frogs either did not or would not understand him.
+
+"I never ask a question twice!" said the beetle, after he had already
+asked this one three times without receiving any answer.
+
+Then he went a little farther, and stumbled against a fragment of
+pottery, that certainly ought not to have been lying there; but as it
+was once there, it gave a good shelter against wind and weather. Here
+dwelt several families of earwigs; and these did not require much,
+only sociality. The female members of the community were full of the
+purest maternal affection, and accordingly each one considered her own
+child the most beautiful and cleverest of all.
+
+"Our son has engaged himself," said one mother. "Dear, innocent boy!
+His greatest hope is that he may creep one day into a clergyman's ear.
+It's very artless and loveable, that; and being engaged will keep him
+steady. What joy for a mother!"
+
+"Our son," said another mother, "had scarcely crept out of the egg,
+when he was already off on his travels. He's all life and spirits;
+he'll run his horns off! What joy that is for a mother! Is it not so,
+Mr. Beetle?" for she knew the stranger by his horny coat.
+
+"You are both quite right," said he; so they begged him to walk in;
+that is to say, to come as far as he could under the bit of pottery.
+
+"Now, you also see _my_ little earwig," observed a third mother and a
+fourth; "they are lovely little things, and highly amusing. They are
+never ill-behaved, except when they are uncomfortable in their inside;
+but, unfortunately, one is very subject to that at their age."
+
+Thus each mother spoke of her baby; and the babies talked among
+themselves, and made use of the little nippers they have in their
+tails to nip the beard of the beetle.
+
+"Yes, they are always busy about something, the little rogues!" said
+the mothers; and they quite beamed with maternal pride; but the beetle
+felt bored by that, and therefore he inquired how far it was to the
+nearest muck-heap.
+
+"That is quite out in the big world, on the other side of the ditch,"
+answered an earwig. "I hope none of my children will go so far, for it
+would be the death of me."
+
+"But I shall try to get so far," said the beetle; and he went off
+without taking formal leave; for that is considered the polite thing
+to do. And by the ditch he met several friends; beetles, all of them.
+
+"Here we live," they said. "We are very comfortable here. Might we ask
+you to step down into this rich mud? You must be fatigued after your
+journey."
+
+"Certainly," replied the beetle. "I have been exposed to the rain, and
+have had to lie upon linen, and cleanliness is a thing that greatly
+exhausts me. I have also pains in one of my wings, from standing in a
+draught under a fragment of pottery. It is really quite refreshing to
+be among one's companions once more."
+
+"Perhaps you come from some muck-heap?" observed the oldest of them.
+
+"Indeed, I come from a much higher place," replied the beetle. "I came
+from the emperor's stable, where I was born with golden shoes on my
+feet. I am travelling on a secret embassy. You must not ask me any
+questions, for I can't betray my secret."
+
+With this the beetle stepped down into the rich mud. There sat three
+young maiden beetles; and they tittered, because they did not know
+what to say.
+
+"Not one of them is engaged yet," said their mother; and the beetle
+maidens tittered again, this time from embarrassment.
+
+"I have never seen greater beauties in the royal stables," exclaimed
+the beetle, who was now resting himself.
+
+"Don't spoil my girls," said the mother; "and don't talk to them,
+please, unless you have serious intentions. But of course your
+intentions are serious, and therefore I give you my blessing."
+
+"Hurrah!" cried all the other beetles together; and our friend was
+engaged. Immediately after the betrothal came the marriage, for there
+was no reason for delay.
+
+The following day passed very pleasantly, and the next in tolerable
+comfort; but on the third it was time to think of food for the wife,
+and perhaps also for children.
+
+"I have allowed myself to be taken in," said our beetle to himself.
+"And now there's nothing for it but to take _them_ in, in turn."
+
+So said, so done. Away he went, and he stayed away all day, and stayed
+away all night; and his wife sat there, a forsaken widow.
+
+"Oh," said the other beetles, "this fellow whom we received into our
+family is nothing more than a thorough vagabond. He has gone away, and
+has left his wife a burden upon our hands."
+
+[Illustration: THE SCHOLARS FIND THE BEETLE.]
+
+"Well, then, she shall be unmarried again, and sit here among my
+daughters," said the mother. "Fie on the villain who forsook her!"
+
+In the meantime the beetle had been journeying on, and had sailed
+across the ditch on a cabbage leaf. In the morning two persons came to
+the ditch. When they saw him, they took him up, and turned him over
+and over, and looked very learned, especially one of them--a boy.
+
+"Allah sees the black beetle in the black stone and in the black rock.
+Is not that written in the Koran?" Then he translated the beetle's
+name into Latin, and enlarged upon the creature's nature and history.
+The second person, an older scholar, voted for carrying him home. He
+said they wanted just such good specimens; and this seemed an uncivil
+speech to our beetle, and in consequence he flew suddenly out of the
+speaker's hand. As he had now dry wings, he flew a tolerable distance,
+and reached a hot-bed, where a sash of the glass roof was partly open,
+so he quietly slipped in and buried himself in the warm earth.
+
+"Very comfortable it is here," said he.
+
+Soon after he went to sleep, and dreamed that the emperor's favourite
+horse had fallen, and had given him his golden shoes, with the promise
+that he should have two more.
+
+That was all very charming. When the beetle woke up, he crept forth
+and looked around him. What splendour was in the hothouse! In the
+background great palm trees growing up on high; the sun made them look
+transparent; and beneath them what a luxuriance of green, and of
+beaming flowers, red as fire, yellow as amber, or white as
+fresh-fallen snow.
+
+"This is an incomparable plenty of plants," cried the beetle. "How
+good they will taste when they are decayed! A capital store-room this!
+There must certainly be relations of mine living here. I will just see
+if I can find any one with whom I may associate. I'm proud, certainly,
+and I'm proud of being so." And so he prowled about in the earth, and
+thought what a pleasant dream that was about the dying horse, and the
+golden shoes he had inherited.
+
+Suddenly a hand seized the beetle, and pressed him, and turned him
+round and round.
+
+The gardener's little son and a companion had come to the hot-bed, had
+espied the beetle, and wanted to have their fun with him. First he was
+wrapped in a vine leaf, and then put into warm trousers-pocket. He
+cribbled and crabbled about there with all his might; but he got a
+good pressing from the boy's hand for this, which served as a hint to
+him to keep quiet. Then the boy went rapidly towards the great lake
+that lay at the end of the garden. Here the beetle was put in an old
+broken wooden shoe, on which a little stick was placed upright for a
+mast, and to this mast the beetle was bound with a woollen thread. Now
+he was a sailor, and had to sail away.
+
+The lake was not very large, but to the beetle it seemed an ocean; and
+he was so astonished at its extent, that he fell over on his back and
+kicked out with his legs.
+
+The little ship sailed away. The current of the water seized it; but
+whenever it went too far from the shore, one of the boys turned up
+his trousers and went in after it, and brought it back to the land.
+But at length, just as it went merrily out again, the two boys were
+called away, and very harshly, so that they hurried to obey the
+summons, ran away from the lake, and left the little ship to its fate.
+Thus it drove away from the shore, farther and farther into the open
+sea: it was terrible work for the beetle, for he could not get away in
+consequence of being bound to the mast.
+
+Then a fly came and paid him a visit.
+
+"What beautiful weather!" said the fly. "I'll rest here, and sun
+myself. You have an agreeable time of it."
+
+"You speak without knowing the facts," replied the beetle. "Don't you
+see that I'm a prisoner?"
+
+"Ah! but I'm not a prisoner," observed the fly; and he flew away
+accordingly.
+
+"Well, now I know the world," said the beetle to himself. "It is an
+abominable world. I'm the only honest person in it. First, they refuse
+me my golden shoes; then I have to lie on wet linen, and to stand in
+the draught; and, to crown all, they fasten a wife upon me. Then, when
+I've taken a quick step out into the world, and found out how one can
+have it there, and how I wished to have it, one of those human boys
+comes and ties me up, and leaves me to the mercy of the wild waves,
+while the emperor's favourite horse prances about proudly in golden
+shoes. That is what annoys me more than all. But one must not look for
+sympathy in this world! My career has been very interesting; but
+what's the use of that, if nobody knows it? The world does not deserve
+to be made acquainted with my history, for it ought to have given me
+golden shoes, when the emperor's horse was shod, and I stretched out
+my feet to be shod too. If I had received golden shoes, I should have
+become an ornament to the stable. Now the stable has lost me, and the
+world has lost me. It is all over!"
+
+But all was not over yet. A boat, in which there were a few young
+girls, came rowing up.
+
+"Look, yonder is an old wooden shoe sailing along," said one of the
+girls.
+
+"There's a little creature bound fast to it," said another.
+
+The boat came quite close to our beetle's ship, and the young girls
+fished him out of the water. One of them drew a small pair of scissors
+from her pocket, and cut the woollen thread, without hurting the
+beetle; and when she stepped on shore, she put him down on the grass.
+
+"Creep, creep--fly, fly--if thou canst," she said. "Liberty is a
+splendid thing."
+
+And the beetle flew up, and straight through the open window of a
+great building; there he sank down, tired and exhausted, exactly on
+the mane of the emperor's favourite horse, who stood in the stable
+when he was at home, and the beetle also. The beetle clung fast to the
+mane, and sat there a short time to recover himself.
+
+"Here I'm sitting on the emperor's favourite horse--sitting on him
+just like the emperor himself!" he cried. "But what was I saying? Yes,
+now I remember. That's a good thought, and quite correct. The smith
+asked me why the golden shoes were given to the horse. Now I'm quite
+clear about the answer. They were given to the horse on _my_ account."
+
+And now the beetle was in a good temper again.
+
+"Travelling expands the mind rarely," said he.
+
+The sun's rays came streaming into the stable, and shone upon him, and
+made the place lively and bright.
+
+"The world is not so bad, upon the whole," said the beetle; "but one
+must know how to take things as they come."
+
+
+
+
+WHAT THE OLD MAN DOES IS ALWAYS RIGHT.
+
+
+I will tell you a story which was told to me when I was a little boy.
+Every time I thought of the story, it seemed to me to become more and
+more charming; for it is with stories as it is with many people--they
+become better as they grow older.
+
+I take it for granted that you have been in the country, and seen a
+very old farmhouse with a thatched roof, and mosses and small plants
+growing wild upon the thatch. There is a stork's nest on the summit of
+the gable; for we can't do without the stork. The walls of the house
+are sloping, and the windows are low, and only one of the latter is
+made so that it will open. The baking-oven sticks out of the wall like
+a little fat body. The elder tree hangs over the paling, and beneath
+its branches, at the foot of the paling, is a pool of water in which a
+few ducks are disporting themselves. There is a yard-dog too, who
+barks at all comers.
+
+Just such a farmhouse stood out in the country; and in this house
+dwelt an old couple--a peasant and his wife. Small as was their
+property, there was one article among it that they could do
+without--a horse, which made a living out of the grass it found by
+the side of the high-road. The old peasant rode into the town on this
+horse; and often his neighbours borrowed it of him, and rendered the
+old couple some service in return for the loan of it. But they thought
+it would be best if they sold the horse, or exchanged it for something
+that might be more useful to them. But what might this _something_ be?
+
+"You'll know that best, old man," said the wife. "It is fair-day
+to-day, so ride into town, and get rid of the horse for money, or make
+a good exchange: whichever you do will be right to me. Ride to the
+fair."
+
+And she fastened his neckerchief for him, for she could do that better
+than he could; and she tied it in a double bow, for she could do that
+very prettily. Then she brushed his hat round and round with the palm
+of her hand, and gave him a kiss. So he rode away upon the horse that
+was to be sold or to be bartered for something else. Yes, the old man
+knew what he was about.
+
+The sun shone hotly down, and not a cloud was to be seen in the sky.
+The road was very dusty, for many people who were all bound for the
+fair were driving, or riding, or walking upon it. There was no shelter
+anywhere from the sunbeams.
+
+Among the rest, a man was trudging along, and driving a cow to the
+fair. The cow was as beautiful a creature as any cow can be.
+
+"She gives good milk, I'm sure," said the peasant. "That would be a
+very good exchange--the cow for the horse.
+
+"Hallo, you there with the cow!" he said; "I tell you what--I fancy a
+horse costs more than a cow, but I don't care for that; a cow would be
+more useful to me. If you like, we'll exchange."
+
+"To be sure I will," said the man; and they exchanged accordingly.
+
+So that was settled, and the peasant might have turned back, for he
+had done the business he came to do; but as he had once made up his
+mind to go to the fair, he determined to proceed, merely to have a
+look at it; and so he went on to the town with his cow.
+
+Leading the animal, he strode sturdily on; and after a short time, he
+overtook a man who was driving a sheep. It was a good fat sheep, with
+a fine fleece on its back.
+
+"I should like to have that fellow," said our peasant to himself. "He
+would find plenty of grass by our palings, and in the winter we could
+keep him in the room with us. Perhaps it would be more practical to
+have a sheep instead of a cow. Shall we exchange?"
+
+The man with the sheep was quite ready, and the bargain was struck. So
+our peasant went on in the high-road with his sheep.
+
+Soon he overtook another man, who came into the road from a field,
+carrying a great goose under his arm.
+
+"That's a heavy thing you have there. It has plenty of feathers and
+plenty of fat, and would look well tied to a string, and paddling in
+the water at our place. That would be something for my old woman; she
+could make all kinds of profit out of it. How often she has said, 'If
+we only had a goose!' Now, perhaps, she can have one; and, if
+possible, it shall be hers. Shall we exchange? I'll give you my sheep
+for your goose, and thank you into the bargain."
+
+The other man had not the least objection; and accordingly they
+exchanged, and our peasant became proprietor of the goose.
+
+By this time he was very near the town. The crowd on the high-road
+became greater and greater; there was quite a crush of men and cattle.
+They walked in the road, and close by the palings; and at the barrier
+they even walked into the toll-man's potato-field, where his one fowl
+was strutting about, with a string to its leg, lest it should take
+fright at the crowd, and stray away, and so be lost. This fowl had
+short tail-feathers, and winked with both its eyes, and looked very
+cunning. "Cluck, cluck!" said the fowl. What it thought when it said
+this I cannot tell you; but directly our good man saw it, he thought,
+"That's the finest fowl I've ever seen in my life! Why, it's finer
+than our parson's brood hen. On my word, I should like to have that
+fowl. A fowl can always find a grain or two, and can almost keep
+itself. I think it would be a good exchange if I could get that for my
+goose.
+
+"Shall we exchange?" he asked the toll-taker.
+
+"Exchange!" repeated the man; "well, that would not be a bad thing."
+
+And so they exchanged; the toll-taker at the barrier kept the goose,
+and the peasant carried away the fowl.
+
+Now, he had done a good deal of business on his way to the fair, and
+he was hot and tired. He wanted something to eat, and a glass of
+brandy to drink; and soon he was in front of the inn. He was just
+about to step in, when the hostler came out, so they met at the door.
+The hostler was carrying a sack.
+
+"What have you in that sack?" asked the peasant.
+
+"Rotten apples," answered the hostler; "a whole sackful of
+them--enough to feed the pigs with."
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD MAN RELATES HIS SUCCESS.]
+
+"Why, that's terrible waste! I should like to take them to my old
+woman at home. Last year the old tree by the turf-hole only bore a
+single apple, and we kept it on the cupboard till it was quite rotten
+and spoilt. 'It was always property,' my old woman said; but here she
+could see a quantity of property--a whole sackful. Yes, I shall be
+glad to show them to her."
+
+"What will you give me for the sackful?" asked the hostler.
+
+"What will I give? I will give my fowl in exchange."
+
+And he gave the fowl accordingly, and received the apples, which he
+carried into the guest-room. He leaned the sack carefully by the
+stove, and then went to the table. But the stove was hot: he had not
+thought of that. Many guests were present--horse dealers, ox-herds,
+and two Englishmen--and the two Englishmen were so rich that their
+pockets bulged out with gold coins, and almost burst; and they could
+bet too, as you shall hear.
+
+Hiss-s-s! hiss-s-s! What was that by the stove? The apples were
+beginning to roast!
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Why, do you know--," said our peasant.
+
+And he told the whole story of the horse that he had changed for a
+cow, and all the rest of it, down to the apples.
+
+"Well, your old woman will give it you well when you get home!" said
+one of the two Englishmen. "There will be a disturbance."
+
+"What?--give me what?" said the peasant. "She will kiss me, and say,
+'What the old man does is always right.'"
+
+"Shall we wager?" said the Englishman. "We'll wager coined gold by the
+ton--a hundred pounds to the hundredweight!"
+
+"A bushel will be enough," replied the peasant. "I can only set the
+bushel of apples against it; and I'll throw myself and my old woman
+into the bargain--and I fancy that's piling up the measure."
+
+"Done--taken!"
+
+And the bet was made. The host's carriage came up, and the Englishmen
+got in, and the peasant got in; away they went, and soon they stopped
+before the peasant's hut.
+
+"Good evening, old woman."
+
+"Good evening, old man."
+
+"I've made the exchange."
+
+"Yes, you understand what you're about," said the woman.
+
+And she embraced him, and paid no attention to the stranger guests,
+nor did she notice the sack.
+
+"I got a cow in exchange for the horse," said he.
+
+"Heaven be thanked!" said she. "What glorious milk we shall have, and
+butter and cheese on the table! That was a capital exchange!"
+
+"Yes, but I changed the cow for a sheep."
+
+"Ah, that's better still!" cried the wife. "You always think of
+everything: we have just pasture enough for a sheep. Ewe's-milk and
+cheese, and woollen jackets and stockings! The cow cannot give those,
+and her hairs will only come off. How you think of everything!"
+
+"But I changed away the sheep for a goose."
+
+"Then this year we shall really have roast goose to eat, my dear old
+man. You are always thinking of something to give me pleasure. How
+charming that is! We can let the goose walk about with a string to her
+leg, and she'll grow fatter still before we roast her."
+
+"But I gave away the goose for a fowl," said the man.
+
+"A fowl? That was a good exchange!" replied the woman. "The fowl will
+lay eggs and hatch them, and we shall have chickens: we shall have a
+whole poultry-yard! Oh, that's just what I was wishing for."
+
+"Yes, but I exchanged the fowl for a sack of shrivelled apples."
+
+"What!--I must positively kiss you for that," exclaimed the wife. "My
+dear, good husband! Now, I'll tell you something. Do you know, you had
+hardly left me this morning, before I began thinking how I could give
+you something very nice this evening. I thought it should be pancakes
+with savoury herbs. I had eggs, and bacon too; but I wanted herbs. So
+I went over to the schoolmaster's--they have herbs there, I know--but
+the schoolmistress is a mean woman, though she looks so sweet. I
+begged her to lend me a handful of herbs. 'Lend!' she answered me;
+'nothing at all grows in our garden, not even a shrivelled apple. I
+could not even lend you a shrivelled apple, my dear woman.' But now
+_I_ can lend _her_ ten, or a whole sackful. That I'm very glad of;
+that makes me laugh!" And with that she gave him a sounding kiss.
+
+"I like that!" exclaimed both the Englishmen together. "Always going
+down-hill, and always merry; that's worth the money." So they paid a
+hundredweight of gold to the peasant, who was not scolded, but kissed.
+
+Yes, it always pays, when the wife sees and always asserts that her
+husband knows best, and that whatever he does is right.
+
+You see, that is my story. I heard it when I was a child; and now you
+have heard it too, and know that "What the old man does is always
+right."
+
+
+
+
+THE WIND TELLS ABOUT WALDEMAR DAA AND HIS DAUGHTERS.
+
+
+When the wind sweeps across the grass, the field has a ripple like a
+pond, and when it sweeps across the corn the field waves to and fro
+like a high sea. That is called the wind's dance; but the wind does
+not dance only, he also tells stories; and how loudly he can sing out
+of his deep chest, and how different it sounds in the tree-tops in the
+forest, and through the loopholes and clefts and cracks in walls! Do
+you see how the wind drives the clouds up yonder, like a frightened
+flock of sheep? Do you hear how the wind howls down here through the
+open valley, like a watchman blowing his horn? With wonderful tones he
+whistles and screams down the chimney and into the fireplace. The fire
+crackles and flares up, and shines far into the room, and the little
+place is warm and snug, and it is pleasant to sit there listening to
+the sounds. Let the wind speak, for he knows plenty of stories and
+fairy tales, many more than are known to any of us. Just hear what the
+wind can tell.
+
+Huh--uh--ush! roar along! That is the burden of the song.
+
+"By the shores of the Great Belt, one of the straits that unite the
+Cattegut with the Baltic, lies an old mansion with thick red walls,"
+says the Wind. "I know every stone in it; I saw it when it still
+belonged to the castle of Marsk Stig on the promontory. But it had to
+be pulled down, and the stone was used again for the walls of a new
+mansion in another place, the baronial mansion of Borreby, which still
+stands by the coast.
+
+"I knew them, the noble lords and ladies, the changing races that
+dwelt there, and now I'm going to tell about Waldemar Daa and his
+daughters. How proudly he carried himself--he was of royal blood! He
+could do more than merely hunt the stag and empty the wine-can. 'It
+_shall_ be done,' he was accustomed to say.
+
+"His wife walked proudly in gold-embroidered garments over the
+polished marble floors. The tapestries were gorgeous, the furniture
+was expensive and artistically carved. She had brought gold and silver
+plate with her into the house, and there was German beer in the
+cellar. Black fiery horses neighed in the stables. There was a wealthy
+look about the house of Borreby at that time, when wealth was still at
+home there.
+
+"Four children dwelt there also; three delicate maidens, Ida, Joanna,
+and Anna Dorothea: I have never forgotten their names.
+
+"They were rich people, noble people, born in affluence, nurtured in
+affluence.
+
+"Huh--sh! roar along!" sang the Wind; and then he continued:
+
+"I did not see here, as in other great noble houses, the high-born
+lady sitting among her women in the great hall turning the
+spinning-wheel: here she swept the sounding chords of the cithern, and
+sang to the sound, but not always old Danish melodies, but songs of a
+strange land. It was 'live and let live' here: stranger guests came
+from far and near, the music sounded, the goblets clashed, and I was
+not able to drown the noise," said the Wind. "Ostentation, and
+haughtiness, and splendour, and display, and rule were there, but the
+fear of the Lord was not there.
+
+"And it was just on the evening of the first day of May," the Wind
+continued. "I came from the west, and had seen how the ships were
+being crushed by the waves, with all on board, and flung on the west
+coast of Jutland. I had hurried across the heath, and over Jutland's
+wood-girt eastern coast, and over the Island of Fuenen, and now I drove
+over the Great Belt, groaning and sighing.
+
+"Then I lay down to rest on the shore of Seeland, in the neighbourhood
+of the great house of Borreby, where the forest, the splendid oak
+forest, still rose.
+
+"The young men-servants of the neighbourhood were collecting branches
+and brushwood under the oak trees; the largest and driest they could
+find they carried into the village, and piled them up in a heap, and
+set them on fire; and men and maids danced, singing in a circle round
+the blazing pile.
+
+"I lay quite quiet," continued the Wind; "but I silently touched a
+branch, which had been brought by the handsomest of the men-servants,
+and the wood blazed up brightly, blazed up higher than all the rest;
+and now he was the chosen one, and bore the name the Street-goat, and
+might choose his Street-lamb first from among the maids; and there was
+mirth and rejoicing, greater than I had ever heard before in the halls
+of the rich baronial mansion.
+
+"And the noble lady drove towards the baronial mansion, with her three
+daughters, in a gilded carriage drawn by six horses. The daughters
+were young and fair--three charming blossoms, rose, lily, and pale
+hyacinth. The mother was a proud tulip, and never acknowledged the
+salutation of one of the men or maids who paused in their sport to do
+her honour: the gracious lady seemed a flower that was rather stiff in
+the stalk.
+
+"Rose, lily, and pale hyacinth; yes, I saw them all three! Whose
+lambkins will they one day become? thought I; their Street-goat will
+be a gallant knight, perhaps a prince. Huh--sh! hurry along! hurry
+along!
+
+"Yes, the carriage rolled on with them, and the peasant people resumed
+their dancing. They rode that summer through all the villages round
+about. But in the night, when I rose again," said the Wind, "the very
+noble lady lay down, to rise again no more: that thing came upon her
+which comes upon all--there is nothing new in that.
+
+"Waldemar Daa stood for a space silent and thoughtful. 'The proudest
+tree can be bowed without being broken,' said a voice within him. His
+daughters wept, and all the people in the mansion wiped their eyes;
+but Lady Daa had driven away--and I drove away too, and rushed along,
+huh--sh!" said the Wind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I returned again; I often returned again over the Island of Fuenen,
+and the shores of the Belt, and I sat down by Borreby, by the splendid
+oak wood; there the heron made his nest, and wood-pigeons haunted the
+place, and blue ravens, and even the black stork. It was still spring;
+some of them were yet sitting on their eggs, others had already
+hatched their young. But how they flew up, how they cried! The axe
+sounded, blow on blow: the wood was to be felled. Waldemar Daa wanted
+to build a noble ship, a man-of-war, a three-decker, which the king
+would be sure to buy; and therefore the wood must be felled, the
+landmark of the seamen, the refuge of the birds. The hawk started up
+and flew away, for its nest was destroyed; the heron and all the birds
+of the forest became homeless, and flew about in fear and in anger: I
+could well understand how they felt. Crows and ravens croaked aloud as
+if in scorn. 'Crack, crack! the nest cracks, cracks, cracks!'
+
+"Far in the interior of the wood, where the noisy swarm of labourers
+were working, stood Waldemar Daa and his three daughters; and all
+laughed at the wild cries of the birds; only one, the youngest, Anna
+Dorothea, felt grieved in her heart; and when they made preparations
+to fell a tree that was almost dead, and on whose naked branches the
+black stork had built his nest, whence the little storks were
+stretching out their heads, she begged for mercy for the little
+things, and tears came into her eyes. Therefore the tree with the
+black stork's nest was left standing. The tree was not worth speaking
+of.
+
+"There was a great hewing and sawing, and a three-decker was built.
+The architect was of low origin, but of great pride; his eyes and
+forehead told how clever he was, and Waldemar Daa was fond of
+listening to him, and so was Waldemar's daughter Ida, the eldest, who
+was now fifteen years old; and while he built a ship for the father,
+he was building for himself an airy castle, into which he and Ida were
+to go as a married couple--which might indeed have happened, if the
+castle with stone walls, and ramparts, and moats had remained. But in
+spite of his wise head, the architect remained but a poor bird; and,
+indeed, what business has a sparrow to take part in a dance of
+peacocks? Huh--sh! I careered away, and he careered away too, for he
+was not allowed to stay; and little Ida got over it, because she was
+obliged to get over it.
+
+"The proud black horses were neighing in the stable; they were worth
+looking at, and accordingly they _were_ looked at. The admiral, who
+had been sent by the king himself to inspect the new ship and take
+measures for its purchase, spoke loudly in admiration of the beautiful
+horses.
+
+"I heard all that," said the Wind. "I accompanied the gentlemen
+through the open door, and strewed blades of straw like bars of gold
+before their feet. Waldemar Daa wanted to have gold, and the admiral
+wished for the proud black horses, and that is why he praised them so
+much; but the hint was not taken, and consequently the ship was not
+bought. It remained on the shore covered over with boards, a Noah's
+ark that never got to the water--Huh--sh! rush away! away!--and that
+was a pity.
+
+"In the winter, when the fields were covered with snow, and the water
+with large blocks of ice that I blew up on to the coast," continued
+the Wind, "crows and ravens came, all as black as might be, great
+flocks of them, and alighted on the dead, deserted, lonely ship by the
+shore, and croaked in hoarse accents of the wood that was no more, of
+the many pretty bird's nests destroyed, and the little ones left
+without a home; and all for the sake of that great bit of lumber, that
+proud ship that never sailed forth.
+
+"I made the snow-flakes whirl, and the snow lay like a great lake high
+around the ship, and drifted over it. I let it hear my voice, that it
+might know what a storm has to say. Certainly I did my part towards
+teaching it seamanship. Huh--sh! push along!
+
+"And the winter passed away; winter and summer, both passed away, and
+they are still passing away, even as I pass away; as the snow whirls
+along, and the apple blossom whirls along, and the leaves fall--away!
+away! away! and men are passing away too!
+
+"But the daughters were still young, and little Ida was a rose, as
+fair to look upon as on the day when the architect saw her. I often
+seized her long brown hair, when she stood in the garden by the apple
+tree, musing, and not heeding how I strewed blossoms on her hair, and
+loosened it, while she was gazing at the red sun and the golden sky,
+through the dark underwood and the trees of the garden.
+
+"Her sister was bright and slender as a lily. Joanna had height and
+deportment, but was like her mother, rather stiff in the stalk. She
+was very fond of walking through the great hall, where hung the
+portraits of her ancestors. The women were painted in dresses of silk
+and velvet, with a tiny little hat, embroidered with pearls, on their
+plaited hair. They were handsome women. The gentlemen were represented
+clad in steel, or in costly cloaks lined with squirrel's skin; they
+wore little ruffs, and swords at their sides, but not buckled to their
+hips. Where would Joanna's picture find its place on that wall some
+day? and how would _he_ look, her noble lord and husband? This is what
+she thought of, and of this she spoke softly to herself. I heard it,
+as I swept into the long hall, and turned round to come out again.
+
+"Anna Dorothea, the pale hyacinth, a child of fourteen, was quiet and
+thoughtful; her great deep blue eyes had a musing look, but the
+childlike smile still played around her lips: I was not able to blow
+it away, nor did I wish to do so.
+
+"We met in the garden, in the hollow lane, in the field and meadow;
+she gathered herbs and flowers which she knew would be useful to her
+father in concocting the drinks and drops he distilled. Waldemar Daa
+was arrogant and proud, but he was also a learned man, and knew a
+great deal. That was no secret, and many opinions were expressed
+concerning it. In his chimney there was fire even in summer time. He
+would lock the door of his room, and for days the fire would be poked
+and raked; but of this he did not talk much--the forces of nature must
+be conquered in silence; and soon he would discover the art of making
+the best thing of all--the red gold.
+
+"That is why the chimney was always smoking, therefore the flames
+crackled so frequently. Yes, I was there too," said the Wind. "Let it
+go, I sang down through the chimney: it will end in smoke, air, coals
+and ashes! You will burn yourself! Hu-uh-ush! drive away! drive away!
+But Waldemar Daa did _not_ drive it away."
+
+"The splendid black horses in the stable--what became of them? what
+became of the old gold and silver vessels in cupboards and chests, the
+cows in the fields, and the house and home itself? Yes, they may melt,
+may melt in the golden crucible, and yet yield no gold.
+
+"Empty grew the barns and store-rooms, the cellars and magazines. The
+servants decreased in number, and the mice multiplied. Then a window
+broke, and then another, and I could get in elsewhere besides at the
+door," said the Wind. "'Where the chimney smokes the meal is being
+cooked,' the proverb says. But here the chimney smoked that devoured
+all the meals, for the sake of the red gold.
+
+"I blew through the courtyard-gate like a watchman blowing his horn,"
+the Wind went on, "but no watchman was there. I twirled the
+weathercock round on the summit of the tower, and it creaked like the
+snoring of the warder, but no warder was there; only mice and rats
+were there. Poverty laid the tablecloth; poverty sat in the wardrobe
+and in the larder; the door fell off its hinges, cracks and fissures
+made their appearance, and I went in and out at pleasure; and that is
+how I know all about it.
+
+"Amid smoke and ashes, amid sorrow and sleepless nights, the hair and
+beard of the master turned grey, and deep furrows showed themselves
+around his temples; his skin turned pale and yellow, as his eyes
+looked greedily for the gold, the desired gold.
+
+"I blew the smoke and ashes into his face and beard: the result of his
+labour was debt instead of pelf. I sung through the burst window-panes
+and the yawning clefts in the walls. I blew into the chests of drawers
+belonging to the daughters, wherein lay the clothes that had become
+faded and threadbare from being worn over and over again. That was not
+the song that had been sung at the children's cradle. The lordly life
+had changed to a life of penury. I was the only one who rejoiced aloud
+in that castle," said the Wind. "I snowed them up, and they say snow
+keeps people warm. They had no wood, and the forest from which they
+might have brought it was cut down. It was a biting frost. I rushed in
+through loopholes and passages, over gables and roofs, that I might be
+brisk. They were lying in bed because of the cold, the three high-born
+daughters; and their father was crouching under his leathern coverlet.
+Nothing to bite, nothing to break, no fire on the hearth--there was a
+life for high-born people! Huh-sh, let it go! But that is what my Lord
+Daa could _not_ do--he could _not_ let it go.
+
+"'After winter comes spring,' he said. 'After want, good times will
+come: one must not lose patience; one must learn to wait! Now my house
+and lands are mortgaged, it is indeed high time; and the gold will
+soon come. At Easter!'
+
+"I heard how he spoke thus, looking at a spider's web. 'Thou cunning
+little weaver, thou dost teach me perseverance. Let them tear thy web,
+and thou wilt begin it again, and complete it. Let them destroy it
+again, and thou wilt resolutely begin to work again--again! That is
+what we must do, and that will repay itself at last.'
+
+"It was the morning of Easter-day. The bells sounded from the
+neighbouring church, and the sun seemed to rejoice in the sky. The
+master had watched through the night in feverish excitement, and had
+been melting and cooling, distilling and mixing. I heard him sighing
+like a soul in despair; I heard him praying, and I noticed how he held
+his breath. The lamp was burnt out, but he did not notice it. I blew
+at the fire of coals, and it threw its red glow upon his ghastly white
+face, lighting it up with a glare, and his sunken eyes looked forth
+wildly out of their deep sockets--but they became larger and larger,
+as though they would burst.
+
+"Look at the alchymic glass! It glows in the crucible, red-hot, and
+pure and heavy! He lifted it with a trembling hand, and cried with a
+trembling voice, 'Gold! gold!'
+
+"He was quite dizzy--I could have blown him down," said the Wind; "but
+I only fanned the glowing coals, and accompanied him through the door
+to where his daughters sat shivering. His coat was powdered with
+ashes, and there were ashes in his beard and in his tangled hair. He
+stood straight up, and held his costly treasure on high, in the
+brittle glass. 'Found, found!--Gold, gold!' he shouted, and again held
+aloft the glass to let it flash in the sunshine; but his hand
+trembled, and the alchymic glass fell clattering to the ground, and
+broke into a thousand pieces; and the last bubble of his happiness had
+burst! Hu-uh-ush! rushing away!--and I rushed away from the
+gold-maker's house.
+
+"Late in autumn, when the days are short, and the mist comes and
+strews cold drops upon the berries and leafless branches, I came back
+in fresh spirits, rushed through the air, swept the sky clear, and
+snapped the dry twigs--which is certainly no great labour, but yet it
+must be done. Then there was another kind of sweeping clean at
+Waldemar Daa's, in the mansion of Borreby. His enemy, Owe Rainel, of
+Basnaes, was there with the mortgage of the house and everything it
+contained in his pocket. I drummed against the broken window-panes,
+beat against the old rotten doors, and whistled through cracks and
+rifts--huh-sh! Mr. Owe Rainel did not like staying there. Ida and Anna
+Dorothea wept bitterly; Joanna stood pale and proud, and bit her thumb
+till it bled--but what could that avail? Owe Rainel offered to allow
+Waldemar Daa to remain in the mansion till the end of his life, but no
+thanks were given him for his offer. I listened to hear what occurred.
+I saw the ruined gentleman lift his head and throw it back prouder
+than ever, and I rushed against the house and the old lime trees with
+such force, that one of the thickest branches broke, one that was not
+decayed; and the branch remained lying at the entrance as a broom
+when any one wanted to sweep the place out: and a grand sweeping out
+there was--I thought it would be so.
+
+[Illustration: LEAVING THE OLD HOME.]
+
+"It was hard on that day to preserve one's composure; but their will
+was as hard as their fortune.
+
+"There was nothing they could call their own except the clothes they
+wore: yes, there was one thing more--the alchymist's glass, a new one
+that had lately been bought, and filled with what had been gathered up
+from the ground of the treasure which promised so much but never kept
+its promise. Waldemar Daa hid the glass in his bosom, and taking his
+stick in his hand, the once rich gentleman passed with his daughters
+out of the house of Borreby. I blew cold upon his heated cheeks, I
+stroked his grey beard and his long white hair, and I sang as well as
+I could,--'Huh-sh! gone away! gone away!' And that was the end of the
+wealth and splendour.
+
+"Ida walked on one side of the old man, and Anna Dorothea on the
+other. Joanna turned round at the entrance--why? Fortune would not
+turn because she did so. She looked at the old walls of what had once
+been the castle of Marsk Stig, and perhaps she thought of his
+daughters:
+
+    'The eldest gave the youngest her hand.
+    And forth they went to the far-off land.'
+
+Was she thinking of this old song? Here were three of them, and their
+father was with them too. They walked along the road on which they had
+once driven in their splendid carriage--they walked forth as beggars,
+with their father, and wandered out into the open field, and into a
+mud hut, which they rented for a dollar and a half a year--into their
+new house with the empty rooms and empty vessels. Crows and magpies
+fluttered above them, and cried, as if in contempt, 'Craw! craw! out
+of the nest! craw! craw!' as they had done in the wood at Borreby when
+the trees were felled.
+
+"Daa and his daughters could not help hearing it. I blew about their
+ears, for what use would it be that they should listen?
+
+"And they went to live in the mud hut on the open field, and I wandered
+away over moor and field, through bare bushes and leafless forests, to the
+open waters, the free shores, to other lands--huh-uh-ush!--away, away! year
+after year!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And how did Waldemar Daa and his daughters prosper? The Wind tells us:
+
+"The one I saw last, yes, for the last time, was Anna Dorothea, the
+pale hyacinth: then she was old and bent, for it was fifty years
+afterwards. She lived longer than the rest; she knew all.
+
+"Yonder on the heath, by the Jutland town of Wiborg, stood the fine
+new house of the canon, built of red bricks with projecting gables;
+the smoke came up thickly from the chimney. The canon's gentle lady
+and her beautiful daughters sat in the bay window, and looked over the
+hawthorn hedge of the garden towards the brown heath. What were they
+looking at? Their glances rested upon the stork's nest without, and
+on the hut, which was almost falling in; the roof consisted of moss
+and houseleek, in so far as a roof existed there at all--the stork's
+nest covered the greater part of it, and that alone was in proper
+condition, for it was kept in order by the stork himself.
+
+"That is a house to be looked at, but not to be touched; I must deal
+gently with it," said the Wind. "For the sake of the stork's nest the
+hut has been allowed to stand, though it was a blot upon the
+landscape. They did not like to drive the stork away, therefore the
+old shed was left standing, and the poor woman who dwelt in it was
+allowed to stay: she had the Egyptian bird to thank for that; or was
+it perchance her reward, because she had once interceded for the nest
+of its black brother in the forest of Borreby? At that time she, the
+poor woman, was a young child, a pale hyacinth in the rich garden. She
+remembered all that right well, did Anna Dorothea.
+
+"'Oh! oh!' Yes, people can sigh like the wind moaning in the rushes
+and reeds. 'Oh! oh!'" she sighed, "no bells sounded at thy burial,
+Waldemar Daa! The poor schoolboys did not even sing a psalm when the
+former lord of Borreby was laid in the earth to rest! Oh, everything
+has an end, even misery. Sister Ida became the wife of a peasant. That
+was the hardest trial that befell our father, that the husband of a
+daughter of his should be a miserable serf, whom the proprietor could
+mount on the wooden horse for punishment! I suppose he is under the
+ground now. And thou, Ida? Alas, alas! it is not ended yet, wretch
+that I am! Grant me that I may die, kind Heaven!'
+
+"That was Anna Dorothea's prayer in the wretched hut which was left
+standing for the sake of the stork.
+
+"I took pity on the fairest of the sisters," said the Wind. "Her
+courage was like that of a man, and in man's clothes she took service
+as a sailor on board of a ship. She was sparing of words, and of a
+dark countenance, but willing at her work. But she did not know how to
+climb; so I blew her overboard before anybody found out that she was a
+woman, and according to my thinking that was well done!" said the
+Wind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"On such an Easter morning as that on which Waldemar Daa had fancied
+that he had found the red gold, I heard the tones of a psalm under the
+stork's nest, among the crumbling walls--it was Anna Dorothea's last
+song.
+
+"There was no window, only a hole in the wall. The sun rose up like a
+mass of gold, and looked through. What a splendour he diffused! Her
+eyes were breaking, and her heart was breaking--but that they would
+have done, even if the sun had not shone that morning on Anna
+Dorothea.
+
+"The stork covered her hut till her death. I sang at her grave!" said
+the Wind. "I sang at her father's grave; I know where his grave is,
+and where hers is, and nobody else knows it.
+
+"New times, changed times! The old high-road now runs through
+cultivated fields; the new road winds among the trim ditches, and soon
+the railway will come with its train of carriages, and rush over the
+graves which are forgotten like the names--hu-ush! passed away, passed
+away!
+
+"That is the story of Waldemar Daa and his daughters. Tell it better,
+any of you, if you know how," said the Wind, and turned away--and he
+was gone.
+
+
+
+
+IB AND CHRISTINE.
+
+
+Not far from the clear stream Gudenau, in North Jutland, in the forest
+which extends by its banks and far into the country, a great ridge of
+land rises and stretches along like a wall through the wood. By this
+ridge, westward, stands a farmhouse, surrounded by poor land; the
+sandy soil is seen through the spare rye and wheat-ears that grow upon
+it. Some years have elapsed since the time of which we speak. The
+people who lived here cultivated the fields, and moreover kept three
+sheep, a pig, and two oxen; in fact, they supported themselves quite
+comfortably, for they had enough to live on if they took things as
+they came. Indeed, they could have managed to save enough to keep two
+horses; but, like the other peasants of the neighbourhood, they said,
+"The horse eats itself up"--that is to say, it eats as much as it
+earns. Jeppe-Jaens cultivated his field in summer. In the winter he
+made wooden shoes, and then he had an assistant, a journeyman, who
+understood as well as he himself did how to make the wooden shoes
+strong, and light, and graceful. They carved shoes and spoons, and
+that brought in money. It would have been wronging the Jeppe-Jaenses to
+call them poor people.
+
+Little Ib, a boy seven years old, the only child of the family, would
+sit by, looking at the workmen, cutting at a stick, and occasionally
+cutting his finger. But one day Ib succeeded so well with two pieces
+of wood, that they really looked like little wooden shoes; and these
+he wanted to give to little Christine. And who was little Christine?
+She was the boatman's daughter, and was graceful and delicate as a
+gentleman's child; had she been differently dressed, no one would have
+imagined that she came out of the hut on the neighbouring heath. There
+lived her father, who was a widower, and supported himself by carrying
+firewood in his great boat out of the forest to the estate of
+Silkeborg, with its great eel-pond and eel-weir, and sometimes even to
+the distant little town of Randers. He had no one who could take care
+of little Christine, and therefore the child was almost always with
+him in his boat, or in the forest among the heath plants and barberry
+bushes. Sometimes, when he had to go as far as the town, he would
+bring little Christine, who was a year younger than Ib, to stay at the
+Jeppe-Jaenses.
+
+Ib and Christine agreed very well in every particular: they divided
+their bread and berries when they were hungry, they dug in the ground
+together for treasures, and they ran, and crept, and played about
+everywhere. And one day they ventured together up the high ridge, and
+a long way into the forest; once they found a few snipes' eggs there,
+and that was a great event for them.
+
+Ib had never been on the heath where Christine's father lived, nor had
+he ever been on the river. But even this was to happen; for
+Christine's father once invited him to go with them; and on the
+evening before the excursion, he followed the boatman over the heath
+to the house of the latter.
+
+Next morning early, the two children were sitting high up on the pile
+of firewood in the boat, eating bread and whistleberries. Christine's
+father and his assistant propelled the boat with staves. They had the
+current with them, and swiftly they glided down the stream, through
+the lakes it forms in its course, and which sometimes seemed shut in
+by reeds and water plants, though there was always room for them to
+pass, and though the old trees bent quite forward over the water, and
+the old oaks bent down their bare branches, as if they had turned up
+their sleeves and wanted to show their knotty naked arms. Old alder
+trees, which the stream had washed away from the bank, clung with
+their fibrous roots to the bottom of the stream, and looked like
+little wooded islands. The water-lilies rocked themselves on the
+river. It was a splendid excursion; and at last they came to the great
+eel-weir, where the water rushed through the flood-gates; and Ib and
+Christine thought this was beautiful to behold.
+
+In those days there was no manufactory there, nor was there any town;
+only the old great farmyard, with its scanty fields, with few
+servants and a few head of cattle, could be seen there; and the
+rushing of the water through the weir and the cry of the wild ducks
+were the only signs of life in Silkeborg. After the firewood had been
+unloaded, the father of Christine bought a whole bundle of eels and a
+slaughtered sucking-pig, and all was put into a basket and placed in
+the stern of the boat. Then they went back again up the stream; but
+the wind was favourable, and when the sails were hoisted, it was as
+good as if two horses had been harnessed to the boat.
+
+When they had arrived at a point in the stream where the
+assistant-boatman dwelt, a little way from the bank, the boat was
+moored, and the two men landed, after exhorting the children to sit
+still. But the children did not do that; or at least they obeyed only
+for a very short time. They must be peeping into the basket in which
+the eels and the sucking-pig had been placed, and they must needs pull
+the sucking-pig out, and take it in their hands, and feel and touch it
+all over; and as both wanted to hold it at the same time, it came to
+pass that they let it fall into the water, and the sucking-pig drifted
+away with the stream--and here was a terrible event!
+
+Ib jumped ashore, and ran a little distance along the bank, and
+Christine sprang after him.
+
+"Take me with you!" she cried.
+
+And in a few minutes they were deep in the thicket, and could no
+longer see either the boat or the bank. They ran on a little farther,
+and then Christine fell down on the ground and began to cry; but Ib
+picked her up.
+
+"Follow me!" he cried. "Yonder lies the house."
+
+But the house was not yonder. They wandered on and on, over the dry,
+rustling, last year's leaves, and over fallen branches that crackled
+beneath their feet. Soon they heard a loud piercing scream. They stood
+still and listened, and presently the scream of an eagle sounded
+through the wood. It was an ugly scream, and they were frightened at
+it; but before them, in the thick wood, the most beautiful blueberries
+grew in wonderful profusion. They were so inviting, that the children
+could not do otherwise than stop; and they lingered for some time,
+eating the blueberries till they had quite blue mouths and blue
+cheeks. Now again they heard the cry they had heard before.
+
+"We shall get into trouble about the pig," said Christine.
+
+"Come, let us go to our house," said Ib; "it is here in the wood."
+
+[Illustration: IB AND CHRISTINE MEET THE GIPSY.]
+
+And they went forward. They presently came to a wood, but it did not
+lead them home; and darkness came on, and they were afraid. The
+wonderful stillness that reigned around was interrupted now and then
+by the shrill cries of the great horrid owl and of the birds that were
+strange to them. At last they both lost themselves in a thicket.
+Christine cried, and Ib cried too; and after they had bemoaned
+themselves for a time, they threw themselves down on the dry leaves,
+and went fast asleep.
+
+The sun was high in the heavens when the two children awoke. They were
+cold; but in the neighbourhood of this resting-place, on the hill, the
+sun shone through the trees, and there they thought they would warm
+themselves; and from there Ib fancied they would be able to see his
+parents' house. But they were far away from the house in question, in
+quite another part of the forest. They clambered to the top of the
+rising ground, and found themselves on the summit of a slope running
+down to the margin of a transparent lake. They could see fish in great
+numbers in the pure water illumined by the sun's rays. This spectacle
+was quite a sudden surprise for them; but close beside them grew a nut
+bush covered with the finest nuts; and now they picked the nuts, and
+cracked them, and ate the delicate young kernels, which had only just
+become perfect. But there was another surprise and another fright in
+store for them. Out of the thicket stepped a tall old woman; her face
+was quite brown, and her hair was deep black and shining. The whites
+of her eyes gleamed like a negro's; on her back she carried a bundle,
+and in her hand she bore a knotted stick. She was a gipsy. The
+children did not at once understand what she said. She brought three
+nuts out of her pocket, and told them that in these nuts the most
+beautiful, the loveliest things were hidden; for they were
+wishing-nuts.
+
+Ib looked at her, and she seemed so friendly, that he plucked up
+courage and asked her if she would give him the nuts; and the woman
+gave them to him, and gathered some more for herself, a whole
+pocketful, from the nut bush.
+
+And Ib and Christine looked at the wishing-nuts with great eyes.
+
+"Is there a carriage with a pair of horses in this nut?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, there's a golden carriage with two horses," answered the woman.
+
+"Then give me the nut," said little Christine.
+
+And Ib gave it to her, and the strange woman tied it in her
+pocket-handkerchief for her.
+
+"Is there in this nut a pretty little neckerchief, like the one
+Christine wears round her neck?" inquired Ib.
+
+"There are ten neckerchiefs in it," answered the woman. "There are
+beautiful dresses in it, and stockings, and a hat with a veil."
+
+"Then I will have that one too," cried little Christine.
+
+And Ib gave her the second nut also. The third was a little black
+thing.
+
+"That one you can keep," said Christine; "and it is a pretty one too."
+
+"What is in it?" inquired Ib.
+
+"The best of all things for you," replied the gipsy-woman.
+
+And Ib held the nut very tight. The woman promised to lead the
+children into the right path, so that they might find their way home;
+and now they went forward, certainly in quite a different direction
+from the path they should have followed. But that is no reason why we
+should suspect the gipsy-woman of wanting to steal the children. In
+the wild wood-path they met the forest bailiff, who knew Ib; and by
+his help, Ib and Christine both arrived at home, where their friends
+had been very anxious about them. They were pardoned and forgiven,
+although they had indeed both deserved "to get into trouble;" firstly,
+because they had let the sucking-pig fall into the water, and
+secondly, because they had run away.
+
+Christine was taken back to her father on the heath, and Ib remained
+in the farmhouse on the margin of the wood by the great ridge. The
+first thing he did in the evening was to bring forth out of his pocket
+the little black nut, in which "the best thing of all" was said to be
+enclosed. He placed it carefully in the crack of the door, and then
+shut the door so as to break the nut; but there was not much kernel in
+it. The nut looked as if it were filled with tobacco or black rich
+earth; it was what we call hollow, or worm-eaten.
+
+"Yes, that's exactly what I thought," said Ib. "How could the very
+best thing be contained in this little nut? And Christine will get
+just as little out of her two nuts, and will have neither fine clothes
+nor the golden carriage."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And winter came on, and the new year began; indeed, several years went
+by.
+
+Ib was at last to be confirmed; and for this reason he went during a
+whole winter to the clergyman, far away in the nearest village, to
+prepare. About this time the boatman one day visited Ib's parents, and
+told them that Christine was now going into service, and that she had
+been really fortunate in getting a remarkably good place, and falling
+into worthy hands.
+
+"Only think," he said; "she is going to the rich innkeeper's, in the
+inn at Herning, far towards the west, many miles from here. She is to
+assist the hostess in keeping the house; and afterwards, if she takes
+to it well, and stays to be confirmed there, the people are going to
+adopt her as their own daughter."
+
+And Ib and Christine took leave of one another. People called them
+"the betrothed;" and at parting, the girl showed Ib that she had still
+the two nuts which he had given her long ago, during their wanderings
+in the forest; and she told him, moreover, that in a drawer she had
+carefully kept the little wooden shoes which he had carved as a
+present for her in their childish days. And thereupon they parted.
+
+Ib was confirmed. But he remained in his mother's house, for he had
+become a clever maker of wooden shoes, and in summer he looked after
+the field. He did it all alone, for his mother kept no farm-servant,
+and his father had died long ago.
+
+Only seldom he got news of Christine from some passing postillion or
+eel-fisher. But she was well off at the rich innkeeper's; and after
+she had been confirmed, she wrote a letter to her father, and sent a
+kind message to Ib and his mother; and in the letter there was mention
+made of certain linen garments and a fine new gown, which Christine
+had received as a present from her employers. This was certainly good
+news.
+
+Next spring, there was a knock one day at the door of our Ibis old
+mother, and behold, the boatman and Christine stepped into the room.
+She had come on a visit to spend a day: a carriage had to come from
+the Herning Inn to the next village, and she had taken the opportunity
+to see her friends once again. She looked as handsome as a real lady,
+and she had a pretty gown on, which had been well sewn, and made
+expressly for her. There she stood, in grand array, and Ib was in his
+working clothes. He could not utter a word: he certainly seized her
+hand, and held it fast in his own, and was heartily glad; but he could
+not get his tongue to obey him. Christine was not embarrassed,
+however, for she went on talking and talking, and, moreover, kissed Ib
+on his mouth in the heartiest manner.
+
+"Did you know me again directly, Ib?" she asked; but even afterwards,
+when they were left quite by themselves, and he stood there still
+holding her hand in his, he could only say:
+
+"You look quite like a real lady, and I am so uncouth. How often I
+have thought of you, Christine, and of the old times!"
+
+And arm in arm they sauntered up the great ridge, and looked across
+the stream towards the heath, towards the great hills overgrown with
+bloom. It was perfectly silent; but by the time they parted it had
+grown quite clear to him that Christine must be his wife. Had they
+not, even in their childhood, been called the betrothed pair? To him
+they seemed to be really engaged to each other, though neither of them
+had spoken a word on the subject. Only for a few more hours could they
+remain together, for Christine was obliged to go back into the next
+village, from whence the carriage was to start early next morning for
+Herning. Her father and Ib escorted her as far as the village. It was
+a fair moonlight evening, and when they reached their destination, and
+Ib still held Christine's hand in his own, he could not make up his
+mind to let her go. His eyes brightened, but still the words came
+halting over his lips. Yet they came from the depths of his heart,
+when he said:
+
+"If you have not become too grand, Christine, and if you can make up
+your mind to live with me in my mother's house as my wife, we must
+become a wedded pair some day; but we can wait awhile yet."
+
+"Yes, let us wait for a time, Ib," she replied; and he kissed her
+lips. "I confide in you, Ib," said Christine; "and I think that I love
+you--but I will sleep upon it."
+
+And with that they parted. And on the way home Ib told the boatman
+that he and Christine were as good as betrothed; and the boatman
+declared he had always expected it would turn out so; and he went home
+with Ib, and remained that night in the young man's house; but nothing
+further was said of the betrothal.
+
+A year passed by, in the course of which two letters were exchanged
+between Ib and Christine. The signature was prefaced by the words,
+"Faithful till death!" One day the boatman came into Ib, and brought
+him a greeting from Christine. What he had further to say was brought
+out in somewhat hesitating fashion, but it was to the effect that
+Christine was almost more than prosperous, for she was a pretty girl,
+courted and loved. The son of the host had been home on a visit; he
+was employed in the office of some great institution in Copenhagen;
+and he was very much pleased with Christine, and she had taken a fancy
+to him: his parents were ready to give their consent, but Christine
+was very anxious to retain Ib's good opinion; "and so she had thought
+of refusing this great piece of good fortune," said the boatman.
+
+At first Ib said not a word; but he became as white as the wall, and
+slightly shook his head. Then he said slowly:
+
+"Christine must not refuse this advantageous offer."
+
+"Then do you write a few words to her," said the boatman.
+
+And Ib sat down to write; but he could not manage it well: the words
+would not come as he wished them; and first he altered, and then he
+tore up the page; but the next morning a letter lay ready to be sent
+to Christine, and it contained the following words:
+
+     "I have read the letter you have sent to your father, and
+     gather from it that you are prospering in all things, and
+     that there is a prospect of higher fortune for you. Ask your
+     heart, Christine, and ponder well the fate that awaits you,
+     if you take me for your husband; what I possess is but
+     little. Do not think of me, or my position, but think of
+     your own welfare. You are bound to me by no promise, and if
+     in your heart you have given me one, I release you from it.
+     May all treasures of happiness be poured out upon you,
+     Christine. Heaven will console me in its own good time.
+
+                           "Ever your sincere friend,
+
+                                                    "IB"
+
+And the letter was dispatched, and Christine duly received it.
+
+In the course of that November her banns were published in the church
+on the heath, and in Copenhagen, where her bridegroom lived; and to
+Copenhagen she proceeded, under the protection of her future
+mother-in-law, because the bridegroom could not undertake the journey
+into Jutland on account of his various occupations. On the journey,
+Christine met her father in a certain village; and here the two took
+leave of one another. A few words were mentioned concerning this fact,
+but Ib made no remark upon it: his mother said he had grown very
+silent of late; indeed, he had become very pensive, and thus the three
+nuts came into his mind which the gipsy-woman had given him long ago,
+and of which he had given two to Christine. Yes, it seemed right--they
+were wishing-nuts, and in one of them lay a golden carriage with two
+horses, and in the other very elegant clothes; all those luxuries
+would now be Christine's in the capital. Her part had thus come true.
+And to him, Ib, the nut had offered only black earth. The gipsy-woman
+had said, this was "the best of all for him." Yes, it was right, that
+also was coming true. The black earth was the best for him. Now he
+understood clearly what had been the woman's meaning. In the black
+earth, in the dark grave, would be the best happiness for him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And once again years passed by, not very many, but they seemed long
+years to Ib. The old innkeeper and his wife died, one after the other;
+the whole of their property, many thousands of dollars, came to the
+son. Yes, now Christine could have the golden carriage, and plenty of
+fine clothes.
+
+During the two long years that followed no letter came from Christine;
+and when her father at length received one from her, it was not
+written in prosperity, by any means. Poor Christine! neither she nor
+her husband had understood how to keep the money together; and there
+seemed to be no blessing with it, because they had not sought it.
+
+And again the weather bloomed and faded. The winter had swept for many
+years across the heath, and over the ridge beneath which Ib dwelt,
+sheltered from the rough winds. The spring sun shone bright, and Ib
+guided the plough across his field, when one day it glided over what
+appeared to be a fire stone. Something like a great black ship came
+out of the ground, and when Ib took it up it proved to be a piece of
+metal; and the place from which the plough had cut the stone gleamed
+brightly with ore. It was a great golden armlet of ancient workmanship
+that he had found. He had disturbed a "Hun's Grave," and discovered
+the costly treasure buried in it. Ib showed what he had found to the
+clergyman, who explained its value to him, and then he betook himself
+to the local judges, who reported the discovery to the keeper of the
+museum, and recommended Ib to deliver up the treasure in person.
+
+"You have found in the earth the best thing you could find," said the
+judge.
+
+"The best thing!" thought Ib. "The very best thing for me, and found
+in the earth! Well, if that is the best, the gipsy-woman was correct
+in what she prophesied to me."
+
+So Ib travelled with the ferry-boat from Aarhus to Copenhagen. To him,
+who had but once or twice passed beyond the river that rolled by his
+home, this seemed like a voyage across the ocean. And he arrived in
+Copenhagen.
+
+The value of the gold he had found was paid over to him; it was a
+large sum--six hundred dollars. And Ib of the heath wandered about in
+the great capital.
+
+On the day on which he had settled to go back with the captain, Ib
+lost his way in the streets, and took quite a different direction from
+the one he intended to follow. He had wandered into the suburb of
+Christianhaven, into a poor little street. Not a human being was to be
+seen. At last a very little girl came out of one of the wretched
+houses. Ib inquired of the little one the way to the street which he
+wanted; but she looked shyly at him, and began to cry bitterly. He
+asked her what ailed her, but could not understand what she said in
+reply. But as they went along the street together, they passed beneath
+the light of a lamp; and when the light fell on the girl's face, he
+felt a strange and sharp emotion, for Christine stood bodily before
+him, just as he remembered her from the days of his childhood.
+
+And he went with the little maiden into the wretched house, and
+ascended the narrow, crazy staircase, which led to a little attic
+chamber in the roof. The air in this chamber was heavy and almost
+suffocating: no light was burning; but there was heavy sighing and
+moaning in one corner. Ib struck a light with the help of a match. It
+was the mother of the child who lay sighing on the miserable bed.
+
+"Can I be of any service to you?" asked Ib. "This little girl has
+brought me up here, but I am a stranger in this city. Are there no
+neighbours or friends whom I could call to you?" And he raised the
+sick woman's head, and smoothed her pillow.
+
+It was Christine of the heath!
+
+For years her name had not been mentioned yonder, for the mention of
+her would have disturbed Ib's peace of mind, and rumour had told
+nothing good concerning her. The wealth which her husband had
+inherited from his parents had made him proud and arrogant. He had
+given up his certain appointment, had travelled for half a year in
+foreign lands, and on his return had incurred debts, and yet lived in
+an expensive fashion. His carriage had bent over more and more, so to
+speak, until at last it turned over completely. The many merry
+companions and table-friends he had entertained declared it served him
+right, for he had kept house like a madman; and one morning his corpse
+was found in the canal.
+
+The icy hand of death was already on Christine. Her youngest child,
+only a few weeks old, expected in prosperity and born in misery, was
+already in its grave, and it had come to this with Christine herself,
+that she lay, sick to death and forsaken, in a miserable room, amid a
+poverty that she might well have borne in her childish days, but which
+now oppressed her painfully, since she had been accustomed to better
+things. It was her eldest child, also a little Christine, that here
+suffered hunger and poverty with her, and whom Ib had now brought
+home.
+
+"I am unhappy at the thought of dying and leaving the poor child here
+alone," she said. "Ah, what is to become of the poor thing?" And not a
+word more could she utter.
+
+And Ib brought out another match, and lighted up a piece of candle he
+found in the room, and the flame illumined the wretched dwelling. And
+Ib looked at the little girl, and thought how Christine had looked
+when she was young; and he felt that for her sake he would be fond of
+this child, which was as yet a stranger to him. The dying woman gazed
+at him, and her eyes opened wider and wider--did she recognize him? He
+never knew, for no further word passed over her lips.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And it was in the forest by the river Gudenau, in the region of the
+heath. The air was thick and dark, and there were no blossoms on the
+heath plant; but the autumn tempests whirled the yellow leaves from
+the wood into the stream, and out over the heath towards the hut of
+the boatman, in which strangers now dwelt; but beneath the ridge, safe
+beneath the protection of the high trees, stood the little farm,
+trimly whitewashed and painted, and within it the turf blazed up
+cheerily in the chimney; for within was sunlight, the beaming sunlight
+of a child's two eyes; and the tones of the spring birds sounded in
+the words that came from the child's rosy lips: she sat on Ib's knee,
+and Ib was to her both father and mother, for her own parents were
+dead, and had vanished from her as a dream vanishes alike from
+children and grown men. Ib sat in the pretty neat house, for he was a
+prosperous man, while the mother of the little girl rested in the
+churchyard at Copenhagen, where she had died in poverty.
+
+[Illustration: LITTLE CHRISTINE.]
+
+Ib had money, and was said to have provided for the future. He had won
+gold out of the black earth, and he had a Christine for his own, after
+all.
+
+
+
+
+OLE THE TOWER-KEEPER.
+
+
+"In the world it's always going up and down--and now I can't go up any
+higher!" So said Ole the tower-keeper. "Most people have to try both
+the ups and the downs; and, rightly considered, we all get to be
+watchmen at last, and look down upon life from a height."
+
+Such was the speech of Ole, my friend, the old tower-keeper, a strange
+talkative old fellow, who seemed to speak out everything that came
+into his head, and who for all that had many a serious thought deep in
+his heart. Yes, he was the child of respectable people, and there were
+even some who said that he was the son of a privy councillor, or that
+he might have been; he had studied too, and had been assistant teacher
+and deputy clerk; but of what service was all that to him? In those
+days he lived in the clerk's house, and was to have everything in the
+house, to be at free quarters, as the saying is; but he was still, so
+to speak, a fine young gentleman. He wanted to have his boots cleaned
+with patent blacking, and the clerk could only afford ordinary grease;
+and upon that point they split--one spoke of stinginess, the other of
+vanity, and the blacking became the black cause of enmity between
+them, and at last they parted.
+
+This is what he demanded of the world in general--namely, patent
+blacking--and he got nothing but grease. Accordingly he at last drew
+back from all men, and became a hermit; but the church tower is the
+only place in a great city where hermitage, office, and bread can be
+found together. So he betook himself up thither, and smoked his pipe
+as he made his solitary rounds. He looked upward and downward, and had
+his own thoughts, and told in his way of what he read in books and in
+himself. I often lent him books, good books; and you may know a man by
+the company he keeps. He loved neither the English governess-novels,
+nor the French ones, which he called a mixture of empty wind and
+raisin-stalks: he wanted biographies and descriptions of the wonders
+of the world. I visited him at least once a year, generally directly
+after New Year's-day, and then he always spoke of this and that which
+the change of the year had put into his head.
+
+I will tell the story of three of these visits, and will reproduce his
+own words whenever I can remember them.
+
+
+FIRST VISIT.
+
+Among the books which I had lately lent Ole, was one which had greatly
+rejoiced and occupied him. It was a geological book, containing an
+account of the boulders.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIDE TO AMACK.]
+
+"Yes, they're rare old fellows, those boulders!" he said; "and to
+think that we should pass them without noticing them! And over the
+street pavement, the paving-stones, those fragments of the oldest
+remains of antiquity, one walks without ever thinking about them. I
+have done the very thing myself. But now I look respectfully at every
+paving-stone. Many thanks for the book! It has filled me with thought,
+and has made me long to read more on the subject. The romance of the
+earth is, after all, the most wonderful of all romances. It's a pity
+one can't read the first volumes of it, because they 're written in a
+language that we don't understand. One must read in the different
+strata, in the pebble-stones, for each separate period. Yes, it is a
+romance, a very wonderful romance, and we all have our place in it. We
+grope and ferret about, and yet remain where we are, but the ball
+keeps turning, without emptying the ocean over us; the clod on which
+we move about, holds, and does not let us through. And then it's a
+story that has been acting for thousands upon thousands of years, and
+is still going on. My best thanks for the book about the boulders.
+Those are fellows indeed! they could tell us something worth hearing,
+if they only knew how to talk. It's really a pleasure, now and then to
+become a mere nothing, especially when a man is as highly placed as I
+am. And then to think that we all, even with patent lacquer, are
+nothing more than insects of a moment on that ant-hill the earth,
+though we may be insects with stars and garters, places and offices!
+One feels quite a novice beside these venerable million-year-old
+boulders. On New Year's-eve I was reading the book, and had lost
+myself in it so completely, that I forgot my usual New Year's
+diversion, namely, the wild hunt to Amack. Ah, you don't know what
+that is!
+
+"The journey of the witches on broomsticks is well enough known--that
+journey is taken on St. John's-eve, to the Brocken; but we have a wild
+journey also, which is national and modern, and that is the journey to
+Amack on the night of the New Year. All indifferent poets and
+poetesses, musicians, newspaper writers and artistic notabilities, I
+mean those who are no good, ride in the New Year's-night through the
+air to Amack. They sit backwards on their painting brushes or quill
+pens, for steel pens won't bear them, they're too stiff. As I told
+you, I see that every New Year's night, and could mention the
+majority of the riders by name, but I should not like to draw their
+enmity upon myself, for they don't like people to talk about their
+ride to Amack on quill pens. I've a kind of niece, who is a fishwife,
+and who, as she tells me, supplies three respectable newspapers with
+the terms of abuse and vituperation they use, and she has herself been
+at Amack as an invited guest; but she was carried out thither, for she
+does not own a quill pen, nor can she ride. She has told me all about
+it. Half of what she said is not true, but the other half gives us
+information enough. When she was out there, the festivities began with
+a song: each of the guests had written his own song, and each one sung
+his own song, for he thought that the best, and it was all one, all
+the same melody. Then those came marching up, in little bands, who are
+only busy with their mouths. There were ringing bells that sang
+alternately; and then came the little drummers that beat their tattoo
+in the family circle; and acquaintance was made with those who write
+without putting their names, which here means as much as using grease
+instead of patent blacking; and then there was the beadle with his
+boy, and the boy was the worst off, for in general he gets no notice
+taken of him; then too there was the good street-sweeper with his
+cart, who turns over the dust-bin, and calls it "good, very good,
+remarkably good." And in the midst of the pleasure that was afforded
+by the mere meeting of these folks, there shot up out of the great
+dirt-heap at Amack a stem, a tree, an immense flower, a great
+mushroom, a perfect roof, which formed a sort of warehouse for the
+worthy company, for in it hung everything they had given to the world
+during the Old Year. Out of the tree poured sparks like flames of
+fire; these were the ideas and thoughts, borrowed from others, which
+they had used, and which now got free and rushed away like so many
+fireworks. They played at 'the stick burns,' and the young poets
+played at 'heart-burns,' and the witlings played off their jests, and
+the jests rolled away with a thundering sound, as if empty pots were
+being shattered against doors. 'It was very amusing!' my niece said;
+in fact, she said many things that were very malicious but very
+amusing, but I won't mention them, for a man must be good-natured and
+not a carping critic. But you will easily perceive that when a man
+once knows the rights of the journey to Amack, as I know them, it's
+quite natural that on the New Year's-night one should look out to see
+the wild chase go by. If in the New Year I miss certain persons who
+used to be there, I am sure to notice others who are new arrivals: but
+this year I omitted taking my look at the guests. I bowled away on the
+boulders, rolled back through millions of years, and saw the stones
+break loose high up in the North, saw them drifting about on icebergs,
+long before Noah's ark was constructed, saw them sink down to the
+bottom of the sea, and reappear with a sand-bank, with that one that
+peered forth from the flood and said, 'This shall be Zealand!' I saw
+them become the dwelling-place of birds that are unknown to us, and
+then become the seat of wild chiefs of whom we know nothing, until
+with their axes they cut their Runic signs into a few of these stones,
+which then came into the calendar of time. But as for me, I had gone
+quite beyond all lapse of time, and had become a cipher and a nothing.
+Then three or four beautiful falling stars came down, which cleared
+the air, and gave my thoughts another direction. You know what a
+falling star is, do you not? The learned men are not at all clear
+about it. I have my own ideas about shooting stars, as the common
+people in many parts call them, and my idea is this: How often are
+silent thanksgivings offered up for one who has done a good and noble
+action! the thanks are often speechless, but they are not lost for all
+that. I think these thanks are caught up, and the sunbeams bring the
+silent, hidden thankfulness over the head of the benefactor; and if it
+be a whole people that has been expressing its gratitude through a
+long lapse of time, the thankfulness appears as a nosegay of flowers,
+and at length falls in the form of a shooting star upon the good man's
+grave. I am always very much pleased when I see a shooting star,
+especially in the New Year's-night, and then find out for whom the
+gift of gratitude was intended. Lately a gleaming star fell in the
+south-west, as a tribute of thanksgiving to many, many! 'For whom was
+that star intended?' thought I. It fell, no doubt, on the hill by the
+Bay of Flensberg, where the Danebrog waves over the graves of
+Schleppegrell, Laesloees, and their comrades. One star also fell in the
+midst of the land, fell upon Soroe, a flower on the grave of Holberg,
+the thanks of the year from a great many--thanks for his charming
+plays!
+
+"It is a great and pleasant thought to know that a shooting star falls
+upon our graves; on mine certainly none will fall--no sunbeam brings
+thanks to me, for here there is nothing worthy of thanks. I shall not
+get the patent lacquer," said Ole; "for my fate on earth is only
+grease, after all."
+
+
+SECOND VISIT.
+
+It was New Year's-day, and I went up on the tower. Ole spoke of the
+toasts that were drunk on the transition from the old year into the
+new, from one grave into the other, as he said. And he told me a story
+about the glasses, and this story had a very deep meaning. It was
+this:
+
+"When on the New Year's-night the clock strikes twelve, the people at
+the table rise up, with full glasses in their hands, and drain these
+glasses, and drink success to the New Year. They begin the year with
+the glass in their hands; that is a good beginning for topers. They
+begin the New Year by going to bed, and that's a good beginning for
+drones. Sleep is sure to play a great part in the New Year, and the
+glass likewise. Do you know what dwells in the glass?" asked Ole. "I
+will tell you--there dwell in the glass, first, health, and then
+pleasure, then the most complete sensual delight: and misfortune and
+the bitterest woe dwell in the glass also. Now suppose we count the
+glasses--of course I count the different degrees in the glasses for
+different people.
+
+"You see, the _first glass_, that's the glass of health, and in that
+the herb of health is found growing; put it up on the beam in the
+ceiling, and at the end of the year you may be sitting in the arbour
+of health.
+
+"If you take the _second glass_--from this a little bird soars
+upwards, twittering in guileless cheerfulness, so that a man may
+listen to his song and perhaps join in 'Fair is life! no downcast
+looks! Take courage and march onward!'
+
+"Out of the _third glass_ rises a little winged urchin, who cannot
+certainly be called an angel-child, for there is goblin blood in his
+veins, and he has the spirit of a goblin; not wishing to hurt or harm
+you, indeed, but very ready to play off tricks upon you. He'll sit at
+your ear and whisper merry thoughts to you; he'll creep into your
+heart and warm you, so that you grow very merry and become a wit, so
+far as the wits of the others can judge.
+
+"In the _fourth glass_ is neither herb, bird, nor urchin: in that
+glass is the pause drawn by reason, and one may never go beyond that
+sign.
+
+"Take the _fifth glass_, and you will weep at yourself, you will feel
+such a deep emotion; or it will affect you in a different way. Out of
+the glass there will spring with a bang Prince Carnival, nine times
+and extravagantly merry: he'll draw you away with him, you'll forget
+your dignity, if you have any, and you'll forget more than you should
+or ought to forget. All is dance, song, and sound; the masks will
+carry you away with them, and the daughters of vanity, clad in silk
+and satin, will come with loose hair and alluring charms: but tear
+yourself away if you can!
+
+"The _sixth glass_! Yes, in that glass sits a demon, in the form of a
+little, well-dressed, attractive and very fascinating man, who
+thoroughly understands you, agrees with you in everything, and becomes
+quite a second self to you. He has a lantern with him, to give you
+light as he accompanies you home. There is an old legend about a saint
+who was allowed to choose one of the seven deadly sins, and who
+accordingly chose drunkenness, which appeared to him the least, but
+which led him to commit all the other six. The man's blood is mingled
+with that of the demon--it is the sixth glass, and with that the germ
+of all evil shoots up within us; and each one grows up with a strength
+like that of the grains of mustard seed, and shoots up into a tree,
+and spreads over the whole world; and most people have no choice but
+to go into the oven, to be re-cast in a new form.
+
+"That's the history of the glasses," said the tower-keeper Ole, "and
+it can be told with lacquer or only with grease; but I give it you
+with both!"
+
+
+THIRD VISIT.
+
+On this occasion I chose the general "moving-day" for my visit to Ole,
+for on that day it is anything but agreeable down in the streets in
+the town; for they are full of sweepings, shreds, and remnants of all
+sorts, to say nothing of the cast-off bed straw in which one has to
+wade about. But this time I happened to see two children playing in
+this wilderness of sweepings. They were playing at "going to bed," for
+the occasion seemed especially favourable for this sport: they crept
+under the straw, and drew an old bit of ragged curtain over themselves
+by way of coverlet. "It was splendid!" they said; but it was a little
+too strong for me, and besides, I was obliged to mount up on my visit.
+
+"It's moving-day to-day," he said; "streets and houses are like a
+dust-bin, a large dust-bin; but I'm content with a cartload. I may get
+something good out of that, and I really did get something good out of
+it, once. Shortly after Christmas I was going up the street; it was
+rough weather, wet and dirty; the right kind of weather to catch cold
+in. The dustman was there with his cart, which was full, and looked
+like a sample of streets on moving-day. At the back of the cart stood
+a fir tree, quite green still, and with tinsel on its twigs: it had
+been used on Christmas-eve, and now it was thrown out into the street,
+and the dustman had stood it up at the back of his cart. It was droll
+to look at, or you may say it was mournful--all depends on what you
+think of when you see it; and I thought about it, and thought this and
+that of many things that were in the cart: or I might have done so,
+and that comes to the same thing. There was an old lady's glove too: I
+wonder what that was thinking of? Shall I tell you? The glove was
+lying there, pointing with its little finger at the tree. 'I'm sorry
+for the tree,' it thought; 'and I was also at the feast, where the
+chandeliers glittered. My life was, so to speak, a ball-night: a
+pressure of the hand, and I burst! My memory keeps dwelling upon that,
+and I have really nothing else to live for!' This is what the glove
+thought, or what it might have thought. 'That's a stupid affair with
+yonder fir tree,' said the potsherds. You see, potsherds think
+everything is stupid. 'When one is in the dust-cart,' they said, 'one
+ought not to give one's self airs and wear tinsel. I know that I have
+been useful in the world, far more useful than such a green stick.'
+That was a view that might be taken, and I don't think it quite a
+peculiar one; but for all that the fir tree looked very well: it was
+like a little poetry in the dust-heap; and truly there is dust enough
+in the streets on moving-day. The way is difficult and troublesome
+then, and I feel obliged to run away out of the confusion; or if I am
+on the tower, I stay there and look down, and it is amusing enough.
+
+[Illustration: THE REJECTED TRAVELLER.]
+
+"There are the good people below, playing at 'changing houses.' They
+toil and tug away with their goods and chattels, and the household
+goblin sits in an old tub and moves with them; all the little griefs
+of the lodging and the family, and the real cares and sorrows, move
+with them out of the old dwelling into the new; and what gain is there
+for them or for us in the whole affair? Yes, there was written long
+ago the good old maxim: 'Think on the great moving-day of death!'
+That is a serious thought; I hope it is not disagreeable to you that
+I should have touched upon it? Death is the most certain messenger
+after all, in spite of his various occupations. Yes, Death is the
+omnibus conductor, and he is the passport writer, and he countersigns
+our service-book, and he is director of the savings bank of life. Do
+you understand me? All the deeds of our life, the great and the little
+alike, we put into this savings bank; and when Death calls with his
+omnibus, and we have to step in, and drive with him into the land of
+eternity, then on the frontier he gives us our service-book as a pass.
+As a provision for the journey he takes this or that good deed we have
+done, and lets it accompany us; and this may be very pleasant or very
+terrific. Nobody has ever escaped this omnibus journey: there is
+certainly a talk about one who was not allowed to go--they call him
+the Wandering Jew: he has to ride behind the omnibus. If he had been
+allowed to get in, he would have escaped the clutches of the poets.
+
+"Just cast your mind's eye into that great omnibus. The society is
+mixed, for king and beggar, genius and idiot, sit side by side: they
+must go without their property and money; they have only the
+service-book and the gift out of the saving's bank with them. But
+which of our deeds is selected and given to us? Perhaps quite a little
+one, one that we have forgotten, but which has been recorded--small as
+a pea, but the pea can send out a blooming shoot. The poor bumpkin,
+who sat on a low stool in the corner, and was jeered at and flouted,
+will perhaps have his worn-out stool given him as a provision; and the
+stool may become a litter in the land of eternity, and rise up then as
+a throne, gleaming like gold, and blooming as an arbour. He who always
+lounged about, and drank the spiced draught of pleasure, that he might
+forget the wild things he had done here, will have his barrel given to
+him on the journey, and will have to drink from it as they go on; and
+the drink is bright and clear, so that the thoughts remain pure, and
+all good and noble feelings are awakened, and he sees and feels what
+in life he could not or would not see; and then he has within him the
+punishment, the _gnawing worm_, which will not die through time
+incalculable. If on the glasses there stood written '_oblivion_,' on
+the barrel '_remembrance_' is inscribed.
+
+"When I read a good book, an historical work, I always think at last
+of the poetry of what I am reading, and of the omnibus of death, and
+wonder which of the hero's deeds Death took out of the savings bank
+for him, and what provisions he got on the journey into eternity.
+There was once a French king--I have forgotten his name, for the names
+of good people are sometimes forgotten, even by me, but it will come
+back some day; there was a king who, during a famine, became the
+benefactor of his people; and the people raised to his memory a
+monument of snow, with the inscription, 'Quicker than this melts didst
+thou bring help!' I fancy that Death, looking back upon the monument,
+gave him a single snow-flake as provision, a snow-flake that never
+melts, and this flake floated over his royal head, like a white
+butterfly, into the land of eternity. Thus too, there was a Louis
+XI.--I have remembered his name, for one remembers what is bad--a
+trait of him often comes into my thoughts, and I wish one could say
+the story is not true. He had his lord high constable executed, and he
+could execute him, right or wrong; but he had the innocent children of
+the constable, one seven and the other eight years old, placed under
+the scaffold so that the warm blood of their father spurted over them,
+and then he had them sent to the Bastille, and shut up in iron cages,
+where not even a coverlet was given them to protect them from the
+cold. And King Louis sent the executioner to them every week, and had
+a tooth pulled out of the head of each, that they might not be too
+comfortable; and the elder of the boys said, 'My mother would die of
+grief if she knew that my younger brother had to suffer so cruelly;
+therefore pull out two of my teeth, and spare him.' The tears came
+into the hangman's eyes, but the king's will was stronger than the
+tears; and every week two little teeth were brought to him on a silver
+plate; he had demanded them, and he had them. I fancy that Death took,
+these two teeth out of the savings bank of life, and gave them to
+Louis XI., to carry with him on the great journey into the land of
+immortality: they fly before him like two flames of fire; they shine
+and burn, and they bite him, the innocent children's teeth.
+
+"Yes, that's a serious journey, the omnibus ride on the great
+moving-day! And when is it to be undertaken? That's just the serious
+part of it. Any day, any how, any minute, the omnibus may draw up.
+Which of our deeds will Death take out of the savings bank, and give
+to us as provision? Let us think of the moving-day that is not marked
+in the calendar."
+
+
+
+
+THE BOTTLE-NECK.
+
+
+In a narrow crooked street, among other abodes of poverty, stood an
+especially narrow and tall house built of timber, which time had
+knocked about in such fashion that it seemed to be out of joint in
+every direction. The house was inhabited by poor people, and the
+deepest poverty was apparent in the garret lodging in the gable,
+where, in front of the only window, hung an old bent birdcage, which
+had not even a proper water-glass, but only a bottle-neck reversed,
+with a cork stuck in the mouth, to do duty for one. An old maid stood
+by the window: she had hung the cage with green chickweed; and a
+little chaffinch hopped from perch to perch, and sang and twittered
+merrily enough.
+
+"Yes, it's all very well for you to sing," said the Bottle-neck; that
+is to say, it did not pronounce the words as we can speak them, for a
+bottle-neck can't speak; but that's what he thought to himself in his
+own mind, like when we people talk quietly to ourselves. "Yes, it's
+all very well for you to sing, you that have all your limbs uninjured.
+You ought to feel what it's like to lose one's body, and to have only
+mouth and neck left, and to be hampered with work into the bargain, as
+in my case; and then I'm sure you would not sing. But after all it is
+well that there should be somebody at least who is merry. I've no
+reason to sing, and, moreover, I can't sing. Yes, when I was a whole
+bottle, I sung out well if they rubbed me with a cork. They used to
+call me a perfect lark, a magnificent lark! Ah, when I was out at a
+picnic with the tanner's family, and his daughter was betrothed! Yes,
+I remember it as if it had happened only yesterday. I have gone
+through a great deal, when I come to recollect. I've been in the fire
+and the water, have been deep in the black earth, and have mounted
+higher than most of the others; and now I'm hanging here, outside the
+birdcage, in the air and the sunshine! Oh, it would be quite worth
+while to hear my history; but I don't speak aloud of it, because I
+can't."
+
+And now the Bottle-neck told its story, which was sufficiently
+remarkable. It told the story to itself, or only thought it in its own
+mind; and the little bird sang his song merrily, and down in the
+street there was driving and hurrying, and every one thought of his
+own affairs, or perhaps of nothing at all; and only the Bottle-neck
+thought. It thought of the flaming furnace in the manufactory, where
+it had been blown into life; it still remembered that it had been
+quite warm, that it had glanced into the hissing furnace, the home of
+its origin, and had felt a great desire to leap directly back again;
+but that gradually it had become cooler, and had been very comfortable
+in the place to which it was taken. It had stood in a rank with a
+whole regiment of brothers and sisters, all out of the same furnace;
+some of them had certainly been blown into champagne bottles, and
+others into beer bottles, and that makes a difference. Later, out in
+the world, it may well happen that a beer bottle may contain the most
+precious wine, and a champagne bottle be filled with blacking; but
+even in decay there is always something left by which people can see
+what one has been--nobility is nobility, even when filled with
+blacking.
+
+All the bottles were packed up, and our bottle was among them. At that
+time it did not think to finish its career as a bottle-neck, or that
+it should work its way up to be a bird's glass, which is always an
+honourable thing; for one is of some consequence, after all. The
+bottle did not again behold the light of day till it was unpacked with
+the other bottles in the cellar of the wine merchant, and rinsed out
+for the first time; and that was a strange sensation. There it lay,
+empty and without a cork, and felt strangely unwell, as if it wanted
+something, it could not tell what. At last it was filled with good
+costly wine, and was provided with a cork, and sealed down. A ticket
+was placed on it, marked "first quality;" and it felt as if it had
+carried off the first prize at an examination; for, you see, the wine
+was good and the bottle was good. When one is young, that's the time
+for poetry! There was a singing and sounding within it, of things
+which it could not understand--of green sunny mountains, whereon the
+grape grows, where many vine dressers, men and women, sing and dance
+and rejoice. "Ah, how beautiful is life!" There was a singing and
+sounding to all this in the bottle, as in a young poet's brain; and
+many a young poet does not understand the meaning of the song that is
+within him.
+
+One morning the bottle was bought, for the tanner's apprentice was
+dispatched for a bottle of wine--"of the best." And now it was put in
+the provision basket, with ham and cheese and sausages; the finest
+butter and the best bread were put into the basket too, the tanner's
+daughter herself packed it. She was young and pretty; her brown eyes
+laughed, and round her mouth played a smile as elegant as that in her
+eyes. She had delicate hands, beautifully white, and her neck was
+whiter still; you saw at once that she was one of the most beautiful
+girls in the town: and still she was not engaged.
+
+The provision basket was in the lap of the young girl when the family
+drove out into the forest. The bottle-neck looked out from the folds
+of the white napkin. There was red wax upon the cork, and the bottle
+looked straight into the girl's face. It also looked at the young
+sailor who sat next to the girl. He was a friend of old days, the son
+of the portrait painter. Quite lately he had passed with honour
+through his examination as mate, and to-morrow he was to sail away in
+a ship, far off to a distant land. There had been much talk of this
+while the basket was being packed; and certainly the eyes and mouth of
+the tanner's pretty daughter did not wear a very joyous expression
+just then.
+
+The young people sauntered through the green wood, and talked to one
+another. What were they talking of? No, the bottle could not hear
+that, for it was in the provision basket. A long time passed before it
+was drawn forth; but when that happened, there had been pleasant
+things going on, for all were laughing, and the tanner's daughter
+laughed too; but she spoke less than before, and her cheeks glowed
+like two roses.
+
+The father took the full bottle and the corkscrew in his hand. Yes,
+it's a strange thing to be drawn thus, the first time! The bottle-neck
+could never afterwards forget that impressive moment; and indeed there
+was quite a convulsion within him when the cork flew out, and a great
+throbbing as the wine poured forth into the glasses.
+
+"Health to the betrothed pair!" cried the papa; and every glass was
+emptied to the dregs, and the young mate kissed his beautiful bride.
+
+"Happiness and blessing!" said the two old people, the father and
+mother; and the young man filled the glasses again.
+
+"Safe return, and a wedding this day next year!" he cried; and when
+the glasses were emptied, he took the bottle, raised it on high, and
+said, "Thou hast been present at the happiest day of my life, thou
+shalt never serve another!"
+
+And so saying he hurled it high into the air. The tanner's daughter
+did not then think that she should see the bottle fly again; and yet
+it was to be so. It then fell into the thick reeds on the margin of a
+little woodland lake; and the bottle-neck could remember quite plainly
+how it lay there for some time. "I gave them wine, and they gave me
+marsh-water," he said; "but it was all meant for the best." He could
+no longer see the betrothed couple and the cheerful old people; but
+for a long time he could hear them rejoicing and singing. Then at last
+came two peasant boys, and looked into the reeds; they spied out the
+bottle, and took it up; and now it was provided for.
+
+At their home, in the wood cottage, the eldest of these brothers, who
+was a sailor, and about to start on a long voyage, had been the day
+before to take leave: the mother was just engaged packing up various
+things he was to take with him on his journey, and which the father
+was going to carry into the town that evening to see his son once
+more, and to give him a farewell greeting for the lad's mother and
+himself. A little bottle of medicated brandy had already been wrapped
+up in a parcel, when the boys came in with a larger and stronger
+bottle which they had found. This bottle would hold more than the
+little one, and they pronounced that the brandy would be capital for
+a bad digestion, inasmuch as it was mixed with medical herbs. The
+draught that was now poured into the bottle was not so good as the red
+wine with which it had once been filled; these were bitter drops, but
+even these are sometimes good. The new big bottle was to go, and not
+the little one; and so the bottle went travelling again. It was taken
+on board for Peter Jensen, in the very same ship in which the young
+mate sailed. But he did not see the bottle; and, indeed, he would not
+have known it, or thought it was the same one out of which they had
+drunk a health to the betrothed pair, and to his own happy return.
+
+[Illustration: THE BOTTLE IS PRESENT ON A JOYOUS OCCASION.]
+
+Certainly it had no longer wine to give, but still it contained
+something that was just as good. Accordingly, whenever Peter Jensen
+brought it out, it was dubbed by his messmates The Apothecary. It
+contained the best medicine, medicine that strengthened the weak, and
+it gave liberally so long as it had a drop left. That was a pleasant
+time, and the bottle sang when it was rubbed with the cork; and it was
+called the Great Lark, "Peter Jensen's Lark."
+
+Long days and months rolled on, and the bottle already stood empty in
+a corner, when it happened--whether on the passage out or home the
+bottle could not tell, for it had never been ashore--that a storm
+arose; great waves came careering along, darkly and heavily, and
+lifted and tossed the ship to and fro. The mainmast was shivered, and
+a wave started one of the planks, and the pumps became useless. It was
+black night. The ship sank; but at the last moment the young mate
+wrote on a leaf of paper, "God's will be done! We are sinking!" He
+wrote the name of his betrothed, and his own name, and that of the
+ship, and put the leaf in an empty bottle that happened to be at hand:
+he corked it firmly down, and threw it out into the foaming sea. He
+knew not that it was the very bottle from which the goblet of joy and
+hope had once been filled for him; and now it was tossing on the waves
+with his last greeting and the message of death.
+
+The ship sank, and the crew sank with her. The bottle sped on like a
+bird, for it bore a heart, a loving letter, within itself. And the sun
+rose and set; and the bottle felt as at the time when it first came
+into being in the red gleaming oven--it felt a strong desire to leap
+back into the light.
+
+It experienced calms and fresh storms; but it was hurled against no
+rock, and was devoured by no shark; and thus it drifted on for a year
+and a day, sometimes towards the north, sometimes towards the south,
+just as the current carried it. Beyond this it was its own master, but
+one may grow tired even of that.
+
+The written page, the last farewell of the bridegroom to his
+betrothed, would only bring sorrow if it came into her hands; but
+where were the hands, so white and delicate, which had once spread the
+cloth on the fresh grass in the greenwood, on the betrothal day? Where
+was the tanner's daughter? Yes, where was the land, and which land
+might be nearest to her dwelling? The bottle knew not; it drove onward
+and onward, and was at last tired of wandering, because that was not
+in its way; but yet it had to travel until at last it came to land--to
+a strange land. It understood not a word of what was spoken here, for
+this was not the language it had heard spoken before; and one loses a
+good deal if one does not understand the language.
+
+The bottle was fished out and examined on all sides. The leaf of paper
+within it was discovered, and taken out, and turned over and over, but
+the people did not understand what was written thereon. They saw that
+the bottle must have been thrown overboard, and that something about
+this was written on the paper, but what were the words? That question
+remained unanswered, and the paper was put back into the bottle, and
+the latter was deposited in a great cupboard, in a great room, in a
+great house.
+
+Whenever strangers came the paper was brought out, and turned over and
+over, so that the inscription, which was only written in pencil,
+became more and more illegible, so that at last no one could see that
+there were letters on it. And for a whole year more the bottle
+remained standing in the cupboard; and then it was put into the loft,
+where it became covered with dust and cobwebs. Ah, how often it
+thought of the better days, the times when it had poured forth red
+wine in the greenwood, when it had been rocked on the waves of the
+sea, and when it had carried a secret, a letter, a parting sigh,
+safely enclosed in its bosom.
+
+For full twenty years it stood up in the loft; and it might have
+remained there longer, but that the house was to be rebuilt. The roof
+was taken off, and then the bottle was noticed, and they spoke about
+it, but it did not understand their language; for one cannot learn a
+language by being shut up in a loft, even if one stays there for
+twenty years.
+
+"If I had been down in the room," thought the Bottle, "I might have
+learned it."
+
+It was now washed and rinsed, and indeed this was requisite. It felt
+quite transparent and fresh, and as if its youth had been renewed in
+this its old age; but the paper it had carried so faithfully had been
+destroyed in the washing.
+
+The bottle was filled with seeds, though it scarcely knew what they
+were. It was corked, and well wrapped up. No light nor lantern was it
+vouchsafed to behold, much less the sun or the moon; and yet, it
+thought, when one goes on a journey one ought to see something; but
+though it saw nothing, it did what was most important--it travelled to
+the place of its destination, and was there unpacked.
+
+"What trouble they have taken over yonder with that bottle!" it heard
+people say; "and yet it is most likely broken." But it was not broken.
+
+The bottle understood every word that was now said; this was the
+language it had heard at the furnace, and at the wine merchant's, and
+in the forest, and in the ship, the only good old language it
+understood: it had come back home, and the language was as a
+salutation of welcome to it. For very joy it felt ready to jump out of
+people's hands; hardly did it notice that its cork had been drawn,
+and that it had been emptied and carried into the cellar, to be placed
+there and forgotten. There's no place like home, even if it's in a
+cellar! It never occurred to the bottle to think how long it would lie
+there, for it felt comfortable, and accordingly lay there for years.
+At last people came down into the cellar to carry off all the bottles,
+and ours among the rest.
+
+Out in the garden there was a great festival. Flaming lamps hung like
+garlands, and paper lanterns shone transparent, like great tulips. The
+evening was lovely, the weather still and clear, the stars twinkled;
+it was the time of the new moon, but in reality the whole moon could
+be seen as a bluish grey disc with a golden rim round half its
+surface, which was a very beautiful sight for those who had good eyes.
+
+The illumination extended even to the most retired of the garden
+walks; at least so much of it, that one could find one's way there.
+Among the leaves of the hedges stood bottles, with a light in each;
+and among them was also the bottle we know, and which was destined one
+day to finish its career as a bottle-neck, a bird's drinking-glass.
+Everything here appeared lovely to our bottle, for it was once more in
+the greenwood, amid joy and feasting, and heard song and music, and
+the noise and murmur of a crowd, especially in that part of the garden
+where the lamps blazed and the paper lanterns displayed their many
+colours. Thus it stood, in a distant walk certainly, but that made it
+the more important; for it bore its light, and was at once ornamental
+and useful, and that is as it should be: in such an hour one forgets
+twenty years spent in a loft, and it is right one should do so.
+
+There passed close to it a pair, like the pair who had walked together
+long ago in the wood, the sailor and the tanner's daughter; the bottle
+seemed to experience all that over again. In the garden were walking
+not only the guests, but other people who were allowed to view all the
+splendour; and among these latter came an old maid who seemed to stand
+alone in the world. She was just thinking, like the bottle, of the
+greenwood, and of a young betrothed pair--of a pair which concerned
+her very nearly, a pair in which she had an interest, and of which she
+had been a part, in that happiest hour of her life--the hour one never
+forgets, if one should become ever so old a maid. But she did not know
+our bottle, nor did the bottle recognize the old maid: it is thus we
+pass each other in the world, meeting again and again, as these two
+met, now that they were together again in the same town.
+
+From the garden the bottle was dispatched once more to the wine
+merchant's, where it was filled with wine, and sold to the aeronaut,
+who was to make an ascent in his balloon on the following Sunday. A
+great crowd had assembled to witness the sight; military music had
+been provided, and many other preparations had been made. The bottle
+saw everything, from a basket in which it lay next to a live rabbit,
+which latter was quite bewildered because he knew he was to be taken
+up into the air, and let down again in a parachute; but the bottle
+knew nothing of the "up" or the "down;" it only saw the balloon
+swelling up bigger and bigger, and at last, when it could swell no
+more, beginning to rise, and to grow more and more restless. The ropes
+that held it were cut, and the huge machine floated aloft with the
+aeronaut and the basket containing the bottle and the rabbit, and the
+music sounded, and all the people cried, "Hurrah!"
+
+"This is a wonderful passage, up into the air!" thought the Bottle;
+"this is a new way of sailing; at any rate, up here we cannot strike
+upon anything."
+
+Thousands of people gazed up at the balloon, and the old maid looked
+up at it also; she stood at the open window of the garret, in which
+hung the cage with the little chaffinch, who had no water-glass as
+yet, but was obliged to be content with an old cup. In the window
+stood a myrtle in a pot; and it had been put a little aside that it
+might not fall out, for the old maid was leaning out of the window to
+look, and she distinctly saw the aeronaut in the balloon, and how he
+let down the rabbit in the parachute, and then drank to the health of
+all the spectators, and at length hurled the bottle high in the air;
+she never thought that this was the identical bottle which she had
+already once seen thrown aloft in honour of her and of her friend on
+the day of rejoicing in the greenwood, in the time of her youth.
+
+The bottle had no respite for thought; for it was quite startled at
+thus suddenly reaching the highest point in its career. Steeples and
+roofs lay far, far beneath, and the people looked like mites.
+
+But now it began to descend with a much more rapid fall than that of
+the rabbit; the bottle threw somersaults in the air, and felt quite
+young, and quite free and unfettered; and yet it was half full of
+wine, though it did not remain so long. What a journey! The sun shone
+on the bottle, all the people were looking at it, the balloon was
+already far away, and soon the bottle was far away too; for it fell
+upon a roof and broke; but the pieces had got such an impetus that
+they could not stop themselves, but went jumping and rolling on till
+they came down into the courtyard and lay there in smaller pieces yet;
+the bottle-neck only managed to keep whole, and that was cut off as
+clean as if it had been done with a diamond.
+
+"That would do capitally for a bird-glass," said the cellarmen; but
+they had neither a bird nor a cage; and to expect them to provide both
+because they had found a bottle-neck that might be made available for
+a glass, would have been expecting too much; but the old maid in the
+garret, perhaps it might be useful to her; and now the bottle-neck was
+taken up to her, and was provided with a cork. The part that had been
+uppermost was now turned downwards, as often happens when changes take
+place; fresh water was poured into it, and it was fastened to the cage
+of the little bird, which sung and twittered right merrily.
+
+"Yes, it's very well for you to sing," said the Bottle-neck; and it
+was considered remarkable for having been in the balloon--for that was
+all they knew of its history. Now it hung there as a bird-glass, and
+heard the murmuring and noise of the people in the street below, and
+also the words of the old maid in the room within. An old friend had
+just come to visit her, and they talked--not of the bottle-neck, but
+about the myrtle in the window.
+
+"No, you certainly must not spend a dollar for your daughter's bridal
+wreath," said the old maid. "You shall have a beautiful little nosegay
+from me, full of blossoms. Do you see how splendidly that tree has
+come on? yes, that has been raised from a spray of the myrtle you gave
+me on the day after my betrothal, and from which I was to have made my
+own wreath when the year was past; but that day never came! The eyes
+closed that were to have been my joy and delight through life. In the
+depths of the sea he sleeps sweetly, my dear one! The myrtle has
+become an old tree, and I become a yet older woman; and when it faded
+at last, I took the last green shoot, and planted it in the ground,
+and it has become a great tree; and now at length the myrtle will
+serve at the wedding--as a wreath for your daughter."
+
+There were tears in the eyes of the old maid. She spoke of the beloved
+of her youth, of their betrothal in the wood; many thoughts came to
+her, but the thought never came, that quite close to her, before the
+very window, was a remembrance of those times; the neck of the bottle
+which had shouted for joy when the cork flew out with a bang on the
+betrothal day. But the bottle-neck did not recognize her, for he was
+not listening to what this old maid said--and still that was because
+he was thinking of her.
+
+
+
+
+GOOD HUMOUR.
+
+
+My father left me the best inheritance; to wit--good humour. And who
+was my father? Why, that has nothing to do with the humour. He was
+lively and stout, round and fat; and his outer and inner man were in
+direct contradiction to his calling. And pray what was he by
+profession and calling in civil society? Yes, if this were to be
+written down and printed in the very beginning of a book, it is
+probable that many when they read it would lay the book aside, and
+say, "It looks so uncomfortable; I don't like anything of that sort."
+And yet my father was neither a horse slaughterer nor an executioner;
+on the contrary, his office placed him at the head of the most
+respectable gentry of the town; and he held his place by right, for it
+was his right place. He had to go first before the bishop even, and
+before the princes of the blood. He always went first--for he was the
+driver of the hearse!
+
+There, now it's out! And I will confess that when people saw my father
+sitting perched up on the omnibus of death, dressed in his long, wide,
+black cloak, with his black-bordered three-cornered hat on his
+head--and then his face, exactly as the sun is drawn, round and
+jocund--it was difficult for them to think of the grave and of sorrow.
+The face said, "It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter; it will be
+better than one thinks."
+
+You see, I have inherited my good humour from him, and also the habit
+of going often to the churchyard, which is a good thing to do if it be
+done in the right spirit; and then I take in the _Intelligencer_, just
+as he used to do.
+
+I am not quite young. I have neither wife, nor children, nor a
+library; but, as aforesaid, I take in the _Intelligencer_, and that's
+my favourite newspaper, as it was also my father's. It is very useful,
+and contains everything that a man needs to know--such as who preaches
+in the church and in the new books. And then what a lot of charity,
+and what a number of innocent, harmless verses are found in it!
+Advertisements for husbands and wives, and requests for
+interviews--all quite simple and natural. Certainly, one may live
+merrily and be contentedly buried if one takes in the _Intelligencer_.
+And, as a concluding advantage, by the end of his life a man will have
+such a capital store of paper, that he may use it as a soft bed,
+unless he prefers to rest upon wood-shavings.
+
+The newspaper and my walk to the churchyard were always my most
+exciting occupations--they were like bathing-places for my good
+humour.
+
+The newspaper every one can read for himself. But please come with me
+to the churchyard; let us wander there where the sun shines and the
+trees grow green. Each of the narrow houses is like a closed book,
+with the back placed uppermost, so that one can only read the title
+and judge what the book contains, but can tell nothing about it; but I
+know something of them. I heard it from my father, or found it out
+myself. I have it all down in my record that I wrote out for my own
+use and pleasure: all that lie here, and a few more too, are
+chronicled in it.
+
+Now we are in the churchyard.
+
+Here, behind this white railing, where once a rose tree grew--it is
+gone now, but a little evergreen from the next grave stretches out its
+green fingers to make a show--there rests a very unhappy man; and yet,
+when he lived, he was in what they call a good position. He had enough
+to live upon, and something over; but worldly cares, or to speak more
+correctly, his artistic taste, weighed heavily upon him. If in the
+evening he sat in the theatre to enjoy himself thoroughly, he would be
+quite put out if the machinist had put too strong a light into one
+side of the moon, or if the sky-pieces hung down over the scenes when
+they ought to have hung behind them, or when a palm tree was
+introduced into a scene representing the Berlin Zoological Gardens, or
+a cactus in a view of the Tyrol, or a beech tree in the far north of
+Norway. As if that was of any consequence. Is it not quite immaterial?
+Who would fidget about such a trifle? It's only make-believe, after
+all, and every one is expected to be amused. Then sometimes the public
+applauded too much to suit his taste, and sometimes too little.
+"They're like wet wood this evening," he would say; "they won't kindle
+at all!" And then he would look round to see what kind of people they
+were; and sometimes he would find them laughing at the wrong time,
+when they ought not to have laughed, and that vexed him; and he
+fretted, and was an unhappy man, and at last fretted himself into his
+grave.
+
+Here rests a very happy man. That is to say, a very grand man. He was
+of high birth, and that was lucky for him, for otherwise he would
+never have been anything worth speaking of; and nature orders all that
+very wisely, so that it's quite charming when we think of it. He used
+to go about in a coat embroidered back and front, and appeared in the
+saloons of society just like one of those costly, pearl-embroidered
+bell-pulls, which have always a good, thick, serviceable cord behind
+them to do the work. He likewise had a good stout cord behind him, in
+the shape of a substitute, who did his duty, and who still continues
+to do it behind another embroidered bell-pull. Everything is so nicely
+managed, it's enough to put one into a good humour.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHURCHYARD NARRATION.]
+
+Here rests--well, it's a very mournful reflection--here rests a man
+who spent sixty-seven years considering how he should get a good idea.
+The object of his life was to say a good thing, and at last he felt
+convinced in his own mind that he had got one, and was so glad of it
+that he died of pure joy at having caught an idea at last. Nobody
+derived any benefit from it, and no one even heard what the good thing
+was. Now, I can fancy that this same good thing won't let him live
+quiet in his grave; for let us suppose that it is a good thing which
+can only be brought out at breakfast if it is to make an effect, and
+that he, according to the received opinion concerning ghosts, can only
+rise and walk at midnight. Why, then the good thing would not suit the
+time, and the man must carry his good idea down with him again. What
+an unhappy man he must be!
+
+Here rests a remarkably stingy woman. During her lifetime she used to
+get up at night and mew, so that the neighbours might think she kept a
+cat--she was so remarkably stingy.
+
+Here is a maiden of another kind. When the canary bird of the heart
+begins to chirp, reason puts her fingers in her ears. The maiden was
+going to be married, but--well, it's an every-day story, and we will
+let the dead rest.
+
+Here sleeps a widow who carried melody in her mouth and gall in her
+heart. She used to go out for prey in the families round about; and
+the prey she hunted was her neighbours' faults, and she was an
+indefatigable hunter.
+
+Here's a family sepulchre. Every member of this family held so firmly
+to the opinions of the rest, that if all the world, and the newspapers
+into the bargain, said of a certain thing it is so and so, and the
+little boy came home from school and said, "I've learned it thus and
+thus," they declared his opinion to be the only true one, because he
+belonged to the family. And it is an acknowledged fact, that if the
+yard-cock of the family crowed at midnight, they would declare it was
+morning, though the watchmen and all the clocks in the city were
+crying out that it was twelve o'clock at night.
+
+The great poet Goethe concludes his "Faust" with the words "may be
+continued;" and our wanderings in the churchyard may be continued too.
+If any of my friends, or my non-friends, go on too fast for me, I go
+out to my favourite spot and select a mound, and bury him or her
+there--bury that person who is yet alive; and there those I bury must
+stay till they come back as new and improved characters. I inscribe
+their life and their deeds, looked at in my fashion, in my record; and
+that's what all people ought to do. They ought not to be vexed when
+any one goes on ridiculously, but bury him directly, and maintain
+their good humour, and keep to the _Intelligencer_, which is often a
+book written by the people with its hand guided.
+
+When the time comes for me to be bound with my history in the boards
+of the grave, I hope they will put up as my epitaph, "A good-humoured
+one." And that's my story.
+
+
+
+
+A LEAF FROM THE SKY.
+
+
+High up yonder, in the thin clear air, flew an angel with a flower
+from the heavenly garden. As he was kissing the flower, a very little
+leaf fell down into the soft soil in the midst of the wood, and
+immediately took root, and sprouted, and sent forth shoots among the
+other plants.
+
+"A funny kind of slip that," said the plants.
+
+And neither thistle nor stinging-nettle would recognize the stranger.
+
+"That must be a kind of garden plant," said they.
+
+And they sneered; and the plant was despised by them as being a thing
+out of the garden.
+
+"Where are you coming?" cried the lofty thistles, whose leaves are all
+armed with thorns.
+
+"You give yourself a good deal of space. That's all nonsense--we are
+not here to support you!" they grumbled.
+
+And winter came, and snow covered the plant; but the plant imparted to
+the snowy covering a lustre as if the sun was shining upon it from
+below as from above. When spring came, the plant appeared as a
+blooming object, more beautiful than any production of the forest.
+
+And now appeared on the scene the botanical professor, who could show
+what he was in black and white. He inspected the plant and tested it,
+but found it was not included in his botanical system; and he could
+not possibly find out to what class it belonged.
+
+"That must be some subordinate species," he said. "I don't know it.
+It's not included in any system."
+
+"Not included in any system!" repeated the thistles and the nettles.
+
+The great trees that stood round about saw and heard it; but they
+said not a word, good or bad, which is the wisest thing to do for
+people who are stupid.
+
+There came through the forest a poor innocent girl. Her heart was
+pure, and her understanding was enlarged by faith. Her whole
+inheritance was an old Bible; but out of its pages a voice said to
+her, "If people wish to do us evil, remember how it was said of
+Joseph. They imagined evil in their hearts, but God turned it to good.
+If we suffer wrong--if we are misunderstood and despised--then we may
+recall the words of Him who was purity and goodness itself, and who
+forgave and prayed for those who buffeted Him and nailed Him to the
+cross." The girl stood still in front of the wonderful plant, whose
+great leaves exhaled a sweet and refreshing fragrance, and whose
+flowers glittered like a coloured flame in the sun; and from each
+flower there came a sound as though it concealed within itself a deep
+fount of melody that thousands of years could not exhaust. With pious
+gratitude the girl looked on this beautiful work of the Creator, and
+bent down one of the branches towards herself to breathe in its
+sweetness; and a light arose in her soul. It seemed to do her heart
+good; and gladly would she have plucked a flower, but she could not
+make up her mind to break one off, for it would soon fade if she did
+so. Therefore the girl only took a single leaf, and laid it in her
+Bible at home; and it lay there quite fresh, always green, and never
+fading.
+
+Among the pages of the Bible it was kept; and, with the Bible, it was
+laid under the young girl's head when, a few weeks afterwards, she lay
+in her coffin, with the solemn calm of death on her gentle face, as if
+the earthly remains bore the impress of the truth that she now stood
+before her Creator.
+
+But the wonderful plant still bloomed without in the forest. It was
+almost like a tree to look upon; and all the birds of passage bowed
+before it.
+
+"That's giving itself foreign airs now," said the thistles and the
+burdocks; "we never behave like that here."
+
+And the black snails actually spat at the flower.
+
+Then came the swineherd. He was collecting thistles and shrubs, to
+burn them for the ashes. The wonderful plant was placed bodily in his
+bundle.
+
+"It shall be made useful," he said; and so said, so done.
+
+[Illustration: THE POOR GIRL'S TREASURE.]
+
+But soon afterwards, the king of the country was troubled with a
+terrible depression of spirits. He was busy and industrious, but that
+did him no good. They read him deep and learned books, and then they
+read from the lightest and most superficial that they could find; but
+it was of no use. Then one of the wise men of the world, to whom they
+had applied, sent a messenger to tell the king that there was one
+remedy to give him relief and to cure him. He said:
+
+"In the king's own country there grows in a forest a plant of heavenly
+origin. Its appearance is thus and thus. It cannot be mistaken."
+
+"I fancy it was taken up in my bundle, and burnt to ashes long ago,"
+said the swineherd; "but I did not know any better."
+
+"You didn't know any better! Ignorance of ignorances!"
+
+And those words the swineherd might well take to himself, for they
+were meant for him, and for no one else.
+
+Not another leaf was to be found; the only one lay in the coffin of
+the dead girl, and no one knew anything about that.
+
+And the king himself, in his melancholy, wandered out to the spot in
+the wood.
+
+"Here is where the plant stood," he said; "it is a sacred place."
+
+And the place was surrounded with a golden railing, and a sentry was
+posted there.
+
+The botanical professor wrote a long treatise upon the heavenly plant.
+For this he was gilded all over, and this gilding suited him and his
+family very well. And indeed that was the most agreeable part of the
+whole story. But the king remained as low-spirited as before; but that
+he had always been, at least so the sentry said.
+
+
+
+
+THE DUMB BOOK.
+
+
+By the high-road in the forest lay a lonely peasant's hut; the road
+went right through the farmyard. The sun shone down, and all the
+windows were open. In the house was bustle and movement; but in the
+garden, in an arbour of blossoming elder, stood an open coffin. A dead
+man had been carried out here, and he was to be buried this morning.
+Nobody stood by the coffin and looked sorrowfully at the dead man; no
+one shed a tear for him: his face was covered with a white cloth, and
+under his head lay a great thick book, whose leaves consisted of whole
+sheets of blotting paper, and on each leaf lay a faded flower. It was
+a complete herbanum, gathered by him in various places; it was to be
+buried with him, for so he had wished it. With each flower a chapter
+in his life was associated.
+
+[Illustration: THE POWER OF THE BOOK.]
+
+"Who is the dead man?" we asked; and the answer was:
+
+"The Old Student. They say he was once a brisk lad, and studied the
+old languages, and sang, and even wrote poems. Then something happened
+to him that made him turn his thoughts to brandy, and take to it; and
+when at last he had ruined his health, he came out here into the
+country, where somebody paid for his board and lodging. He was as
+gentle as a child, except when the dark mood came upon him; but when
+it came he became like a giant, and then ran about in the woods like a
+hunted stag; but when we once got him home again, and prevailed with
+him so far that he opened the book with the dried plants, he often sat
+whole days, and looked sometimes at one plant and sometimes at
+another, and at times the tears rolled over his cheeks: Heaven knows
+what he was thinking of. But he begged us to put the book into the
+coffin, and now he lies there, and in a little while the lid will be
+nailed down, and he will have his quiet rest in the grave."
+
+The face-cloth was raised, and there was peace upon the features of
+the dead man, and a sunbeam played upon it; a swallow shot with arrowy
+flight into the arbour, and turned rapidly, and twittered over the
+dead man's head.
+
+What a strange feeling it is--and we have doubtless all experienced
+it--that of turning over old letters of the days of our youth! a new
+life seems to come up with them, with all its hopes and sorrows. How
+many persons with whom we were intimate in those days, are as it were
+dead to us! and yet they are alive, but for a long time we have not
+thought of them--of them whom we then thought to hold fast for ages,
+and with whom we were to share sorrow and joy.
+
+Here the withered oak-leaf in the book reminded the owner of the
+friend, the school-fellow, who was to be a friend for life: he
+fastened the green leaf in the student's cap in the green wood, when
+the bond was made "for life:" where does he live now? The leaf is
+preserved, but the friendship has perished! And here is a foreign
+hothouse plant, too delicate for the gardens of the North; the leaves
+almost seem to keep their fragrance still. She gave it to him, the
+young lady in the nobleman's garden. Here is the water rose, which he
+plucked himself, and moistened with salt tears--the roses of the sweet
+waters. And here is a nettle--what tale may its leaves have to tell?
+What were his thoughts when he plucked it and kept it? Here is a lily
+of the valley, from the solitudes of the forest. Here's an evergreen
+from the flower-pot of the tavern; and here's a naked sharp blade of
+grass.
+
+The blooming elder waves its fresh fragrant blossoms over the dead
+man's head, and the swallow flies past again. "Pee-wit! pee-wit!" And
+now the men come with nails and hammers, and the lid is laid over the
+dead man, that his head may rest upon the dumb book--vanished and
+scattered!
+
+
+
+
+THE JEWISH GIRL.
+
+
+Among the children in a charity school sat a little Jewish girl. She
+was a good, intelligent child, the quickest in all the school; but she
+had to be excluded from one lesson, for she was not allowed to take
+part in the scripture-lesson, for it was a Christian school.
+
+In that hour the girl was allowed to open the geography book, or to do
+her sum for the next day; but that was soon done; and when she had
+mastered her lesson in geography, the book indeed remained open before
+her, but the little one read no more in it; she listened silently to
+the words of the Christian teacher, who soon became aware that she was
+listening more intently than almost any of the other children.
+
+"Read your book, Sara," the teacher said, in mild reproof; but her
+dark beaming eye remained fixed upon him; and once when he addressed a
+question to her, she knew how to answer better than any of the others
+could have done. She had heard and understood, and had kept his words
+in her heart.
+
+When her father, a poor honest man, first brought the girl to the
+school, he had stipulated that she should be excluded from the lessons
+on the Christian faith. But it would have caused disturbance, and
+perhaps might have awakened discontent in the minds of the others, if
+she had been sent from the room during the hours in question, and
+consequently she stayed; but this could not go on any longer.
+
+The teacher betook himself to the father, and exhorted him either to
+remove his daughter from the school, or to consent that Sara should
+become a Christian.
+
+"I can no longer be a silent spectator of the gleaming eyes of the
+child, and of her deep and earnest longing for the words of the
+Gospel," said the teacher.
+
+Then the father burst into tears.
+
+"I know but little of the commandment given to my fathers," he said;
+"but Sara's mother was steadfast in the faith, a true daughter of
+Israel, and I vowed to her as she lay dying that our child should
+never be baptized. I must keep my vow, for it is even as a covenant
+with God Himself."
+
+And accordingly the little Jewish maiden quitted the Christian
+school.
+
+Years have rolled on.
+
+In one of the smallest provincial towns there dwelt, as a servant in a
+humble household, a maiden who held the Mosaic faith. Her hair was
+black as ebony, her eye dark as night, and yet full of splendour and
+light, as is usual with the daughters of Israel. It was Sara. The
+expression in the countenance of the now grown-up maiden was still
+that of the child sitting upon the school-room bench and listening
+with thoughtful eyes to the words of the Christian teacher.
+
+Every Sunday there pealed from the church the sounds of the organ and
+the song of the congregation. The strains penetrated into the house
+where the Jewish girl, industrious and faithful in all things, stood
+at her work.
+
+"Thou shalt keep holy the Sabbath-day," said a voice within her, the
+voice of the Law; but her Sabbath-day was a working day among the
+Christians, and that seemed unfortunate to her. But then the thought
+arose in her soul: "Doth God reckon by days and hours?" And when this
+thought grew strong within her, it seemed a comfort that on the Sunday
+of the Christians the hour of prayer remained undisturbed; and when
+the sound of the organ and the songs of the congregation sounded
+across to her as she stood in the kitchen at her work, then even that
+place seemed to become a sacred one to her. Then she would read in the
+Old Testament, the treasure and comfort of her people, and it was only
+in this one she could read; for she kept faithfully in the depths of
+her heart the words the teacher had spoken when she left the school,
+and the promise her father had given to her dying mother, that she
+should never receive Christian baptism, or deny the faith of her
+ancestors. The New Testament was to be a sealed book to her; and yet
+she knew much of it, and the Gospel echoed faintly among the
+recollections of her youth.
+
+[Illustration: SARA LISTENING TO THE SINGING IN THE CHURCH.]
+
+One evening she was sitting in a corner of the living-room. Her master
+was reading aloud; and she might listen to him, for it was not the
+Gospel that he read, but an old story-book, therefore she might stay.
+The book told of a Hungarian knight who was taken prisoner by a
+Turkish pasha, who caused him to be yoked with his oxen to the plough,
+and driven with blows of the whip till the blood came, and he almost
+sank under the pain and ignominy he endured. The faithful wife of the
+knight at home parted with all her jewels, and pledged castle and
+land. The knight's friends amassed large sums, for the ransom demanded
+was almost unattainably high: but it was collected at last, and the
+knight was freed from servitude and misery. Sick and exhausted, he
+reached his home. But soon another summons came to war against the
+foes of Christianity: the knight heard the cry, and he could stay no
+longer, for he had neither peace nor rest. He caused himself to be
+lifted on his war-horse; and the blood came back to his cheek, his
+strength appeared to return, and he went forth to battle and to
+victory. The very same pasha who had yoked him to the plough became
+his prisoner, and was dragged to his castle. But not an hour had
+passed when the knight stood before the captive pasha, and said to
+him:
+
+"What dost thou suppose awaiteth thee?"
+
+"I know it," replied the Turk. "Retribution."
+
+"Yes, the retribution of the Christian!" resumed the knight. "The
+doctrine of Christ commands us to forgive our enemies, and to love our
+fellow-man, for it teaches us that God is love. Depart in peace,
+depart to thy home: I will restore thee to thy dear ones; but in
+future be mild and merciful to all who are unfortunate."
+
+Then the prisoner broke out into tears, and exclaimed:
+
+"How could I believe in the possibility of such mercy! Misery and
+torment seemed to await me, they seemed inevitable; therefore I took
+poison, which I secretly carried about me, and in a few hours its
+effects will slay me. I must die--there is no remedy! But before I
+die, do thou expound to me the teaching which includes so great a
+measure of love and mercy, for it is great and godlike! Grant me to
+hear this teaching, and to die a Christian!" And his prayer was
+fulfilled.
+
+That was the legend which the master read out of the old story-book.
+All the audience listened with sympathy and pleasure; but Sara, the
+Jewish girl, sitting alone in her corner, listened with a burning
+heart; great tears came into her gleaming black eyes, and she sat
+there with a gentle and lowly spirit as she had once sat on the school
+bench, and felt the grandeur of the Gospel; and the tears rolled down
+over her cheeks.
+
+But again the dying words of her mother rose up within her:
+
+"Let not my daughter become a Christian," the voice cried; and
+together with it arose the word of the Law: "Thou shalt honour thy
+father and thy mother."
+
+"I am not admitted into the community of the Christians," she said;
+"they abuse me for being a Jew girl--our neighbour's boys hooted me
+last Sunday, when I stood at the open church-door, and looked in at
+the flaming candles on the altar, and listened to the song of the
+congregation. Ever since I sat upon the school bench I have felt the
+force of Christianity, a force like that of a sunbeam, which streams
+into my soul, however firmly I may shut my eyes against it. But I will
+not pain thee in thy grave, O my mother, I will not be unfaithful to
+the oath of my father, I will not read the Bible of the Christians. I
+have the religion of my people, and to that will I hold!"
+
+And years rolled on again.
+
+The master died. His widow fell into poverty; and the servant girl was
+to be dismissed. But Sara refused to leave the house: she became the
+staff in time of trouble, and kept the household together, working
+till late in the night to earn the daily bread through the labour of
+her hands; for no relative came forward to assist the family, and the
+widow become weaker every day, and lay for months together on the bed
+of sickness. Sara worked hard, and in the intervals sat kindly
+ministering by the sick-bed: she was gentle and pious, an angel of
+blessing in the poverty-stricken house.
+
+"Yonder on the table lies the Bible," said the sick woman to Sara.
+"Read me something from it, for the night appears to be so long--oh,
+so long!--and my soul thirsts for the word of the Lord."
+
+And Sara bowed her head. She took the book, and folded her hands over
+the Bible of the Christians, and opened it, and read to the sick
+woman. Tears stood in her eyes, which gleamed and shone with ecstacy,
+and light shone in her heart.
+
+"O my mother," she whispered to herself; "thy child may not receive the
+baptism of the Christians, or be admitted into the congregation--thou hast
+willed it so, and I shall respect thy command: we will remain in union
+together here on earth; but beyond this earth there is a higher union, even
+union in God! He will be at our side, and lead us through the valley of
+death. It is He that descendeth upon the earth when it is athirst, and
+covers it with fruitfulness. I understand it--I know not how I came to
+learn the truth; but it is through Him, through Christ!"
+
+And she started as she pronounced the sacred name, and there came upon
+her a baptism as of flames of fire, and her frame shook, and her limbs
+tottered so that she sank down fainting, weaker even than the sick
+woman by whose couch she had watched.
+
+"Poor Sara!" said the people; "she is overcome with night watching and
+toil!"
+
+They carried her out into the hospital for the sick poor. There she
+died; and from thence they carried her to the grave, but not to the
+churchyard of the Christians, for yonder was no room for the Jewish
+girl; outside, by the wall, her grave was dug.
+
+But God's sun, that shines upon the graves of the Christians, throws
+its beams also upon the grave of the Jewish girl beyond the wall; and
+when the psalms are sung in the churchyard of the Christians, they
+echo likewise over her lonely resting-place; and she who sleeps
+beneath is included in the call to the resurrection, in the name of
+Him who spake to his disciples:
+
+"John baptized you with water, but I will baptize you with the Holy
+Ghost!"
+
+
+
+
+THE THORNY ROAD OF HONOUR
+
+
+An old story yet lives of the "Thorny Road of Honour," of a marksman,
+who indeed attained to rank and office, but only after a lifelong and
+weary strife against difficulties. Who has not, in reading this story,
+thought of his own strife, and of his own numerous "difficulties?" The
+story is very closely akin to reality; but still it has its harmonious
+explanation here on earth, while reality often points beyond the
+confines of life to the regions of eternity. The history of the world
+is like a magic lantern that displays to us, in light pictures upon
+the dark ground of the present, how the benefactors of mankind, the
+martyrs of genius, wandered along the thorny road of honour.
+
+From all periods, and from every country, these shining pictures
+display themselves to us; each only appears for a few moments, but
+each represents a whole life, sometimes a whole age, with its
+conflicts and victories. Let us contemplate here and there one of the
+company of martyrs--the company which will receive new members until
+the world itself shall pass away.
+
+We look down upon a crowded amphitheatre. Out of the "Clouds" of
+Aristophanes, satire and humour are pouring down in streams upon the
+audience; on the stage Socrates, the most remarkable man in Athens, he
+who had been the shield and defence of the people against the thirty
+tyrants, is held up mentally and bodily to ridicule--Socrates, who
+saved Alcibiades and Xenophon in the turmoil of battle, and whose
+genius soared far above the gods of the ancients. He himself is
+present; he has risen from the spectator's bench, and has stepped
+forward, that the laughing Athenians may well appreciate the likeness
+between himself and the caricature on the stage: there he stands
+before them, towering high above them all.
+
+Thou juicy, green, poisonous hemlock, throw thy shadow over
+Athens--not thou, olive tree of fame!
+
+Seven cities contended for the honour of giving birth to Homer--that
+is to say, they contended after his death! Let us look at him as he
+was in his lifetime. He wanders on foot through the cities, and
+recites his verses for a livelihood; the thought for the morrow turns
+his hair grey! He, the great seer, is blind, and painfully pursues his
+way--the sharp thorn tears the mantle of the king of poets. His song
+yet lives, and through that alone live all the heroes and gods of
+antiquity.
+
+[Illustration: THE KING OF POETS.]
+
+One picture after another springs up from the east, from the west, far
+removed from each other in time and place, and yet each one forming a
+portion of the thorny road of honour, on which the thistle indeed
+displays a flower, but only to adorn the grave.
+
+The camels pass along under the palm trees; they are richly laden with
+indigo and other treasures of price, sent by the ruler of the land to
+him whose songs are the delight of the people, the fame of the
+country: he whom envy and falsehood have driven into exile has been
+found, and the caravan approaches the little town in which he has
+taken refuge. A poor corpse is carried out of the town-gate, and the
+funeral procession causes the caravan to halt. The dead man is he whom
+they have been sent to seek--Firdusi--who has wandered the thorny road
+of honour even to the end.
+
+The African, with blunt features, thick lips, and woolly hair, sits on
+the marble steps of the palace in the capital of Portugal, and begs:
+he is the submissive slave of Camoens, and but for him, and for the
+copper coins thrown to him by the passers by, his master, the poet of
+the "Lusiad," would die of hunger. Now, a costly monument marks the
+grave of Camoens.
+
+There is a new picture.
+
+Behind the iron grating a man appears, pale as death, with long
+unkempt beard.
+
+"I have made a discovery," he says, "the greatest that has been made
+for centuries; and they have kept me locked up here for more than
+twenty years!"
+
+"Who is the man?
+
+"A madman," replies the keeper of the madhouse. "What whimsical ideas
+these lunatics have! He imagines that one can propel things by means
+of steam. It is Solomon de Cares, the discoverer of the power of
+steam, whose theory, expressed in dark words, is not understood by
+Richelieu--and he dies in the madhouse!"
+
+Here stands Columbus, whom the street boys used once to follow and
+jeer, because he wanted to discover a new world--and he has discovered
+it. Shouts of joy greet him from the breasts of all, and the clash of
+bells sounds to celebrate his triumphant return; but the clash of the
+bells of envy soon drowns the others. The discoverer of a world, he
+who lifted the American gold land from the sea, and gave it to his
+king--he is rewarded with iron chains. He wishes that these chains may
+be placed in his coffin, for they witness of the world, and of the way
+in which a man's contemporaries reward good service.
+
+One picture after another comes crowding on; the thorny path of honour
+and of fame is over-filled.
+
+Here in dark night sits the man who measured the mountains in the
+moon; he who forced his way out into the endless space, among stars
+and planets; he, the mighty man who understood the spirit of nature,
+and felt the earth moving beneath his feet--Galileo. Blind and deaf he
+sits--an old man thrust through with the spear of suffering, and amid
+the torments of neglect, scarcely able to lift his foot--that foot
+with which, in the anguish of his soul, when men denied the truth, he
+stamped upon the ground with the exclamation, "_Yet_ it moves!"
+
+Here stands a woman of childlike mind, yet full of faith and
+inspiration; she carries the banner in front of the combating army,
+and brings victory and salvation to her fatherland. The sound of
+shouting arises, and the pile flames up: they are burning the witch,
+Joan of Arc. Yes, and a future century jeers at the white lily.
+Voltaire, the satyr of human intellect, writes "_La Pucelle_."
+
+At the _Thing_ or assembly at Viborg, the Danish nobles burn the laws
+of the king--they flame up high, illuminating the period and the
+lawgiver, and throw a glory into the dark prison tower, where an old
+man is growing grey and bent. With his finger he marks out a groove in
+the stone table. It is the popular king who sits there, once the ruler
+of three kingdoms, the friend of the citizen and the peasant: it is
+Christian the Second. Enemies wrote his history. Let us remember his
+improvements of seven and twenty years, if we cannot forget his crime.
+
+A ship sails away, quitting the Danish shores; a man leans against the
+mast, casting a last glance towards the Island Hueen. It is Tycho
+Brahe. He raised the name of Denmark to the stars, and was rewarded
+with injury, loss, and sorrow. He is going to a strange country.
+
+"The vault of heaven is above me everywhere," he says, "and what do I
+want more?" And away sails the famous Dane, the astronomer, to live
+honoured and free in a strange land.
+
+"Ay, free, if only from the unbearable sufferings of the body!" comes
+in a sigh through time, and strikes upon our ear. What a picture!
+Griffenfeldt, a Danish Prometheus, bound to the rocky island of
+Munkholm.
+
+We are in America, on the margin of one of the largest rivers; an
+innumerable crowd has gathered, for it is said that a ship is to sail
+against wind and weather, bidding defiance to the elements; the man
+who thinks he can solve the problem is named Robert Fulton. The ship
+begins its passage, but suddenly it stops. The crowd begins to laugh
+and whistle and hiss--the very father of the man whistles with the
+rest.
+
+"Conceit! Foolery!" is the cry. "It has happened just as he deserved:
+put the crack-brain under lock and key!"
+
+Then suddenly a little nail breaks, which had stopped the machine for
+a few moments; and now the wheels turn again, the floats break the
+force of the waters, and the ship continues its course--and the beam
+of the steam-engine shortens the distance between far lands from hours
+into minutes.
+
+O human race, canst thou grasp the happiness of such a minute of
+consciousness, this penetration of the soul by its mission, the moment
+in which all dejection, and every wound--even those caused by own
+fault--is changed into health and strength and clearness--when discord
+is converted to harmony--the minute in which men seem to recognize the
+manifestation of the heavenly grace in one man, and feel how this one
+imparts it to all?
+
+Thus the thorny path of honour shows itself as a glory, surrounding
+the earth with its beams: thrice happy he who is chosen to be a
+wanderer there, and, without merit of his own, to be placed between
+the builder of the bridge and the earth, between Providence and the
+human race!
+
+On mighty wings the spirit of history floats through the ages, and
+shows--giving courage and comfort, and awakening gentle thoughts--on
+the dark nightly background, but in gleaming pictures, the thorny path
+of honour; which does not, like a fairy tale, end in brilliancy and
+joy here on earth, but stretches out beyond all time, even into
+eternity!
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD GRAVESTONE
+
+
+In a little provincial town, in the time of the year when people say
+"the evenings are drawing in," there was one evening quite a social
+gathering in the home of a father of a family. The weather was still
+mild and warm. The lamp gleamed on the table; the long curtains hung
+down in folds before the open windows, by which stood many
+flower-pots; and outside, beneath the dark blue sky, was the most
+beautiful moonshine. But they were not talking about this. They were
+talking about the old great stone which lay below in the courtyard,
+close by the kitchen door, and on which the maids often laid the
+cleaned copper kitchen utensils that they might dry in the sun, and
+where the children were fond of playing. It was, in fact, an old
+gravestone.
+
+"Yes," said the master of the house, "I believe the stone comes from
+the old convent churchyard; for from the church yonder, the pulpit,
+the memorial boards, and the gravestones were sold. My father bought
+the latter, and they were cut in two to be used as paving-stones; but
+that old stone was kept back, and has been lying in the courtyard ever
+since."
+
+[Illustration: PREBEN SCHWANE AND HIS WIFE MARTHA.]
+
+"One can very well see that it is a gravestone," observed the eldest
+of the children; "we can still decipher on it an hour-glass and a
+piece of an angel; but the inscription which stood below it is quite
+effaced, except that you may read the name of _Preben_, and a great
+_S_ close behind it, and a little farther down the name of _Martha_.
+But nothing more can be distinguished, and even that is only plain
+when it has been raining, or when we have washed the stone.
+
+"On my word, that must be the gravestone of Preben Schwane and his
+wife!"
+
+These words were spoken by an old man; so old, that he might well have
+been the grandfather of all who were present in the room.
+
+"Yes, they were one of the last pairs that were buried in the old
+churchyard of the convent. They were an honest old couple. I can
+remember them from the days of my boyhood. Every one knew them, and
+every one esteemed them. They were the oldest pair here in the town.
+The people declared that they had more than a tubful of gold; and yet
+they went about very plainly dressed, in the coarsest stuffs, but
+always with splendidly clean linen. They were a fine old pair, Preben
+and Martha! When both of them sat on the bench at the top of the steep
+stone stairs in front of the house, with the old linden tree spreading
+its branches above them, and nodded at one in their kind gentle way,
+it seemed quite to do one good. They were very kind to the poor; they
+fed them and clothed them; and there was judgment in their benevolence
+and true Christianity. The old woman died first: that day is still
+quite clear before my mind. I was a little boy, and had accompanied my
+father over there, and we were just there when she fell asleep. The
+old man was very much moved, and wept like a child. The corpse lay in
+the room next to the one where we sat; and he spoke to my father and
+to a few neighbours who were there, and said how lonely it would be
+now in his house, and how good and faithful she (his dead wife) had
+been, how many years they had wandered together through life, and how
+it had come about that they came to know each other and to fall in
+love. I was, as I have told you, a boy, and only stood by and listened
+to what the others said; but it filled me with quite a strange emotion
+to listen to the old man, and to watch how his cheeks gradually
+flushed red when he spoke of the days of their courtship, and told how
+beautiful she was, and how many little innocent pretexts he had
+invented to meet her. And then he talked of the wedding-day, and his
+eyes gleamed; he seemed to talk himself back into that time of joy.
+And yet she was lying in the next room--dead--an old woman; and he was
+an old man, speaking of the past days of hope! Yes, yes, thus it is!
+Then I was but a child, and now I am old--as old as Preben Schwane was
+then. Time passes away, and all things change. I can very well
+remember the day when she was buried, and how Preben Schwane walked
+close behind the coffin. A few years before, the couple had caused
+their gravestone to be prepared, and their names to be engraved on it,
+with the inscription, all but the date. In the evening the stone was
+taken to the churchyard, and laid over the grave; and the year
+afterwards it was taken up, that old Preben Schwane might be laid to
+rest beside his wife. They did not leave behind them anything like the
+wealth people had attributed to them: what there was went to families
+distantly related to them--to people of whom until then one had known
+nothing. The old wooden house, with the seat at the top of the steps,
+beneath the lime tree, was taken down by the corporation; it was too
+old and rotten to be left standing. Afterwards, when the same fate
+befell the convent church, and the graveyard was levelled, Preben's
+and Martha's tombstone was sold, like everything else, to any one who
+would buy it; and that is how it has happened that this stone was not
+hewn in two, as many another has been, but that it still lies below in
+the yard as a scouring-bench for the maids and a plaything for the
+children. The high-road now goes over the resting-place of old Preben
+and his wife. No one thinks of them any more."
+
+And the old man who had told all this shook his head scornfully.
+
+"Forgotten! Everything will be forgotten!" he said.
+
+And then they spoke in the room of other things; but the youngest
+child, a boy with great serious eyes, mounted up on a chair behind the
+window-curtains, and looked out into the yard, where the moon was
+pouring its radiance over the old stone--the old stone that had always
+appeared to him so tame and flat, but which lay there now like a great
+leaf out of a book of chronicles. All that the boy had heard about old
+Preben and his wife seemed concentrated in the stone; and he gazed at
+it, and looked at the pure bright moon and up into the clear air, and
+it seemed as though the countenance of the Creator was beaming over
+His world.
+
+"Forgotten! Everything will be forgotten!" was repeated in the room.
+
+But in that moment an invisible angel kissed the boy's forehead, and
+whispered to him:
+
+"Preserve the seed-corn that has been entrusted to thee, that it may
+bear fruit. Guard it well! Through thee, my child, the obliterated
+inscription on the old tombstone shall be chronicled in golden letters
+to future generations! The old pair shall wander again arm-in-arm
+through the streets, and smile, and sit with their fresh healthy faces
+under the lime tree on the bench by the steep stairs, and nod at rich
+and poor. The seed-corn of this hour shall ripen in the course of time
+to a blooming poem. The beautiful and the good shall not be forgotten;
+it shall live on in legend and in song."
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD BACHELOR'S NIGHTCAP.
+
+
+There is a street in Copenhagen that has this strange name--"Hysken
+Straede." Whence comes this name, and what is its meaning? It is said
+to be German; but injustice has been done to the Germans in this
+matter, for it would have to be "Haeuschen," and not "Hysken." For here
+stood, once upon a time, and indeed for a great many years, a few
+little houses, which were principally nothing more than wooden booths,
+just as we see now in the market-places at fair-time. They were,
+perhaps, a little larger, and had windows; but the panes consisted of
+horn or bladder, for glass was then too expensive to be used in every
+house. But then we are speaking of a long time ago--so long since,
+that grandfather and great-grandfather, when they talked about them,
+used to speak of them as "the old times"--in fact, it is several
+centuries ago.
+
+The rich merchants in Bremen and Lubeck carried on trade with
+Copenhagen. They did not reside in the town themselves, but sent their
+clerks, who lived in the wooden booths in the Haeuschen Street, and
+sold beer and spices. The German beer was good, and there were many
+kinds of it, as there were, for instance, Bremen, and Prussinger, and
+Sous beer, and even Brunswick mumm; and quantities of spices were
+sold--saffron, and aniseed, and ginger, and especially pepper. Yes,
+pepper was the chief article here, and so it happened that the German
+clerks got the nickname "pepper gentry;" and there was a condition
+made with them in Lubeck and in Bremen, that they would not marry at
+Copenhagen, and many of them became very old. They had to care for
+themselves, and to look after their own comforts, and to put out their
+own fires--when they had any; and some of them became very solitary
+old boys, with eccentric ideas and eccentric habits. From them all
+unmarried men, who have attained a certain age, are called in Denmark
+"pepper gentry;" and this must be understood by all who wish to
+comprehend this history.
+
+The "pepper gentleman" becomes a butt for ridicule, and is continually
+told that he ought to put on his nightcap, and draw it down over his
+eyes, and do nothing but sleep. The boys sing,
+
+    "Cut, cut wood!
+    Poor bachelor so good.
+    Go, take your nightcap, go to rest,
+    For 'tis the nightcap suits you best!"
+
+Yes, that's what they sing about the "pepperer"--thus they make game
+of the poor bachelor and his nightcap, and turn it into ridicule, just
+because they know very little about either. Ah, that kind of nightcap
+no one should wish to earn! And why not?--We shall hear.
+
+[Illustration: THE PEPPERER'S BOOTH.]
+
+In the old times the "Housekin Street" was not paved, and the people
+stumbled out of one hole into another, as in a neglected bye-way; and
+it was narrow too. The booths leaned side by side, and stood so close
+together that in the summer time a sail was often stretched from one
+booth to its opposite neighbour, on which occasion the fragrance of
+pepper, saffron, and ginger became doubly powerful. Behind the
+counters young men were seldom seen. The clerks were generally old
+boys; but they did not look like what we should fancy them, namely,
+with wig, and nightcap, and plush small-clothes, and with waistcoat
+and coat buttoned up to the chin. No, grandfather's great-grandfather
+may look like that, and has been thus portrayed, but the "pepper
+gentry" had no superfluous means, and accordingly did not have their
+portraits taken; though, indeed, it would be interesting now to have a
+picture of one of them, as he stood behind the counter or went to
+church on holy days. His hat was high-crowned and broad-brimmed, and
+sometimes one of the youngest clerks would mount a feather. The
+woollen shirt was hidden behind a broad linen collar, the close jacket
+was buttoned up to the chin, and the cloak hung loose over it; and the
+trousers were tucked into the broad-toed shoes, for the clerks did not
+wear stockings. In their girdles they sported a dinner-knife and
+spoon, and a larger knife was placed there also for the defence of the
+owner; and this weapon was often very necessary. Just so was Anthony,
+one of the oldest clerks, clad on high days and holy days, except
+that, instead of a high-crowned hat, he wore a low bonnet, and under
+it a knitted cap (a regular nightcap), to which he had grown so
+accustomed that it was always on his head; and he had two of
+them--nightcaps, of course. The old fellow was a subject for a
+painter. He was as thin as a lath, had wrinkles clustering round his
+eyes and mouth, and long bony fingers, and bushy grey eyebrows: over
+the left eye hung quite a tuft of hair, and that did not look very
+handsome, though it made him very noticeable. People knew that he came
+from Bremen; but that was not his native place, though his master
+lived there. His own native place was in Thuringia, the town of
+Eisenach, close by the Wartburg. Old Anthony did not speak much of
+this, but he thought of it all the more.
+
+The old clerks of the Haeuschen Street did not often come together.
+Each one remained in his booth, which was closed early in the evening;
+and then it looked dark enough in the street: only a faint glimmer of
+light forced its way through the little horn-pane in the roof; and in
+the booth sat, generally on his bed, the old bachelor, his German
+hymn-book in his hand, singing an evening psalm in a low voice; or he
+went about in the booth till late into the night, and busied himself
+about all sorts of things. It was certainly not an amusing life. To be
+a stranger in a strange land is a bitter lot: nobody cares for you,
+unless you happen to get in anybody's way.
+
+Often when it was dark night outside, with snow and rain, the place
+looked very gloomy and lonely. No lamps were to be seen, with the
+exception of one solitary light hanging before the picture of the
+Virgin that was fastened against the wall. The plash of the water
+against the neighbouring rampart at the castle wharf could be plainly
+heard. Such evenings are long and dreary, unless people devise some
+employment for themselves. There is not always packing or unpacking to
+do, nor can the scales be polished or paper bags be made continually;
+and, failing these, people should devise other employment for
+themselves. And that is just what old Anthony did; for he used to mend
+his clothes and put pieces on his boots. When he at last sought his
+couch, he used from habit to keep his nightcap on. He drew it down a
+little closer; but soon he would push it up again, to see if the light
+had been properly extinguished. He would touch it, press the wick
+together, and then lie down on the other side, and draw his nightcap
+down again; but then a doubt would come upon him, if every coal in the
+little fire-pan below had been properly deadened and put out--a tiny
+spark might have been left burning, and might set fire to something
+and cause damage. And therefore he rose from his bed, and crept down
+the ladder, for it could scarcely be called a stair. And when he came
+to the fire-pan not a spark was to be discovered, and he might just go
+back again. But often, when he had gone half of the way back, it would
+occur to him that the shutters might not be securely fastened; yes,
+then his thin legs must carry him downstairs once more. He was cold,
+and his teeth chattered in his mouth when he crept back again to bed;
+for the cold seems to become doubly severe when it knows it cannot
+stay much longer. He drew up the coverlet closer around him, and
+pulled down the nightcap lower over his brows, and turned his thoughts
+away from trade and from the labours of the day. But that did not
+procure him agreeable entertainment; for now old thoughts came and put
+up their curtains, and these curtains have sometimes pins in them,
+with which one pricks oneself, and one cries out "Oh!" and they prick
+into one's flesh and burn so, that the tears sometimes come into one's
+eyes; and that often happened to old Anthony--hot tears. The largest
+pearls streamed forth, and fell on the coverlet or on the floor, and
+then they sounded as if one of his heart-strings had broken. Sometimes
+again they seemed to rise up in flame, illuminating a picture of life
+that never faded out of his heart. If he then dried his eyes with his
+nightcap, the tear and the picture were indeed crushed, but the source
+of the tears remained, and welled up afresh from his heart. The
+pictures did not come up in the order in which the scenes had occurred
+in reality, for very often the most painful would come together; then
+again the most joyful would come, but these had the deepest shadows of
+all.
+
+The beech woods of Denmark are acknowledged to be fine, but the woods
+of Thuringia arose far more beautiful in the eyes of Anthony. More
+mighty and more venerable seemed to him the old oaks around the proud
+knightly castle, where the creeping plants hung down over the stony
+blocks of the rock; sweeter there bloomed the flowers of the apple
+tree than in the Danish land. This he remembered very vividly. A
+glittering tear rolled down over his cheek; and in this tear he could
+plainly see two children playing--a boy and a girl. The boy had red
+cheeks, and yellow curling hair, and honest blue eyes. He was the son
+of the merchant Anthony--it was himself. The little girl had brown
+eyes and black hair, and had a bright clever look. She was the
+burgomaster's daughter Molly. The two were playing with an apple. They
+shook the apple, and heard the pips rattling in it. Then they cut the
+apple in two, and each of them took a half; they divided even the
+pips, and ate them all but one, which the little girl proposed that
+they should lay in the earth.
+
+"Then you shall see," she said, "what will come out. It will be
+something you don't at all expect. A whole apple tree will come out,
+but not directly."
+
+And she put the pip in a flower-pot, and both were very busy and eager
+about it. The boy made a hole in the earth with his finger, and the
+little girl dropped the pip in it, and they both covered it with
+earth.
+
+"Now, you must not take it out to-morrow to see if it has struck
+root," said Molly. "That won't do at all. I did it with my flowers;
+but only twice. I wanted to see if they were growing--and I didn't
+know any better then--and the plants withered."
+
+Anthony took away the flower-pot, and every morning, the whole winter
+through, he looked at it; but nothing was to be seen but the black
+earth. At length, however, the spring came, and the sun shone warm
+again; and two little green leaves came up out of the pot.
+
+"Those are for me and Molly," said the boy. "That's beautiful--that's
+marvellously beautiful!"
+
+Soon a third leaf made its appearance. Whom did that represent? Yes,
+and there came another, and yet another. Day by day and week by week
+they grew larger, and the plant began to take the form of a real tree.
+And all this was now mirrored in a single tear, which was wiped away
+and disappeared; but it might come again from its source in the heart
+of old Anthony.
+
+In the neighbourhood of Eisenach a row of stony mountains rises up.
+One of these mountains is round in outline, and lifts itself above the
+rest, naked and without tree, bush, or grass. It is called the Venus
+Mount. In this mountain dwells Lady Venus, one of the deities of the
+heathen times. She is also called Lady Holle; and every child in and
+around Eisenach has heard about her. She it was who lured Tannhauser,
+the noble knight and minstrel, from the circle of the singers of the
+Wartburg into her mountain.
+
+[Illustration: IMPERTINENT MOLLY.]
+
+Little Molly and Anthony often stood by this mountain; and once Molly
+said:
+
+"You may knock and say, 'Lady Holle, open the door--Tannhauser is
+here!"
+
+But Anthony did not dare. Molly, however, did it, though she only said
+the words "Lady Holle, Lady Holle!" aloud and distinctly; the rest she
+muttered so indistinctly that Anthony felt convinced she had not
+really said anything; and yet she looked as bold and saucy as
+possible--as saucy as when she sometimes came round him with other
+little girls in the garden, and all wanted to kiss him because he did
+not like to be kissed and tried to keep them off; and she was the only
+one who dared to kiss him in spite of his resistance.
+
+"_I_ may kiss him!" she would say proudly.
+
+That was her vanity; and Anthony submitted, and thought no more about
+it.
+
+How charming and how teasing Molly was! It was said that Lady Holle in
+the mountain was beautiful also, but that her beauty was like that of
+a tempting fiend. The greatest beauty and grace was possessed by Saint
+Elizabeth, the patron of the country, the pious Princess of Thuringia,
+whose good actions have been immortalized in many places in legends
+and stories. In the chapel her picture was hanging, surrounded by
+silver lamps; but it was not in the least like Molly.
+
+The apple tree which the two children had planted grew year by year,
+and became taller and taller--so tall, that it had to be transplanted
+into the garden, into the fresh air, where the dew fell and the sun
+shone warm. And the tree developed itself strongly, so that it could
+resist the winter. And it seemed as if, after the rigour of the cold
+season was past, it put forth blossoms in spring for very joy. In the
+autumn it brought two apples--one for Molly and one for Anthony. It
+could not well have produced less.
+
+The tree had grown apace, and Molly grew like the tree. She was as
+fresh as an apple-blossom; but Anthony was not long to behold this
+flower. All things change! Molly's father left his old home, and Molly
+went with him, far away. Yes, in our time steam has made the journey
+they took a matter of a few hours, but then more than a day and a
+night were necessary to go so far eastward from Eisenach to the
+furthest border of Thuringia, to the city which is still called
+Weimar.
+
+And Molly wept, and Anthony wept; but all their tears melted into one,
+and this tear had the rosy, charming hue of joy. For Molly told him
+she loved him--loved him more than all the splendours of Weimar.
+
+One, two, three years went by, and during this period two letters were
+received. One came by a carrier, and a traveller brought the other.
+The way was long and difficult, and passed through many windings by
+towns and villages.
+
+Often had Molly and Anthony heard of Tristram and Iseult, and often
+had the boy applied the story to himself and Molly, though the name
+Tristram was said to mean "born in tribulation," and that did not
+apply to Anthony, nor would he ever be able to think, like Tristram,
+"She has forgotten me." But, indeed, Iseult did not forget her
+faithful knight; and when both were laid to rest in the earth, one on
+each side of the church, the linden trees grew from their graves over
+the church roof, and there encountered each other in bloom. Anthony
+thought that was beautiful, but mournful; but it could not become
+mournful between him and Molly: and he whistled a song of the old
+minne-singer, Walter of the Vogelverde:
+
+    "Under the lindens
+    Upon the heath."
+
+And especially that passage appeared charming to him:
+
+    "From the forest, down in the vale,
+    Sang her sweet song the nightingale."
+
+This song was often in his mouth, and he sang and whistled it in the
+moonlight nights, when he rode along the deep hollow way on horseback
+to get to Weimar and visit Molly. He wished to come unexpectedly, and
+he came unexpectedly.
+
+He was made welcome with full goblets of wine, with jovial company,
+fine company, and a pretty room and a good bed were provided for him;
+and yet his reception was not what he had dreamt and fancied it would
+be. He could not understand himself--he could not understand the
+others: but _we_ can understand it. One may be admitted into a house
+and associate with a family without becoming one of them. One may
+converse together as one would converse in a post-carriage, and know
+one another as people know each other on a journey, each incommoding
+the other and wishing that either oneself or the good neighbour were
+away. Yes, this was the kind of thing Anthony felt.
+
+"I am an honest girl," said Molly; "and I myself will tell you what it
+is. Much has changed since we were children together--changed inwardly
+and outwardly. Habit and will have no power over our hearts. Anthony,
+I should not like to have an enemy in you, now that I shall soon be
+far away from here. Believe me, I entertain the best wishes for you;
+but to feel for you what I know now one may feel for a man, has never
+been the case with me. You must reconcile yourself to this. Farewell,
+Anthony!"
+
+And Anthony bade her farewell. No tear came into his eye, but he felt
+that he was no longer Molly's friend. Hot iron and cold iron alike
+take the skin from our lips, and we have the same feeling when we kiss
+it: and he kissed himself into hatred as into love.
+
+Within twenty-four hours Anthony was back in Eisenach, though
+certainly the horse on which he rode was ruined.
+
+"What matter!" he said: "I am ruined too; and I will destroy
+everything that can remind me of her, or of Lady Holle, or Venus the
+heathen woman! I will break down the apple tree and tear it up by the
+roots, so that it shall never bear flower or fruit more!"
+
+But the apple tree was not broken down, though he himself was broken
+down, and bound on a couch by fever. What was it that raised him up
+again? A medicine was presented to him which had strength to do
+this--the bitterest of medicines, that shakes up body and spirit
+together. Anthony's father ceased to be the richest of merchants.
+Heavy days--days of trial--were at the door; misfortune came rolling
+into the house like great waves of the sea. The father became a poor
+man. Sorrow and suffering took away his strength. Then Anthony had to
+think of something else besides nursing his love-sorrows and his anger
+against Molly. He had to take his father's place--to give orders, to
+help, to act energetically, and at last to go out into the world and
+earn his bread.
+
+Anthony went to Bremen. There he learned what poverty and hard living
+meant; and these sometimes make the heart hard, and sometimes soften
+it, even too much.
+
+How different the world was, and how different the people were from
+what he had supposed them to be in his childhood! What were the
+minne-singer's songs to him now?--an echo, a vanishing sound! Yes,
+that is what he thought sometimes; but again the songs would sound in
+his soul, and his heart became gentle.
+
+"God's will is best!" he would say then. "It was well that I was not
+permitted to keep Molly's heart--that she did not remain true to me.
+What would it have led to now, when fortune has turned away from me?
+She quitted me before she knew of this loss of prosperity, or had any
+notion of what awaited me. That was a mercy of Providence towards me.
+Everything has happened for the best. It was not her fault--and I have
+been so bitter, and have shown so much rancour towards her!"
+
+And years went by. Anthony's father was dead, and strangers lived in
+the old house. But Anthony was destined to see it again. His rich
+employer sent him on commercial journeys, and his duty led him into
+his native town of Eisenach. The old Wartburg stood unchanged on the
+mountain, with "the monk and the nun" hewn out in stone. The great
+oaks gave to the scene the outlines it had possessed in his childish
+days. The Venus Mount glimmered grey and naked over the valley. He
+would have been glad to cry, "Lady Holle, Lady Holle, unlock the door,
+and I shall enter and remain in my native earth!"
+
+That was a sinful thought, and he blessed himself to drive it away.
+Then a little bird out of the thicket sang clearly, and the old
+minne-song came into his mind:
+
+    "From the forest, down in the vale,
+    Sang her sweet song the nightingale."
+
+And here in the town of his childhood, which he thus saw again through
+tears, much came back into his remembrance. The paternal house stood
+as in the old times; but the garden was altered, and a field-path led
+over a portion of the old ground, and the apple tree that he had not
+broken down stood there, but outside the garden, on the farther side
+of the path. But the sun threw its rays on the apple tree as in the
+old days, the dew descended gently upon it as then, and it bore such a
+burden of fruit that the branches were bent down towards the earth.
+
+"That flourishes!" he said. "The tree can grow!"
+
+Nevertheless, one of the branches of the tree was broken. Mischievous
+hands had torn it down towards the ground; for now the tree stood by
+the public way.
+
+"They break its blossoms off without a feeling of thankfulness--they
+steal its fruit and break the branches. One might say of the tree as
+has been said of some men--'It was not sung at his cradle that it
+should come thus.' How brightly its history began, and what has it
+come to? Forsaken and forgotten--a garden tree by the hedge, in the
+field, and on the public way! There it stands unprotected, plundered,
+and broken! It has certainly not died, but in the course of years the
+number of blossoms will diminish; at last the fruit will cease
+altogether; and at last--at last all will be over!"
+
+Such were Anthony's thoughts under the tree; such were his thoughts
+during many a night in the lonely chamber of the wooden house in the
+distant land--in the Haeuschen Street in Copenhagen, whither his rich
+employer, the Bremen merchant, had sent him, first making it a
+condition that he should not marry.
+
+"Marry! Ha, ha!" he laughed bitterly to himself.
+
+Winter had set in early; it was freezing hard. Without, a snow-storm
+was raging, so that every one who could do so remained at home; thus,
+too, it happened that those who lived opposite to Anthony did not
+notice that for two days his house had not been unlocked, and that he
+did not show himself; for who would go out unnecessarily in such
+weather?
+
+They were grey, gloomy days; and in the house, whose windows were not
+of glass, twilight only alternated with dark night. Old Anthony had
+not left his bed during the two days, for he had not the strength to
+rise; he had for a long time felt in his limbs the hardness of the
+weather. Forsaken by all, lay the old bachelor, unable to help
+himself. He could scarcely reach the water-jug that he had placed by
+his bedside, and the last drop it contained had been consumed. It was
+not fever, nor sickness, but old age that had struck him down. Up
+yonder, where his couch was placed, he was overshadowed as it were by
+continual night. A little spider, which, however, he could not see,
+busily and cheerfully span its web around him, as if it were weaving a
+little crape banner that should wave when the old man closed his eyes.
+
+The time was very slow, and long, and dreary. Tears he had none to
+shed, nor did he feel pain. The thought of Molly never came into his
+mind. He felt as if the world and its noise concerned him no
+longer--as if he were lying outside the world, and no one were
+thinking of him. For a moment he felt a sensation of hunger--of
+thirst. Yes, he felt them both. But nobody came to tend him--nobody.
+He thought of those who had once suffered want; of Saint Elizabeth, as
+she had once wandered on earth; of her, the saint of his home and of
+his childhood, the noble Duchess of Thuringia, the benevolent lady who
+had been accustomed to visit the lowliest cottages, bringing to the
+inmates refreshment and comfort. Her pious deeds shone bright upon his
+soul. He thought of her as she had come to distribute words of
+comfort, binding up the wounds of the afflicted, giving meat to the
+hungry; though her stern husband had chidden her for it. He thought of
+the legend told of her, how she had been carrying the full basket
+containing food and wine, when her husband, who watched her footsteps,
+came forth and asked angrily what she was carrying, whereupon she
+answered, in fear and trembling, that the basket contained roses which
+she had plucked in the garden; how he had torn away the white cloth
+from the basket, and a miracle had been performed for the pious lady;
+for bread, and wine, and everything in the basket had been transformed
+into roses!
+
+Thus the saint's memory dwelt in Anthony's quiet mind; thus she stood
+bodily before his downcast face, before his warehouse in the simple
+booth in the Danish land. He uncovered his head, and looked into her
+gentle eyes, and everything around him was beautiful and roseate. Yes,
+the roses seemed to unfold themselves in fragrance. There came to him
+a sweet, peculiar odour of apples, and he saw a blooming apple tree,
+which spread its branches above him--it was the tree which Molly and
+he had planted together.
+
+And the tree strewed down its fragrant leaves upon him, cooling his
+burning brow. The leaves fell upon his parched lips, and were like
+strengthening bread and wine; and they fell upon his breast, and he
+felt reassured and calm, and inclined to sleep peacefully.
+
+"Now I shall sleep," he whispered to himself. "Sleep is refreshing.
+To-morrow I shall be upon my feet again, and strong and
+well--glorious, wonderful! That apple tree, planted in true affection,
+now stands before me in heavenly radiance----"
+
+[Illustration: THE OPPOSITE NEIGHBOUR LOOKS AFTER OLD ANTHONY.]
+
+And he slept.
+
+The day afterwards--it was the third day that his shop had remained
+closed--the snow-storm had ceased, and a neighbour from the opposite
+house came over towards the booth where dwelt old Anthony, who had not
+yet shown himself. Anthony lay stretched upon his bed--dead--with his
+old cap clutched tightly in his two hands! They did not put that cap
+on his head in his coffin, for he had a new white one.
+
+Where were now the tears that he had wept? What had become of the
+pearls? They remained in the nightcap--and the true ones do not come
+out in the wash--they were preserved in the nightcap, and in time
+forgotten; but the old thoughts and the old dreams still remained in
+the "bachelor's nightcap." Don't wish for such a cap for yourself. It
+would make your forehead very hot, would make your pulse beat
+feverishly, and conjure up dreams which appear like reality. The first
+who wore that identical cap afterwards felt all that at once, though
+it was half a century afterwards; and that man was the burgomaster
+himself, who, with his wife and eleven children, was well and firmly
+established, and had amassed a very tolerable amount of wealth. He was
+immediately seized with dreams of unfortunate love, of bankruptcy, and
+of heavy times.
+
+"Hallo! how the nightcap burns!" he cried out, and tore it from his
+head.
+
+And a pearl rolled out, and another, and another, and they sounded and
+glittered.
+
+"This must be gout," said the burgomaster. "Something dazzles my
+eyes!"
+
+They were tears, shed half a century before by old Anthony from
+Eisenach.
+
+Every one who afterwards put that nightcap upon his head had visions
+and dreams which excited him not a little. His own history was changed
+into that of Anthony, and became a story; in fact, many stories. But
+some one else may tell _them_. We have told the first. And our last
+word is--don't wish for "The Old Bachelor's Nightcap."
+
+
+
+
+THE MARSH KING'S DAUGHTER.
+
+
+The storks tell their little ones very many stories, all of the moor
+and the marsh. These stories are generally adapted to the age and
+capacity of the hearers. The youngest are content if they are told
+"Kribble-krabble, plurre-murre" as a story, and find it charming; but
+the older ones want something with a deeper meaning, or at any rate
+something relating to the family. Of the two oldest and longest
+stories that have been preserved among the storks, we are only
+acquainted with one, namely, that of Moses, who was exposed by his
+mother on the banks of the Nile, and whom the king's daughter found,
+and who afterwards became a great man and a prophet. That history is
+very well known.
+
+The second is not known yet, perhaps, because it is quite an inland
+story. It has been handed down from mouth to mouth, from stork-mamma
+to stork-mamma, for thousands of years, and each of them has told it
+better and better; and now _we_'ll tell it best of all.
+
+The first stork pair who told the story had their summer residence on
+the wooden house of the Viking, which lay by the wild moor in
+Wendsyssel; that is to say, if we are to speak out of the abundance of
+our knowledge, hard by the great moor in the circle of Hjoerring, high
+up by the Skagen, the northern point of Jutland. The wilderness there
+is still a great wide moor-heath, about which we can read in the
+official description of districts. It is said that in old times there
+was here a sea, whose bottom was upheaved; now the moorland extends
+for miles on all sides, surrounded by damp meadows, and unsteady
+shaking swamp, and turfy moor, with blueberries and stunted trees.
+Mists are almost always hovering over this region, which seventy years
+ago was still inhabited by wolves. It is certainly rightly called the
+"wild moor;" and one can easily think how dreary and lonely it must
+have been, and how much marsh and lake there was here a thousand years
+ago. Yes, in detail, exactly the same things were seen then that may
+yet be beheld. The reeds had the same height, and bore the same kind
+of long leaves and bluish-brown feathery plumes that they bear now;
+the birch stood there, with its white bark and its fine
+loosely-hanging leaves, just as now; and as regards the living
+creatures that dwelt here--why, the fly wore its gauzy dress of the
+same cut that it wears now; and the favourite colours of the stork
+were white picked out with black, and red stockings. The people
+certainly wore coats of a different cut to those they now wear; but
+whoever stepped out on the shaking moorland, be he huntsman or
+follower, master or servant, met with the same fate a thousand years
+ago that he would meet with to-day. He sank and went down to the
+"marsh king," as they called him, who ruled below in the great
+moorland empire. They also called him "gungel king;" but we like the
+name "marsh king" better, and by that we'll call him, as the storks
+did. Very little is known of the marsh king's rule; but perhaps that
+is a good thing.
+
+In the neighbourhood of the moorland, hard by the great arm of the
+German Ocean and the Cattegat, which is called the Luemfjorden, lay the
+wooden house of the Viking, with its stone water-tight cellars, with
+its tower and its three projecting stories. On the roof the stork had
+built his nest; and stork-mamma there hatched the eggs, and felt sure
+that her hatching would come to something.
+
+One evening stork-papa stayed out very long; and when he came home he
+looked very bustling and important.
+
+"I've something very terrible to tell you," he said to the
+stork-mamma.
+
+"Let that be," she replied. "Remember that I'm hatching the eggs, and
+you might agitate me, and I might do them a mischief."
+
+"You must know it," he continued. "She has arrived here--the daughter
+of our host in Egypt--she has dared to undertake the journey here--and
+she's gone!"
+
+"She who came from the race of the fairies? Oh, tell me all about it!
+You know I can't bear to be kept long in suspense when I'm hatching
+eggs."
+
+"You see, mother, she believed in what the doctor said, and you told
+me true. She believed that the moor flowers would bring healing to her
+sick father, and she has flown here in swan's plumage, in company with
+the other swan-princesses, who come to the North every year to renew
+their youth. She has come here, and she is gone!"
+
+"You are much too long-winded!" exclaimed the stork-mamma, "and the
+eggs might catch cold. I can't bear being kept in such suspense!"
+
+"I have kept watch," said the stork-papa; "and to-night, when I went
+into the reeds--there where the marsh ground will bear me--three swans
+came. Something in their flight seemed to say to me, 'Look out! That's
+not altogether swan; it's only swan's feathers!' Yes, mother, you have
+a feeling of intuition just as I have; you know whether a thing is
+right or wrong."
+
+"Yes, certainly," she replied; "but tell me about the princess. I'm
+sick of hearing of the swan's feathers."
+
+"Well, you know that in the middle of the moor there is something like
+a lake," continued stork-papa. "You can see one corner of it if you
+raise yourself a little. There, by the reeds and the green mud, lay a
+great alder stump; and on this the three swans sat, flapping their
+wings and looking about them. One of them threw off her plumage, and I
+immediately recognized her as our house princess from Egypt! There she
+sat, with no covering but her long black hair. I heard her tell the
+others to pay good heed to the swan's plumage, while she dived down
+into the water to pluck the flowers which she fancied she saw growing
+there. The others nodded, and picked up the empty feather dress and
+took care of it. 'I wonder what they will do with it?' thought I; and
+perhaps she asked herself the same question. If so, she got an
+answer--a very practical answer--for the two rose up and flew away
+with her swan's plumage. 'Do thou dive down,' they cried; 'thou shalt
+never see Egypt again! Remain thou here in the moor!' And so saying,
+they tore the swan's plumage into a thousand pieces, so that the
+feathers whirled about like a snow-storm; and away they flew--the two
+faithless princesses!"
+
+[Illustration: THE PRINCESS LEFT IN THE MARSH.]
+
+"Why, that is terrible!" said stork-mamma. "I can't bear to hear any
+more of it. But now tell me what happened next."
+
+"The princess wept and lamented aloud. Her tears fell fast on the
+alder stump, and the latter moved; for it was not a regular alder
+stump, but the marsh king--he who lives and rules in the depths of the
+moor! I myself saw it--how the stump of the tree turned round, and
+ceased to be a tree stump; long thin branches grew forth from it like
+arms. Then the poor child was terribly frightened, and sprang up to
+flee away. She hurried across to the green slimy ground; but that
+cannot even carry me, much less her. She sank immediately, and the
+alder stump dived down too; and it was he who drew her down. Great
+black bubbles rose up out of the moor-slime, and the last trace of
+both of them vanished when these burst. Now the princess is buried in
+the wild moor, and never more will she bear away a flower to Egypt.
+Your heart would have burst, mother, if you had seen it."
+
+"You ought not to tell me anything of the kind at such a time as
+this," said stork-mamma; "the eggs might suffer by it. The princess
+will find some way of escape; some one will come to help her. If it
+had been you or I, or one of our people, it would certainly have been
+all over with us."
+
+"But I shall go and look every day to see if anything happens," said
+stork-papa.
+
+And he was as good as his word.
+
+A long time had passed, when at last he saw a green stalk shooting up
+out of the deep moor-ground. When it reached the surface, a leaf
+spread out and unfolded itself broader and broader; close by it, a bud
+came out. And one morning, when stork-papa flew over the stalk, the
+bud opened through the power of the strong sunbeams, and in the cup of
+the flower lay a beautiful child--a little girl--looking just as if
+she had risen out of the bath. The little one so closely resembled the
+princess from Egypt, that at the first moment the stork thought it
+must be the princess herself; but, on second thoughts, it appeared
+more probable that it must be the daughter of the princess and of the
+marsh king; and that also explained her being placed in the cup of the
+water-lily.
+
+"But she cannot possibly be left lying there," thought stork-papa;
+"and in my nest there are so many persons already. But stay, I have a
+thought. The wife of the Viking has no children, and how often has she
+not wished for a little one! People always say, 'The stork has brought
+a little one;' and I will do so in earnest this time. I shall fly with
+the child to the Viking's wife. What rejoicing there will be yonder!"
+
+And the stork lifted the little girl out of the flower-cup, flew to
+the wooden house, picked a hole with his beak in the bladder-covered
+window, laid the charming child on the bosom of the Viking's wife, and
+then hurried up to the stork-mamma, and told her what he had seen and
+done; and the little storks listened to the story, for they were big
+enough to do so now.
+
+"So you see," he concluded, "the princess is not dead, for she must
+have sent the little one up here; and now that is provided for too."
+
+"Ah, I said it would be so, from the very beginning!" said the
+stork-mamma; "but now think a little of your own family. Our
+travelling time is drawing on; sometimes I feel quite restless in my
+wings already. The cuckoo and the nightingale have started; and I
+heard the quails saying that they were going too, so soon as the wind
+was favourable. Our young ones will behave well at the exercising, or
+I am much deceived in them."
+
+The Viking's wife was extremely glad when she woke next morning and
+found the charming infant lying in her arms. She kissed and caressed
+it; but it cried violently, and struggled with its arms and legs, and
+did not seem rejoiced at all. At length it cried itself to sleep; and
+as it lay there still and tranquil, it looked exceedingly beautiful.
+The Viking's wife was in high glee: she felt light in body and soul;
+her heart leapt within her; and it seemed to her as if her husband and
+his warriors, who were absent, must return quite as suddenly and
+unexpectedly as the little one had come.
+
+Therefore she and the whole household had enough to do in preparing
+everything for the reception of her lord. The long coloured curtains
+of tapestry, which she and her maids had worked, and on which they had
+woven pictures of their idols, Odin, Thor, and Freya, were hung up;
+the slaves polished the old shields, that served as ornaments; and
+cushions were placed on the benches, and dry wood laid on the
+fireplace in the midst of the hall, so that the flame might be fanned
+up at a moment's notice. The Viking's wife herself assisted in the
+work, so that towards evening she was very tired, and went to sleep
+quickly and lightly.
+
+When she awoke towards morning, she was violently alarmed, for the
+infant had vanished! She sprang from her couch, lighted a pine-torch,
+and searched all round about; and, behold, in the part of the bed
+where she had stretched her feet, lay, not the child, but a great ugly
+frog! She was horror-struck at the sight, and seized a heavy stick to
+kill the frog; but the creature looked at her with such strange,
+mournful eyes, that she was not able to strike the blow. Once more she
+looked round the room--the frog uttered a low, wailing croak, and she
+started, sprang from the couch, and ran to the window and opened it.
+At that moment the sun shone forth, and flung its beams through the
+window on the couch and on the great frog; and suddenly it appeared as
+though the frog's great mouth contracted and became small and red, and
+its limbs moved and stretched and became beautifully symmetrical, and
+it was no longer an ugly frog which lay there, but her pretty child!
+
+"What is this?" she said. "Have I had a bad dream? Is it not my own
+lovely cherub lying there?"
+
+And she kissed and hugged it; but the child struggled and fought like
+a little wild cat.
+
+Not on this day nor on the morrow did the Viking return, although he
+certainly was on his way home; but the wind was against him, for it
+blew towards the south, favourably for the storks. A good wind for one
+is a contrary wind for another.
+
+When one or two more days and nights had gone, the Viking's wife
+clearly understood how the case was with her child, that a terrible
+power of sorcery was upon it. By day it was charming as an angel of
+light, though it had a wild, savage temper; but at night it became an
+ugly frog, quiet and mournful, with sorrowful eyes. Here were two
+natures changing inwardly as well as outwardly with the sunlight. The
+reason of this was that by day the child had the form of its mother,
+but the disposition of its father; while, on the contrary, at night
+the paternal descent became manifest in its bodily appearance, though
+the mind and heart of the mother then became dominant in the child.
+Who might be able to loosen this charm that wicked sorcery had worked?
+
+The wife of the Viking lived in care and sorrow about it; and yet her
+heart yearned towards the little creature, of whose condition she felt
+she should not dare tell her husband on his return; for he would
+probably, according to the custom which then prevailed, expose the
+child on the public highway, and let whoever listed take it away. The
+good Viking woman could not find it in her heart to allow this, and
+she therefore determined that the Viking should never see the child
+except by daylight.
+
+One morning the wings of storks were heard rushing over the roof; more
+than a hundred pairs of those birds had rested from their exercise
+during the previous night, and now they soared aloft, to travel
+southwards.
+
+"All males here, and ready," they cried; "and the wives and children
+too."
+
+"How light we feel!" screamed the young storks in chorus: "it seems to
+be creeping all over us, down into our very toes, as if we were filled
+with frogs. Ah, how charming it is, travelling to foreign lands!"
+
+"Mind you keep close to us during your flight," said papa and mamma.
+"Don't use your beaks too much, for that tires the chest."
+
+And the storks flew away.
+
+At the same time the sound of the trumpets rolled across the heath,
+for the Viking had landed with his warriors; they were returning
+home, richly laden with spoil, from the Gallic coast, where the
+people, as in the land of the Britons, sang in frightened accents:
+
+    "Deliver us from the wild Northmen!"
+
+[Illustration: THE VIKING'S FEAST.]
+
+And life and tumultuous joy came with them into the Viking's castle on
+the moorland. The great mead tub was brought into the hall, the pile
+of wood was set ablaze, horses were killed, and a great feast was to
+begin. The officiating priest sprinkled the slaves with the warm
+blood; the fire crackled, the smoke rolled along beneath the roof; but
+they were accustomed to that. Guests were invited, and received
+handsome gifts: all feuds and all malice were forgotten. And the
+company drank deep, and threw the bones of the feast in each others'
+faces, and this was considered a sign of good humour. The bard, a kind
+of minstrel, but who was also a warrior, and had been on the
+expedition with the rest, sang them a song, in which they heard all
+their warlike deeds praised, and everything remarkable specially
+noticed. Every verse ended with the burden:
+
+    "Goods and gold, friends and foes will die; every man must one day die;
+    But a famous name will never die!"
+
+And with that they beat upon their shields, and hammered the table in
+glorious fashion with bones and knives.
+
+The Viking's wife sat upon the high seat in the open hall. She wore a
+silken dress, and golden armlets, and great amber beads: she was in
+her costliest garb. And the bard mentioned her in his song, and sang
+of the rich treasure she had brought her rich husband. The latter was
+delighted with the beautiful child, which he had seen in the daytime
+in all its loveliness; and the savage ways of the little creature
+pleased him especially. He declared that the girl might grow up to be
+a stately heroine, strong and determined as a man. She would not wink
+her eyes when a practised hand cut off her eyebrows with a sword by
+way of a jest.
+
+The full mead barrel was emptied, and a fresh one brought in; for
+these were people who liked to enjoy all things plentifully. The old
+proverb was indeed well known, which says, "The cattle know when they
+should quit the pasture, but a foolish man knoweth not the measure of
+his own appetite." Yes, they knew it well enough; but one _knows_ one
+thing, and one _does_ another. They also knew that "even the welcome
+guest becomes wearisome when he sitteth long in the house;" but for
+all that they sat still, for pork and mead are good things; and there
+was high carousing, and at night the bondmen slept among the warm
+ashes, and dipped their fingers in the fat grease and licked them.
+Those were glorious times!
+
+Once more in the year the Viking sallied forth, though the storms of
+autumn already began to roar: he went with his warriors to the shores
+of Britain, for he declared that was but an excursion across the
+water; and his wife stayed at home with the little girl. And thus
+much is certain, that the poor lady soon got to love the frog with its
+gentle eyes and its sorrowful sighs, almost better than the pretty
+child that bit and beat all around her.
+
+The rough damp mist of autumn, which devours the leaves of the forest,
+had already descended upon thicket and heath. "Birds feather-less," as
+they called the snow, flew in thick masses, and winter was coming on
+fast. The sparrows took possession of the storks' nests, and talked
+about the absent proprietors according to their fashion; but
+these--the stork pair, with all the young ones--what had become of
+them?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The storks were now in the land of Egypt, where the sun sent forth
+warm rays, as it does here on a fine midsummer day. Tamarinds and
+acacias bloomed in the country all around; the crescent of Mahomet
+glittered from the cupolas of the temples, and on the slender towers
+sat many a stork pair resting after the long journey. Great troops
+divided the nests, built close together on venerable pillars and in
+fallen temple arches of forgotten cities. The date-palm lifted up its
+screen as if it would be a sunshade; the greyish-white pyramids stood
+like masses of shadow in the clear air of the far desert, where the
+ostrich ran his swift career, and the lion gazed with his great grave
+eyes at the marble sphinx which lay half buried in the sand. The
+waters of the Nile had fallen, and the whole river bed was crowded
+with frogs, and this spectacle was just according to the taste of the
+stork family. The young storks thought it was optical illusion, they
+found everything so glorious.
+
+"Yes, it's delightful here; and it's always like this in our warm
+country," said the stork-mamma; and the young ones felt quite frisky
+on the strength of it.
+
+"Is there anything more to be seen?" they asked. "Are we to go much
+farther into the country?"
+
+"There's nothing further to be seen," answered stork-mamma. "Behind
+this delightful region there are luxuriant forests, whose branches are
+interlaced with one another, while prickly climbing plants close up
+the paths--only the elephant can force a way for himself with his
+great feet; and the snakes are too big, and the lizards too quick for
+us. If you go into the desert, you'll get your eyes full of sand when
+there's a light breeze, but when it blows great guns you may get into
+the middle of a pillar of sand. It is best to stay here, where there
+are frogs and locusts. I shall stay here, and you shall stay too."
+
+And there they remained. The parents sat in the nest on the slender
+minaret, and rested, and yet were busily employed smoothing and
+cleaning their feathers, and whetting their beaks against their red
+stockings. Now and then they stretched out their necks, and bowed
+gravely, and lifted their heads, with their high foreheads and fine
+smooth feathers, and looked very clever with their brown eyes. The
+female young ones strutted about in the juicy reeds, looked slyly at
+the other young storks, made acquaintances, and swallowed a frog at
+every third step, or rolled a little snake to and fro in their bills,
+which they thought became them well, and, moreover, tasted nice. The
+male young ones began a quarrel, beat each other with their wings,
+struck with their beaks, and even pricked each other till the blood
+came. And in this way sometimes one couple was betrothed, and
+sometimes another, of the young ladies and gentlemen, and that was
+just what they wanted, and their chief object in life: then they took
+to a new nest, and began new quarrels, for in hot countries people are
+generally hot-tempered and passionate. But it was pleasant for all
+that, and the old people especially were much rejoiced, for all that
+young people do seems to suit them well. There was sunshine every day,
+and every day plenty to eat, and nothing to think of but pleasure. But
+in the rich castle at the Egyptian host's, as they called him, there
+was no pleasure to be found.
+
+The rich mighty lord reclined on his divan, in the midst of the great
+hall of the many-coloured walls, looking as if he were sitting in a
+tulip; but he was stiff and powerless in all his limbs, and lay
+stretched out like a mummy. His family and servants surrounded him,
+for he was not dead, though one could not exactly say that he was
+alive. The healing moor flower from the North, which was to have been
+found and brought home by her who loved him best, never appeared. His
+beauteous young daughter, who had flown in the swan's plumage over sea
+and land, to the far North, was never to come back. "She is dead!" the
+two returning swan-maidens had said, and they had concocted a complete
+story, which ran as follows:
+
+"We three together flew high in the air: a hunter saw us, and shot his
+arrow at us; it struck our young companion and friend; and slowly,
+singing her farewell song, she sunk down, a dying swan, into the
+woodland lake. By the shore of the lake, under a weeping birch tree,
+we laid her in the cool earth. But we had our revenge. We bound fire
+under the wings of the swallow who had her nest beneath the huntsman's
+thatch; the house burst into flames, the huntsman was burnt in the
+house, and the glare shone over the sea as far as the hanging birch
+beneath which she sleeps. Never will she return to the land of Egypt."
+
+And then the two wept. And when stork-papa heard the story, he clapped
+with his beak so that it could be heard a long way off.
+
+[Illustration: THE KING OF EGYPT DECEIVED BY THE PRINCESSES.]
+
+"Treachery and lies!" he cried. "I should like to run my beak deep
+into their chests."
+
+"And perhaps break it off," interposed the stork-mamma; "and then you
+would look well. Think first of yourself, and then of your family, and
+all the rest does not concern you."
+
+"But to-morrow I shall seat myself at the edge of the open cupola,
+when the wise and learned men assemble, to consult on the sick man's
+state: perhaps they may come a little nearer the truth."
+
+And the learned and wise men came together and spoke a great deal, out
+of which the stork could make no sense--and it had no result, either
+for the sick man or for the daughter in the swampy waste. But for all
+that we may listen to what the people said, for we have to listen to a
+great deal of talk in the world.
+
+But then it's an advantage to hear what went before, what has been
+said; and in this case we are well informed, for we know just as much
+about it as stork-papa.
+
+"Love gives life! the highest love gives the highest life! Only
+through love can his life be preserved." That is what they all said,
+and the learned men said it was very cleverly and beautifully spoken.
+
+"That is a beautiful thought!" stork-papa said immediately.
+
+"I don't quite understand it," stork-mamma replied: "and that's not my
+fault, but the fault of the thought. But let it be as it will, I've
+something else to think of."
+
+And now the learned men had spoken of love to this one and that one,
+and of the difference between the love of one's neighbour and love
+between parents and children, of the love of plants for the light,
+when the sunbeam kisses the ground and the germ springs forth from
+it,--everything was so fully and elaborately explained that it was
+quite impossible for stork-papa to take it in, much less to repeat it.
+He felt quite weighed down with thought, and half shut his eyes, and
+the whole of the following day he stood thoughtfully on one leg: it
+was quite heavy for him to carry, all that learning.
+
+But one thing stork-papa understood. All, high and low, had spoken out
+of their inmost hearts, and said that it was a great misfortune for
+thousands of people, yes, for the whole country, that this man was
+lying sick, and could not get well, and that it would spread joy and
+pleasure abroad if he should recover. But where grew the flower that
+could restore him to health? They had all searched for it, consulted
+learned books, the twinkling stars, the weather and the wind; they had
+made inquiries in every byway of which they could think; and at length
+the wise men and the learned men had said, as we have already told,
+that "Love begets life--will restore a father's life;" and on this
+occasion they had surpassed themselves, and said more than they
+understood. They repeated it, and wrote down as a recipe, "Love
+begets life." But how was the thing to be prepared according to the
+recipe? that was a point they could not get over. At last they were
+decided upon the point that help must come by means of the princess,
+through her who clave to her father with her whole soul; and at last a
+method had been devised whereby help could be procured in this
+dilemma. Yes, it was already more than a year ago since the princess
+had sallied forth by night, when the brief rays of the new moon were
+waning: she had gone out to the marble sphinx, had shaken the dust
+from her sandals, and gone onward through the long passage which leads
+into the midst of one of the great pyramids, where one of the mighty
+kings of antiquity, surrounded by pomp and treasure, lay swathed in
+mummy cloths. There she was to incline her ear to the breast of the
+dead king; for thus, said the wise men, it should be made manifest to
+her where she might find life and health for her father. She had
+fulfilled all these injunctions, and had seen in a vision that she was
+to bring home from the deep lake in the northern moorland--the very
+place had been accurately described to her--the lotos flower which
+grows in the depths of the waters, and then her father would regain
+health and strength.
+
+And therefore she had gone forth in the swan's plumage out of the land
+of Egypt to the open heath, to the woodland moor. And the stork-papa
+and stork-mamma knew all this; and now we also know it more accurately
+than we knew it before. We know that the marsh king had drawn her down
+to himself, and know that to her loved ones at home she is dead for
+ever. One of the wisest of them said, as the stork-mamma said too,
+"She will manage to help herself;" and at last they quieted their
+minds with that, and resolved to wait and see what would happen, for
+they knew of nothing better that they could do.
+
+"I should like to take away the swan's feathers from the two faithless
+princesses," said the stork-papa; "then, at any rate, they will not be
+able to fly up again to the wild moor and do mischief. I'll hide the
+two swan-feather suits up there, till somebody has occasion for them."
+
+"But where do you intend to hide them?" asked stork-mamma.
+
+"Up in our nest in the moor," answered he. "I and our young ones will
+take turns in carrying them up yonder, on our return, and if that
+should prove too difficult for us, there are places enough on the way
+where we can conceal them till our next journey. Certainly, one suit
+of swan's feathers would be enough for the princess, but two are
+always better. In those northern countries no one can have too many
+wraps."
+
+"No one will thank you for it," quoth stork-mamma; "but you're the
+master. Except at breeding-time, I have nothing to say."
+
+In the Viking's castle by the wild moor, whither the storks bent their
+flight when the spring approached, they had given the little girl the
+name of Helga; but this name was too soft for a temper like that which
+was associated with her beauteous form. Every month this temper showed
+itself in sharper outlines; and in the course of years--during which
+the storks made the same journey over and over again, in autumn to the
+Nile, in spring back to the moorland lake--the child grew to be a
+great girl; and before people were aware of it, she was a beautiful
+maiden in her sixteenth year. The shell was splendid, but the kernel
+was harsh and hard; and she was hard, as indeed were most people in
+those dark, gloomy times. It was a pleasure to her to splash about
+with her white hands in the blood of the horse that had been slain in
+sacrifice. In her wild mood she bit off the neck of the black cock the
+priest was about to offer up; and to her father she said in perfect
+seriousness,
+
+"If thy enemy should pull down the roof of thy house, while thou wert
+sleeping in careless safety; if I felt it or heard it, I would not
+wake thee even if I had the power. I should never do it, for my ears
+still tingle with the blow that thou gavest me years ago--thou! I have
+never forgotten it."
+
+But the Viking took her words in jest; for, like all others, he was
+bewitched with her beauty, and he knew not how temper and form changed
+in Helga. Without a saddle she sat upon a horse, as if she were part
+of it, while it rushed along in full career; nor would she spring from
+the horse when it quarrelled and fought with other horses. Often she
+would throw herself, in her clothes, from the high shore into the sea,
+and swim to meet the Viking when his boat steered near home; and she
+cut the longest lock of her hair, and twisted it into a string for her
+bow.
+
+"Self-achieved is well-achieved," she said.
+
+The Viking's wife was strong of character and of will, according to
+the custom of the times; but, compared to her daughter, she appeared
+as a feeble, timid woman; for she knew that an evil charm weighed
+heavily upon the unfortunate child.
+
+It seemed as if, out of mere malice, when her mother stood on the
+threshold or came out into the yard, Helga, would often seat herself
+on the margin of the well, and wave her arms in the air; then suddenly
+she would dive into the deep well, when her frog nature enabled her to
+dive and rise, down and up, until she climbed forth again like a cat,
+and came back into the hall dripping with water, so that the green
+leaves strewn upon the ground floated and turned in the streams that
+flowed from her garments.
+
+[Illustration: THE TRANSFORMED PRINCESS.]
+
+But there was one thing that imposed a check upon Helga, and that was
+the evening twilight. When that came she was quiet and thoughtful, and
+would listen to reproof and advice; and then a secret feeling seemed
+to draw her towards her mother. And when the sun sank, and the usual
+transformation of body and spirit took place in her, she would sit
+quiet and mournful, shrunk to the shape of the frog, her body indeed
+much larger than that of the animal whose likeness she took, and for
+that reason much more hideous to behold; for she looked like a
+wretched dwarf with a frog's head and webbed fingers. Her eyes then
+assumed a very melancholy expression. She had no voice, and could only
+utter a hollow croaking that sounded like the stifled sob of a
+dreaming child. Then the Viking's wife took her on her lap, and forgot
+the ugly form as she looked into the mournful eyes, and said,
+
+"I could almost wish that thou wert always my poor dumb frog-child;
+for thou art only the more terrible when thy nature is veiled in a
+form of beauty."
+
+And the Viking woman wrote Runic characters against sorcery and spells
+of sickness, and threw them over the wretched child; but she could not
+see that they worked any good.
+
+"One can scarcely believe that she was ever so small that she could
+lie in the cup of a water-lily," said stork-papa, "now she's grown up
+the image of her Egyptian mother. Ah, we shall never see that poor
+lady again! Probably she did not know how to help herself, as you and
+the learned men said. Year after year I have flown to and fro, across
+and across the great moorland, and she has never once given a sign
+that she was still alive. Yes, I may as well tell you, that every
+year, when I came here a few days before you, to repair the nest and
+attend to various matters, I spent a whole night in flying to and fro
+over the lake, as if I had been an owl or a bat, but every time in
+vain. The two suits of swan feathers which I and the young ones
+dragged up here out of the land of the Nile have consequently not been
+used: we had trouble enough with them to bring them hither in three
+journeys; and now they lie down here in the nest, and if it should
+happen that a fire broke out, and the wooden house were burned, they
+would be destroyed."
+
+"And our good nest would be destroyed too," said stork-mamma; "but you
+think less of that than of your plumage stuff and of your
+moor-princess. You'd best go down into the mud and stay there with
+her. You're a bad father to your own children, as I said already when
+I hatched our first brood. I only hope neither we nor our children
+will get an arrow in our wings through that wild girl. Helga doesn't
+know in the least what she does. I wish she would only remember that
+we have lived here longer than she, and that we have never forgotten
+our duty, and have given our toll every year, a feather, an egg, and a
+young one, as it was right we should do. Do you think I can now wander
+about in the courtyard and everywhere, as I was wont in former days,
+and as I still do in Egypt, where I am almost the playfellow of the
+people, and that I can press into pot and kettle as I can yonder? No,
+I sit up here and am angry at her, the stupid chit! And I am angry at
+you too. You should have just left her lying in the water-lily, and
+she would have been dead long ago."
+
+"You are much better than your words," said stork-papa. "I know you
+better than you know yourself."
+
+And with that he gave a hop, and flapped his wings heavily twice,
+stretched out his legs behind him, and flew away, or rather sailed
+away, without moving his wings. He had already gone some distance,
+when he gave a great _flap_! The sun shone upon his grand plumage, and
+his head and neck were stretched forth proudly. There was power in it,
+and dash!
+
+"After all, he's handsomer than any of them," said stork-mamma to
+herself; "but I won't tell him so."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Early in that autumn the Viking came home, laden with booty, and
+bringing prisoners with him. Among these was a young Christian priest,
+one of those who contemned the gods of the North.
+
+Often in those later times there had been a talk, in hall and chamber,
+of the new faith that was spreading far and wide in the South, and
+which, by means of Saint Ansgarius, had penetrated as far as Hedeby on
+the Schlei. Even Helga had heard of this belief in One who, from love
+to men and for their redemption, had sacrificed His life; but with her
+all this had, as the saying is, gone in at one ear and come out at the
+other. It seemed as if she only understood the meaning of the word
+"love," when she crouched in a corner of the chamber in the form of a
+miserable frog; but the Viking's wife had listened to the mighty
+history that was told throughout the lands, and had felt strangely
+moved thereby.
+
+On their return from their voyage, the men told of the splendid
+temples, of their hewn stones, raised for the worship of Him whose
+worship is love. Some massive vessels, made with cunning art, of gold,
+had been brought home among the booty, and each one had a peculiar
+fragrance; for they were incense vessels, which had been swung by
+Christian priests before the altar.
+
+In the deep cellars of the Viking's house the young priest had been
+immured, his hands and feet bound with strips of bark. The Viking's
+wife declared that he was beautiful as Bulder to behold, and his
+misfortune touched her heart; but Helga declared that it would be
+right to tie ropes to his heels, and fasten him to the tails of wild
+oxen. And she exclaimed,
+
+"Then I would let loose the dogs--hurrah! over the moor and across the
+swamp! That would be a spectacle for the gods! And yet finer would it
+be to follow him in his career."
+
+But the Viking would not suffer him to die such a death: he purposed
+to sacrifice the priest on the morrow, on the death-stone in the
+grove, as a despiser and foe of the high gods.
+
+For the first time a man was to be sacrificed here.
+
+Helga begged, as a boon, that she might sprinkle the image of the god
+and the assembled multitude with the blood of the priest. She
+sharpened her glittering knife, and when one of the great savage dogs,
+of whom a number were running about near the Viking's abode, ran by
+her, she thrust the knife into his side, "merely to try its
+sharpness," as she said. And the Viking's wife looked mournfully at
+the wild, evil-disposed girl; and when night came on and the maiden
+exchanged beauty of form for gentleness of soul, she spoke in eloquent
+words to Helga of the sorrow that was deep in her heart.
+
+The ugly frog, in its monstrous form, stood before her, and fixed its
+brown eyes upon her face, listening to her words, and seeming to
+comprehend them with human intelligence.
+
+"Never, not even to my lord and husband, have I allowed my lips to
+utter a word concerning the sufferings I have to undergo through
+thee," said the Viking's wife; "my heart is full of woe concerning
+thee: more powerful, and greater than I ever fancied it, is the love
+of a mother! But love never entered into thy heart--thy heart that is
+like the wet, cold moorland plants."
+
+Then the miserable form trembled, and it was as though these words
+touched an invisible bond between body and soul, and great tears came
+into the mournful eyes.
+
+"Thy hard time will come," said the Viking's wife; "and it will be
+terrible to me too. It had been better if thou hadst been set out by
+the high-road, and the night wind had lulled thee to sleep."
+
+And the Viking's wife wept bitter tears, and went away full of wrath
+and bitterness of spirit, vanishing behind the curtain of furs that
+hung loose over the beam and divided the hall.
+
+The wrinkled frog crouched in the corner alone. A deep silence reigned
+around; but at intervals a half-stifled sigh escaped from its breast,
+from the breast of Helga. It seemed as though a painful new life were
+arising in her inmost heart. She came forward and listened; and,
+stepping forward again, grasped with her clumsy hands the heavy pole
+that was laid across before the door. Silently and laboriously she
+pushed back the pole, silently drew back the bolt, and took up the
+flickering lamp which stood in the antechamber of the hall. It seemed
+as if a strong hidden will gave her strength. She drew back the iron
+bolt from the closed cellar door, and crept in to the captive. He was
+asleep; and when he awoke and saw the hideous form, he shuddered as
+though he had beheld a wicked apparition. She drew her knife, cut the
+bonds that confined his hands and feet, and beckoned him to follow
+her.
+
+[Illustration: THE FLIGHT.]
+
+He uttered some holy names, and made the sign of the cross; and when
+the form remained motionless at his side, he said,
+
+"Who art thou? Whence this animal shape that thou bearest, while yet
+thou art full of gentle mercy?"
+
+The frog-woman beckoned him to follow, and led him through corridors
+shrouded with curtains, into the stables, and there pointed to a
+horse. He mounted on its back; but she also sprang up before him,
+holding fast by the horse's mane. The prisoner understood her meaning,
+and in a rapid trot they rode on a way which he would never have
+found, out on to the open heath.
+
+He thought not of her hideous form, but felt how the mercy and
+loving-kindness of the Almighty were working by means of this
+monstrous apparition; he prayed pious prayers, and sang songs of
+praise. Then she trembled. Was it the power of song and of prayer that
+worked in her, or was she shuddering at the cold morning twilight that
+was approaching? What were her feelings? She raised herself up, and
+wanted to stop the horse and to alight; but the Christian priest held
+her back with all his strength, and sang a pious song, as if that
+would have the power to loosen the charm that turned her into the
+hideous semblance of a frog. And the horse gallopped on more wildly
+than ever; the sky turned red, the first sunbeam pierced through the
+clouds, and as the flood of light came streaming down, the frog
+changed its nature. Helga was again the beautiful maiden with the
+wicked, demoniac spirit. He held a beautiful maiden in his arms, but
+was horrified at the sight: he swung himself from the horse, and
+compelled it to stand. This seemed to him a new and terrible sorcery;
+but Helga likewise leaped from the saddle, and stood on the ground.
+The child's short garment reached only to her knee. She plucked the
+sharp knife from her girdle, and quick as lightning she rushed in upon
+the astonished priest.
+
+"Let me get at thee!" she screamed; "let me get at thee, and plunge
+this knife in thy body! Thou art pale as straw, thou beardless slave!"
+
+She pressed in upon him. They struggled together in a hard strife, but
+an invisible power seemed given to the Christian captive. He held her
+fast; and the old oak tree beneath which they stood came to his
+assistance; for its roots, which projected over the ground, held fast
+the maiden's feet that had become entangled in it. Quite close to them
+gushed a spring; and he sprinkled Helga's face and neck with the fresh
+water, and commanded the unclean spirit to come forth, and blessed her
+in the Christian fashion; but the water of faith has no power when the
+well-spring of faith flows not from within.
+
+And yet the Christian showed his power even now, and opposed more than
+the mere might of a man against the evil that struggled within the
+girl. His holy action seemed to overpower her: she dropped her hands,
+and gazed with frightened eyes and pale cheeks upon him who appeared
+to her a mighty magician learned in secret arts; he seemed to her to
+speak in a dark Runic tongue, and to be making cabalistic signs in the
+air. She would not have winked had he swung a sharp knife or a
+glittering axe against her; but she trembled when he signed her with
+the sign of the cross on her brow and her bosom, and she sat there
+like a tame bird with bowed head.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHRISTIAN PRIEST'S SPELL.]
+
+Then he spoke to her in gentle words of the kindly deed she had done
+for him in the past night, when she came to him in the form of the
+hideous frog, to loosen his bonds, and to lead him out to life and
+light; and he told her that she too was bound in closer bonds than
+those that had confined him, and that she should be released by his
+means. He would take her to Hedeby (Schleswig), to the holy Ansgarius,
+and yonder in the Christian city the spell that bound her would be
+loosed. But he would not let her sit before him on the horse, though
+of her own accord she offered to do so.
+
+"Thou must sit behind me, not before me," he said. "Thy magic beauty
+hath a power that comes of evil, and I fear it; and yet I feel that
+the victory is sure to him who hath faith."
+
+And he knelt down and prayed fervently. It seemed as though the
+woodland scenes were consecrated as a holy church by his prayer. The
+birds sang as though they belonged to the new congregation, the wild
+flowers smelt sweet as incense; and while he spoke the horse that had
+carried them both in headlong career stood still before the tall
+bramble bushes, and plucked at them, so that the ripe juicy berries
+fell down upon Helga's hands, offering themselves for her refreshment.
+
+Patiently she suffered the priest to lift her on the horse, and sat
+like a somnambulist, neither completely asleep nor wholly awake. The
+Christian bound two branches together with bark, in the form of a
+cross, which he held up high as they rode through the forest. The wood
+became thicker as they went on, and at last became a trackless
+wilderness.
+
+The wild sloe grew across the way, so that they had to ride round the
+bushes. The bubbling spring became not a stream but a standing marsh,
+round which likewise they were obliged to lead the horse. There was
+strength and refreshment in the cool forest breeze; and no small power
+lay in the gentle words, which were spoken in faith and in Christian
+love, from a strong inward yearning to lead the poor lost one into the
+way of light and life.
+
+They say the rain-drops can hollow the hard stone, and the waves of
+the sea can smooth and round the sharp edges of the rocks. Thus did
+the dew of mercy, that dropped upon Helga, smooth what was rough, and
+penetrate what was hard in her. The effects did not yet appear, nor
+was she aware of them herself; but doth the seed in the bosom of earth
+know, when the refreshing dew and the quickening sunbeams fall upon
+it, that it hath within itself the power of growth and blossoming? As
+the song of the mother penetrates into the heart of the child, and it
+babbles the words after her, without understanding their import, until
+they afterwards engender thought, and come forward in due time clearer
+and more clearly, so here also did the Word work, that is powerful to
+create.
+
+They rode forth from the dense forest, across the heath, and then
+again through pathless roads; and towards evening they encountered a
+band of robbers.
+
+[Illustration: HELGA AND THE PRIEST ATTACKED BY ROBBERS.]
+
+"Where hast thou stolen that beauteous maiden?" cried the robbers; and
+they seized the horse's bridle, and dragged the two riders from its
+back. The priest had no weapon save the knife he had taken from
+Helga; and with this he tried to defend himself. One of the robbers
+lifted his axe to slay him, but the young priest sprang aside and
+eluded the blow, which struck deep into the horse's neck, so that the
+blood spurted forth, and the creature sank down on the ground. Then
+Helga seemed suddenly to wake from her long reverie, and threw
+herself hastily upon the gasping animal. The priest stood before her
+to protect and defend her, but one of the robbers swung his iron
+hammer over the Christian's head, and brought it down with such a
+crash that blood and brains were scattered around, and the priest sank
+to the earth, dead.
+
+Then the robber's seized beautiful Helga by her white arms and her
+slender waist; but the sun went down, and its last ray disappeared at
+that moment, and she was changed into the form of a frog. A
+white-green mouth spread over half her face, her arms became thin and
+slimy, and broad hands with webbed fingers spread out upon them like
+fans. Then the robbers were seized with terror, and let her go. She
+stood, a hideous monster, among them; and as it is the nature of the
+frog to do, she hopped up high, and disappeared in the thicket. Then
+the robbers saw that this must be a bad prank of the spirit Loke, or
+the evil power of magic, and in great affright they hurried away from
+the spot.
+
+The full moon was already rising. Presently it shone with splendid
+radiance over the earth, and poor Helga crept forth from the thicket
+in the wretched frog's shape. She stood still beside the corpse of the
+priest and the carcase of the slain horse. She looked at them with
+eyes that appeared to weep, and from the frog-mouth came forth a
+croaking like the voice of a child bursting into tears. She leant
+first over the one, then over the other, brought water in her hollow
+hand, which had become larger and more capacious by the webbed skin,
+and poured it over them; but dead they were, and dead they would
+remain, she at last understood. Soon wild beasts would come and tear
+their dead bodies; but no, that must not be! so she dug up the earth
+as well as she could, in the endeavour to prepare a grave for them.
+She had nothing to work with but a stake and her two hands encumbered
+with the webbed skin that grew between the fingers, and which were
+torn by the labour, so that the blood flowed over them. At last she
+saw that her endeavours would not succeed. Then she brought water and
+washed the dead man's face, and covered it with fresh green leaves;
+she brought green boughs and laid them upon him, scattering dead
+leaves in the spaces between. Then she brought the heaviest stones she
+could carry and laid them over the dead body, stopping up the
+interstices with moss. And now she thought the grave-hill would be
+strong and secure. The night had passed away in this difficult
+work--the sun broke through the clouds, and beautiful Helga stood
+there in all her loveliness, with bleeding hands, and with the first
+tears flowing that had ever bedewed her maiden cheeks.
+
+[Illustration: HELGA IN THE TREE.]
+
+Then in this transformation it seemed as if two natures were striving
+within her. Her whole frame trembled, and she looked around, as if she
+had just awoke from a troubled dream. Then she ran towards the slender
+tree, clung to it for support, and in another moment she had climbed
+to the summit of the tree, and held fast. There she sat like a
+startled squirrel, and remained the whole day long in the silent
+solitude of the wood, where everything is quiet, and, as they say,
+dead. Butterflies fluttered around in sport, and in the neighbourhood
+were several ant-hills, each with its hundreds of busy little
+occupants moving briskly to and fro. In the air danced a number of
+gnats, swarm upon swarm, and hosts of buzzing flies, lady-birds, gold
+beetles, and other little winged creatures; the worm crept forth from
+the damp ground, the moles came out; but except these all was silent
+around--silent, and, as people say, dead--for they speak of things as
+they understand them. No one noticed Helga, but some flocks of crows,
+that flew screaming about the top of the tree on which she sat: the
+birds hopped close up to her on the twigs with pert curiosity; but
+when the glance of her eye fell upon them, it was a signal for their
+flight. But they could not understand her--nor, indeed, could she
+understand herself.
+
+When the evening twilight came on, and the sun was sinking, the time
+of her transformation roused her to fresh activity. She glided down
+from the tree, and as the last sunbeam vanished she stood in the
+wrinkled form of the frog, with the torn webbed skin on her hands; but
+her eyes now gleamed with a splendour of beauty that had scarcely been
+theirs when she wore her garb of loveliness, for they were a pair of
+pure, pious, maidenly eyes that shone out of the frog-face. They bore
+witness of depth of feeling, of the gentle human heart; and the
+beauteous eyes overflowed in tears, weeping precious drops that
+lightened the heart.
+
+On the sepulchral mound she had raised there yet lay the cross of
+boughs, the last work of him who slept beneath. Helga lifted up the
+cross, in pursuance of a sudden thought that came upon her. She
+planted it upon the burial mound, over the priest and the dead horse.
+The sorrowful remembrance of him called fresh tears into her eyes; and
+in this tender frame of mind she marked the same sign in the sand
+around the grave; and as she wrote the sign with both her hands, the
+webbed skin fell from them like a torn glove; and when she washed her
+hands in the woodland spring, and gazed in wonder at their snowy
+whiteness, she again made the holy sign in the air between herself and
+the dead man; then her lips trembled, the holy name that had been
+preached to her during the ride from the forest came to her mouth, and
+she pronounced it audibly.
+
+Then the frog-skin fell from her, and she was once more the beauteous
+maiden. But her head sank wearily, her tired limbs required rest, and
+she fell into a deep slumber.
+
+Her sleep, however, was short. Towards midnight she awoke. Before her
+stood the dead horse, beaming and full of life, which gleamed forth
+from his eyes and from his wounded neck; close beside the creature
+stood the murdered Christian priest, "more beautiful than Bulder," the
+Viking woman would have said; and yet he seemed to stand in a flame of
+fire.
+
+Such gravity, such an air of justice, such a piercing look shone out
+of his great mild eyes, that their glance seemed to penetrate every
+corner of her heart. Beautiful Helga trembled at the look, and her
+remembrance awoke as though she stood before the tribunal of
+judgment.
+
+[Illustration: HELGA IS TAKEN BACK TO THE MARSH.]
+
+Every good deed that had been done for her, every loving word that had
+been spoken, seemed endowed with life: she understood that it had been
+love that kept her here during the days of trial, during which the
+creature formed of dust and spirit, soul and earth, combats and
+struggles; she acknowledged that she had only followed the leading of
+temper, and had done nothing for herself; everything had been given
+her, everything had happened as it were by the interposition of
+Providence. She bowed herself humbly, confessing her own deep
+imperfection in the presence of the Power that can read every thought
+of the heart--and then the priest spoke.
+
+"Thou daughter of the moorland," he said, "out of the earth, out of
+the moor, thou camest; but from the earth thou shalt arise. I come
+from the land of the dead. Thou, too, shalt pass through the deep
+valleys into the beaming mountain region, where dwell mercy and
+completeness. I cannot lead thee to Hedeby, that thou mayest receive
+Christian baptism; for, first, thou must burst the veil of waters over
+the deep moorland, and draw forth the living source of thy being and
+of thy birth; thou must exercise thy faculties in deeds before the
+consecration can be given thee."
+
+And he lifted her upon the horse, and gave her a golden censer similar
+to the one she had seen in the Viking's castle. The open wound in the
+forehead of the slain Christian shone like a diadem. He took the cross
+from the grave and held it aloft. And now they rode through the air,
+over the rustling wood, over the hills where the old heroes lay
+buried, each on his dead war-horse; and the iron figures rose up and
+gallopped forth, and stationed themselves on the summits of the hills.
+The golden hoop on the forehead of each gleamed in the moonlight, and
+their mantles floated in the night breeze. The dragon that guards
+buried treasures likewise lifted up his head and gazed after the
+riders. The gnomes and wood-spirits peeped forth from beneath the
+hills and from between the furrows of the fields, and flitted to and
+fro with red, blue, and green torches, like the sparks in the ashes of
+a burnt paper.
+
+Over woodland and heath, over river and marsh they fled away, up to
+the wild moor; and over this they hovered in wide circles. The
+Christian priest held the cross aloft; it gleamed like gold; and from
+his lips dropped pious prayers. Beautiful Helga joined in the hymns he
+sang, like a child joining in its mother's song. She swung the censer,
+and a wondrous fragrance of incense streamed forth thence, so that the
+reeds and grass of the moor burst forth into blossom. Every germ came
+forth from the deep ground. All that had life lifted itself up. A veil
+of water-lilies spread itself forth like a carpet of wrought flowers,
+and upon this carpet lay a sleeping woman, young and beautiful. Helga
+thought it was her own likeness she saw upon the mirror of the calm
+waters. But it was her mother whom she beheld, the moor king's wife,
+the princess from the banks of the Nile.
+
+The dead priest commanded that the slumbering woman should be lifted
+upon the horse; but the horse sank under the burden, as though its
+body had been a cloth fluttering in the wind. But the holy sign gave
+strength to the airy phantom, and then the three rode from the moor to
+the firm land.
+
+[Illustration: HELGA MEETS WITH HER MOTHER IN THE MARSH.]
+
+Then the cock crowed in the Viking's castle, and the phantom shapes
+dissolved and floated away in air; but mother and daughter stood
+opposite each other.
+
+"Am I really looking at my own image from beneath the deep waters?"
+asked the mother.
+
+"Is it myself that I see reflected on the clear mirror?" exclaimed the
+daughter.
+
+And they approached one another, and embraced. The heart of the mother
+beat quickest, and she understood the quickening pulses.
+
+"My child! thou flower of my own heart! my lotos-flower of the deep
+waters!"
+
+And she embraced her child anew, and wept; and the tears were as a new
+baptism of life and love to Helga.
+
+"In the swan's plumage came I hither," said the mother; "and here also I
+threw off my dress of feathers. I sank through the shaking moorland, far
+down into the black slime, which closed like a wall around me. But soon I
+felt a fresher stream; a power drew me down, deeper and ever deeper. I felt
+the weight of sleep upon my eyelids; I slumbered, and dreams hovered round
+me. It seemed to me that I was again in the pyramid in Egypt, and yet the
+waving willow trunk that had frightened me up in the moor was ever before
+me. I looked at the clefts and wrinkles in the stem, and they shone forth
+in colours, and took the form of hieroglyphics: it was the case of the
+mummy at which I was gazing; at last the case burst, and forth stepped the
+thousand-year-old king, the mummied form, black as pitch, shining black as
+the wood-snail or the fat mud of the swamp; whether it was the marsh king
+or the mummy of the pyramids I knew not. He seized me in his arms, and I
+felt as if I must die. When I returned to consciousness a little bird was
+sitting on my bosom, beating with its wings, and twittering and singing.
+The bird flew away from me up towards the heavy, dark covering; but a long
+green band still fastened him to me. I heard and understood his longing
+tones: 'Freedom! Sunlight! to my father!' Then I thought of my father and
+the sunny land of my birth, my life, and my love; and I loosened the band
+and let the bird soar away home to the father. Since that hour I have
+dreamed no more. I have slept a sleep, a long and heavy sleep, till within
+this hour; harmony and incense awoke me and set me free."
+
+The green band from the heart of the mother to the bird's wings, where
+did it flutter now? whither had it been wafted? Only the stork had
+seen it. The band was the green stalk, the bow at the end, the
+beauteous flower, the cradle of the child that had now bloomed into
+beauty, and was once more resting on its mother's heart.
+
+And while the two were locked in each other's embrace, the old stork
+flew around them in smaller and smaller circles, and at length shot
+away in swift flight towards his nest, whence he brought out the
+swan-feather suits he had preserved there for years, throwing one to
+each of them, and the feathers closed around them, so that they soared
+up from the earth in the semblance of two white swans.
+
+"And now we will speak with one another," quoth stork-papa, "now we
+understand each other, though the beak of one bird is differently
+shaped from that of another. It happens more than fortunately that you
+came to-night. To-morrow we should have been gone--mother, myself, and
+the young ones; for we're flying southward. Yes, only look at me! I am
+an old friend from the land of the Nile, and mother has a heart larger
+than her beak. She always declared the princess would find a way to
+help herself; and I and the young ones carried the swan's feathers up
+here. But how glad I am! and how fortunate that I'm here still! At
+dawn of day we shall move hence, a great company of storks. We'll fly
+first, and do you follow us; thus you cannot miss your way; moreover,
+I and the youngsters will keep a sharp eye upon you."
+
+"And the lotos-flower which I was to bring with me," said the Egyptian
+princess, "she is flying by my side in the swan's plumage! I bring
+with me the flower of my heart; and thus the riddle has been read.
+Homeward! homeward!"
+
+But Helga declared she could not quit the Danish land before she had
+once more seen her foster-mother, the affectionate Viking woman. Every
+beautiful recollection, every kind word, every tear that her
+foster-mother had wept for her, rose up in her memory, and in that
+moment she almost felt as if she loved the Viking woman best of all.
+
+"Yes, we must go to the Viking's castle," said stork-papa; "mother and
+the youngsters are waiting for us there. How they will turn up their
+eyes and flap their wings! Yes, you see mother doesn't speak
+much--she's short and dry, but she means all the better. I'll begin
+clapping at once, that they may know we're coming." And stork-papa
+clapped in first-rate style, and they all flew away towards the
+Viking's castle.
+
+In the castle every one was sunk in deep sleep. The Viking's wife had
+not retired to rest until it was late. She was anxious about Helga,
+who had vanished with a Christian priest three days before: she knew
+Helga must have assisted him in his flight, for it was the girl's
+horse that had been missed from the stables; but how all this had been
+effected was a mystery to her. The Viking woman had heard of the
+miracles told of the Christian priest, and which were said to be
+wrought by him and by those who believed in his words and followed
+him. Her passing thoughts formed themselves into a dream, and it
+seemed to her that she was still lying awake on her couch, and that
+deep darkness reigned without. The storm drew near: she heard the sea
+roaring and rolling to the east and to the west, like the waves of the
+North Sea and the Cattegat. The immense snake which was believed to
+surround the span of the earth in the depths of the ocean was
+trembling in convulsions; she dreamed that the night of the fall of
+the gods had come--Ragnarok, as the heathen called the last day, when
+everything was to pass away, even the great gods themselves. The
+war-trumpet sounded, and the gods rode over the rainbow, clad in
+steel, to fight the last battle. The winged Valkyrs rode before them,
+and the dead warriors closed the train. The whole firmament was ablaze
+with northern lights, and yet the darkness seemed to predominate. It
+was a terrible hour.
+
+And close by the terrified Viking woman Helga seemed to be crouching
+on the floor in the hideous frog form, trembling and pressing close to
+her foster-mother, who took her on her lap and embraced her
+affectionately, hideous though she was. The air resounded with the
+blows of clubs and swords, and with the hissing of arrows, as if a
+hailstorm were passing across it. The hour was come when earth and sky
+were to burst, the stars to fall, and all things to be swallowed up in
+Surtur's sea of fire; but she knew that there would be a new heaven
+and a new earth, that the corn fields then would wave where now the
+ocean rolled over the desolate tracts of sand, and that the
+unutterable God would reign; and up to Him rose Bulder the gentle, the
+affectionate, delivered from the kingdom of the dead; he came; the
+Viking woman saw him, and recognized his countenance; it was that of
+the captive Christian priest. "White Christian!" she cried aloud, and
+with these words she pressed a kiss upon the forehead of the hideous
+frog-child. Then the frog-skin fell off, and Helga stood revealed in
+all her beauty, lovely and gentle as she had never appeared, and with
+beaming eyes. She kissed her foster-mother's hands, blessed her for
+all the care and affection lavished during the days of bitterness and
+trial, for the thought she had awakened and cherished in her, for
+naming the name, which she repeated, "White Christian;" and beauteous
+Helga arose in the form of a mighty swan, and spread her white wings
+with a rushing like the sound of a troop of birds of passage winging
+their way through the air.
+
+The Viking woman woke; and she heard the same noise without still
+continuing. She knew it was the time for the storks to depart, and
+that it must be those birds whose wings she heard. She wished to see
+them once more, and to bid them farewell as they set forth on their
+journey. Therefore she rose from her couch and stepped out upon the
+threshold, and on the top of the gable she saw stork ranged behind
+stork, and around the castle, over the high trees, flew bands of
+storks wheeling in wide circles; but opposite the threshold where she
+stood, by the well where Helga had often sat and alarmed her with her
+wildness, sat two white swans gazing at her with intelligent eyes. And
+she remembered her dream, which still filled her soul as if it were
+reality. She thought of Helga in the shape of a swan, and of the
+Christian priest; and suddenly she felt her heart rejoice within her.
+
+[Illustration: THE DISGUISED PRINCESSES BID FAREWELL TO THE VIKING
+WOMAN.]
+
+The swans flapped their wings and arched their necks, as if they would
+send her a greeting, and the Viking's wife spread out her arms
+towards them, as if she felt all this; and smiled through her tears,
+and then stood sunk in deep thought.
+
+Then all the storks arose, flapping their wings and clapping with
+their beaks, to start on their voyage towards the South.
+
+"We will not wait for the swans," said stork-mamma: "if they want to
+go with us they had better come. We can't sit here till the plovers
+start. It is a fine thing, after all, to travel in this way, in
+families, not like the finches and partridges, where the male and
+female birds fly in separate bodies, which appears to me a very
+unbecoming thing. What are yonder swans flapping their wings for?"
+
+"Well, everyone flies in his own fashion," said stork-papa: "the swans
+in an oblique line, the cranes in a triangle, and the plovers in a
+snake's line."
+
+"Don't talk about snakes while we are flying up here," said
+stork-mamma. "It only puts ideas into the children's heads which can't
+be gratified."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Are those the high mountains of which I heard tell?" asked Helga, in
+the swan's plumage.
+
+"They are storm clouds driving on beneath us," replied her mother.
+
+"What are yonder white clouds that rise so high?" asked Helga again.
+
+"Those are the mountains covered with perpetual snow which you see
+yonder," replied her mother.
+
+And they flew across the lofty Alps towards the blue Mediterranean.
+
+"Africa's land! Egypt's strand!" sang, rejoicingly, in her swan's
+plumage, the daughter of the Nile, as from the lofty air she saw her
+native land looming in the form of a yellowish wavy stripe of shore.
+
+And all the birds caught sight of it, and hastened their flight.
+
+"I can scent the Nile mud and wet frogs," said stork-mamma; "I begin
+to feel quite hungry. Yes; now you shall taste something nice; and you
+will see the maraboo bird, the crane, and the ibis. They all belong to
+our family, though they are not nearly so beautiful as we. They give
+themselves great airs, especially the ibis. He has been quite spoilt
+by the Egyptians, for they make a mummy of him and stuff him with
+spices. I would rather be stuffed with live frogs, and so would you,
+and so you shall. Better have something in one's inside while one is
+alive than to be made a fuss with after one is dead. That's my
+opinion, and I am always right."
+
+"Now the storks are come," said the people in the rich house on the
+banks of the Nile, where the royal lord lay in the open hall on the
+downy cushions, covered with a leopard skin, not alive and yet not
+dead, but waiting and hoping for the lotos-flower from the deep
+moorland, in the far North. Friends and servants stood around his
+couch.
+
+[Illustration: THE KING OF EGYPT'S RECOVERY.]
+
+And into the hall flew two beauteous swans. They had come with the
+storks. They threw off their dazzling white plumage, and two lovely
+female forms were revealed, as like each other as two dewdrops. They
+bent over the old, pale, sick man, they put back their long hair, and
+while Helga bent over her grandfather, his white cheeks reddened, his
+eyes brightened, and life came back to his wasted limbs. The old man
+rose up cheerful and well; and daughter and granddaughter embraced him
+joyfully, as if they were giving him a morning greeting after a long
+heavy dream.
+
+And joy reigned through the whole house, and likewise in the stork's
+nest, though there the chief cause was certainly the good food,
+especially the numberless frogs, which seemed to spring up in heaps
+out of the ground; and while the learned men wrote down hastily, in
+flying characters, a sketch of the history of the two princesses, and
+of the flower of health that had been a source of joy for the home and
+the land, the stork pair told the story to their family in their own
+fashion, but not till all had eaten their fill, otherwise the
+youngsters would have found something more interesting to do than to
+listen to stories.
+
+"Now, at last, you will become something," whispered stork-mamma,
+"there's no doubt about that."
+
+"What should I become?" asked stork-papa. "What have I done? Nothing
+at all!"
+
+"You have done more than the rest! But for you and the youngsters the
+two princesses would never have seen Egypt again, or have effected the
+old man's cure. You will turn out something! They must certainly give
+you a doctor's degree, and our youngsters will inherit it, and so will
+their children after them, and so on. You already look like an
+Egyptian doctor; at least in my eyes."
+
+"I cannot quite repeat the words as they were spoken," said
+stork-papa, who had listened from the roof to the report of these
+events, made by the learned men, and was now telling it again to his
+own family. "What they said was so confused, it was so wise and
+learned, that they immediately received rank and presents--even the
+head cook received an especial mark of distinction--probably for the
+soup."
+
+"And what did you receive?" asked stork-mamma. "Surely they ought not
+to forget the most important person of all, and you are certainly he!
+The learned men have done nothing throughout the whole affair but used
+their tongues; but you will doubtless receive what is due to you."
+
+Late in the night, when the gentle peace of sleep rested upon the now
+happy house, there was one who still watched. It was not stork-papa,
+though he stood upon one leg, and slept on guard--it was Helga who
+watched. She bowed herself forward over the balcony, and looked into
+the clear air, gazed at the great gleaming stars, greater and purer in
+their lustre than she had ever seen them in the North, and yet the
+same orbs. She thought of the Viking woman in the wild moorland, of
+the gentle eyes of her foster-mother, and of the tears which the kind
+soul had wept over the poor frog-child that now lived in splendour
+under the gleaming stars, in the beauteous spring air on the banks of
+the Nile. She thought of the love that dwelt in the breast of the
+heathen woman, the love that had been shown to a wretched creature,
+hateful in human form, and hideous in its transformation. She looked
+at the gleaming stars, and thought of the glory that had shone upon
+the forehead of the dead man, when she flew with him through the
+forest and across the moorland; sounds passed through her memory,
+words she had heard pronounced as they rode onward, and when she was
+borne wondering and trembling through the air, words from the great
+Fountain of love that embraces all human kind.
+
+Yes, great things had been achieved and won! Day and night beautiful
+Helga was absorbed in the contemplation of the great sum of her
+happiness, and stood in the contemplation of it like a child that
+turns hurriedly from the giver to gaze on the splendours of the gifts
+it has received. She seemed to lose herself in the increasing
+happiness, in contemplation of what might come, of what would come.
+Had she not been borne by miracle to greater and greater bliss? And in
+this idea she one day lost herself so completely, that she thought no
+more of the Giver. It was the exuberance of youthful courage,
+unfolding its wings for a bold flight! Her eyes were gleaming with
+courage, when suddenly a loud noise in the courtyard below recalled
+her thoughts from their wandering flight. There she saw two great
+ostriches running round rapidly in a narrow circle. Never before had
+she seen such creatures--great clumsy things they were, with wings
+that looked as if they had been clipped, and the birds themselves
+looking as if they had suffered violence of some kind; and now for the
+first time she heard the legend which the Egyptians tell of the
+ostrich.
+
+Once, they say, the ostriches were a beautiful, glorious race of
+birds, with strong large wings; and one evening the larger birds of
+the forest said to the ostrich, "Brother, shall we fly to-morrow, _God
+willing_, to the river to drink?" And the ostrich answered, "I will."
+At daybreak, accordingly, they winged their flight from thence, flying
+first up on high, towards the sun, that gleamed like the eye of
+God--higher and higher, the ostrich far in advance of all the other
+birds. Proudly the ostrich flew straight towards the light, boasting
+of his strength, and not thinking of the Giver or saying, "God
+willing!" Then suddenly the avenging angel drew aside the veil from
+the flaming ocean of sunlight, and in a moment the wings of the proud
+bird were scorched and shrivelled up, and he sank miserably to the
+ground. Since that time, the ostrich has never again been able to
+raise himself in the air, but flees timidly along the ground, and runs
+round in a narrow circle. And this is a warning for us men, that in
+all our thoughts and schemes, in all our doings and devices, we should
+say, "God willing." And Helga bowed her head thoughtfully and gravely,
+and looked at the circling ostrich, noticing its timid fear, and its
+stupid pleasure at sight of its own great shadow cast upon the white
+sunlit wall. And seriousness struck its roots deep into her mind and
+heart. A rich life in present and future happiness was given and won;
+and what was yet to come? the best of all, "_God willing_."
+
+In early spring, when the storks flew again towards the North,
+beautiful Helga took off her golden bracelet, and scratched her name
+upon it; and beckoning to the stork-father, she placed the golden hoop
+around his neck, and begged him to deliver it to the Viking woman, so
+that the latter might see that her adopted daughter was well, and had
+not forgotten her.
+
+"That's heavy to carry," thought the stork-papa, when he had the
+golden ring round his neck; "but gold and honour are not to be flung
+into the street. The stork brings good fortune; they'll be obliged to
+acknowledge that over yonder."
+
+"You lay gold and I lay eggs," said the stork-mamma. "But with you
+it's only once in a way, whereas I lay eggs every year; but neither of
+us is appreciated--that's very disheartening."
+
+"Still one has one's inward consciousness, mother," replied
+stork-papa.
+
+"But you can't hang that round your neck," stork-mamma retorted; "and
+it won't give you a good wind or a good meal."
+
+The little nightingale, singing yonder in the tamarind tree, will soon
+be going north too. Helga the fair had often heard the sweet bird sing
+up yonder by the wild moor; now she wanted to give it a message to
+carry, for she had learned the language of birds when she flew in the
+swan's plumage; she had often conversed with stork and with swallow,
+and she knew the nightingale would understand her. So she begged the
+little bird to fly to the beech wood, on the peninsula of Jutland,
+where the grave-hill had been reared with stones and branches, and
+begged the nightingale to persuade all other little birds that they
+might build their nests around the place, so that the song of birds
+should resound over that sepulchre for evermore. And the nightingale
+flew away--and time flew away.
+
+[Illustration: A MESSAGE TO THE VIKING WOMAN.]
+
+In autumn the eagle stood upon the pyramid and saw a stately train of
+richly laden camels approaching, and richly attired armed men on
+foaming Arab steeds, shining white as silver, with pink trembling
+nostrils, and great thick manes hanging down almost over their slender
+legs. Wealthy guests, a royal prince of Arabia, handsome as a prince
+should be, came into the proud mansion on whose roof the stork's nests
+now stood empty: those who had inhabited the nest were away now, in
+the far north; but they would soon return. And, indeed, they returned
+on that very day that was so rich in joy and gladness. Here a marriage
+was celebrated, and fair Helga was the bride, shining in jewels and
+silk. The bridegroom was the young Arab prince, and bride and
+bridegroom sat together at the upper end of the table, between mother
+and grandfather.
+
+But her gaze was not fixed upon the bridegroom, with his manly
+sun-browned cheeks, round which a black beard curled; she gazed not at
+his dark fiery eyes that were fixed upon her--but far away at a
+gleaming star that shone down from the sky.
+
+Then strong wings were heard beating the air. The storks were coming
+home, and however tired the old stork pair might be from the journey,
+and however much they needed repose, they did not fail to come down at
+once to the balustrades of the verandah; for they knew what feast was
+being celebrated. Already on the frontier of the land they had heard
+that Helga had caused their figures to be painted on the wall--for did
+they not belong to her history?
+
+"That's very pretty and suggestive," said stork-papa.
+
+"But it's very little," observed stork-mamma. "They could not possibly
+have done less."
+
+And when Helga saw them, she rose and came on to the verandah, to
+stroke the backs of the storks. The old pair waved their heads and
+bowed their necks, and even the youngest among the young ones felt
+highly honoured by the reception.
+
+And Helga looked up to the gleaming star, which seemed to glow purer
+and purer; and between the star and herself there floated a form,
+purer than the air, and visible through it: it floated quite close to
+her. It was the spirit of the dead Christian priest; he too was coming
+to her wedding feast--coming from heaven.
+
+"The glory and brightness yonder outshines everything that is known on
+earth!" he said.
+
+And fair Helga begged so fervently, so beseechingly, as she had never
+yet prayed, that it might be permitted her to gaze in there for one
+single moment, that she might be allowed to cast but a single glance
+into the brightness that beamed in the kingdom.
+
+Then he bore her up amid splendour and glory. Not only around her, but
+within her, sounded voices and beamed a brightness that words cannot
+express.
+
+"Now we must go back; thou wilt be missed," he said.
+
+"Only one more look!" she begged. "But one short minute more!"
+
+"We must go back to the earth. The guests will all depart."
+
+"Only one more look--the last."
+
+And Helga stood again in the verandah; but the marriage lights without
+had vanished, and the lamps in the hall were extinguished, and the
+storks were gone--nowhere a guest to be seen--no bridegroom--all
+seemed to have been swept away in those few short minutes!
+
+Then a great dread came upon her. Alone she went through the empty
+great hall into the next chamber. Strange warriors slept yonder. She
+opened a side door which led into her own chamber; and, as she thought
+to step in there, she suddenly found herself in the garden; but yet it
+had not looked thus here before--the sky gleamed red--the morning dawn
+was come.
+
+Three minutes only in heaven and a whole night on earth had passed
+away!
+
+Then she saw the storks again. She called to them, spoke their
+language; and stork-papa turned his head towards her, listened to her
+words, and drew near.
+
+"You speak our language," he said; "what do you wish? Why do you
+appear here--you, a strange woman?"
+
+"It is I--it is Helga--dost thou not know me? Three minutes ago we
+were speaking together yonder in the verandah!"
+
+"That's a mistake," said the stork; "you must have dreamt all that!"
+
+"No, no!" she persisted. And she reminded him of the Viking's castle,
+and of the great ocean, and of the journey hither.
+
+Then stork-papa winked with his eyes, and said:
+
+"Why, that's an old story, which I heard from the time of my
+great-grandfather. There certainly was here in Egypt a princess of
+that kind from the Danish land, but she vanished on the evening of her
+wedding-day, many hundred years ago, and never came back! You may read
+about it yourself yonder on the monument in the garden; there you'll
+find swans and storks sculptured, and at the top you are yourself in
+white marble!"
+
+And thus it was. Helga saw it, and understood it, and sank on her
+knees.
+
+The sun burst forth in glory; and as, in time of yore, the frog-shape
+had vanished in its beams, and the beautiful form had stood displayed,
+so now in the light a beauteous form, clearer, purer than air--a beam
+of brightness--flew up into heaven!
+
+The body crumbled to dust; and a faded lotos-flower lay on the spot
+where Helga had stood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, that's a new ending to the story," said stork-papa. "I had
+certainly not expected it. But I like it very well."
+
+"But what will the young ones say to it?" said stork-mamma.
+
+"Yes, certainly, that's the important point," replied he.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST DREAM OF THE OLD OAK TREE.
+
+A CHRISTMAS TALE.
+
+
+In the forest, high up on the steep shore, hard by the open sea coast,
+stood a very old oak tree. It was exactly three hundred and sixty-five
+years old, but that long time was not more for the tree than just as
+many days would be to us men. We wake by day and sleep through the
+night, and then we have our dreams: it is different with the tree,
+which keeps awake through three seasons of the year, and does not get
+its sleep till winter comes. Winter is its time for rest, its night
+after the long day which is called spring, summer, and autumn.
+
+On many a warm summer day the Ephemera, the fly that lives but for a
+day, had danced around his crown--had lived, enjoyed, and felt happy;
+and then rested for a moment in quiet bliss the tiny creature, on one
+of the great fresh oak leaves; and then the tree always said:
+
+"Poor little thing! Your whole life is but a single day! How very
+short! It's quite melancholy!"
+
+"Melancholy! Why do you say that?" the Ephemera would then always
+reply. "It's wonderfully bright, warm, and beautiful all around me,
+and that makes me rejoice!"
+
+"But only one day, and then it's all done!"
+
+"Done!" repeated the Ephemera. "What's the meaning of _done_? Are you
+_done_, too?"
+
+"No; I shall perhaps live for thousands of your days, and my day is
+whole seasons long! It's something so long, that you can't at all
+manage to reckon it out."
+
+"No? then I don't understand you. You say you have thousands of my
+days; but I have thousands of moments, in which I can be merry and
+happy. Does all the beauty of this world cease when you die?"
+
+"No," replied the Tree; "it will certainly last much longer--far
+longer than I can possibly think."
+
+"Well, then, we have the same time, only that we reckon differently."
+
+And the Ephemera danced and floated in the air, and rejoiced in her
+delicate wings of gauze and velvet, and rejoiced in the balmy breezes
+laden with the fragrance of meadows and of wild roses and
+elder-flowers, of the garden hedges, wild thyme, and mint, and
+daisies; the scent of these was all so strong that the Ephemera was
+almost intoxicated. The day was long and beautiful, full of joy and of
+sweet feeling, and when the sun sank low the little fly felt very
+agreeably tired of all its happiness and enjoyment. The delicate wings
+would not carry it any more, and quietly and slowly it glided down
+upon the soft grass blade, nodded its head as well as it could nod,
+and went quietly to sleep--and was dead.
+
+"Poor little Ephemera!" said the Oak. "That was a terribly short
+life!"
+
+And on every summer day the same dance was repeated, the same question
+and answer, and the same sleep. The same thing was repeated through
+whole generations of ephemera, and all of them felt equally merry and
+equally happy.
+
+The Oak stood there awake through the spring morning, the noon of
+summer, and the evening of autumn; and its time of rest, its night,
+was coming on apace. Winter was approaching.
+
+Already the storms were singing their "good night, good night!" Here
+fell a leaf, and there fell a leaf.
+
+"We'll rock you, and dandle you! Go to sleep, go to sleep! We sing you
+to sleep, we shake you to sleep, but it does you good in your old
+twigs, does it not? They seem to crack for very joy! Sleep sweetly,
+sleep sweetly! It's your three hundred and sixty-fifth night. Properly
+speaking, you're only a stripling as yet! Sleep sweetly! The clouds
+strew down snow, there will be quite a coverlet, warm and protecting,
+around your feet. Sweet sleep to you, and pleasant dreams!"
+
+And the Oak Tree stood there, denuded of all its leaves, to sleep
+through the long winter, and to dream many a dream, always about
+something that had happened to it, just as in the dreams of men.
+
+The great Oak had once been small--indeed, an acorn had been its
+cradle. According to human computation, it was now in its fourth
+century. It was the greatest and best tree in the forest; its crown
+towered far above all the other trees, and could be descried from
+afar across the sea, so that it served as a landmark to the sailors:
+the tree had no idea how many eyes were in the habit of seeking it.
+High up in its green summit the wood-pigeon built her nest, and the
+cuckoo sat in its boughs, and sang his song; and in autumn, when the
+leaves looked like thin plates of copper, the birds of passage came
+and rested there, before they flew away across the sea; but now it was
+winter, and the tree stood there leafless, so that every one could see
+how gnarled and crooked the branches were that shot forth from its
+trunk. Crows and rooks came and took their seat by turns in the
+boughs, and spoke of the hard times which were beginning, and of the
+difficulty of getting a living in winter.
+
+It was just at the holy Christmas time, when the tree dreamed its most
+glorious dream.
+
+The tree had a distinct feeling of the festive time, and fancied he
+heard the bells ringing from the churches all around; and yet it
+seemed as if it were a fine summer's day, mild and warm. Fresh and
+green he spread out his mighty crown; the sunbeams played among the
+twigs and the leaves; the air was full of the fragrance of herbs and
+blossoms; gay butterflies chased each other to and fro. The ephemeral
+insects danced as if all the world were created merely for them to
+dance and be merry in. All that the tree had experienced for years and
+years, and that had happened around him, seemed to pass by him again,
+as in a festive pageant. He saw the knights of ancient days ride by
+with their noble dames on gallant steeds, with plumes waving in their
+bonnets and falcons on their wrists. The hunting horn sounded, and the
+dogs barked. He saw hostile warriors in coloured jerkins and with
+shining weapons, with spear and halbert, pitching their tents and
+striking them again. The watch-fires flamed up anew, and men sang and
+slept under the branches of the tree. He saw loving couples meeting
+near his trunk, happily, in the moonshine; and they cut the initials
+of their names in the grey-green bark of his stem. Once--but long
+years had rolled by since then--citherns and AEolian harps had been
+hung up on his boughs by merry wanderers, now they hung there again,
+and once again they sounded in tones of marvellous sweetness. The
+wood-pigeons cooed, as if they were telling what the tree felt in all
+this, and the cuckoo called out to tell him how many summer days he
+had yet to live.
+
+Then it appeared to him as if new life were rippling down into the
+remotest fibre of his root, and mounting up into his highest branches,
+to the tops of the leaves. The tree felt that he was stretching and
+spreading himself, and through his root he felt that there was life
+and motion even in the ground itself. He felt his strength increase,
+he grew higher, his stem shot up unceasingly, and he grew more and
+more, his crown became fuller, and spread out; and in proportion as
+the tree grew, he felt his happiness increase, and his joyous hope
+that he should reach even higher--quite up to the warm brilliant sun.
+
+[Illustration: THE LOVERS AT THE OLD OAK TREE.]
+
+Already had he grown high above the clouds, which floated past beneath
+his crown like dark troops of passage-birds, or like great white
+swans. And every leaf of the tree had the gift of sight, as if it had
+eyes wherewith to see; the stars became visible in broad daylight,
+great and sparkling; each of them sparkled like a pair of eyes, mild
+and clear. They recalled to his memory well-known gentle eyes, eyes of
+children, eyes of lovers who had met beneath his boughs.
+
+It was a marvellous spectacle, and one full of happiness and joy! And
+yet amid all this happiness the tree felt a longing, a yearning desire
+that all other trees of the wood beneath him, and all the bushes, and
+herbs, and flowers, might be able to rise with him, that they too
+might see this splendour, and experience this joy. The great majestic
+oak was not quite happy in his happiness, while he had not them all,
+great and little, about him; and this feeling of yearning trembled
+through his every twig, through his every leaf, warmly and fervently
+as through a human heart.
+
+The crown of the tree waved to and fro, as if he sought something in
+his silent longing, and he looked down. Then he felt the fragrance of
+thyme, and soon afterwards the more powerful scent of honeysuckle and
+violets; and he fancied he heard the cuckoo answering him.
+
+Yes, through the clouds the green summits of the forest came peering
+up, and under himself the Oak saw the other trees, as they grew and
+raised themselves aloft. Bushes and herbs shot up high, and some tore
+themselves up bodily by the roots to rise the quicker. The birch was
+the quickest of all. Like a white streak of lightning, its slender
+stem shot upwards in a zigzag line, and the branches spread around it
+like green gauze and like banners; the whole woodland natives, even to
+the brown plumed rushes, grew up with the rest, and the birds came
+too, and sang; and on the grass blade that fluttered aloft like a long
+silken ribbon into the air, sat the grasshopper cleaning his wings
+with his leg; the May beetles hummed, and the bees murmured, and every
+bird sang in his appointed manner; all was song and sound of gladness
+up into the high heaven.
+
+"But the little blue flower by the water-side, where is that?" said
+the Oak; "and the purple bell-flower and the daisy?" for, you see, the
+old Oak Tree wanted to have them all about him.
+
+"We are here--we are here!" was shouted and sung in reply.
+
+"But the beautiful thyme of last summer--and in the last year there
+was certainly a place here covered with lilies of the valley! and the
+wild apple tree that blossomed so splendidly! and all the glory of the
+wood that came year by year--if that had only just been born, it might
+have been here now!"
+
+"We are here, we are here!" replied voices still higher in the air. It
+seemed as if they had flown on before.
+
+"Why, that is beautiful, indescribably beautiful!" exclaimed the old
+Oak Tree, rejoicingly. "I have them all around me, great and small;
+not one has been forgotten! How can so much happiness be imagined? How
+can it be possible?"
+
+"In heaven, in the better land, it can be imagined, and it is
+possible!" the reply sounded through the air.
+
+And the old tree, who grew on and on, felt how his roots were tearing
+themselves free from the ground.
+
+"That's right, that's better than all!" said the tree. "Now no fetters
+hold me! I can fly up now, to the very highest, in glory and in light!
+And all my beloved ones are with me, great and small--all of them,
+all!"
+
+That was the dream of the old Oak Tree; and while he dreamt thus a
+mighty storm came rushing over land and sea--at the holy Christmas
+tide. The sea rolled great billows towards the shore; there was a
+cracking and crashing in the tree--his root was torn out of the ground
+in the very moment while he was dreaming that his root freed itself
+from the earth. He fell. His three hundred and sixty-five years were
+now as the single day of the Ephemera.
+
+On the morning of the Christmas festival, when the sun rose, the storm
+had subsided. From all the churches sounded the festive bells, and
+from every hearth, even from the smallest hut, arose the smoke in blue
+clouds, like the smoke from the altars of the druids of old at the
+feast of thanks offerings. The sea became gradually calm, and on board
+a great ship in the offing, that had fought successfully with the
+tempest, all the flags were displayed, as a token of joy suitable to
+the festive day.
+
+"The tree is down--the old Oak Tree, our landmark on the coast!" said
+the sailors. "It fell in the storm of last night. Who can replace it?
+No one can."
+
+This was the funeral oration, short but well meant, that was given to
+the tree, which lay stretched on the snowy covering on the sea shore;
+and over its prostrate form sounded the notes of a song from the ship,
+a carol of the joys of Christmas, and of the redemption of the soul of
+man by His blood, and of eternal life.
+
+    "Sing, sing aloud, this blessed morn--
+    It is fulfilled--and He is born,
+    Oh, joy without compare!
+        Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"
+
+Thus sounded the old psalm tune, and every one on board the ship felt
+lifted up in his own way, through the song and the prayer, just as the
+old tree had felt lifted up in its last, its most beauteous dream in
+the Christmas night.
+
+
+
+
+THE BELL-DEEP.
+
+
+"Ding-dong! ding-dong!" It sounds up from the "bell-deep," in the
+Odense-Au. Every child in the old town of Odense, on the island of
+Fuenen, knows the Au, which washes the gardens round about the town,
+and flows on under the wooden bridges from the dam to the water-mill.
+In the Au grow the yellow water-lilies and brown feathery reeds; the
+dark velvety flag grows there, high and thick; old, decayed willows,
+slanting and tottering, hang far out over the stream beside the monks'
+meadow and by the bleaching-ground; but opposite there are gardens
+upon gardens, each different from the rest, some with pretty flowers
+and bowers like little dolls' pleasure-grounds, often displaying only
+cabbage and other kitchen plants; and here and there the gardens
+cannot be seen at all, for the great elder trees that spread
+themselves out by the bank, and hang far out over the streaming
+waters, which are deeper here and there than an oar can fathom.
+Opposite the old nunnery is the deepest place, which is called the
+"bell-deep," and there dwells the old water spirit, the "Au-mann."
+This spirit sleeps through the day while the sun shines down upon the
+water; but in starry and moonlit nights he shows himself. He is very
+old: grandmother says that she has heard her own grandmother tell of
+him; he is said to lead a solitary life, and to have nobody with whom
+he can converse save the great old church bell. Once the bell hung in
+the church tower; but now there is no trace left of the tower or of
+the church, which was called St. Alban's.
+
+"Ding-dong! ding-dong!" sounded the bell, when the tower still stood
+there; and one evening, while the sun was setting, and the bell was
+swinging away bravely, it broke loose and came flying down through the
+air, the brilliant metal shining in the ruddy beam.
+
+"Ding-dong! ding-dong! Now I'll retire to rest!" sang the bell, and
+flew down into the Odense-Au where it is deepest; and that is why the
+place is called the "bell-deep." But the bell got neither rest nor
+sleep. Down in the Au-mann's haunt it sounds and rings, so that the
+tones sometimes pierce upward through the waters; and many people
+maintain that its strains forebode the death of some one; but that is
+not true, for then the bell is only talking with the Au-mann, who is
+now no longer alone.
+
+And what is the bell telling? It is old, very old, as we have already
+observed; it was there long before grandmother's grandmother was born;
+and yet it is but a child in comparison with the Au-mann, who is an
+old quiet personage, an oddity, with his hose of eel-skin, and his
+scaly jacket with the yellow lilies for buttons, and a wreath of reed
+in his hair and seaweed in his beard; but he looks very pretty for all
+that.
+
+[Illustration: THE AU-MANN LISTENING TO THE BELL.]
+
+What the bell tells? To repeat it all would require years and days;
+for year by year it is telling the old stories, sometimes short ones,
+sometimes long ones, according to its whim; it tells of old times, of
+the dark hard times, thus:
+
+"In the church of St. Alban, the monk mounted up into the tower. He
+was young and handsome, but thoughtful exceedingly. He looked through
+the loophole out upon the Odense-Au, when the bed of the water was yet
+broad, and the monks' meadow was still a lake; he looked out over it,
+and over the rampart, and over the nuns' hill opposite, where the
+convent lay, and the light gleamed forth from the nun's cell; he had
+known the nun right well, and he thought of her, and his heart beat
+quicker as he thought. Ding-dong! ding-dong!"
+
+Yes, this was the story the bell told.
+
+"Into the tower came also the dapper man-servant of the bishop; and
+when I, the bell, who am made of metal, rang hard and loud, and swung
+to and fro, I might have beaten out his brains. He sat down close
+under me, and played with two little sticks as if they had been a
+stringed instrument; and he sang to it. 'Now I may sing it out aloud,
+though at other times I may not whisper it. I may sing of everything
+that is kept concealed behind lock and bars. Yonder it is cold and
+wet. The rats are eating her up alive! Nobody knows of it! Nobody
+hears of it! Not even now, for the bell is ringing and singing its
+loud Ding-dong! ding-dong.'
+
+"There was a king in those days; they called him Canute. He bowed
+himself before bishop and monk; but when he offended the free peasants
+with heavy taxes and hard words, they seized their weapons and put him
+to flight like a wild beast. He sought shelter in the church, and shut
+gate and door behind him. The violent band surrounded the church; I
+heard tell of it. The crows, ravens, and magpies started up in terror
+at the yelling and shouting that sounded around. They flew into the
+tower and out again, they looked down upon the throng below, and they
+also looked into the windows of the church, and screamed out aloud
+what they saw there. King Canute knelt before the altar in prayer, his
+brothers Eric and Benedict stood by him as a guard with drawn swords;
+but the king's servant, the treacherous Blake, betrayed his master;
+the throng in front of the church knew where they could hit the king,
+and one of them flung a stone through a pane of glass, and the king
+lay there dead! The cries and screams of the savage horde and of the
+birds sounded through the air, and I joined in it also; for I sang
+'Ding-dong! ding-dong!'
+
+"The church bell hangs high and looks far around, and sees the birds
+around it, and understands their language; the wind roars in upon it
+through windows and loopholes; and the wind knows everything, for he
+gets it from the air, which encircles all things, and the church bell
+understands his tongue, and rings it out into the world, 'Ding-dong!
+ding-dong!'
+
+"But it was too much for me to hear and to know; I was not able any
+longer to ring it out. I became so tired, so heavy, that the beam
+broke, and I flew out into the gleaming Au where the water is
+deepest, and where the Au-mann lives, solitary and alone; and year by
+year I tell him what I have heard and what I know. Ding-dong!
+ding-dong!"
+
+Thus it sounds complainingly out of the bell-deep in the Odense-Au:
+that is what grandmother told us.
+
+But the schoolmaster says that there was not any bell that rung down
+there, for that it could not do so; and that no Au-mann dwelt yonder,
+for there was no Au-mann at all! And when all the other church bells
+are sounding sweetly, he says that it is not really the bells that are
+sounding, but that it is the air itself which sends forth the notes;
+and grandmother said to us that the bell itself said it was the air
+who told it him, consequently they are agreed on that point, and this
+much is sure. "Be cautious, cautious, and take good heed to thyself,"
+they both say.
+
+The air knows everything. It is around us, it is in us, it talks of
+our thoughts and of our deeds, and it speaks longer of them than does
+the bell down in the depths of the Odense-Au where the Au-mann dwells;
+it rings it out into the vault of heaven, far, far out, for ever and
+ever, till the heaven bells sound "Ding-dong! ding-dong!"
+
+
+
+
+THE PUPPET SHOWMAN.
+
+
+On board the steamer was an elderly man with such a merry face that,
+if it did not belie him, he must have been the happiest fellow in
+creation. And, indeed, he declared he was the happiest man; I heard it
+out of his own mouth. He was a Dane, a travelling theatre director. He
+had all his company with him in a large box, for he was proprietor of
+a puppet-show. His inborn cheerfulness, he said, had been _purified_
+by a Polytechnic candidate, and the experiment had made him completely
+happy. I did not at first understand all this, but afterwards he
+explained the whole story to me, and here it is. He told me:
+
+[Illustration: THE ANIMATED PUPPETS.]
+
+"It was in the little town of Slagelse I gave a representation in the
+hall of the posting-house, and had a brilliant audience, entirely a
+juvenile one, with the exception of two respectable matrons. All at
+once a person in black, of student-like appearance, came into the room
+and sat down; he laughed aloud at the telling parts, and applauded
+quite appropriately. That was quite an unusual spectator for me! I
+felt anxious to know who he was, and I heard he was a candidate from
+the Polytechnic Institution in Copenhagen, who had been sent out to
+instruct the folks in the provinces. Punctually at eight o'clock my
+performance closed; for children must go early to bed, and a manager
+must consult the convenience of his public. At nine o'clock the
+candidate commenced his lecture, with experiments, and now I formed
+part of _his_ audience. It was wonderful to hear and to see. The
+greater part of it was beyond my scope; but still it made me think
+that if we men can find out so much, we must be surely intended to
+last longer than the little span until we are hidden away in the
+earth. They were quite miracles in a small way that he showed, and yet
+everything flowed as naturally as water! At the time of Moses and the
+prophets such a man would have been received among the sages of the
+land; in the middle ages they would have burned him at a stake. All
+night long I could not go to sleep. And the next evening, when I gave
+another performance, and the candidate was again present, I felt
+fairly overflowing with humour. I once heard from a player that when
+he acted a lover he always thought of one particular lady among the
+audience; he only played for her, and forgot all the rest of the
+house; and now the Polytechnic candidate was my 'she,' my only
+auditor, for whom alone I played. And when the performance was over,
+all the puppets were called before the curtain, and the Polytechnic
+candidate invited me into his room to take a glass of wine; and he
+spoke of my comedies, and I of his science; and I believe we were both
+equally pleased. But I had the best of it, for there was much in what
+he did of which he could not always give me an explanation. For
+instance, that a piece of iron that falls through a spiral should
+become magnetic. Now, how does that happen? The spirit comes upon it;
+but whence does it come? It is as with people in this world; they are
+made to tumble through the spiral of this world, and the spirit comes
+upon them, and there stands a Napoleon, or a Luther, or a person of
+that kind. 'The whole world is a series of miracles,' said the
+candidate; 'but we are so accustomed to them that we call them
+every-day matters.' And he went on explaining things to me until my
+skull seemed lifted up over my brain, and I declared that if I were
+not an old fellow I would at once visit the Polytechnic Institution,
+that I might learn to look at the sunny side of the world, though I am
+one of the happiest of men. 'One of the happiest!' said the candidate,
+and he seemed to take real pleasure in it. 'Are you happy?' 'Yes,' I
+replied, 'and they welcome me in all the towns where I come with my
+company; but I certainly have _one_ wish, which sometimes lies like
+lead, like an Alp, upon my good humour: I should like to become a real
+theatrical manager, the director of a real troupe of men and women!'
+'I see,' he said, 'you would like to have life breathed into your
+puppets, so that they might be real actors, and you their director;
+and would you then be quite happy?' He did not believe it; but I
+believed it, and we talked it over all manner of ways without coming
+any nearer to an agreement; but we clanked our glasses together, and
+the wine was excellent. There was some magic in it, or I should
+certainly have become tipsy. But that did not happen; I retained my
+clear view of things, and somehow there was sunshine in the room, and
+sunshine beamed out of the eyes of the Polytechnic candidate. It made
+me think of the old stories of the gods, in their eternal youth, when
+they still wandered upon earth and paid visits to the mortals; and I
+said so to him, and he smiled, and I could have sworn he was one of
+the ancient gods in disguise, or that, at any rate, he belonged to the
+family! and certainly he must have been something of the kind, for my
+highest wish was to have been fulfilled, the puppets were to be gifted
+with life, and I was to be director of a real company. We drank to my
+success and clinked our glasses. He packed all my dolls into a box,
+bound the box on my back, and then let me fall through a spiral. I
+heard myself tumbling, and then I was lying on the floor--I know that
+quite well--and the whole company sprang out of the box. The spirit
+had come upon all of us: all the puppets had become distinguished
+artists, so they said themselves, and I was the director. All was
+ready for the first representation; the whole company wanted to speak
+to me, and the public also. The dancing lady said the house would fall
+down if she did not keep it up by standing on one leg; for she was the
+great genius, and begged to be treated as such. The lady who acted the
+queen wished to be treated off the stage as a queen, or else she
+should get out of practice. The man who was only employed to deliver a
+letter gave himself just as many airs as the first lover, for he
+declared the little ones were just as important as the great ones, and
+that all were of equal consequence, considered as an artistic whole.
+The hero would only play parts composed of nothing but points; for
+those brought him down the applause. The prima donna would only play
+in a red light; for she declared that a blue one did not suit her
+complexion. It was like a company of flies in a bottle; and I was in
+the bottle with them, for I was the director. My breath stopped and my
+head whirled round; I was as miserable as a man can be. It was quite a
+novel kind of men among whom I now found myself. I only wished I had
+them all in the box again, and that I had never been a director at
+all; so I told them roundly that after all they were nothing but
+puppets; and then they killed me. I found myself lying on my bed in my
+room; and how I got there, and how I got away at all from the
+Polytechnic candidate, he may perhaps know, for I don't. The moon
+shone upon the floor where the box lay open, and the dolls all in a
+confusion together--great and small all scattered about; but I was not
+idle. Out of bed I jumped, and into the box they had all to go, some
+on their heads, some on their feet, and I shut down the lid and seated
+myself upon the box. 'Now you'll just have to stay there,' said I,
+'and I shall beware how I wish you flesh and blood again.' I felt
+quite light, my good humour had come back, and I was the happiest of
+mortals. The Polytechnic student had fully purified me. I sat as happy
+as a king, and went to sleep on the box. The next morning--strictly
+speaking it was noon, for I slept wonderfully late that day--I was
+still sitting there, happy and conscious that my former wish had been
+a foolish one. I inquired for the Polytechnic candidate, but he was
+gone, like the Greek and Roman gods; and from that time I've been the
+happiest of men. I am a happy director: none of my company ever
+grumble, nor my public either, for they are always merry. I can put my
+pieces together just as I please. I take out of every comedy what
+pleases me best, and no one is angry at it. Pieces that are neglected
+now-a-days by the great public, but which it used to run after thirty
+years ago, and at which it used to cry till the tears ran down its
+cheeks, these pieces I now take up; I put them before the little ones,
+and the little ones cry just as papa and mamma used to cry thirty
+years ago; but I shorten them, for the youngsters don't like a long
+palaver; what they want is something mournful, but quick."
+
+
+
+
+THE PIGS.
+
+
+Charles Dickens once told us about a pig, and since that time we are
+in a good humour if we only hear one grunt. St. Antony took the pig
+under his protection; and when we think of the prodigal son we always
+associate with him the idea of feeding swine; and it was in front of a
+pig-sty that a certain carriage stopped in Sweden, about which I am
+going to talk. The farmer had his pig-sty built out towards the high
+road, close by his house, and it was a wonderful pig-sty. It was an
+old state carriage. The seats had been taken out and the wheels taken
+off, and so the body of the old coach lay on the ground, and four pigs
+were shut up inside it. I wonder if these were the first that had ever
+been there? That point could not certainly be determined; but that it
+had been a real state coach everything bore witness, even to the
+damask rag that hung down from the roof; everything spoke of better
+days.
+
+"Humph! humph!" said the occupants, and the coach creaked and groaned;
+for it had come to a mournful end. "The beautiful has departed," it
+sighed--or at least it might have done so.
+
+We came back in autumn. The coach was there still, but the pigs were
+gone. They were playing the grand lords out in the woods. Blossoms
+and leaves were gone from all the trees, and storm and rain ruled, and
+gave them neither peace nor rest; and the birds of passage had flown.
+"The beautiful has departed! This was the glorious green wood, but the
+song of the birds and the warm sunshine are gone! gone!" Thus said the
+mournful voice that creaked in the lofty branches of the trees, and it
+sounded like a deep-drawn sigh, a sigh from the bosom of the wild rose
+tree, and of him who sat there; it was the rose king. Do you know him?
+He is all beard, the finest reddish-green beard; he is easily
+recognized. Go up to the wild rose bushes, and when in autumn all the
+flowers have faded from them, and only the wild hips remain, you will
+often find under them a great red-green moss flower; and that is the
+rose king. A little green leaf grows up out of his head, and that's
+his feather. He is the only man of his kind on the rose bush; and he
+it was who sighed.
+
+[Illustration: THE PIGS AT HOME IN THE OLD STATE COACH.]
+
+"Gone! gone! The beautiful is gone! The roses have faded, and the
+leaves fall down! It's wet here! it's boisterous here! The birds who
+used to sing are dumb, and the pigs go out hunting for acorns, and the
+pigs are the lords of the forest!"
+
+The nights were cold and the days were misty; but, for all that, the
+raven sat on the branch and sang, "Good! good!" Raven and crow sat on
+the high bough; and they had a large family, who all said, "Good!
+good!" and the majority is always right.
+
+Under the high trees, in the hollow, was a great puddle, and here the
+pigs reclined, great and small. They found the place so inexpressibly
+lovely! "Oui! oui!" they all exclaimed. That was all the French they
+knew, but even that was something; and they were so clever and so fat!
+
+The old ones lay quite still, and reflected; the young ones were very
+busy, and were not quiet a moment. One little porker had a twist in
+his tail like a ring, and this ring was his mothers's pride: she
+thought all the rest were looking at the ring, and thinking only of
+the ring; but that they were not doing; they were thinking of
+themselves and of what was useful, and what was the use of the wood.
+They had always heard that the acorns they ate grew at the roots of
+the trees, and accordingly they had grubbed up the ground; but there
+came quite a little pig--it's always the young ones who come out with
+their new-fangled notions--who declared that the acorns fell down from
+the branches, for one had just fallen down on his head, and the idea
+had struck him at once, afterwards he had made observations, and now
+was quite certain on the point. The old ones put their heads together.
+"Umph!" they said, "umph! The glory has departed: the twittering of
+the birds is all over: we want fruit; whatever's good to eat is good,
+and we eat everything."
+
+"Oui! oui!" chimed in all the rest.
+
+But the mother now looked at her little porker, the one with the ring
+in his tail, "One must not overlook the beautiful," she said. "Good!
+good!" cried the crow, and flew down from the tree to try and get an
+appointment as nightingale; for some one must be appointed; and the
+crow obtained the office directly.
+
+"Gone! gone!" sighed the rose king. "All the beautiful is gone!"
+
+It was boisterous, it was grey, cold, and windy; and through the
+forest and over the field swept the rain in long dark streaks. Where
+is the bird who sang, where are the flowers upon the meadow, and the
+sweet berries of the wood? Gone! gone!
+
+Then a light gleamed from the forester's house. It was lit up like a
+star, and threw its long ray among the trees. A song sounded forth
+out of the house! Beautiful children played there round the old
+grandfather. He sat with the Bible on his knee, and read of the
+Creator and of a better world, and spoke of spring that would return,
+of the forest that would array itself in fresh green, of the roses
+that would bloom, the nightingale that would sing, and of the
+beautiful that would reign in its glory again.
+
+But the rose king heard it not, for he sat in the cold, damp weather,
+and sighed, "Gone! gone!" And the pigs were the lords of the forest,
+and the old mother sow looked proudly at her little porker with the
+twist in his tail. "There is always somebody who has a soul for the
+beautiful!" she said.
+
+
+
+
+ANNE LISBETH.
+
+
+Anne Lisbeth had a colour like milk and blood; young, fresh, and
+merry, she looked beautiful, with gleaming white teeth and clear eyes;
+her footstep was light in the dance, and her mind was lighter still.
+And what came of it all? Her son was an ugly brat! Yes, he was not
+pretty; so he was put out to be nursed by the labourer's wife. Anne
+Lisbeth was taken into the count's castle, and sat there in the
+splendid room arrayed in silks and velvets; not a breath of wind might
+blow upon her, and no one was allowed to speak a harsh word to her.
+No, that might not be; for she was nurse to the count's child, which
+was delicate and fair as a prince, and beautiful as an angel; and how
+she loved this child! Her own boy was provided for at the labourer's,
+where the mouth boiled over more frequently than the pot, and where,
+in general, no one was at home to take care of the child. Then he
+would cry; but what nobody knows, that nobody cares for, and he would
+cry till he was tired, and then he fell asleep; and in sleep one feels
+neither hunger nor thirst. A capital invention is sleep.
+
+With years, just as weeds shoot up, Anne Lisbeth's child grew, but yet
+they said his growth was stunted; but he had quite become a member of
+the family in which he dwelt; they had received money to keep him.
+Anne Lisbeth was rid of him for good. She had become a town lady, and
+had a comfortable home of her own; and out of doors she wore a bonnet,
+when she went out for a walk; but she never walked out to see the
+labourer--that was too far from the town; and indeed she had nothing
+to go for; the boy belonged to the labouring people, and she said he
+could eat his food, and he should do something to earn his food, and
+consequently he kept Matz's red cow. He could already tend cattle and
+make himself useful.
+
+The big dog, by the yard gate of the nobleman's mansion, sits proudly
+in the sunshine on the top of the kennel, and barks at every one who
+goes by: if it rains he creeps into his house, and there he is warm
+and dry. Ann Lisbeth's boy sat in the sunshine on the fence of the
+field, and cut out a pole-pin. In the spring he knew of three
+strawberry plants that were in blossom, and would certainly bear
+fruit, and that was his most hopeful thought; but they came to
+nothing. He sat out in the rain in foul weather, and was wet to the
+skin, and afterwards the cold wind dried the clothes on his back. When
+he came to the lordly farmyard he was hustled and cuffed, for the men
+and maids declared he was horribly ugly; but he was used to
+that--loved by nobody!
+
+That was how it went with Anne Lisbeth's boy; and how could it go
+otherwise? It was, once for all, his fate to be beloved by nobody.
+
+Till now a "land crab," the land at last threw him overboard. He went
+to sea in a wretched vessel, and sat by the helm, while the skipper
+sat over the grog-can. He was dirty and ugly, half frozen and half
+starved: one would have thought he had never had enough; and that
+really was the case.
+
+It was late in autumn, rough, wet, windy weather; the wind cut cold
+through the thickest clothing, especially at sea; and out to sea went
+a wretched boat, with only two men on board, or, properly speaking,
+with only a man and a half, the skipper and his boy. It had only been
+a kind of twilight all day, and now it became dark; and it was bitter
+cold. The skipper drank a dram, which was to warm him from within. The
+bottle was old, and the glass too; it was whole at the top, but the
+foot was broken off, and therefore it stood upon a little carved block
+of wood painted blue. "A dram comforts one, and two are better still,"
+thought the skipper. The boy sat at the helm, which he held fast in
+his hard seamed hands: he was ugly, and his hair was matted, and he
+looked crippled and stunted; he was the field labourer's boy, though
+in the church register he was entered as Anne Lisbeth's son.
+
+The wind cut its way through the rigging, and the boat cut through the
+sea. The sail blew out, filled by the wind, and they drove on in wild
+career. It was rough and wet around and above, and it might come worse
+still. Hold! what was that? what struck there? what burst yonder? what
+seized the boat? It heeled, and lay on its beam ends! Was it a
+waterspout? Was it a heavy sea coming suddenly down? The boy at the
+helm cried out aloud, "Heaven help us!" The boat had struck on a
+great rock standing up from the depths of the sea, and it sank like an
+old shoe in a puddle; it sank "with man and mouse," as the saying is;
+and there were mice on board, but only one man and a half, the skipper
+and the labourer's boy. No one saw it but the swimming seagulls, and
+the fishes down yonder, and even they did not see it rightly, for they
+started back in terror when the water rushed into the ship, and it
+sank. There it lay scarce a fathom below the surface, and those two
+were provided for, buried and forgotten! Only the glass with the foot
+of blue wood did not sink; for the wood kept it up; the glass drifted
+away, to be broken and cast upon the shore--where and when? But,
+indeed, that is of no consequence. It had served its time, and it had
+been loved, which Anne Lisbeth's boy had not been. But in heaven no
+soul will be able to say, "Never loved!"
+
+Anne Lisbeth had lived in the city for many years. She was called
+Madame, and felt her dignity, when she remembered the old "noble" days
+in which she had driven in the carriage, and had associated with
+countesses and baronesses. Her beautiful noble-child was the dearest
+angel, the kindest heart; he had loved her so much, and she had loved
+him in return; they had kissed and loved each other, and the boy had
+been her joy, her second life. Now he was so tall, and was fourteen
+years old, handsome and clever: she had not seen him since she carried
+him in her arms; for many years she had not been in the count's
+palace, for indeed it was quite a journey thither.
+
+"I must once make an effort and go," said Anne Lisbeth. "I must go to
+my darling, to my sweet count's child. Yes, he certainly must long to
+see me too, the young count; he thinks of me and loves me as in those
+days when he flung his angel arms round my neck and cried 'Anne Liz.!'
+It sounded like music. Yes, I must make an effort and see him again."
+
+She drove across the country in a grazier's cart, and then got out and
+continued her journey on foot, and thus reached the count's castle. It
+was great and magnificent as it had always been, and the garden looked
+the same as ever; but all the people there were strangers to her; not
+one of them knew Anne Lisbeth, and they did not know of what
+consequence she had once been there, but she felt sure the countess
+would let them know it, and her darling boy too. How she longed to see
+him!
+
+Now, Anne Lisbeth was at her journey's end. She was kept waiting a
+considerable time, and for those who wait time passes slowly. But
+before the great people went to table she was called in and accosted
+very graciously. She was to see her sweet boy after dinner, and then
+she was to be called in again.
+
+How tall and slender and thin he had grown! But he had still his
+beautiful eyes, and the angel-sweet mouth! He looked at her, but he
+said not a word: certainly he did not know her. He turned round, and
+was about to go away, but she seized his hand and pressed it to her
+mouth. "Good, good!" said he; and with that he went out of the
+room--he who filled her every thought--he whom she had loved best, and
+who was her whole earthly pride. Anne Lisbeth went out of the castle
+into the open highway, and she felt very mournful; he had been so cold
+and strange to her, had not a word nor a thought for her, he whom she
+had once carried day and night, and whom she still carried in her
+dreams.
+
+[Illustration: ANNE LISBETH'S BOY.]
+
+A great black raven shot down in front of her on to the high road, and
+croaked and croaked again. "Ha!" she said, "what bird of ill omen art
+thou?"
+
+She came past the hut of the labourer; the wife stood at the door, and
+the two women spoke to one another.
+
+"You look well," said the woman. "You are plump and fat; you're well
+off."
+
+"Oh, yes," answered Anne Lisbeth.
+
+"The boat went down with them," continued the woman. "Hans skipper and
+the boy were both drowned. There's an end of them. I always thought
+the boy would be able to help me out with a few dollars. He'll never
+cost _you_ anything more, Anne Lisbeth."
+
+"So they were drowned?" Anne Lisbeth repeated; and then nothing more
+was said on the subject.
+
+Anne Lisbeth was very low-spirited because her count-child had shown
+no disposition to talk with her who loved him so well, and who had
+journeyed all that way to get a sight of him; and the journey had cost
+money too, though the pleasure she had derived from it was not great.
+Still she said not a word about this. She would not relieve her heart
+by telling the labourer's wife about it, lest the latter should think
+she did not enjoy her former position at the castle. Then the raven
+screamed again, and flew past over her once more.
+
+"The black wretch!" said Anne Lisbeth; "he'll end by frightening me
+to-day."
+
+She had brought coffee and chicory with her, for she thought it would
+be a charity towards the poor woman to give them to her to boil a cup
+of coffee, and then she herself would take a cup too. The woman
+prepared the coffee, and in the meantime Anne Lisbeth sat down upon a
+chair and fell asleep. There she dreamed of something she had never
+dreamed before; singularly enough, she dreamed of her own child that
+had wept and hungered there in the labourer's hut, had been hustled
+about in heat and in cold, and was now lying in the depths of the sea,
+Heaven knows where. She dreamed she was sitting in the hut, where the
+woman was busy preparing the coffee--she could smell the roasting
+coffee beans. But suddenly it seemed to her that there stood on the
+threshold a beautiful young form, as beautiful as the count's child;
+and this apparition said to her, "The world is passing away! Hold fast
+to me, for you are my mother after all. You have an angel in heaven.
+Hold me fast!" And the child-angel stretched out its hand to her; and
+there was a terrible crash, for the world was going to pieces, and the
+angel was raising himself above the earth, and holding her by the
+sleeve so tightly, it seemed to her, that she was lifted up from the
+ground; but, on the other hand, something heavy hung at her feet and
+dragged her down, and it seemed to her that hundreds of women clung to
+her, and cried, "If thou art to be saved, we must be saved too! Hold
+fast, hold fast!" And then they all hung on to her; but there were too
+many of them, and--_ritsch, ratsch!_--the sleeve tore, and Anne
+Lisbeth fell down in horror--and awoke. And indeed she was on the
+point of falling over, with the chair on which she sat; she was so
+startled and alarmed that she could not recollect what it was she had
+dreamed, but she remembered that it had been something dreadful.
+
+[Illustration: ANNE LISBETH AT THE LABOURER'S COTTAGE.]
+
+The coffee was taken, and they had a chat together; and then Anne
+Lisbeth went away towards the little town where she was to meet the
+carrier, and to drive back with him to her own home. But when she came
+to speak to him, he said he should not be ready to start before the
+evening of the next day. She began to think about the expense and the
+length of the way, and when she considered that the route by the sea
+shore was shorter by two miles than the other, and that the weather
+was clear and the moon shone, she determined to make her way on foot,
+and to start at once, that she might be at home by next day.
+
+The sun had set, and the evening bells, tolled in the towers of the
+village churches, still sounded through the air; but no, it was not
+the bells, but the cry of the frogs in the marshes. Now they were
+silent, and all around was still; not a bird was heard, for they were
+all gone to rest; and even the owl seemed to be at home; deep silence
+reigned on the margin of the forest and by the sea shore: as Anne
+Lisbeth walked on she could hear her own footsteps on the sand; there
+was no sound of waves in the sea; everything out in the deep waters
+had sunk to silence. All was quiet there, the living and the dead
+creatures of the sea.
+
+Anne Lisbeth walked on "thinking of nothing at all," as the saying is,
+or rather, her thoughts wandered; but thoughts had not wandered away
+from her, for they are never absent from us, they only slumber. But
+those that have not yet stirred come forth at their time, and begin to
+stir sometimes in the heart and sometimes in the head, and seem to
+come upon us as if from above.
+
+It is written that a good deed bears its fruit of blessing, and it is
+also written that sin is death. Much has been written and much has
+been said which one does not know or think of in general; and thus it
+was with Anne Lisbeth. But it may happen that a light arises within
+one, and that the forgotten things may approach.
+
+All virtues and all vices lie in our hearts. They are in mine and in
+thine; they lie there like little grains of seed; and then from
+without comes a ray of sunshine or the touch of an evil hand, or maybe
+you turn the corner and go to the right or to the left, and that may
+be decisive; for the little seed-corn perhaps is stirred, and it
+swells and shoots up, and it bursts, and pours its sap into all your
+blood, and then your career has commenced. There are tormenting
+thoughts, which one does not feel when one walks on with slumbering
+senses, but they are there, fermenting in the heart. Anne Lisbeth
+walked on thus with her senses half in slumber, but the thoughts were
+fermenting within her. From one Shrove Tuesday to the next there comes
+much that weighs upon the heart--the reckoning of a whole year: much
+is forgotten, sins against Heaven in word and in thought, against our
+neighbour, and against our own conscience. We don't think of these
+things, and Anne Lisbeth did not think of them. She had committed no
+crime against the law of the land, she was very respectable, an
+honoured and well-placed person, that she knew. And as she walked
+along by the margin of the sea, what was it she saw lying there? An
+old hat, a man's hat. Now, where might that have been washed
+overboard? She came nearer, and stopped to look at the hat. Ha! what
+was lying yonder? She shuddered; but it was nothing save a heap of sea
+grass and tangle flung across a long stone; but it looked just like a
+corpse: it was only sea grass and tangle, and yet she was frightened
+at it, and as she turned away to walk on much came into her mind that
+she had heard in her childhood; old superstitions of spectres by the
+sea shore, of the ghosts of drowned but unburied people whose corpses
+have been washed up on to the desert shore. The body, she had heard,
+could do harm to none, but the spirit could pursue the lonely
+wanderer, and attach itself to him, and demand to be carried to the
+churchyard that it might rest in consecrated ground. "Hold fast! hold
+fast!" the spectre would then cry; and while Anne Lisbeth murmured the
+words to herself, her whole dream suddenly stood before her just as
+she had dreamed it, when the mothers clung to her and had repeated
+this word, amid the crash of the world, when her sleeve was torn and
+she slipped out of the grasp of her child, who wanted to hold her up
+in that terrible hour. Her child, her own child, which she had never
+loved, lay now buried in the sea, and might rise up like a spectre
+from the waters, and cry "Hold fast! carry me to consecrated earth."
+And as these thoughts passed through her mind, fear gave speed to her
+feet, so that she walked on faster and faster; fear came upon her like
+the touch of a cold wet hand that was laid upon her heart, so that she
+almost fainted; and as she looked out across the sea, all there grew
+darker and darker; a heavy mist came rolling onward, and clung round
+bush and tree, twisting them into fantastic shapes. She turned round,
+and glanced up at the moon, which had risen behind her. It looked like
+a pale, rayless surface; and a deadly weight appeared to cling to her
+limbs. "Hold fast!" thought she; and when she turned round a second
+time and looked at the moon, its white face seemed quite close to her,
+and the mist hung like a pale garment from her shoulders. "Hold fast!
+carry me to consecrated earth!" sounded in her ears in strange hollow
+tones. The sound did not come from frogs or ravens; she saw no sign of
+any such creatures. "A grave, dig me a grave!" was repeated quite
+loud. Yes, it was the spectre of her child, the child that lay in the
+ocean, and whose spirit could have no rest until it was carried to the
+churchyard, and until a grave had been dug for it in consecrated
+ground. Thither she would go, and there she would dig; and she went on
+in the direction of the church, and the weight on her heart seemed to
+grow lighter, and even to vanish altogether; but when she turned to go
+home by the shortest way, it returned. "Hold fast! hold fast!" and the
+words came quite clear, though they were like the croak of a frog or
+the wail of a bird, "A grave! dig me a grave!"
+
+The mist was cold and damp; her hands and face were cold and damp with
+horror; a heavy weight again seized her and clung to her, and in her
+mind a great space opened for thoughts that had never before been
+there.
+
+Here in the North the beech wood often buds in a single night, and in
+the morning sunlight it appears in its full glory of youthful green;
+and thus in a single instant can the consciousness unfold itself of
+the sin that has been contained in the thoughts, words, and works of
+our past life. It springs up and unfolds itself in a single second
+when once the conscience is awakened; and God wakens it when we least
+expect it. Then we find no excuse for ourselves--the deed is there,
+and bears witness against us; the thoughts seem to become words, and
+to sound far out into the world. We are horrified at the thought of
+what we have carried within us, and have not stifled over what we have
+sown in our thoughtlessness and pride. The heart hides within itself
+all the virtues and likewise all the vices, and they grow even in the
+shallowest ground.
+
+Anne Lisbeth now experienced all the thoughts we have clothed in
+words. She was overpowered by them, and sank down, and crept along for
+some distance on the ground. "A grave! dig me a grave!" it sounded
+again in her ears; and she would gladly have buried herself if in the
+grave there had been forgetfulness of every deed. It was the first
+hour of her awakening; full of anguish and horror. Superstition
+alternately made her shudder with cold and made her blood burn with
+the heat of fever. Many things of which she had never liked to speak
+came into her mind. Silent as the cloud shadows in the bright
+moonshine, a spectral apparition flitted by her: she had heard of it
+before. Close by her gallopped four snorting steeds, with fire
+spurting from their eyes and nostrils; they dragged a red-hot coach,
+and within it sat the wicked proprietor who had ruled here a hundred
+years ago. The legend said that every night at twelve o'clock he drove
+into his castle yard and out again. There! there! He was not pale as
+dead men are said to be, but black as a coal. He nodded at Anne
+Lisbeth and beckoned to her. "Hold fast! hold fast! then you may ride
+again in a nobleman's carriage, and forget your child!"
+
+She gathered herself up, and hastened to the churchyard; but the black
+crosses and the black ravens danced before her eyes, and she could not
+distinguish one from the other. The ravens croaked, as the raven had
+done that she saw in the daytime, but now she understood what they
+said. "I am the raven-mother! I am the raven-mother!" each raven
+croaked, and Anne Lisbeth now understood that the name also applied
+to her; and she fancied she should be transformed into a black bird,
+and be obliged to cry what they cried if she did not dig the grave.
+
+[Illustration: ANNE LISBETH FOUND ON THE SEA SHORE.]
+
+And she threw herself on the earth, and with her hands dug a grave in
+the hard ground, so that the blood ran from her fingers.
+
+"A grave! dig me a grave!" it still sounded; she was fearful that the
+cock might crow, and the first red streak appear in the east, before
+she had finished her work, and then she would be lost.
+
+And the cock crowed, and day dawned in the east, and the grave was
+only half dug. An icy hand passed over her head and face, and down
+towards her heart. "Only half a grave!" a voice wailed, and fled away.
+Yes, it fled away over the sea--it was the ocean spectre; and
+exhausted and overpowered, Anne Lisbeth sunk to the ground, and her
+senses forsook her.
+
+It was bright day when she came to herself, and two men were raising
+her up; but she was not lying in the churchyard, but on the sea shore,
+where she had dug a deep hole in the sand, and cut her hand against a
+broken glass, whose sharp stem was stuck in a little painted block of
+wood. Anne Lisbeth was in a fever. Conscience had shuffled the cards
+of superstition, and had laid out these cards, and she fancied she had
+only half a soul, and that her child had taken the other half down
+into the sea. Never would she be able to swing herself aloft to the
+mercy of Heaven, till she had recovered this other half, which was now
+held fast in the deep water. Anne Lisbeth got back to her former home,
+but was no longer the woman she had been: her thoughts were confused
+like a tangled skein; only one thread, only one thought she had
+disentangled, namely, that she must carry the spectre of the sea shore
+to the churchyard, and dig a grave for him, that thus she might win
+back her soul.
+
+Many a night she was missed from her home; and she was always found on
+the sea shore, waiting for the spectre. In this way a whole year
+passed by; and then one night she vanished again, and was not to be
+found; the whole of the next day was wasted in fruitless search.
+
+Towards evening, when the clerk came into the church to toll the
+vesper bell, he saw by the altar Anne Lisbeth, who had spent the whole
+day there. Her physical forces were almost exhausted, but her eyes
+gleamed brightly, and her cheeks had a rosy flush. The last rays of
+the sun shone upon her, and gleamed over the altar on the bright
+buckles of the Bible which lay there, opened at the words of the
+prophet Joel: "Bend your hearts, and not your garments, and turn unto
+the Lord!" That was just a chance, the people said; as many things
+happen by chance.
+
+In the face of Anne Lisbeth, illumined by the sun, peace and rest were
+to be seen. She said she was happy, for now she had conquered. Last
+night the spectre of the shore, her own child, had come to her, and
+had said to her, "Thou hast dug me only half a grave, but thou hast
+now, for a year and a day, buried me altogether in thy heart, and it
+is there that a mother can best hide her child!" And then he gave her
+her lost soul back again, and brought her here into the church.
+
+"Now I am in the house of God," she said, "and in that house we are
+happy."
+
+And when the sun had set, Anne Lisbeth's soul had risen to that region
+where there is no more anguish, and Anne Lisbeth's troubles were over.
+
+
+
+
+CHARMING.
+
+
+Alfred the sculptor--you know him? We all know him: he won the great
+gold medal, and got a travelling scholarship, went to Italy, and then
+came back to his native land. He was young in those days, and indeed
+he is young yet, though he is ten years older than he was then.
+
+After his return he visited one of the little provincial towns on the
+island of Seeland. The whole town knew who the stranger was, and one
+of the richest persons gave a party in honour of him, and all who were
+of any consequence, or possessed any property, were invited. It was
+quite an event, and all the town knew of it without its being
+announced by beat of drum. Apprentice boys, and children of poor
+people, and even some of the poor people themselves, stood in front of
+the house, and looked at the lighted curtain; and the watchman could
+fancy that _he_ was giving a party, so many people were in the
+streets. There was quite an air of festivity about, and in the house
+was festivity also, for Mr. Alfred the sculptor was there.
+
+He talked, and told anecdotes, and all listened to him with pleasure
+and a certain kind of awe; but none felt such respect for him as did
+the elderly widow of an official: she seemed, so far as Mr. Alfred was
+concerned, like a fresh piece of blotting paper, that absorbed all
+that was spoken, and asked for more. She was very appreciative, and
+incredibly ignorant--a kind of female Caspar Hauser.
+
+"I should like to see Rome," she said. "It must be a lovely city, with
+all the strangers who are continually arriving there. Now, do give us
+a description of Rome. How does the city look when you come in by the
+gate?"
+
+"I cannot very well describe it," replied the sculptor. "A great open
+place, and in the midst of it an obelisk, which is a thousand years
+old."
+
+"An organist!" exclaimed the lady, who had never met with the word
+_obelisk_. A few of the guests could hardly keep from laughing, nor
+could the sculptor quite keep his countenance; but the smile that rose
+to his lips faded away, for he saw, close by the inquisitive dame, a
+pair of dark blue eyes--they belonged to the daughter of the speaker,
+and any one who has such a daughter cannot be silly! The mother was
+like a fountain of questions, and the daughter, who listened, but
+never spoke, might pass for the beautiful Naiad of the fountain. How
+charming she was! She was a study for the sculptor to contemplate, but
+not to converse with; and, indeed, she did not speak, or only very
+seldom.
+
+"Has the Pope a large family?" asked the lady.
+
+And the young man considerately answered, as if the question had been
+better put, "No, he does not come of a great family."
+
+"That's not what I mean," the widow persisted. "I mean, has he a wife
+and children?"
+
+"The Pope is not allowed to marry," said the gentleman.
+
+"I don't like that," was the lady's comment.
+
+She certainly might have put more sensible questions; but if she had
+not spoken in just the manner she used, would her daughter have leant
+so gracefully on her shoulder, looking straight out with the almost
+mournful smile upon her face?
+
+Then Mr. Alfred spoke again, and told of the glory of colour in Italy,
+of the purple hills, the blue Mediterranean, the azure sky of the
+South, whose brightness and glory was only surpassed in the North by a
+maiden's deep blue eyes. And this he said with a peculiar application;
+but she who should have understood his meaning, looked as if she were
+quite unconscious of it, and that again was charming!
+
+"Italy!" sighed a few of the guests. "Oh, to travel!" sighed others.
+"Charming, charming!" chorused they all.
+
+"Yes, if I win a hundred thousand dollars in the lottery," said the
+head tax-collector's lady, "then we will travel. I and my daughter,
+and you, Mr. Alfred; you must be our guide. We'll all three travel
+together, and one or two good friends more." And she nodded in such a
+friendly way at the company, that each one might imagine he or she was
+the person who was to be taken to Italy. "Yes, we will go to Italy!
+but not to those parts where there are robbers--we'll keep to Rome,
+and to the great high roads where one is safe."
+
+And the daughter sighed very quietly. And how much may lie in one
+little sigh, or be placed in it! The young man placed a great deal in
+it. The two blue eyes, lit up that evening in honour of him, must
+conceal treasures--treasures of the heart and mind--richer than all
+the glories of Rome; and when he left the party that night he had lost
+_his_ heart--lost it completely, to the young lady.
+
+The house of the head tax-collector's widow was the one which Mr.
+Alfred the sculptor most assiduously frequented; and it was understood
+that his visits were not intended for that lady, though he and she
+were the people who kept up the conversation; he came for the
+daughter's sake. They called her Kala. Her name was really Calen
+Malena, and these two names had been contracted into the one name,
+Kala. She was beautiful; but a few said she was rather dull, and
+probably slept late of a morning.
+
+"She has been always accustomed to that," her mother said. "She's a
+beauty, and they always are easily tired. She sleeps rather late, but
+that makes her eyes so clear."
+
+What a power lay in the depths of these dark blue eyes! "Still waters
+run deep." The young man felt the truth of this proverb; and his heart
+had sunk into the depths. He spoke and told his adventures, and the
+mamma was as simple and eager in her questioning as on the first
+evening of their meeting.
+
+It was a pleasure to hear Alfred describe anything. He spoke of
+Naples, of excursions to Mount Vesuvius, and showed coloured prints of
+several of the eruptions. And the head tax-collector's widow had never
+heard of them before, or taken time to consider the question.
+
+"Good heavens!" she exclaimed. "So that is a burning mountain! But is
+it not dangerous to the people round about?"
+
+"Whole cities have been destroyed," he answered; "for instance,
+Pompeii and Herculaneum."
+
+"But the poor people!--And you saw all that with your own eyes?"
+
+"No, I did not see any of the eruptions represented in these pictures,
+but I will show you a picture of my own, of an eruption I saw."
+
+He laid a pencil sketch upon the table, and mamma, who had been
+absorbed in the contemplation of the highly coloured prints, threw a
+glance at the pale drawing, and cried in astonishment,
+
+"Did you see it throw up white fire?"
+
+For a moment Alfred's respect for Kala's mamma suffered a sudden
+diminution; but, dazzled by the light that illumined Kala, he soon
+found it quite natural that the old lady should have no eye for
+colour. After all, it was of no consequence, for Kala's mamma had the
+best of all things--namely, Kala herself.
+
+And Alfred and Kala were betrothed, which was natural enough, and the
+betrothal was announced in the little newspaper of the town. Mamma
+purchased thirty copies of the paper, that she might cut out the
+paragraph and send it to friends and acquaintances. And the betrothed
+pair were happy, and the mother-in-law elect was happy too; for it
+seemed like connecting herself with Thorwaldsen.
+
+"For you are a continuation of Thorwaldsen," she said to Alfred. And
+it seemed to Alfred that mamma had in this instance said a clever
+thing. Kala said nothing; but her eyes shone, her lips smiled, her
+every movement was graceful: yes, she was beautiful; that cannot be
+too often repeated.
+
+Alfred undertook to take a bust of Kala and of his mother-in-law. They
+sat to him accordingly, and saw how he moulded and smoothed the soft
+clay with his fingers.
+
+"I suppose it's only on our account," said mamma-in-law, "that you
+undertake this commonplace work, and don't leave your servant to do
+all that sticking together."
+
+"It is highly necessary that I should mould the clay myself," he
+replied.
+
+"Ah, yes, you are so very polite," retorted mamma; and Kala silently
+pressed his hand, still soiled by the clay.
+
+And he unfolded to both of them the loveliness of nature in creation,
+pointing out how the living stood higher in the scale than the dead
+creature, how the plant was developed beyond the mineral, the animal
+beyond the plant, and man beyond the animal. He strove to show them
+how mind and beauty become manifest in outward form, and how it was
+the sculptor's task to seize that beauty and to manifest it in his
+works.
+
+Kala stood silent, and nodded approbation of the expressed thought,
+while mamma-in-law made the following confession:
+
+"It's difficult to follow all that. But I manage to hobble after you
+with my thoughts, though they whirl round and round, but I contrive to
+hold them fast."
+
+And Kala's beauty held Alfred fast, filled his soul, and seized and
+mastered him. Beauty gleamed forth from Kala's every feature--gleamed
+from her eyes, lurked in the corners of her mouth, and in every
+movement of her fingers. Alfred the sculptor saw this: he spoke only
+of her, thought only of her, and the two became one; and thus it may
+be said that she spoke much, for he and she were one, and he was
+always talking of her.
+
+Such was the betrothal; and now came the wedding, with bridesmaids and
+wedding presents, all duly mentioned in the wedding speech.
+
+Mamma-in-law had set up Thorwaldsen's bust at the end of the table,
+attired in a dressing-gown, for he was to be a guest; such was her
+whim. Songs were sung and cheers were given, for it was a gay wedding,
+and they were a handsome pair. "Pygmalion received his Galatea," so
+one of the songs said.
+
+[Illustration: KALA'S BUST.]
+
+"Ah, that's your mythologies," said mamma-in-law.
+
+Next day the youthful pair started for Copenhagen, where they were to
+live. Mamma-in-law accompanied them, "to take care of the
+commonplace," as she said, meaning the domestic economy. Kala was
+like a doll in a doll's house, all was so bright, so new, and so fine.
+There they sat, all three; and as for Alfred, to use a proverb that
+will describe his position, we may say that he sat like the friar in
+the goose-yard.
+
+The magic of form had enchanted him. He had looked at the case, and
+cared not to inquire what the case contained, and that omission brings
+unhappiness, much unhappiness, into married life; for the case may be
+broken, and the gilt may come off; and then the purchaser may repent
+his bargain. In a large party it is very disagreeable to observe that
+one's buttons are giving way, and that there are no buckles to fall
+back upon; but it is worse still in a great company to become aware
+that wife and mother-in-law are talking nonsense, and that one cannot
+depend upon oneself for a happy piece of wit to carry off the
+stupidity of the thing.
+
+The young married pair often sat hand in hand, he speaking and she
+letting fall a word here and there--the same melody, the same clear,
+bell-like sounds. It was a mental relief when Sophy, one of her
+friends, came to pay a visit.
+
+Sophy was not pretty. She was certainly free from bodily deformity,
+though Kala always asserted she was a little crooked; but no eye save
+a friend's would have remarked it. She was a very sensible girl, and
+it never occurred to her that she might become at all dangerous here.
+Her appearance was like a pleasant breath of air in the doll's house;
+and air was certainly required here, as they all acknowledged. They
+felt they wanted airing, and consequently they came out into the air,
+and mamma-in-law and the young couple travelled to Italy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Thank Heaven that we are in our own four walls again," was the
+exclamation of mother and daughter when they came home, a year after.
+
+"There's no pleasure in travelling," said mamma-in-law. "To tell the
+truth, it's very wearisome--I beg pardon for saying so. I found the
+time hang heavy, though I had my children with me; and it's expensive
+work, travelling, very expensive! And all those galleries one has to
+see, and the quantity of things you are obliged to run after! You must
+do it for decency's sake, for you're sure to be asked when you come
+back; and then you're sure to be told that you've omitted to see what
+was best worth seeing. I got tired at last of those endless Madonnas;
+one seemed to be turning a Madonna oneself!"
+
+"And what bad living you get!" said Kala.
+
+"Yes," replied mamma, "no such thing as an honest meat soup. It's
+miserable trash, their cookery."
+
+And the travelling fatigued Kala: she was always fatigued, that was
+the worst of it. Sophy was taken into the house, where her presence
+was a real advantage.
+
+Mamma-in-law acknowledged that Sophy understood both housewifery and
+art, though a knowledge of the latter could not be expected from a
+person of her limited means; and she was, moreover, an honest,
+faithful girl; she showed that thoroughly while Kala lay sick--fading
+away.
+
+Where the case is everything, the case should be strong, or else all
+is over. And all _was_ over with the case--Kala died.
+
+"She was beautiful," said mamma, "she was quite different from the
+antiques, for they are so damaged. A beauty ought to be perfect, and
+Kala was a perfect beauty."
+
+Alfred wept, and mamma wept, and both of them wore mourning. The black
+dress suited mamma very well, and she wore mourning the longest.
+Moreover, she had to experience another grief in seeing Alfred marry
+again--marry Sophy, who had no appearance at all.
+
+"He's gone to the very extreme," cried mamma-in-law; "he has gone from
+the most beautiful to the ugliest, and he has forgotten his first
+wife. Men have no endurance. My husband was of a different stamp, and
+he died before me."
+
+"Pygmalion received his Galatea," said Alfred: "yes, that's what they
+said in the wedding song. I had once really fallen in love with the
+beautiful statue, which awoke to life in my arms; but the kindred soul
+which Heaven sends down to us, the angel who can feel and sympathise
+with and elevate us, I have not found and won till now. You came,
+Sophy, not in the glory of outward beauty, though you are fair, fairer
+than is needful. The chief thing remains the chief. You came to teach
+the sculptor that his work is but clay and dust, only an outward form
+in a fabric that passes away, and that we must seek the essence, the
+internal spirit. Poor Kala! ours was but wayfarers' life. Yonder,
+where we shall know each other by sympathy, we shall be half
+strangers."
+
+"That was not lovingly spoken," said Sophy, "not spoken like a
+Christian. Yonder, where there is no giving in marriage, but where, as
+you say, souls attract each other by sympathy; there where everything
+beautiful develops itself and is elevated, her soul may acquire such
+completeness that it may sound more harmoniously than mine; and you
+will then once more utter the first raptured exclamation of your love,
+Beautiful--most beautiful!"
+
+
+
+
+IN THE DUCK-YARD.
+
+
+A duck arrived from Portugal. Some said she came from Spain, but
+that's all the same. At any rate she was called the Portuguese, and
+laid eggs, and was killed and cooked, and that was _her_ career. But
+the ducklings which crept forth from her eggs were afterwards also
+called Portuguese, and there is something in that. Now, of the whole
+family there was only one left in the duck-yard, a yard to which the
+chickens had access likewise, and where the cock strutted about in a
+very aggressive manner.
+
+"He annoys me with his loud crowing!" observed the Portuguese duck.
+"But he's a handsome bird, there's no denying that, though he is not a
+drake. He ought to moderate his voice, but that's an art inseparable
+from polite education, like that possessed by the little singing birds
+over in the lime trees in the neighbour's garden. How charmingly they
+sing! There's something quite pretty in their warbling. I call it
+Portugal. If I had only such a little singing bird, I'd be a mother to
+him, kind and good, for that's in my blood, my Portuguese blood!"
+
+And while she was still speaking, a little singing bird came head over
+heels from the roof into the yard. The cat was behind him, but the
+bird escaped with a broken wing, and that's how he came tumbling into
+the yard.
+
+"That's just like the cat; she's a villain!" said the Portuguese duck.
+"I remember her ways when I had children of my own. That such a
+creature should be allowed to live, and to wander about upon the
+roofs! I don't think they do such things in Portugal!"
+
+And she pitied the little singing bird, and the other ducks who were
+not of Portuguese descent pitied him too.
+
+"Poor little creature!" they said, as one after another came up. "We
+certainly can't sing," they said, "but we have a sounding board, or
+something of the kind, within us; we can feel that, though we don't
+talk of it."
+
+"But I can talk of it," said the Portuguese duck; "and I'll do
+something for the little fellow, for that's my duty!" And she stepped
+into the water-trough, and beat her wings upon the water so heartily,
+that the little singing bird was almost drowned by the bath she got,
+but the duck meant it kindly. "That's a good deed," she said: "the
+others may take example by it."
+
+"Piep!" said the little bird; one of his wings was broken, and he
+found it difficult to shake himself; but he quite understood that the
+bath was kindly meant. "You are very kind-hearted, madam," he said;
+but he did not wish for a second bath.
+
+"I have never thought about my heart," continued the Portuguese duck,
+"but I know this much, that I love all my fellow-creatures except the
+cat; but nobody can expect me to love her, for she ate up two of my
+ducklings. But pray make yourself at home, for one can make oneself
+comfortable. I myself am from a strange country, as you may see from
+my bearing, and from my feathery dress. My drake is a native of these
+parts, he's not of my race; but for all that I'm not proud! If any one
+here in the yard can understand you, I may assert that I am that
+person."
+
+"She's quite full of Portulak," said a little common duck, who was
+witty; and all the other common ducks considered the word _Portulak_
+quite a good joke, for it sounded like Portugal; and they nudged each
+other and said "Rapp!" It was too witty! And all the other ducks now
+began to notice the little singing bird.
+
+"The Portuguese has certainly a greater command of language," they
+said. "For our part, we don't care to fill our beaks with such long
+words, but our sympathy is just as great. If we don't do anything for
+you, we march about with you everywhere; and we think that the best
+thing we can do."
+
+"You have a lovely voice," said one of the oldest. "It must be a great
+satisfaction to be able to give so much pleasure as you are able to
+impart. I certainly am no great judge of your song, and consequently I
+keep my beak shut; and even that is better than talking nonsense to
+you, as others do."
+
+"Don't plague him so," interposed the Portuguese duck: "he requires
+rest and nursing. My little singing bird, do you wish me to prepare
+another bath for you?"
+
+"Oh no! pray let me be dry!" was the little bird's petition.
+
+"The water-cure is the only remedy for me when I am unwell," quoth the
+Portuguese. "Amusement is beneficial too! The neighbouring fowls will
+soon come to pay their visit. There are two Cochin Chinese among them.
+They wear feathers on their legs, are well educated, and have been
+brought from afar, consequently they stand higher than the others in
+my regard."
+
+And the fowls came, and the cock came; to-day he was polite enough to
+abstain from being rude.
+
+"You are a true singing bird," he said, "and you do as much with your
+little voice as can possibly be done with it. But one requires a
+little more shrillness, that every hearer may hear that one is a
+male."
+
+The two Chinese stood quite enchanted with the appearance of the
+singing bird. He looked very much rumpled after his bath, so that he
+seemed to them to have quite the appearance of a little Cochin China
+fowl. "He's charming," they cried, and began a conversation with him,
+speaking in whispers, and using the most aristocratic Chinese dialect.
+
+[Illustration: THE LITTLE SINGING BIRD RECEIVES DISTINGUISHED
+PATRONAGE.]
+
+"We are of your race," they continued. "The ducks, even the
+Portuguese, are swimming birds, as you cannot fail to have noticed.
+You do not know us yet; very few know us, or give themselves the
+trouble to make our acquaintance--not even any of the fowls, though we
+are born to occupy a higher grade on the ladder than most of the rest.
+But that does not disturb us: we quietly pursue our path amid the
+others, whose principles are certainly not ours; for we look at things
+on the favourable side, and only speak of what is good, though it is
+difficult sometimes to find something when nothing exists. Except us
+two and the cock, there's no one in the whole poultry-yard who is at
+once talented and polite. It cannot even be said of the inhabitants of
+the duck-yard. We warn you, little singing bird: don't trust that one
+yonder with the short tail feathers, for she's cunning. The pied one
+there, with the crooked stripes on her wings, is a strife-seeker, and
+lets nobody have the last word, though she's always in the wrong. The
+fat duck yonder speaks evil of every one, and that's against our
+principles: if we have nothing good to tell, we should hold our beaks.
+The Portuguese is the only one who has any education, and with whom
+one can associate, but she is passionate, and talks too much about
+Portugal."
+
+"I wonder what those two Chinese are always whispering to one another
+about," whispered one duck to her friend. "They annoy me--we have
+never spoken to them."
+
+Now the drake came up. He thought the little singing bird was a
+sparrow.
+
+"Well, I don't understand the difference," he said; "and indeed it's
+all the same thing. He's only a plaything, and if one has them, why,
+one has them."
+
+"Don't attach any value to what he says," the Portuguese whispered.
+"He's very respectable in business matters; and with him business
+takes precedence of everything. But now I shall lie down for a rest.
+One owes that to oneself, that one may be nice and fat when one is to
+be embalmed with apples and plums."
+
+And accordingly she lay down in the sun, and winked with one eye; and
+she lay very comfortably, and she felt very comfortable, and she slept
+very comfortably.
+
+The little singing bird busied himself with his broken wing. At last
+he lay down too, and pressed close to his protectress: the sun shone
+warm and bright, and he had found a very good place.
+
+But the neighbour's fowls were awake. They went about scratching up
+the earth; and, to tell the truth, they had paid the visit simply and
+solely to find food for themselves. The Chinese were the first to
+leave the duck-yard; and the other fowls soon followed them. The witty
+little duck said of the Portuguese that the old lady was becoming a
+ducky dotard. At this the other ducks laughed and cackled aloud.
+"Ducky dotard," they whispered; "that's too witty!" and then they
+repeated the former joke about Portulak, and declared that it was
+vastly amusing. And then they lay down.
+
+They had been lying asleep for some time, when suddenly something was
+thrown into the yard for them to eat. It came down with such a thwack,
+that the whole company started up from sleep and clapped their wings.
+The Portuguese awoke too, and threw herself over on the other side,
+pressing the little singing bird very hard as she did so.
+
+"Piep!" he cried; "you trod very hard upon me, madam."
+
+"Well, why do you lie in my way?" the duck retorted. "You must not be
+so touchy. I have nerves of my own, but yet I never called out 'Piep!'
+
+"Don't be angry," said the little bird "the 'piep' came out of my beak
+unawares."
+
+The Portuguese did not listen to him, but began eating as fast as she
+could, and made a good meal. When this was ended, and she lay down
+again, the little bird came up, and wanted to be amiable, and sang:
+
+      "Tillee-lilly lee,
+    Of the good spring time,
+    I'll sing so fine
+      As far away I flee."
+
+"Now I want to rest after my dinner," said the Portuguese. "You must
+conform to the rules of the house while you're here. I want to sleep
+now."
+
+The little singing bird was quite taken aback, for he had meant it
+kindly. When Madam afterwards awoke, he stood before her again with a
+little corn that he had found, and laid it at her feet; but as she had
+not slept well, she was naturally in a very bad humour.
+
+"Give that to a chicken!" she said, "and don't be always standing in
+my way."
+
+"Why are you angry with me?" replied the little singing bird. "What
+have I done?"
+
+"Done!" repeated the Portuguese duck: "your mode of expression is not
+exactly genteel; a fact to which I must call your attention."
+
+"Yesterday it was sunshine here," said the little bird, "but to-day
+it's cloudy and the air is close."
+
+"You don't know much about the weather, I fancy," retorted the
+Portuguese. "The day is not done yet. Don't stand there looking so
+stupid."
+
+"But you are looking at me just as the wicked eyes looked when I fell
+into the yard yesterday."
+
+"Impertinent creature!" exclaimed the Portuguese duck, "would you
+compare me with the cat, that beast of prey? There's not a drop of
+malicious blood in me. I've taken your part, and will teach you good
+manners."
+
+And so saying, she bit off the singing bird's head, and he lay dead on
+the ground.
+
+"Now, what's the meaning of this?" she said, "could he not bear even
+that? Then certainly he was not made for this world. I've been like a
+mother to him I know that, for I've a good heart."
+
+Then the neighbour's cock stuck his head into the yard, and crowed
+with steam-engine power.
+
+"You'll kill me with your crowing!" she cried. "It's all your fault.
+He's lost his head, and I am very near losing mine."
+
+"There's not much lying where he fell!" observed the cock.
+
+"Speak of him with respect," retorted the Portuguese duck, "for he had
+song, manners, and education. He was affectionate and soft, and that's
+as good in animals, as in your so-called human beings."
+
+And all the ducks came crowding round the little dead singing bird.
+Ducks have strong passions, whether they feel envy or pity; and as
+there was nothing here to envy, pity manifested itself, even in the
+two Chinese.
+
+"We shall never get such a singing bird again; he was almost a
+Chinese," they whispered, and they wept with a mighty clucking sound,
+and all the fowls clucked too; but the ducks went about with the
+redder eyes.
+
+"We've hearts of our own," they said; "nobody can deny that."
+
+"Hearts!" repeated the Portuguese, "yes, that we have, almost as much
+as in Portugal."
+
+"Let us think of getting something to satisfy our hunger," said the
+drake, "for that's the most important point. If one of our toys is
+broken, why, we have plenty more!"
+
+
+
+
+THE GIRL WHO TROD ON THE LOAF.
+
+
+The story of the girl who trod on the loaf, to avoid soiling her
+shoes, and of the misfortunes that befell this girl, is well known. It
+has been written, and even printed.
+
+The girl's name was Inge; she was a poor child, but proud and
+presumptuous; there was a bad foundation in her, as the saying is.
+When she was quite a little child, it was her delight to catch flies,
+and tear off their wings, so as to convert them into creeping things.
+Grown older, she would take cockchafers and beetles, and spit them on
+pins. Then she pushed a green leaf or a little scrap of paper towards
+their feet, and the poor creatures seized it, and held it fast, and
+turned it over and over, struggling to get free from the pin.
+
+"The cockchafer is reading," Inge would say. "See how he turns the
+leaf round and round!"
+
+With years she grew worse rather than better; but she was pretty, and
+that was her misfortune; otherwise she would have been more sharply
+reproved than she was.
+
+"Your headstrong will requires something strong to break it!" her own
+mother often said. "As a little child, you used to trample on my
+apron; but I fear you will one day trample on my heart."
+
+And that is what she really did.
+
+She was sent into the country, into service in the house of rich
+people, who kept her as their own child, and dressed her in
+corresponding style. She looked well, and her presumption increased.
+
+When she had been there about a year, her mistress said to her, "You
+ought once to visit your parents, Inge."
+
+And Inge set out to visit her parents, but it was only to show herself
+in her native place, and that the people there might see how grand she
+had become; but when she came to the entrance of the village, and the
+young husbandmen and maids stood there chatting, and her own mother
+appeared among them, sitting on a stone to rest, and with a faggot of
+sticks before her that she had picked up in the wood, then Inge turned
+back, for she felt ashamed that she, who was so finely dressed, should
+have for a mother a ragged woman, who picked up wood in the forest.
+She did not turn back out of pity for her mother's poverty, she was
+only angry.
+
+And another half-year went by, and her mistress said again, "You ought
+to go to your home, and visit your old parents, Inge. I'll make you a
+present of a great wheaten loaf that you may give to them; they will
+certainly be glad to see you again."
+
+And Inge put on her best clothes, and her new shoes, and drew her
+skirts around her, and set out, stepping very carefully, that she
+might be clean and neat about the feet; and there was no harm in that.
+But when she came to the place where the footway led across the moor,
+and where there was mud and puddles, she threw the loaf into the mud,
+and trod upon it to pass over without wetting her feet. But as she
+stood there with one foot upon the loaf and the other uplifted to step
+farther, the loaf sank with her, deeper and deeper, till she
+disappeared altogether, and only a great puddle, from which the
+bubbles rose, remained where she had been.
+
+And that's the story.
+
+[Illustration: INGE TURNS BACK AT THE SIGHT OF HER POOR MOTHER.]
+
+But whither did Inge go? She sank into the moor ground, and went down to
+the moor woman, who is always brewing there. The moor woman is cousin to
+the elf maidens, who are well enough known, of whom songs are sung, and
+whose pictures are painted; but concerning the moor woman it is only known
+that when the meadows steam in summer-time it is because she is brewing.
+Into the moor woman's brewery did Inge sink down; and no one can endure
+that place long. A box of mud is a palace compared with the moor woman's
+brewery. Every barrel there has an odour that almost takes away one's
+senses; and the barrels stand close to each other; and wherever there is a
+little opening among them, through which one might push one's way, the
+passage becomes impracticable from the number of damp toads and fat snakes
+who sit out their time there. Among this company did Inge fall; and all the
+horrible mass of living creeping things was so icy cold, that she shuddered
+in all her limbs, and became stark and stiff. She continued fastened to the
+loaf, and the loaf drew her down as an amber button draws a fragment of
+straw.
+
+The moor woman was at home, and on that day there were visitors in the
+brewery. These visitors were old Bogey and his grandmother, who came
+to inspect it; and Bogey's grandmother is a venomous old woman, who is
+never idle: she never rides out to pay a visit without taking her work
+with her; and, accordingly, she had brought it on the day in question.
+She sewed biting-leather to be worked into men's shoes, and which
+makes them wander about unable to settle anywhere. She wove webs of
+lies, and strung together hastily-spoken words that had fallen to the
+ground; and all this was done for the injury and ruin of mankind. Yes,
+indeed, she knew how to sew, to weave, and to string, this old
+grandmother!
+
+Catching sight of Inge, she put up her double eye-glass, and took
+another look at the girl. "That's a girl who has ability!" she
+observed, "and I beg you will give me the little one as a memento of
+my visit here. She'll make a capital statue to stand in my grandson's
+antechamber."
+
+And Inge was given up to her, and this is how Inge came into Bogey's
+domain. People don't always go there by the direct path, but they can
+get there by roundabout routes if they have a tendency in that
+direction.
+
+That was a never-ending antechamber. The visitor became giddy who
+looked forward, and doubly giddy when he looked back, and saw a whole
+crowd of people, almost utterly exhausted, waiting till the gate of
+mercy should be opened to them--they had to wait a long time! Great
+fat waddling spiders spun webs of a thousand years over their feet,
+and these webs cut like wire, and bound them like bronze fetters; and,
+moreover, there was an eternal unrest working in every heart--a
+miserable unrest. The miser stood there, and had forgotten the key of
+his strong box, and he knew the key was sticking in the lock. It would
+take too long to describe the various sorts of torture that were
+found there together. Inge felt a terrible pain while she had to
+stand there as a statue, for she was tied fast to the loaf.
+
+"That's the fruit of wishing to keep one's feet neat and tidy," she
+said to herself. "Just look how they're all staring at me!" Yes,
+certainly, the eyes of all were fixed upon her, and their evil
+thoughts gleamed forth from their eyes, and they spoke to one another,
+moving their lips, from which no sound whatever came forth: they were
+very horrible to behold.
+
+"It must be a great pleasure to look at me!" thought Inge, "and indeed
+I have a pretty face and fine clothes." And she turned her eyes, for
+she could not turn her head; her neck was too stiff for that. But she
+had not considered how her clothes had been soiled in the moor woman's
+brewhouse. Her garments were covered with mud; a snake had fastened in
+her hair, and dangled down her back; and out of each fold of her frock
+a great toad looked forth, croaking like an asthmatic poodle. That was
+very disconcerting. "But all the rest of them down here look
+horrible," she observed to herself, and derived consolation from the
+thought.
+
+The worst of all was the terrible hunger that tormented her. But could
+she not stoop and break off a piece of the loaf on which she stood?
+No, her back was too stiff, her hands and arms were benumbed, and her
+whole body was like a pillar of stone; only she was able to turn her
+eyes in her head, to turn them quite round so that she could see
+backwards: it was an ugly sight. And then the flies came up, and crept
+to and fro over her eyes, and she blinked her eyes, but the flies
+would not go away, for they could not fly: their wings had been pulled
+out, so that they were converted into creeping insects: it was
+horrible torment added to the hunger, for she felt empty, quite,
+entirely empty. "If this lasts much longer," she said, "I shall not be
+able to bear it." But she had to bear it, and it lasted on and on.
+
+Then a hot tear fell down upon her head, rolled over her face and
+neck, down on to the loaf on which she stood; and then another tear
+rolled down, followed by many more. Who might be weeping for Inge? Had
+she not still a mother in the world? The tears of sorrow which a
+mother weeps for her child always make their way to the child; but
+they do not relieve it, they only increase its torment. And now to
+bear this unendurable hunger, and yet not to be able to touch the loaf
+on which she stood! She felt as if she had been feeding on herself,
+and had become like a thin, hollow reed that takes in every sound, for
+she heard everything that was said of her up in the world, and all
+that she heard was hard and evil. Her mother, indeed, wept much and
+sorrowed for her, but for all that she said, "A haughty spirit goes
+before a fall. That was thy ruin, Inge. Thou hast sorely grieved thy
+mother."
+
+Her mother and all on earth knew of the sin she had committed; knew
+that she had trodden upon the loaf, and had sunk and disappeared; for
+the cowherd had seen it from the hill beside the moor.
+
+"Greatly hast thou grieved thy mother, Inge," said the mother; "yes,
+yes, I thought it would be thus."
+
+"Oh that I never had been born!" thought Inge; "it would have been far
+better. But what use is my mother's weeping now?"
+
+And she heard how her master and mistress, who had kept and cherished
+her like kind parents, now said she was a sinful child, and did not
+value the gifts of God, but trampled them under her feet, and that the
+gates of mercy would only open slowly to her.
+
+"They should have punished me," thought Inge, "and have driven out the
+whims I had in my head."
+
+She heard how a complete song was made about her, a song of the proud
+girl who trod upon the loaf to keep her shoes clean, and she heard how
+the song was sung everywhere.
+
+"That I should have to bear so much evil for this!" thought Inge; "the
+others ought to be punished, too, for their sins. Yes, then there
+would be plenty of punishing to do. Ah, how I'm being tortured!" And
+her heart became harder than her outward form.
+
+"Here in this company one can't even become better," she said, "and I
+don't want to become better! Look, how they're all staring at me!"
+
+And her heart was full of anger and malice against all men. "Now
+they've something to talk about at last up yonder. Ah, how I'm being
+tortured!"
+
+And then she heard how her story was told to the little children, and
+the little ones called her the godless Inge, and said she was so
+naughty and ugly that she must be well punished.
+
+Thus, even the children's mouths spoke hard words of her.
+
+But one day, while grief and hunger gnawed her hollow frame, and she
+heard her name mentioned and her story told to an innocent child, a
+little girl, she became aware that the little one burst into tears at
+the tale of the haughty, vain Inge.
+
+"But will Inge never come up here again?" asked the little girl.
+
+And the reply was, "She will never come up again."
+
+"But if she were to say she was sorry, and to beg pardon, and say she
+would never do so again?"
+
+"Yes, then she might come; but she will not beg pardon," was the
+reply.
+
+"I should be so glad if she would," said the little girl; and she was
+quite inconsolable. "I'll give my doll and all my playthings if she
+may only come up. It's too dreadful--poor Inge!"
+
+And these words penetrated to Inge's inmost heart, and seemed to do
+her good. It was the first time any one had said, "Poor Inge," without
+adding anything about her faults: a little innocent child was weeping
+and praying for mercy for her. It made her feel quite strangely, and
+she herself would gladly have wept, but she could not weep, and that
+was a torment in itself.
+
+While years were passing above her, for where she was there was no
+change, she heard herself spoken of more and more seldom. At last, one
+day a sigh struck on her ear: "Inge, Inge, how you have grieved me! I
+said how it would be!" It was the last sigh of her dying mother.
+
+Occasionally she heard her name spoken by her former employers, and
+they were pleasant words when the woman said, "Shall I ever see thee
+again, Inge? One knows not what may happen."
+
+But Inge knew right well that her good mistress would never come to
+the place where she was.
+
+And again time went on--a long, bitter time. Then Inge heard her name
+pronounced once more, and saw two bright stars that seemed gleaming
+above her. They were two gentle eyes closing upon earth. So many years
+had gone by since the little girl had been inconsolable and wept about
+"poor Inge," that the child had become an old woman, who was now to be
+called home to heaven; and in the last hour of existence, when the
+events of the whole life stand at once before us, the old woman
+remembered how as a child she had cried heartily at the story of Inge.
+
+And the eyes of the old woman closed, and the eye of her soul was
+opened to look upon the hidden things. She, in whose last thoughts
+Inge had been present so vividly, saw how deeply the poor girl had
+sunk, and burst into tears at the sight; in heaven she stood like a
+child, and wept for poor Inge. And her tears and prayers sounded like
+an echo in the dark empty space that surrounded the tormented captive
+soul, and the unhoped-for love from above conquered her, for an angel
+was weeping for her. Why was this vouchsafed to her? The tormented
+soul seemed to gather in her thoughts every deed she had done on
+earth, and she, Inge, trembled and wept such tears as she had never
+yet wept. She was filled with sorrow about herself: it seemed as
+though the gate of mercy could never open to her; and while in deep
+penitence she acknowledged this, a beam, of light shot radiantly down
+into the depths to her, with a greater force than that of the sunbeam
+which melts the snow man the boys have built up; and quicker than the
+snow-flake melts, and becomes a drop of water that falls on the warm
+lips of a child, the stony form of Inge was changed to mist, and a
+little bird soared with the speed of lightning upward into the world
+of men. But the bird was timid and shy towards all things around; he
+was ashamed of himself, ashamed to encounter any living thing, and
+hurriedly sought to conceal himself in a dark hole in an old crumbling
+wall; there he sat cowering, trembling through his whole frame, and
+unable to utter a sound, for he had no voice. Long he sat there,
+before he could rightly see all the beauty around him; for it was
+beautiful. The air was fresh and mild, the moon cast its mild radiance
+over the earth; trees and bushes exhaled fragrance, and it was right
+pleasant where he sat, and his coat of feathers was clean and pure.
+How all creation seemed to speak of beneficence and love! The bird
+wanted to sing of the thoughts that stirred in his breast, but he
+could not; gladly would he have sung as the cuckoo and the nightingale
+sung in spring-time. But Heaven, that hears the mute song of praise of
+the worm, could hear the notes of praise which now trembled in the
+breast of the bird, as David's psalms were heard before they had
+fashioned themselves into words and song.
+
+For weeks these toneless songs stirred within the bird; at last, the
+holy Christmas-time approached. The peasant who dwelt near set up a
+pole by the old wall with, some ears of corn bound to the top, that
+the birds of heaven might have a good meal, and rejoice in the happy,
+blessed time.
+
+And on Christmas morning the sun arose and shone upon the ears of
+corn, which were surrounded by a number of twittering birds. Then out
+of the hole in the wall streamed forth the voice of another bird, and
+the bird soared forth from its hiding-place; and in heaven it was well
+known what bird this was.
+
+It was a hard winter. The ponds were covered with ice, and the beasts
+of the field and the birds of the air were stinted for food. Our
+little bird soared away over the high road, and in the ruts of the
+sledges he found here and there a grain of corn, and at the
+halting-places some crumbs. Of these he ate only a few, but he called
+all the other hungry sparrows around him, that they, too, might have
+some food. He flew into the towns, and looked round about; and
+wherever a kind hand had strewn bread on the window-sill for the
+birds, he only ate a single crumb himself, and gave all the rest to
+the other birds.
+
+In the course of the winter, the bird had collected so many bread
+crumbs, and given them to the other birds, that they equalled the
+weight of the loaf on which Inge had trod to keep her shoes clean; and
+when the last bread crumb had been found and given, the grey wings of
+the bird became white, and spread far out.
+
+"Yonder is a sea-swallow, flying away across the water," said the
+children when they saw the white bird. Now it dived into the sea, and
+now it rose again into the clear sunlight. It gleamed white; but no
+one could tell whither it went, though some asserted that it flew
+straight into the sun.
+
+
+
+
+A STORY FROM THE SAND-DUNES.
+
+
+This is a story from the sand-dunes or sand-hills of Jutland; though
+it does not begin in Jutland, the northern peninsula, but far away in
+the south, in Spain. The ocean is the high road between the
+nations--transport thyself thither in thought to sunny Spain. There it
+is warm and beautiful, there the fiery pomegranate blossoms flourish
+among the dark laurels; from the mountains a cool refreshing wind
+blows down, upon, and over the orange gardens, over the gorgeous
+Moorish halls with their golden cupolas and coloured walls: through
+the streets go children in procession, with candles and with waving
+flags, and over them, lofty and clear, rises the sky with its gleaming
+stars. There is a sound of song and of castagnettes, and youths and
+maidens join in the dance under the blooming acacias, while the
+mendicant sits upon the hewn marble stone, refreshing himself with the
+juicy melon, and dreamily enjoying life. The whole is like a glorious
+dream. And there was a newly married couple who completely gave
+themselves up to its charm; moreover, they possessed the good things
+of this life, health and cheerfulness of soul, riches and honour.
+
+"We are as happy as it is possible to be," exclaimed the young couple,
+from the depths of their hearts They had indeed but one step more to
+mount in the ladder of happiness, in the hope that God would give them
+a child; a son like them in form and in spirit.
+
+The happy child would be welcomed with rejoicing, would be tended with
+all care and love, and enjoy every advantage that wealth and ease
+possessed by an influential family could give.
+
+And the days went by like a glad festival.
+
+"Life is a gracious gift of Providence, an almost inappreciable gift!"
+said the young wife, "and yet they tell us that fulness of joy is
+found only in the future life, for ever and ever. I cannot compass the
+thought."
+
+"And perhaps the thought arises from the arrogance of men," said the
+husband. "It seems a great pride to believe that we shall live for
+ever, that we shall be as gods. Were these not the words of the
+serpent, the origin of falsehood?"
+
+"Surely you do not doubt the future life?" exclaimed the young wife;
+and it seemed as if one of the first shadows flitted over the sunny
+heaven of her thoughts.
+
+"Faith promises it, and the priests tells us so!" replied the man;
+"but amid all my happiness, I feel that it is arrogance to demand a
+continued happiness, another life after this. Has not so much been
+given us in this state of existence, that we ought to be, that we
+_must_ be, contented with it?"
+
+"Yes, it has been given to _us_," said the young wife, "but to how
+many thousands is not this life one scene of hard trial? How many have
+been thrown into this world, as if only to suffer poverty and shame
+and sickness and misfortune? If there were no life after this,
+everything on earth would be too unequally distributed, and the
+Almighty would not be justice itself."
+
+"Yonder beggar," replied the man, "has his joys which seem to him
+great, and which rejoice him as much as the king is rejoiced in the
+splendour of his palace. And then, do you not think that the beast of
+burden, which suffers blows and hunger, and works itself to death,
+suffers from its heavy fate? The dumb beast might likewise demand a
+future life, and declare the decree unjust that does not admit it into
+a higher place of creation."
+
+"HE has said, 'In my Father's house are many mansions,'" replied the
+young wife: "heaven is immeasurable, as the love of our Maker is
+immeasurable. Even the dumb beast is His creature; and I firmly
+believe that no life will be lost, but that each will receive that
+amount of happiness which he can enjoy, and which is sufficient for
+him."
+
+"This world is sufficient for me!" said the man, and he threw his arms
+round his beautiful, amiable wife, and then smoked his cigarette on
+the open balcony, where the cool air was filled with the fragrance of
+oranges and pinks. The sound of music and the clatter of castagnettes
+came up from the road, the stars gleamed above, and two eyes full of
+affection, the eyes of his wife, looked on him with the undying glance
+of love.
+
+[Illustration: IN SPAIN.]
+
+"Such a moment," he said, "makes it worth while to be born, to fall,
+and to disappear!" and he smiled. The young wife raised her hand in
+mild reproach, and the shadow passed away from her world, and they
+were happy--quite happy.
+
+Everything seemed to work together for them. They advanced in honour,
+in prosperity, and in joy. There was a change, indeed, but only a
+change of place; not in enjoyment of life and of happiness. The young
+man was sent by his sovereign as ambassador to the court of Russia.
+This was an honourable office, and his birth and his acquirements gave
+him a title to be thus honoured. He possessed a great fortune, and his
+wife had brought him wealth equal to his own, for she was the daughter
+of a rich and respected merchant. One of this merchant's largest and
+finest ships was to be dispatched during that year to Stockholm, and
+it was arranged that the dear young people, the daughter and the
+son-in-law, should travel in it to St. Petersburg. And all the
+arrangements on board were princely--rich carpets for the feet, and
+silk and luxury on all sides.
+
+In an old heroic song, "The King's Son of England," it says,
+"Moreover, he sailed in a gallant ship, and the anchor was gilded with
+ruddy gold, and each rope was woven through with silk," And this ship
+involuntarily rose in the mind of him who saw the vessel from Spain,
+for here was the same pomp, and the same parting thought naturally
+arose--the thought:
+
+    "God grant that we all in joy
+    Once more may meet again."
+
+And the wind blew fairly seaward from the Spanish shore, and the
+parting was to be but a brief one, for in a few weeks the voyagers
+would reach their destination; but when they came out upon the high
+seas, the wind sank, the sea became calm and shining, the stars of
+heaven gleamed brightly, and they were festive evenings that were
+spent in the sumptuous cabin.
+
+At length the voyagers began to wish for wind, for a favouring breeze;
+but the breeze would not blow, or, if it did arise, it was contrary.
+Thus weeks passed away, two full months; and then at last the fair
+wind blew--it blew from the south-west. The ship sailed on the high
+seas between Scotland and Jutland, and the wind increased just as in
+the old song of "The King's Son of England."
+
+    "And it blew a storm, and the rain came down,
+    And they found not land nor shelter,
+    And forth they threw their anchor of gold,
+    As the wind blew westward, toward Denmark."
+
+This all happened a long, long while ago. King Christian VII. then sat
+on the Danish throne, and he was still a young man. Much has happened
+since that time, much has changed or has been changed. Sea and
+moorland have been converted into green meadows, heath has become
+arable land, and in the shelter of the West Jute huts grow apple trees
+and rose bushes, though they certainly require to be sought for, as
+they bend beneath the sharp west wind. In Western Jutland one may go
+back in thought to the old times, farther back than the days when
+Christian VII. bore rule. As it did then, in Jutland, the brown heath
+now also extends for miles, with its "Hun's Graves," its aerial
+spectacles, and its crossing, sandy, uneven roads; westward, where
+large rivulets run into the bays, extend marshes and meadow land,
+girdled with lofty sand-hills, which, like a row of Alps, raise their
+peaked summits towards the sea, only broken by the high clayey ridges,
+from which the waves year by year bite out huge mouthfuls, so that the
+impending shores fall down as if by the shock of an earthquake. Thus
+it is there to-day, and thus it was many, many years ago, when the
+happy pair were sailing in the gorgeous ship.
+
+It was in the last days of September, a Sunday, and sunny weather; the
+chiming of the church bells in the bay of Nissum was wafted along like
+a chain of sounds. The churches there are erected almost entirely of
+hewn boulder stones, each like a piece of rock; the North Sea might
+foam over them, and they would not be overthrown. Most of them are
+without steeples, and the bells are hung between two beams in the open
+air. The service was over, and the congregation thronged out into the
+churchyard, where then, as now, not a tree nor a bush was to be seen;
+not a single flower had been planted there, nor had a wreath been laid
+upon the graves. Rough mounds show where the dead had been buried, and
+rank grass, tossed by the wind, grows thickly over the whole
+churchyard. Here and there a grave had a monument to show, in the
+shape of a half-decayed block of wood rudely shaped into the form of a
+coffin, the said block having been brought from the forest of West
+Jutland; but the forest of West Jutland is the wild sea itself, where
+the inhabitants find the hewn beams and planks and fragments which the
+breakers cast ashore. The wind and the sea fog soon destroy the wood.
+One of these blocks had been placed by loving hands on a child's
+grave, and one of the women, who had come out of the church, stepped
+towards it. She stood still in front of it, and let her glance rest on
+the discoloured memorial. A few moments afterwards her husband stepped
+up to her. Neither of them spoke a word, but he took her hand, and
+they wandered across the brown heath, over moor and meadow, towards
+the sand-hills; for a long time they thus walked silently side by
+side.
+
+"That was a good sermon to-day," the man said at length. "If we had
+not God to look to, we should have nothing!"
+
+"Yes," observed the woman, "He sends joy and sorrow, and He has a
+right to send them. To-morrow our little boy would have been five
+years old, if we had been allowed to keep him."
+
+"You will gain nothing by fretting, wife," said the man. "The boy is
+well provided for. He is there whither we pray to go."
+
+And they said nothing more, but went forward to their house among the
+sand-hills. Suddenly, in front of one of the houses where the sea
+grass did not keep the sand down with its twining roots, there arose
+what appeared to be a column of smoke rising into the air. A gust of
+wind swept in among the hills, whirling the particles of sand high in
+the air. Another, and the strings of fish hung up to dry flapped and
+beat violently against the wall of the hut; and then all was still
+again, and the sun shone down hotly.
+
+Man and wife stepped into the house. They had soon taken off their
+Sunday clothes, and emerging again, they hurried away over the dunes,
+which stood there like huge waves of sand suddenly arrested in their
+course, while the sandweeds and the dunegrass with its bluish stalks
+spread a changing colour over them. A few neighbours came up, and
+helped one another to draw the boats higher up on the sand. The wind
+now blew more sharply than before; it was cutting and cold: and when
+they went back over the sand-hills, sand and little pointed stones
+blew into their faces. The waves reared themselves up with their white
+crowns of foam, and the wind cut off their crests, flinging the foam
+far around.
+
+The evening came on. In the air was a swelling roar, moaning and
+complaining like a troop of despairing spirits, that sounded above the
+hoarse rolling of the sea; for the fisher's little hut was on the very
+margin. The sand rattled against the window panes, and every now and
+then came a violent gust of wind, that shook the house to its
+foundations. It was dark, but towards midnight the moon would rise.
+
+The air became clearer, but the storm swept in all its gigantic force
+over the perturbed sea. The fisher people had long gone to bed, but in
+such weather there was no chance of closing an eye. Presently there
+was a knocking at the window, and the door was opened, and a voice
+said:
+
+"There's a great ship fast stranded on the outermost reef."
+
+In a moment the fish people had sprung from their couch, and hastily
+arrayed themselves.
+
+The moon had risen, it was light enough to make the surrounding
+objects visible, to those who could open their eyes for the blinding
+clouds of sand. The violence of the wind was terrible; and only by
+creeping forward between the gusts was it possible to pass among the
+sand-hills; and now the salt spray flew up from the sea like down,
+while the ocean foamed like a roaring cataract towards the beach. It
+required a practised eye to descry the vessel out in the offing. The
+vessel was a noble brig. The billows now lifted it over the reef,
+three or four cables' lengths out of the usual channel. It drove
+towards the land, struck against the second reef, and remained fixed.
+
+[Illustration: SAVED FROM THE WRECK.]
+
+To render assistance was impossible; the sea rolled fairly in upon the
+vessel, making a clean breach over her. Those on shore fancied they
+heard the cries of help from on board, and could plainly descry the
+busy useless efforts made by the stranded crew. Now a wave came
+rolling onward, falling like a rock upon the bowsprit, and tearing it
+from the brig. The stern was lifted high above the flood. Two people
+were seen to embrace and plunge together into the sea; in a moment
+more, and one of the largest waves that rolled towards the sand-hills
+threw a body upon the shore. It was a woman, and appeared quite dead,
+said the sailors; but some women thought they discerned signs of life
+in her, and the stranger was carried across the sand-hills into the
+fisherman's hut. How beautiful and fair she was! certainly she must
+be a great lady.
+
+They laid her upon the humble bed that boasted not a yard of linen;
+but there was a woollen coverlet, and that would keep the occupant
+warm.
+
+Life returned to her, but she was delirious, and knew nothing of what
+had happened, or where she was; and it was better so, for everything
+she loved and valued lay buried in the sea. It was with her ship as
+with the vessel in the song of "The King's Son of England."
+
+    "Alas, it was a grief to see
+    How the gallant ship sank speedily."
+
+Portions of wreck and fragments of wood drifted ashore, and they were
+all that remained of what had been the ship. The wind still drove
+howling over the coast. For a few moments the strange lady seemed to
+rest; but she awoke in pain, and cries of anguish and fear came from
+her lips. She opened her wonderfully beautiful eyes, and spoke a few
+words, but none understood her.
+
+And behold, as a reward for the pain and sorrow she had undergone, she
+held in her arms a new-born child, the child that was to have rested
+upon a gorgeous couch, surrounded by silken curtains, in the sumptuous
+home. It was to have been welcomed with joy to a life rich in all the
+goods of the earth; and now Providence had caused it to be born in
+this humble retreat, and not even a kiss did it receive from its
+mother.
+
+The fisher's wife laid the child upon the mother's bosom, and it
+rested on a heart that beat no more, for she was dead. The child who
+was to be nursed by wealth and fortune, was cast into the world,
+washed by the sea among the sand-hills, to partake the fate and heavy
+days of the poor. And here again comes into our mind the old song of
+the English king's son, in which mention is made of the customs
+prevalent at that time, when knights and squires plundered those who
+had been saved from shipwreck.
+
+The ship had been stranded some distance south of Nissum Bay. The
+hard, inhuman days in which, as we have stated, the inhabitants of the
+Jutland shores did evil to the shipwrecked, were long past. Affection
+and sympathy and self-sacrifice for the unfortunate were to be found,
+as they are to be found in our own time, in many a brilliant example.
+The dying mother and the unfortunate child would have found succour
+and help wherever the wind blew them; but nowhere could they have
+found more earnest care than in the hut of the poor fisherwife; who
+had stood but yesterday, with a heavy heart, beside the grave which
+covered her child, which would have been five years old that day, if
+God had spared it to her.
+
+No one knew who the dead stranger was, or could even form a
+conjecture. The pieces of wreck said nothing on the subject.
+
+Into the rich house in Spain no tidings penetrated of the fate of the
+daughter and the son-in-law. They had not arrived at their destined
+post, and violent storms had raged during the past weeks. At last the
+verdict was given, "Foundered at sea--all lost."
+
+But in the sand-hills near Hunsby, in the fisherman's hut, lived a
+little scion of the rich Spanish family.
+
+Where Heaven sends food for two, a third can manage to make a meal,
+and in the depths of the sea is many a dish of fish for the hungry.
+
+And they called the boy Juergen.
+
+"It must certainly be a Jewish child," the people said, "it looks so
+swarthy."
+
+"It might be an Italian or a Spaniard," observed the clergyman.
+
+But to the fisherwoman these three nations seemed all the same, and
+she consoled herself with the idea that the child was baptized as a
+Christian.
+
+The boy throve. The noble blood in his veins was warm, and he became
+strong on his homely fare. He grew apace in the humble house, and the
+Danish dialect spoken by the West Jutes became his language. The
+pomegranate seed from Spanish soil became a hardy plant on the coast
+of West Jutland. Such may be a man's fate! To this home he clung with
+the roots of his whole being. He was to have experience of cold and
+hunger, and the misfortunes and hardships that surrounded the humble;
+but he tasted also of the poor man's joys.
+
+Childhood has sunny heights for all, whose memory gleams through the
+whole after life. The boy had many opportunities for pleasure and
+play. The whole coast, for miles and miles, was full of playthings;
+for it was a mosaic of pebbles, red as coral, yellow as amber, and
+others again white and rounded like birds' eggs; and all smoothed and
+prepared by the sea. Even the bleached fish skeletons, the water
+plants dried by the wind, seaweed, white, gleaming, and long
+linen-like bands, waving among the stones, all these seemed made to
+give pleasure and amusement to the eye and the thoughts; and the boy
+had an intelligent mind--many and great faculties lay dormant in him.
+How readily he retained in his mind the stories and songs he heard,
+and how neat-handed he was! With stones and mussel shells he put
+together pictures and ships with which one could decorate the room;
+and he could cut out his thoughts wonderfully on a stick, his
+foster-mother said, though the boy was still so young and little! His
+voice sounded sweetly; every melody flowed at once from his lips. Many
+chords were attained in his heart which might have sounded out into
+the world, if he had been placed elsewhere than in the fisherman's hut
+by the North Sea.
+
+One day another ship was stranded there. Among other things, a chest
+of rare flower bulbs floated ashore. Some were put into the cooking
+pots, for they were thought to be eatable, and others lay and
+shrivelled in the sand, but they did not accomplish their purpose, or
+unfold the richness of colour whose germ was within them. Would it be
+better with Juergen? The flower bulbs had soon played their part, but
+he had still years of apprenticeship before him.
+
+Neither he nor his friends remarked in what a solitary and uniform way
+one day succeeded another; for there was plenty to do and to see. The
+sea itself was a great lesson book, unfolding a new leaf every day,
+such as calm and storm, breakers and waifs. The visits to the church
+were festal visits. But among the festal visits in the fisherman's
+house, one was particularly distinguished. It was repeated twice in
+the year, and was, in fact, the visit of the brother of Juergen's
+foster-mother, the eel breeder from Zjaltring, upon the neighbourhood
+of the "Bow Hill." He used to come in a cart painted red, and filled
+with eels. The cart was covered and locked like a box, and painted all
+over with blue and white tulips. It was drawn by two dun oxen, and
+Juergen was allowed to guide them.
+
+The eel breeder was a witty fellow, a merry guest, and brought a
+measure of brandy with him. Every one received a small glassful, or a
+cupful when there was a scarcity of glasses: even Juergen had as much
+as a large thimbleful, that he might digest the fat eel, the eel
+breeder said, who always told the same story over again, and when his
+hearers laughed he immediately told it over again to the same
+audience. As, during his childhood, and even later, Juergen used many
+expressions from this story of the eel breeder's, and made use of it
+in various ways, it is as well that we should listen to it too. Here
+it is:
+
+"The eels went into the bay; and the mother-eel said to her daughters,
+who begged leave to go a little way up the bay, 'Don't go too far: the
+ugly eel spearer might come and snap you all up.' But they went too
+far; and of eight daughters only three came back to the eel-mother,
+and these wept and said, 'We only went a little way before the door,
+and the ugly eel spearer came directly, and stabbed five of our party
+to death.' 'They'll come again,' said the mother-eel. 'Oh no,'
+exclaimed the daughters, 'for he skinned them, and cut them in two,
+and fried them.' 'Oh, they'll come again,' the mother-eel persisted.
+'No,' replied the daughters, 'for he ate them up.' 'They'll come
+again,' repeated the mother-eel. 'But he drank brandy after them,'
+continued the daughters. 'Ah, then they'll never come back,' said the
+mother, and she burst out crying, 'It's the brandy that buries the
+eels.'
+
+"And therefore," said the eel breeder, in conclusion, "it is always
+right to take brandy after eating eels."
+
+[Illustration: THE EEL BREEDER'S VISIT.]
+
+And this story was the tinsel thread, the most humorous recollection
+of Juergen's life. _He_ likewise wanted to go a little way outside the
+door, and up the bay--that is to say, out into the world in a ship;
+and his mother said, like the eel breeder, "There are so many bad
+people--eel spearers!" But he wished to go a little way past the
+sand-hills, a little way into the dunes, and he succeeded in doing so.
+Four merry days, the happiest of his childhood, unrolled themselves,
+and the whole beauty and splendour of Jutland, all the joy and
+sunshine of his home, was concentrated in these. He was to go to a
+festival--though it was certainly a burial feast.
+
+A wealthy relative of the fisherman's family had died. The farm lay
+deep in the country, eastward, and a point towards the north, as the
+saying is. Juergen's foster-parents were to go, and he was to accompany
+them from the dunes, across heath and moor. They came to the green
+meadows where the river Skjaern rolls its course, the river of many
+eels, where mother-eels dwell with their daughters, who are caught and
+eaten up by wicked people. But men were said sometimes to have acted
+no better towards their own fellow men; for had not the knight, Sir
+Bugge, been murdered by wicked people? and though he was well spoken
+of, had he not wanted to kill the architect, as the legend tells us,
+who had built for him the castle, with the thick walls and tower,
+where Juergen and his parents now stood, and where the river falls into
+the bay? The wall on the ramparts still remained, and red crumbling
+fragments lay strewn around. Here it was that Sir Bugge, after the
+architect had left him, said to one of his men, "Go thou after him,
+and say, 'Master, the tower shakes.' If he turns round, you are to
+kill him, and take from him the money I paid him; but if he does not
+turn round, let him depart in peace." The man obeyed, and the
+architect never turned round, but called back, "The tower does not
+shake in the least, but one day there will come a man from the west,
+in a blue cloak, who will cause it to shake!" And indeed so it
+chanced, a hundred years later; for the North Sea broke in, and the
+tower was cast down, but the man who then possessed the castle,
+Prebjoern Gyldenstjerne, built a new castle higher up, at the end of
+the meadow, and that stands to this day, and is called Noerre Vosborg.
+
+Past this castle went Juergen and his foster-parents. They had told him
+its story during the long winter evenings, and now he saw the lordly
+castle, with its double moat, and trees, and bushes; the wall, covered
+with ferns, rose within the moat; but most beautiful of all were the
+lofty lime trees, which grew up to the highest windows, and filled the
+air with sweet fragrance. In a corner of the garden towards the
+north-west stood a great bush full of blossom like winter snow amid
+the summer's green: it was a juniper bush, the first that Juergen had
+seen thus in bloom. He never forgot it, nor the lime tree: the child's
+soul treasured up these remembrances of beauty and fragrance to
+gladden the old man.
+
+From Noerre Vosborg, where the juniper blossomed, the way went more
+easily; for they encountered other guests who were also bound for the
+burial, and were riding in waggons. Our travellers had to sit all
+together on a little box at the back of the waggon, but even this was
+preferable to walking, they thought. So they pursued their journey in
+the waggon across the rugged heath. The oxen which drew the vehicle
+slipped every now and then, where a patch of fresh grass appeared amid
+the heather. The sun shone warm, and it was wonderful to behold how in
+the far distance something like smoke seemed to be rising; and yet
+this smoke was clearer than the mist; it was transparent, and looked
+like rays of light rolling and dancing afar over the heath.
+
+"That is Lokeman driving his sheep," said some one; and this was
+enough to excite the fancy of Juergen. It seemed to him as if they were
+now going to enter fairyland, though everything was still real.
+
+How quiet it was! Far and wide the heath extended around them like a
+beautiful carpet. The heather bloomed; the juniper bushes and the
+fresh oak saplings stood up like nosegays from the earth. An inviting
+place for a frolic, if it were not for the number of poisonous adders
+of which the travellers spoke, as they did also of the wolves which
+formerly infested the place, from which circumstance the region was
+still called the Wolfsborg region. The old man who guided the oxen
+related how, in the lifetime of his father, the horses had to sustain
+many a hard fight with the wild beasts that were now extinct; and how
+he himself, when he went out one morning to bring in the horses, had
+found one of them standing with its fore-feet on a wolf it had killed,
+after the savage beast had torn and lacerated the legs of the brave
+horse.
+
+The journey over the heath and the deep sand was only too quickly
+accomplished. They stopped before the house of mourning, where they
+found plenty of guests within and without. Waggon after waggon stood
+ranged in a row, and horses and oxen went out to crop the scanty
+pasture. Great sand-hills, like those at home in the North Sea, rose
+behind the house, and extended far and wide. How had they come here,
+miles into the interior of the land, and as large and high as those on
+the coast? The wind had lifted and carried them hither, and to them
+also a history was attached.
+
+Psalms were sung, and a few of the old people shed tears; beyond this,
+the guests were cheerful enough, as it appeared to Juergen, and there
+was plenty to eat and drink. Eels there were of the fattest, upon
+which brandy should be poured to bury them, as the eel breeder said;
+and certainly his maxim was here carried out.
+
+Juergen went to and fro in the house. On the third day he felt quite at
+home, like as in the fisherman's hut on the sand-hills where he had
+passed his early days. Here on the heath there was certainly an
+unheard-of wealth, for the flowers and blackberries and bilberries
+were to be found in plenty, so large and sweet, that when they were
+crushed beneath the tread of the passers by, the heath was coloured
+with their red juice.
+
+Here was a Hun's Grave, and yonder another. Columns of smoke rose into
+the still air; it was a heath-fire, he was told, that shone so
+splendidly in the dark evening.
+
+Now came the fourth day, and the funeral festivities were to conclude,
+and they were to go back from the land-dunes to the sand-dunes.
+
+"Ours are the best," said the old fisherman, Juergen's foster-father;
+"these have no strength."
+
+And they spoke of the way in which the sand-dunes had come into the
+country, and it seemed all very intelligible. This was the explanation
+they gave:
+
+A corpse had been found on the coast, and the peasants had buried it
+in the churchyard; and from that time the sand began to fly, and the
+sea broke in violently. A wise man in the parish advised them to open
+the grave and to look if the buried man was not lying sucking his
+thumb; for if so, he was a man of the sea, and the sea would not rest
+until it had got him back. So the grave was opened, and he really was
+found with his thumb in his mouth. So they laid him upon a cart and
+harnessed two oxen before it; and as if stung by an adder, the oxen
+ran away with the man of the sea over heath and moorland to the ocean;
+and then the sand ceased flying inland, but the hills that had been
+heaped up still remained there. All this Juergen heard and treasured in
+his memory from the happiest days of his childhood, the days of the
+burial feast. How glorious it was to get out into strange regions, and
+to see strange people! And he was to go farther still. He was not yet
+fourteen years old when he went out in a ship to see what the world
+could show him: bad weather, heavy seas, malice, and hard men--these
+were his experiences, for he became a ship boy. There were cold
+nights, and bad living, and blows to be endured; then he felt as if
+his noble Spanish blood boiled within him, and bitter wicked words
+seethed up to his lips; but it was better to gulp them down, though he
+felt as the eel must feel when it is flayed and cut up, and put into
+the frying-pan.
+
+"I shall come again!" said a voice within him. He saw the Spanish
+coast, the native land of his parents. He even saw the town where they
+had lived in happiness and prosperity; but he knew nothing of his home
+or race, and his race knew just as little about him.
+
+The poor ship boy was not allowed to land; but on the last day of
+their stay he managed to get ashore. There were several purchases to
+be made, and he was to carry them on board.
+
+There stood Juergen in his shabby clothes, which looked as if they had
+been washed in the ditch and dried in the chimney: for the first time
+he, the inhabitant of the dunes, saw a great city. How lofty the
+houses seemed, and how full of people were the streets! some pushing
+this way, some that--a perfect maelstrom of citizens and peasants,
+monks and soldiers--a calling and shouting, and jingling of
+bell-harnessed asses and mules, and the church bells chiming between
+song and sound, hammering and knocking, all going on at once. Every
+handicraft had its home in the basements of the houses or in the
+lanes; and the sun shone so hotly, and the air was so close, that one
+seemed to be in an oven full of beetles, cockchafers, bees, and flies,
+all humming and murmuring together. Juergen hardly knew where he was or
+which way he went. Then he saw just in front of him the mighty portal
+of the cathedral; the lights were gleaming in the dark aisles, and a
+fragrance of incense was wafted towards him. Even the poorest beggar
+ventured up the steps into the temple. The sailor with whom Juergen
+went took his way through the church; and Juergen stood in the
+sanctuary. Coloured pictures gleamed from their golden ground. On the
+altar stood the figure of the Virgin with the child Jesus, surrounded
+by lights and flowers; priests in festive garb were chanting, and
+choir boys, beautifully attired, swung the silver censer. What
+splendour, what magnificence did he see here! It streamed through his
+soul and overpowered him; the church and the faith of his parents
+surrounded him, and touched a chord in his soul, so that the tears
+overflowed his eyes.
+
+From the church they went to the market-place. Here a quantity of
+provisions were given him to carry. The way to the harbour was long,
+and, tired and overpowered by various emotions, he rested for a few
+moments before a splendid house, with marble pillars, statues, and
+broad staircases. Here he rested his burden against the wall. Then a
+liveried porter came out, lifted up a silver-headed cane, and drove
+him away--him, the grandson of the house. But no one there knew that,
+and he just as little as any one. And afterwards he went on board
+again, and there were hard words and cuffs, little sleep and much
+work; such were his experiences. They say that it is well to suffer in
+youth, if age brings something to make up for it.
+
+His time of servitude on shipboard had expired, and the vessel lay
+once more at Ringkjoebing, in Jutland: he came ashore and went home to
+the sand-dunes by Hunsby; but his foster-mother had died while he was
+away on his voyage.
+
+A hard winter followed that summer. Snowstorms swept over land and
+sea, and there was a difficulty in getting about. How variously things
+were distributed in the world! here biting cold and snowstorms, while
+in the Spanish land there was burning sunshine and oppressive heat.
+And yet, when here at home there came a clear frosty day, and Juergen
+saw the swans flying in numbers from the sea towards the land, and
+across to Vosborg, it appeared to him that people could breathe most
+freely here; and here too was a splendid summer! In imagination he saw
+the heath bloom and grow purple with rich juicy berries, and saw the
+elder trees and the lime trees at Vosborg in blossom. He determined to
+go there once more.
+
+Spring came on, and the fishery began. Juergen was an active assistant
+in this; he had grown in the last year, and was quick at work. He was
+full of life, he understood how to swim, to tread water, to turn over
+and tumble in the flood. They often warned him to beware of the troops
+of dogfish, which could seize the best swimmer, and draw him down, and
+devour him; but such was not Juergen's fate.
+
+At the neighbour's on the dune was a boy named Martin, with whom
+Juergen was very friendly, and the two took service in the same ship to
+Norway, and also went together to Holland; and they had never had any
+quarrel; but a quarrel can easily come, for when a person is hot by
+nature, he often uses strong gestures, and that is what Juergen did one
+day on board when they had a quarrel about nothing at all. They were
+sitting behind the cabin door, eating out of a delf plate which they
+had placed between them. Juergen held his pocket-knife in his hand, and
+lifted it against Martin, and at the same time became ashy pale in the
+face, and his eyes had an ugly look. Martin only said,
+
+"Ah! ha! you 're one of that sort, who are fond of using the knife!"
+
+Hardly were the words spoken, when Juergen's hand sank down. He
+answered not a syllable, but went on eating, and afterwards walked
+away to his work. When they were resting again, he stepped up to
+Martin, and said,
+
+"You may hit me in the face! I have deserved it. But I feel as if I
+had a pot in me that boiled over."
+
+"There let the thing rest," replied Martin; and after that they were
+almost doubly as good friends as before; and when afterwards they got
+back to the dunes and began telling their adventures, this was told
+among the rest; and Martin said that Juergen was certainly passionate,
+but a good fellow for all that.
+
+They were both young and strong, well-grown and stalwart; but Juergen
+was the cleverer of the two.
+
+In Norway the peasants go into the mountains, and lead out the cattle
+there to pasture. On the west coast of Jutland, huts have been erected
+among the sand-hills; they are built of pieces of wreck, and roofed
+with turf and heather. There are sleeping-places around the walls, and
+here the fisher people live and sleep during the early spring. Every
+fisherman has his female helper, his manager, as she is called, whose
+business consists in baiting the hooks, preparing the warm beer for
+the fishermen when they come ashore, and getting their dinners cooked
+when they come back into the hut tired and hungry. Moreover, the
+managers bring up the fish from the boat, cut them open, prepare them,
+and have generally a great deal to do.
+
+Juergen, his father, and several other fishermen and their managers
+inhabited the same hut; Martin lived in the next one.
+
+One of the girls, Else by name, had known Juergen from childhood: they
+were glad to see each other, and in many things were of the same mind;
+but in outward appearance they were entirely opposite; for he was
+brown, whereas she was pale and had flaxen hair, and eyes as blue as
+the sea in sunshine.
+
+One day as they were walking together, and Juergen held her hand in his
+very firmly and warmly, she said to him,
+
+"Juergen, I have something weighing upon my heart! Let me be your
+manager, for you are like a brother to me, whereas Martin, who has
+engaged me--he and I are lovers----but you need not tell that to the
+rest."
+
+And it seemed to Juergen as if the loose sand were giving way under his
+feet. He spoke not a word, but only nodded his head, which signified
+"yes." More was not required; but suddenly he felt in his heart that
+he detested Martin; and the longer he considered of this--for he had
+never thought of Else in this way before--the more did it become clear
+to him that Martin had stolen from him the only being he loved; and
+now it was all at once plain to him, that Else was the being in
+question.
+
+When the sea is somewhat disturbed, and the fishermen come home in
+their great boat, it is a sight to behold how they cross the reefs.
+One of the men stands upright in the bow of the boat, and the others
+watch him, sitting with the oars in their hands. Outside the reef they
+appear to be rowing not towards the land, but backing out to sea, till
+the man standing in the boat gives them the sign that the great wave
+is coming which is to float them across the reef; and accordingly the
+boat is lifted--lifted high in the air, so that its keel is seen from
+the shore; and in the next minute the whole boat is hidden from the
+eye; neither mast nor keel nor people can be seen, as though the sea
+had devoured them; but in a few moments they emerge like a great sea
+animal climbing up the waves, and the oars move as if the creature had
+legs. The second and the third reef are passed in the same manner; and
+now the fishermen jump into the water; every wave helps them, and
+pushes the boat well forward, till at length they have drawn it beyond
+the range of the breakers.
+
+A wrong order given in front of the reef--the slightest
+hesitation--and the boat must founder.
+
+"Then it would be all over with me, and Martin too!" This thought
+struck Juergen while they were out at sea, where his foster-father had
+been taken alarmingly ill. The fever had seized him. They were only a
+few oars' strokes from the reef, and Juergen sprang from his seat, and
+stood up in the bow.
+
+"Father--let me come!" he said; and his eye glanced towards Martin,
+and across the waves: but while every oar bent with the exertions of
+the rowers, as the great wave came towering towards them, he beheld
+the pale face of his father, and dare not obey the evil impulse that
+had seized him. The boat came safely across the reef to land, but the
+evil thought remained in his blood, and roused up every little fibre
+of bitterness which had remained in his memory since he and Martin had
+been comrades. But he could not weave the fibres together, nor did he
+endeavour to do so. He felt that Martin had despoiled him, and this
+was enough to make him detest his former friend. Several of the
+fishermen noticed this, but not Martin, who continued obliging and
+talkative--the latter a little too much.
+
+Juergen's adopted father had to keep his bed, which became his
+deathbed, for in the next week he died; and now Juergen was installed
+as heir in the little house behind the sand-hills. It was but a little
+house, certainly, but still it was something, and Martin had nothing
+of the kind.
+
+"You will not take sea service again, Juergen?" observed one of the old
+fishermen. "You will always stay with us, now."
+
+But this was not Juergen's intention, for he was just thinking of
+looking about him a little in the world. The eel breeder of Zjaltring
+had an uncle in Alt-Skage, who was a fisherman, but at the same time a
+prosperous merchant, who had ships upon the sea; he was said to be a
+good old man, and it would not be amiss to enter his service.
+Alt-Skage lies in the extreme north of Jutland, as far removed from
+the Hunsby dunes as one can travel in that country; and this is just
+what pleased Juergen, for he did not want to remain till the wedding of
+Martin and Else, which was to be celebrated in a few weeks.
+
+[Illustration: ELSE AFFIRMS HER PREFERENCE FOR MARTIN.]
+
+The old fisherman asserted that it was foolish now to quit the
+neighbourhood; for that Juergen had a home, and Else would probably be
+inclined to take him rather than Martin.
+
+Juergen answered so much at random, that it was not easy to understand
+what he meant; but the old man brought Else to him, and she said, "You
+have a home now; that ought to be well considered."
+
+And Juergen thought of many things.
+
+The sea has heavy waves, but there are heavier waves in the human
+heart. Many thoughts, strong and weak, thronged through Juergen's
+brain; and he said to Else,
+
+"If Martin had a house like mine, whom would you rather have?"
+
+"But Martin has no house, and cannot get one."
+
+"But let us suppose he had one."
+
+"Why then I would certainly take Martin, for that's what my heart
+tells me; but one can't live upon that."
+
+And Juergen thought of these things all night through. Something was
+working within him, he could not understand what it was, but he had a
+thought that was stronger than his love for Else; and so he went to
+Martin, and what he said and did there was well considered. He let the
+house to Martin on the most liberal terms, saying that he wished to go
+to sea again, because it pleased him to do so. And Else kissed him on
+the mouth when she heard that, for she loved Martin best.
+
+In the early morning Juergen purposed to start. On the evening before
+his departure, when it was already growing late, he felt a wish to
+visit Martin once more; he started, and among the dunes the old fisher
+met him, who was angry at his going. The old man made jokes about
+Martin, and declared there must be some magic about that fellow, "of
+whom all the girls were so fond." Juergen paid no heed to this speech,
+but said farewell to the old man, and went on towards the house where
+Martin dwelt. He heard loud talking within. Martin was not alone, and
+this made Juergen waver in his determination, for he did not wish to
+encounter Else; and on second consideration, he thought it better not
+to hear Martin thank him again, and therefore turned back.
+
+On the following morning, before break of day, he fastened his
+knapsack, took his wooden provision box in his hand, and went away
+among the sand-hills towards the coast path. The way was easier to
+traverse than the heavy sand road, and moreover shorter; for he
+intended to go in the first instance to Zjaltring, by Bowberg, where
+the eel breeder lived, to whom he had promised a visit.
+
+The sea lay pure and blue before him, and mussel shells and sea
+pebbles, the playthings of his youth, crunched under his feet. While
+he was thus marching on, his nose suddenly began to bleed: it was a
+trifling incident, but little things can have great significances. A
+few large drops of blood fell upon one of his sleeves. He wiped them
+off and stopped the bleeding, and it seemed to him as if this had
+cleared and lightened his brain. In the sand the sea-eringa was
+blooming here and there. He broke off a stalk and stuck it in his hat;
+he determined to be merry and of good cheer, for he was going into the
+wide world--"a little way outside the door, in front of the hay," as
+the young eels had said. "Beware of bad people, who will catch you and
+flay you, cut you in two, and put you in the frying-pan!" he repeated
+in his mind, and smiled, for he thought he should find his way through
+the world--good courage is a strong weapon!
+
+The sun already stood high when he approached the narrow entrance to
+Nissum Bay. He looked back, and saw a couple of horsemen gallopping a
+long distance behind him, and they were accompanied by other people.
+But this concerned him nothing.
+
+The ferry was on the opposite side of the bay. Juergen called to the
+ferryman; and when the latter came over with the boat, Juergen stepped
+in; but before they had gone half-way across, the men whom he had seen
+riding so hastily behind him, hailed the ferryman, and summoned him to
+return in the name of the law. Juergen did not understand the reason of
+this, but he thought it would be best to turn back, and therefore
+himself took an oar and returned. The moment the boat touched the
+shore, the men sprang on board, and, before he was aware, they had
+bound his hands with a rope.
+
+"Thy wicked deed will cost thee thy life," they said. "It is well that
+we caught thee."
+
+He was accused of nothing less than murder. Martin had been found
+dead, with a knife thrust through his neck. One of the fishermen had
+(late on the previous evening) met Juergen going towards Martin's
+house; and this was not the first time Juergen had raised his knife
+against Martin--so they knew that he was the murderer. The town in
+which the prison was built was a long way off, and the wind was
+contrary for going there; but not half an hour would be required to
+get across the bay, and a quarter of an hour would bring them from
+thence to Noerre Vosborg, a great castle with walls and ditches. One of
+Juergen's captors was a fisherman, a brother of the keeper of the
+castle; and he declared it might be managed that Juergen should for the
+present be put into the dungeon at Vosborg, where Long Martha the
+gipsy had been shut up till her execution.
+
+No attention was paid to the defence made by Juergen; the few drops of
+blood upon his shirt-sleeve bore heavy witness against him. But Juergen
+was conscious of innocence; and as there was no chance of immediately
+righting himself, he submitted to his fate.
+
+The party landed just at the spot where Sir Bugge's castle had stood
+and where Juergen had walked with his foster-parents after the burial
+feast, during the four happiest days of his childhood. He was led by
+the old path over the meadow to Vosborg; and again the elder
+blossomed and the lofty lindens smelt sweet, and it seemed but
+yesterday that he had left the spot.
+
+In the two wings of the castle a staircase leads down to a spot below
+the entrance, and from thence there is access to a low vaulted cellar.
+Here Long Martha had been imprisoned, and hence she had been led away
+to the scaffold. She had eaten the hearts of five children, and had
+been under the delusion that if she could obtain two more, she would
+be able to fly and to make herself invisible. In the midst of the
+cellar roof was a little narrow air-hole, but no window. The blooming
+lindens could not waft a breath of comforting fragrance into that
+abode, where all was dark and mouldy. Only a rough bench stood in the
+prison; but "a good conscience is a soft pillow," and consequently
+Juergen could sleep well.
+
+The thick oaken door was locked, and secured on the outside by an iron
+bar; but the goblin of superstition can creep through a keyhole into
+the baron's castle just as into the fisherman's hut; and wherefore
+should he not creep in here, where Juergen sat thinking of Long Martha
+and her evil deeds? Her last thought on the night before her execution
+had filled this space; and all the magic came into Juergen's mind which
+tradition asserted to have been practised there in the old times, when
+Sir Schwanwedel dwelt there. All this passed through Juergen's mind,
+and made him shudder; but a sunbeam--a refreshing thought from
+without--penetrated his heart even here; it was the remembrance of the
+blooming elder and the fragrant lime trees.
+
+He was not left there long. They carried him off to the town of
+Ringkjoebing, where his imprisonment was just as hard.
+
+Those times were not like ours. Hard measure was dealt out to the
+"common" people; and it was just after the days when farms were
+converted into knights' estates, on which occasions coachmen and
+servants were often made magistrates, and had it in their power to
+sentence a poor man, for a small offence, to lose his property and to
+corporal punishment. Judges of this kind were still to be found; and
+in Jutland, far from the capital and from the enlightened well-meaning
+head of the government, the law was still sometimes very loosely
+administered; and the smallest grievance that Juergen had to expect was
+that his case would be protracted.
+
+Cold and cheerless was his abode--and when would this state of things
+end? He had innocently sunk into misfortune and sorrow--that was his
+fate. He had leisure now to ponder on the difference of fortune on
+earth, and to wonder why this fate had been allotted to him; and he
+felt sure that the question would be answered in the next life--the
+existence that awaits us when this is over. This faith had grown
+strong in him in the poor fisherman's hut; that which had never shone
+into his father's mind, in all the richness and sunshine of Spain, was
+vouchsafed as a light of comfort in his poverty and distress--a sign
+of mercy from God that never deceives.
+
+The spring storms began to blow. The rolling and moaning of the North
+Sea could be heard for miles inland when the wind was lulled; for then
+it sounded like the rushing of a thousand waggons over a hard road
+with a mine beneath. Juergen, in his prison, heard these sounds, and it
+was a relief to him. No melody could have appealed so directly to his
+heart as did these sounds of the sea--the rolling sea, the boundless
+sea, on which a man can be borne across the world before the wind,
+carrying his own house with him wherever he is driven, just as the
+snail carries its home even into a strange land.
+
+How he listened to the deep moaning, and how the thought arose in
+him--"Free! free! How happy to be free, even without shoes and in
+ragged clothes!" Sometimes, when such thoughts crossed his mind, the
+fiery nature rose within him, and he beat the wall with his clenched
+fists.
+
+Weeks, months, a whole year had gone by, when a vagabond--Niels, the
+thief, called also the horse couper--was arrested; and now the better
+times came, and it was seen what wrong Juergen had endured.
+
+In the neighbourhood of Ringkjoebing, at a beer-house, Niels, the
+thief, had met Martin on the afternoon before Juergen's departure from
+home and before the murder. A few glasses were drunk--not enough to
+cloud any one's brain, but yet enough to loosen Martin's tongue; and
+he began to boast, and to say that he had obtained a house, and
+intended to marry; and when Niels asked where he intended to get the
+money, Martin shook his pocket proudly, and said,
+
+"The money is there, where it ought to be."
+
+This boast cost him his life; for when he went home, Niels went after
+him, and thrust a knife through his throat, to rob the murdered man of
+the expected gold, which did not exist.
+
+This was circumstantially explained; but for us it is enough to know
+that Juergen was set at liberty. But what amends did he get for having
+been imprisoned a whole year, and shut out from all communion with
+men? They told him he was fortunate in being proved innocent, and that
+he might go. The burgomaster gave him two dollars for travelling
+expenses, and many citizens offered him provisions and beer--there
+were still good men, not all "grind and flay." But the best of all
+was, that the merchant Broenne of Skjagen, the same into whose service
+Juergen intended to go a year since, was just at that time on business
+in the town of Ringkjoebing. Broenne heard the whole story; and the man
+had a good heart, and understood what Juergen must have felt and
+suffered. He therefore made up his mind to make it up to the poor lad,
+and convince him that there were still kind folks in the world.
+
+So Juergen went forth from the prison as if to Paradise, to find
+freedom, affection, and trust. He was to travel this road now; for no
+goblet of life is all bitterness: no good man would pour out such
+measure to his fellow man, and how should He do it, who is love
+itself?
+
+"Let all that be buried and forgotten," said Broenne the merchant. "Let
+us draw a thick line through last year; and we will even burn the
+calendar. And in two days we'll start for dear, friendly, peaceful
+Skjagen. They call Skjagen an out-of-the-way corner; but it's a good
+warm chimney-corner, and its windows open towards every part of the
+world."
+
+That was a journey!--it was like taking fresh breath--out of the cold
+dungeon air into the warm sunshine! The heath stood blooming in its
+greatest pride, and the herd-boy sat on the Hun's Grave and blew his
+pipe, which he had carved for himself out of the sheep's bone. Fata
+Morgana, the beautiful aerial phenomenon of the desert, showed itself
+with hanging gardens and swaying forests, and the wonderful cloud
+phenomenon, called here the "Lokeman driving his flock," was seen
+likewise.
+
+Up through the land of the Wendels, up towards Skjagen, they went,
+from whence the men with the long beards (the Longobardi, or Lombards)
+had emigrated in the days when, in the reign of King Snio, all the
+children and the old people were to have been killed, till the noble
+Dame Gambaruk proposed that the young people had better emigrate. All
+this was known to Juergen--thus much knowledge he had; and even if he
+did not know the land of the Lombards beyond the high Alps, he had an
+idea how it must be there, for in his boyhood he had been in the
+south, in Spain. He thought of the southern fruits piled up there; of
+the red pomegranate blossoms; of the humming, murmuring, and toiling
+in the great beehive of a city he had seen; but, after all, home is
+best; and Juergen's home was Denmark.
+
+[Illustration: JUeRGEN'S BETTER FORTUNE.]
+
+At length they reached "Wendelskajn," as Skjagen is called in the old
+Norwegian and Icelandic writings. Then already Old Skjagen, with the
+western and eastern town, extended for miles, with sand-hills and
+arable land, as far as the lighthouse near the "Skjagenzweig." Then,
+as now, the houses were strewn among the wind-raised sand-hills--a
+desert where the wind sports with the sand, and where the voices of
+the seamen and the wild swans strike harshly on the ear. In the
+south-west, a mile from the sea, lies Old Skjagen; and here dwelt
+merchant Broenne, and here Juergen was henceforth to dwell. The great
+house was painted with tar; the smaller buildings had each an
+overturned boat for a roof; the pig-sty had been put together of
+pieces of wreck. There was no fence here, for indeed there was nothing
+to fence in; but long rows of fishes were hung upon lines, one above
+the other, to dry in the wind. The whole coast was strewn with spoilt
+herrings; for there were so many of those fish, that a net was
+scarcely thrown into the sea before they were caught by cartloads;
+there were so many, that often they were thrown back into the sea, or
+left to lie on the shore.
+
+The old man's wife and daughter, and his servants too, came
+rejoicingly to meet him. There was a great pressing of hands, and
+talking, and questioning. And the daughter, what a lovely face and
+bright eyes she had!
+
+The interior of the house was roomy and comfortable. Fritters that a
+king would have looked upon as a dainty dish, were placed on the
+table; and there was wine from the vineyard of Skjagen--that is, the
+sea; for there the grapes come ashore ready pressed and prepared in
+barrels and in bottles.
+
+When the mother and daughter heard who Juergen was, and how innocently
+he had suffered, they looked at him in a still more friendly way; and
+the eyes of the charming Clara were the friendliest of all. Juergen
+found a happy home in Old Skjagen. It did his heart good; and his
+heart had been sorely tried, and had drunk the bitter goblet of love,
+which softens or hardens according to circumstances. Juergen's heart
+was still soft--it was young, and there was still room in it; and
+therefore it was well that Mistress Clara was going in three weeks in
+her father's ship to Christiansand, in Norway, to visit an aunt, and
+to stay there the whole winter.
+
+On the Sunday before her departure they all went to church, to the
+holy Communion. The church was large and handsome, and had been built
+centuries before by Scotchmen and Hollanders; it lay at a little
+distance from the town. It was certainly somewhat ruinous, and the
+road to it was heavy, through the deep sand; but the people gladly
+went through the difficulties to get to the house of God, to sing
+psalms and hear the sermon. The sand had heaped itself up round the
+walls of the church; but the graves were kept free from it.
+
+It was the largest church north of the Limfjord. The Virgin Mary, with
+the golden crown on her head and the child Jesus in her arms, stood
+life-like upon the altar; the holy Apostles had been carved in the
+choir; and on the wall hung portraits of the old burgomasters and
+councillors of Skjagen; the pulpit was of carved work. The sun shone
+brightly into the church, and its radiance fell on the polished brass
+chandelier, and on the little ship that hung from the vaulted roof.
+
+Juergen felt as if overcome by a holy, childlike feeling, like that
+which possessed him when, as a boy, he had stood in the splendid
+Spanish cathedral; but here the feeling was different, for he felt
+conscious of being one of the congregation.
+
+After the sermon followed the holy Communion. He partook of the bread
+and wine, and it happened that he knelt beside Mistress Clara; but his
+thoughts were so fixed upon Heaven and the holy service, that he did
+not notice his neighbour until he rose from his knees, and then he saw
+tears rolling down her cheeks.
+
+Two days later she left Skjagen and went to Norway. He stayed behind,
+and made himself useful in the house and in the business. He went out
+fishing, and at that time fish were more plentiful and larger than
+now. Every Sunday when he sat in the church, and his eye rested on the
+statue of the Virgin on the altar, his glance rested for a time on the
+spot where Mistress Clara had knelt beside him, and he thought of her,
+how hearty and kind she had been to him.
+
+And so the autumn and the winter time passed away. There was wealth
+here, and a real family life; even down to the domestic animals, who
+were all well kept. The kitchen glittered with copper and tin and
+white plates, and from the roof hung hams and beef, and winter stores
+in plenty. All this is still to be seen in many rich farms of the west
+coast of Jutland: plenty to eat and drink, clean decorated rooms,
+clever heads, happy tempers, and hospitality prevail there as in an
+Arab tent.
+
+Never since the famous burial feast had Juergen spent such a happy
+time; and yet Mistress Clara was absent, except in the thoughts and
+memory of all.
+
+In April a ship was to start for Norway, and Juergen was to sail in it.
+He was full of life and spirits, and looked so stout and jovial that
+Dame Broenne declared it did her good to see him.
+
+"And it's a pleasure to see you too, old wife," said the old merchant.
+"Juergen has brought life into our winter evenings, and into you too,
+mother. You look younger this year, and you seem well and bonny. But
+then you were once the prettiest girl in Wiborg, and that's saying a
+great deal, for I have always found the Wiborg girls the prettiest of
+any."
+
+Juergen said nothing to this, but he thought of a certain maiden of
+Skjagen; and he sailed to visit that maiden, for the ship steered to
+Christiansand, in Norway, and a favouring wind bore it rapidly to that
+town.
+
+One morning merchant Broenne went out to the lighthouse that stands far
+away from Old Skjagen: the coal fire had long gone out, and the sun
+was already high when he mounted the tower. The sand-banks extend
+under the water a whole mile from the shore. Outside these banks many
+ships were seen that day; and with the help of his telescope the old
+man thought he descried his own vessel, the "Karen Broenne."
+
+Yes, surely there she was; and the ship was sailing up with Juergen and
+Clara on board. The church and the lighthouse appeared to them as a
+heron and a swan rising from the blue waters. Clara sat on deck, and
+saw the sand-hills gradually looming forth: if the wind held she might
+reach her home in about an hour--so near were they to home and its
+joys--so near were they to death and its terrors. For a plank in the
+ship gave way, and the water rushed in. The crew flew to the pumps,
+and attempted to stop the leak. A signal of distress was hoisted; but
+they were still a full mile from the shore. Fishing boats were in
+sight, but they were still far distant. The wind blew shoreward, and
+the tide was in their favour too; but all was insufficient, for the
+ship sank. Juergen threw his right arm about Clara, and pressed her
+close to him.
+
+With what a look she gazed in his face! As he threw himself in God's
+name into the water with her, she uttered a cry; but still she felt
+safe, certain that he would not let her sink.
+
+And now, in the hour of terror and danger, Juergen experienced what the
+old song told:
+
+    "And written it stood, how the brave king's son
+    Embraced the bride his valour had won."
+
+How rejoiced he felt that he was a good swimmer! He worked his way
+onward with his feet and with one hand, while with the other he
+tightly held the young girl. He rested upon the waves, he trod the
+water, he practised all the arts he knew, so as to reserve strength
+enough to reach the shore. He heard how Clara uttered a sigh, and felt
+a convulsive shudder pass through her, and he pressed her to him
+closer than ever. Now and then a wave rolled over her; and he was
+still a few cables' lengths from the land, when help came in the shape
+of an approaching boat. But under the water--he could see it
+clearly--stood a white form gazing at him: a wave lifted him up, and
+the form approached him: he felt a shock, and it grew dark, and
+everything vanished from his gaze.
+
+On the sand-reef lay the wreck of a ship, the sea washed over it; the
+white figure-head leant against an anchor, the sharp iron extended
+just to the surface. Juergen had come in contact with this, and the
+tide had driven him against it with double force. He sank down
+fainting with his load; but the next wave lifted him and the young
+girl aloft again.
+
+The fishermen grasped them, and lifted them into the boat. The blood
+streamed down over Juergen's face; he seemed dead, but he still
+clutched the girl so tightly that they were obliged to loosen her by
+force from his grasp. And Clara lay pale and lifeless in the boat,
+that now made for the shore.
+
+All means were tried to restore Clara to life; but she was dead! For
+some time he had been swimming onward with a corpse, and had exerted
+himself to exhaustion for one who was dead.
+
+Juergen was still breathing. The fishermen carried him into the nearest
+house upon the sand-hills. A kind of surgeon who lived there, and was
+at the same time a smith and a general dealer, bound up Juergen's
+wounds in a temporary way, till a physician could be got next day from
+the nearest town.
+
+The brain of the sick man was affected. In delirium he uttered wild
+cries; but on the third day he lay quiet and exhausted on his couch,
+and his life seemed to hang by a thread, and the physician said it
+would be best if this string snapped.
+
+"Let us pray that God may take him to Himself; he will never be a sane
+man again!"
+
+But life would not depart from him--the thread would not snap; but the
+thread of memory broke: the thread of all his mental power had been
+cut through; and, what was most terrible, a body remained--a living
+healthy body--that wandered about like a spectre.
+
+Juergen remained in the house of the merchant Broenne.
+
+"He contracted his illness in his endeavour to save our child," said
+the old man, "and now he is our son."
+
+People called Juergen imbecile; but that was not the right expression.
+He was like an instrument, in which the strings are loose and will
+sound no more; only at times for a few minutes they regained their
+power, and then they sounded anew: old melodies were heard, snatches
+of song; pictures unrolled themselves, and then disappeared again in
+the mist, and once more he sat staring before him, without a thought.
+We may believe that he did not suffer, but his dark eyes lost their
+brightness, and looked only like black clouded glass.
+
+"Poor imbecile Juergen!" said the people.
+
+He it was whose life was to have been so pleasant that it would be
+"presumption and pride" to expect or believe in a higher existence
+hereafter. All his great mental faculties had been lost; only hard
+days, pain, and disappointment had been his lot. He was like a rare
+plant torn from its native soil, and thrown upon the sand, to wither
+there. And was the image, fashioned in God's likeness, to have no
+better destination? Was it to be merely the sport of chance? No. The
+all-loving God would certainly repay him in the life to come, for
+what he had suffered and lost here. "The Lord is good to all; and His
+mercy is over all His works." These words from the Psalms of David,
+the old pious wife of the merchant repeated in patience and hope, and
+the prayer of her heart was that Juergen might soon be summoned to
+enter into the life eternal.
+
+In the churchyard where the sand blows across the walls, Clara lay
+buried. It seemed as if Juergen knew nothing of this--it did not come
+within the compass of his thoughts, which comprised only fragments of
+a past time. Every Sunday he went with the old people to church, and
+sat silent there with vacant gaze. One day, while the Psalms were
+being sung, he uttered a deep sigh, and his eyes gleamed: they were
+fixed upon the altar, upon the place where he had knelt with his
+friend who was dead. He uttered her name, and became pale as death,
+and tears rolled over his cheeks.
+
+They led him out of the church; and he said to the bystanders that he
+was well, and had never been ill: he, the heavily afflicted, the waif
+cast forth upon the world, remembered nothing of his sufferings. And
+the Lord our Creator is wise and full of loving-kindness--who can
+doubt it?
+
+In Spain, where the warm breezes blow over the Moorish cupola, among
+the orange trees and laurels, where song and the sound of castagnettes
+are always heard, sat in the sumptuous house a childish old man, the
+richest merchant in the place, while children marched in procession
+through the streets, with waving flags and lighted tapers. How much of
+his wealth would the old man not have given to be able to press his
+children to his heart! his daughter, or her child, that had perhaps
+never seen the light in this world, far less a Paradise.
+
+"Poor child!"
+
+Yes, poor child--a child still, and yet more than thirty years old;
+for to that age Juergen had attained in Old Skjagen.
+
+The drifting sand had covered the graves in the churchyard quite up to
+the walls of the church; but yet the dead must be buried among their
+relations and loved ones who had gone before them. Merchant Broenne and
+his wife now rested here with their children, under the white sand.
+
+It was spring-time, the season of storms. The sand-hills whirled up in
+clouds, and the sea ran high, and flocks of birds flew like clouds in
+the storms, shrieking across the dunes; and shipwreck followed
+shipwreck on the reefs of "Skjagenzweig" from towards the Hunsby
+dunes. One evening Juergen was sitting alone in the room. Suddenly his
+mind seemed to become clearer, and a feeling of unrest came upon him,
+which in his younger years had often driven him forth upon the heath
+and the sand-hills.
+
+"Home! home!" he exclaimed. No one heard him. He went out of the house
+towards the dunes. Sand and stones blew into his face and whirled
+around him. He went on farther and farther, towards the church: the
+sand lay high around the walls, half over the windows; but the heap
+had been shovelled away from the door, and the entrance was free and
+easy to open; and Juergen went into the church.
+
+The storm went howling over the town of Skjagen. Within the memory of
+man the sea had not run so high--a terrible tempest! but Juergen was in
+the temple of God, and while black night reigned without, a light
+arose in his soul, a light that was never to be extinguished; he felt
+the heavy stone which seemed to weigh upon his head burst asunder. He
+thought he heard the sound of the organ, but it was the storm and the
+moaning of the sea. He sat down on one of the seats; and behold, the
+candles were lighted up one by one; a richness was displayed such as
+he had only seen in the church in Spain; and all the pictures of the
+old councillors were endued with life, and stepped forth from the
+walls against which they had stood for centuries, and seated
+themselves in the entrance of the church. The gates and doors flew
+open, and in came all the dead people, festively clad, and sat down to
+the sound of beautiful music, and filled the seats in the church. Then
+the psalm tune rolled forth like a sounding sea; and his old
+foster-parents from the Hunsby dunes were here, and the old merchant
+Broenne and his wife; and at their side, close to Juergen, sat their
+friendly, lovely daughter Clara, who gave her hand to Juergen, and they
+both went to the altar, where they had once knelt together, and the
+priest joined their hands and joined them together for life. Then the
+sound of music was heard again, wonderful, like a child's voice full
+of joy and expectation, and it swelled on to an organ's sound, to a
+tempest of full, noble sounds, lovely and elevating to hear, and yet
+strong enough to burst the stone tombs.
+
+And the little ship that hung down from the roof of the choir came
+down, and became wonderfully large and beautiful, with silken sails
+and golden yards, "and every rope wrought through with silk," as the
+old song said. The married pair went on board, and the whole
+congregation with them, for there was room and joyfulness for all. And
+the walls and arches of the church bloomed like the juniper and the
+fragrant lime trees, and the leaves and branches waved and distributed
+coolness; then they bent and parted, and the ship sailed through the
+midst of them, through the sea, and through the air; and every church
+taper became a star, and the wind sang a psalm tune, and all sang
+with the wind:
+
+"In love, to glory--no life shall be lost. Full of blessedness and
+joy. Hallelujah!"
+
+And these words were the last that Juergen spoke in this world. The
+thread snapped that bound the immortal soul, and nothing but a dead
+body lay in the dark church, around which the storm raged, covering it
+with loose sand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning was Sunday, and the congregation and their pastor
+went forth to the service. The road to church had been heavy; the sand
+made the way almost impassable; and now, when they at last reached
+their goal, a great hill of sand was piled up before the entrance, and
+the church itself was buried. The priest spoke a short prayer, and
+said that God had closed the door of this house, and the congregation
+must go and build a new one for Him elsewhere.
+
+So they sang a psalm under the open sky, and went back to their homes.
+
+Juergen was nowhere to be found in the town of Skjagen, or in the
+dunes, however much they sought for him. It was thought that the
+waves, which had rolled far up on the sand, had swept him away.
+
+His body lay buried in a great sepulchre, in the church itself. In the
+storm the Lord's hand had thrown a handful of earth on his grave; and
+the heavy mound of sand lay upon it, and lies there to this day.
+
+The whirling sand had covered the high vaulted passages; whitethorn
+and wild rose trees grow over the church, over which the wanderer now
+walks; while the tower, standing forth like a gigantic tombstone over
+a grave, is to be seen for miles around: no king has a more splendid
+tombstone. No one disturbs the rest of the dead; no one knew of this,
+and we are the first who know of this grave--the storm sang the tale
+to me among the sand-hills.
+
+
+
+
+THE BISHOP OF BOeRGLUM AND HIS WARRIORS.
+
+
+Our scene is in Northern Jutland, in the so called "wild moor." We
+hear what is called the "Wester-wow-wow"--the peculiar roar of the
+North Sea as it breaks against the western coast of Jutland. It rolls
+and thunders with a sound that penetrates for miles into the land; and
+we are quite near the roaring. Before us rises a great mound of
+sand--a mountain we have long seen, and towards which we are wending
+our way, driving slowly along through the deep sand. On this mountain
+of sand is a lofty old building--the convent of Boerglum. In one of its
+wings (the larger one) there is still a church. And at this convent we
+now arrive in the late evening hour; but the weather is clear in the
+bright June night around us. The eye can range far, far over field and
+moor to the bay of Aalborg, over heath and meadow, and far across the
+dark blue sea.
+
+Now we are there, and roll past between barns and other farm
+buildings; and at the left of the gate we turn aside to the old Castle
+Farm, where the lime trees stand in lines along the walls, and,
+sheltered from the wind and weather, grow so luxuriously that their
+twigs and leaves almost conceal the windows.
+
+We mount the winding staircase of stone, and march through the long
+passages under the heavy roof-beams. The wind moans very strangely
+here, both within and without. It is hardly known how, but people
+say--yes, people say a great many things when they are frightened or
+want to frighten others--they say that the old dead choir-men glide
+silently past us into the church, where mass is sung. They can be
+heard in the rushing of the storm, and their singing brings up strange
+thoughts in the hearers--thoughts of the old times into which we are
+carried back.
+
+On the coast a ship is stranded; and the bishop's warriors are there,
+and spare not those whom the sea has spared. The sea washes away the
+blood that has flowed from cloven skulls. The stranded goods belong to
+the bishop, and there is a store of goods here. The sea casts up tubs
+and barrels filled with costly wine for the convent cellar; and in the
+convent is already good store of beer and mead. There is plenty in the
+kitchen--dead game and poultry, hams and sausages; and fat fish swim
+in the ponds without.
+
+The Bishop of Boerglum is a mighty lord. He has great possessions, but
+still he longs for more--everything must bow before the mighty Olaf
+Glob. His rich cousin at Thyland is dead, and his widow is to have the
+rich inheritance. But how comes it that one relation is always harder
+towards another than even strangers would be? The widow's husband had
+possessed all Thyland, with the exception of the Church property. Her
+son was not at home. In his boyhood he had already started on a
+journey, for his desire was to see foreign lands and strange people.
+For years there had been no news of him. Perhaps he had long been
+laid in the grave, and would never come back to his home to rule where
+his mother then ruled.
+
+"What has a woman to do with rule?" said the bishop.
+
+He summoned the widow before a court; but what did he gain thereby?
+The widow had never been disobedient to the law, and was strong in her
+just rights.
+
+Bishop Olaf, of Boerglum, what dost thou purpose? What writest thou on
+yonder smooth parchment, sealing it with thy seal, and intrusting it
+to the horsemen and servants, who ride away--far away--to the city of
+the Pope?
+
+It is the time of falling leaves and of stranded ships, and soon icy
+winter will come.
+
+Twice had icy winter returned before the bishop welcomed the horsemen
+and servants back to their home. They came from Rome with a papal
+decree--a ban, or bull, against the widow who had dared to offend the
+pious bishop. "Cursed be she, and all that belongs to her. Let her be
+expelled from the congregation and the Church. Let no man stretch
+forth a helping hand to her, and let friends and relations avoid her
+as a plague and a pestilence!"
+
+"What will not bend must break," said the Bishop of Boerglum.
+
+And all forsake the widow; but she holds fast to her God. He is her
+helper and defender.
+
+One servant only--an old maid--remained faithful to her; and, with the
+old servant, the widow herself followed the plough; and the crop grew,
+though the land had been cursed by the Pope and the bishop.
+
+"Thou child of hell, I will yet carry out my purpose!" cries the
+Bishop of Boerglum. "Now will I lay the hand of the Pope upon thee, to
+summon thee before the tribunal that shall condemn thee!"
+
+[Illustration: JENS GLOB MEETS HIS MOTHER.]
+
+Then did the widow yoke the two last oxen that remained to her to a
+waggon, and mounted upon the waggon, with her old servant, and
+travelled away across the heath out of the Danish land. As a stranger
+she came into a foreign country, where a strange tongue was spoken and
+where new customs prevailed. Farther and farther she journeyed, to
+where green hills rise into mountains, and the vine clothes their
+sides. Strange merchants drive by her, and they look anxiously after
+their waggons laden with merchandise. They fear an attack from the
+armed followers of the robber-knights. The two poor women, in their
+humble vehicle drawn by two black oxen, travel fearlessly through the
+dangerous sunken road and through the darksome forest. And now they
+were in Franconia. And there met them a stalwart knight, with a train
+of twelve armed followers. He paused, gazed at the strange vehicle,
+and questioned the women as to the goal of their journey and the
+place whence they came. Then one of them mentioned Thyland, in
+Denmark, and spoke of her sorrows--of her woes--which were soon to
+cease; for so Divine Providence had willed it. For the stranger knight
+is the widow's son. He seized her hand, he embraced her, and the
+mother wept. For years she had not been able to weep, but had only
+bitten her lips till the blood started.
+
+It is the time of falling leaves and of stranded ships, and soon will
+icy winter come.
+
+The sea rolled wine-tubs to the shore for the bishop's cellar. In the
+kitchen the deer roasted on the spit before the fire. At Boerglum it
+was warm and cheerful in the heated rooms, while cold winter raged
+without, when a piece of news was brought to the bishop: "Jens Glob,
+of Thyland, has come back, and his mother with him." Jens Glob laid a
+complaint against the bishop, and summoned him before the temporal and
+the spiritual court.
+
+"That will avail him little," said the bishop. "Best leave off thy
+efforts, knight Jens."
+
+Again it is the time of falling leaves, of stranded ships--icy winter
+comes again, and the "white bees" are swarming, and sting the
+traveller's face till they melt.
+
+"Keen weather to-day," say the people, as they step in.
+
+Jens Glob stands so deeply wrapped in thought that he singes the skirt
+of his wide garment.
+
+"Thou Boerglum bishop," he exclaims, "I shall subdue thee after all!
+Under the shield of the Pope, the law cannot reach thee; but Jens Glob
+shall reach thee!"
+
+Then he writes a letter to his brother-in-law, Olaf Hase, in
+Sallingland, and prays that knight to meet him on Christmas Eve, at
+mass, in the church at Widberg. The bishop himself is to read the
+mass, and consequently will journey from Boerglum to Thyland; and this
+is known to Jens Glob.
+
+Moorland and meadow are covered with ice and snow. The marsh will bear
+horse and rider, the bishop with his priests, and armed men. They ride
+the shortest way, through the waving reeds, where the wind moans
+sadly.
+
+Blow thy brazen trumpet, thou trumpeter clad in foxskin! it sounds
+merrily in the clear air. So they ride on over heath and
+moorland--over what is the garden of Fata Morgana in the hot summer,
+though now icy, like all the country--towards the church of Widberg.
+
+The wind is blowing his trumpet too--blowing it harder and harder. He
+blows up a storm--a terrible storm--that increases more and more.
+Towards the church they ride, as fast as they may through the storm.
+The church stands firm, but the storm careers on over field and
+moorland, over land and sea.
+
+Boerglum's bishop reaches the church; but Olaf Hase will scarce do so,
+hard as he may ride. He journeys with his warriors on the farther side
+of the bay, to help Jens Glob, now that the bishop is to be summoned
+before the judgment seat of the Highest.
+
+The church is the judgment hall; the altar is the council table. The
+lights burn clear in the heavy brass candelabra. The storm reads out
+the accusation and the sentence, roaming in the air over moor and
+heath, and over the rolling waters. No ferry-boat can sail over the
+bay in such weather as this.
+
+Olaf Hase makes halt at Ottesworde. There he dismisses his warriors,
+presents them with their horses and harness, and gives them leave to
+ride home and greet his wife. He intends to risk his life alone in the
+roaring waters; but they are to bear witness for him that it is not
+his fault if Jens Glob stands without reinforcement in the church at
+Widberg. The faithful warriors will not leave him, but follow him out
+into the deep waters. Ten of them are carried away; but Olaf Hase and
+two of the youngest men reach the farther side. They have still four
+miles to ride.
+
+It is past midnight. It is Christmas. The wind has abated. The church
+is lighted up; the gleaming radiance shines through the window-frames,
+and pours out over meadow and heath. The mass has long been finished,
+silence reigns in the church, and the wax is heard dropping from the
+candles to the stone pavement. And now Olaf Hase arrives.
+
+In the forecourt Jens Glob greets him kindly, and says,
+
+"I have just made an agreement with the bishop."
+
+"Sayest thou so?" replied Olaf Hase. "Then neither thou nor the bishop
+shall quit this church alive."
+
+And the sword leaps from the scabbard, and Olaf Hase deals a blow that
+makes the panel of the church-door, which Jens Glob hastily closes
+between them, fly in fragments.
+
+"Hold, brother! First hear what the agreement was that I made. I have
+slain the bishop and his warriors and priests. They will have no word
+more to say in the matter, nor will I speak again of all the wrong
+that my mother has endured."
+
+The long wicks of the altar lights glimmer red; but there is a redder
+gleam upon the pavement, where the bishop lies with cloven skull, and
+his dead warriors around him, in the quiet of the holy Christmas
+night.
+
+And four days afterwards the bells toll for a funeral in the convent
+of Boerglum. The murdered bishop and the slain warriors and priests
+are displayed under a black canopy, surrounded by candelabra decked
+with crape. There lies the dead man, in the black cloak wrought with
+silver; the crosier in the powerless hand that was once so mighty. The
+incense rises in clouds, and the monks chant the funeral hymn. It
+sounds like a wail--it sounds like a sentence of wrath and
+condemnation that must be heard far over the land, carried by the
+wind--sung by the wind--the wail that sometimes is silent, but never
+dies; for ever again it rises in song, singing even into our own time
+this legend of the Bishop of Boerglum and his hard nephew. It is heard
+in the dark night by the frightened husbandman, driving by in the
+heavy sandy road past the convent of Boerglum. It is heard by the
+sleepless listener in the thickly-walled rooms at Boerglum. And not
+only to the ear of superstition is the sighing and the tread of
+hurrying feet audible in the long echoing passages leading to the
+convent-door that has long been locked. The door still seems to open,
+and the lights seem to flame in the brazen candlesticks; the fragrance
+of incense arises; the church gleams in its ancient splendour; and the
+monks sing and say the mass over the slain bishop, who lies there in
+the black silver-embroidered mantle, with the crozier in his powerless
+hand; and on his pale proud forehead gleams the red wound like fire,
+and there burn the worldly mind and the wicked thoughts.
+
+Sink down into his grave--into oblivion--ye terrible shapes of the
+times of old!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hark to the raging of the angry wind, sounding above the rolling sea.
+A storm approaches without, calling aloud for human lives. The sea has
+not put on a new mind with the new time. This night it is a horrible
+pit to devour up lives, and to-morrow, perhaps, it may be a glassy
+mirror--even as in the old time that we have buried. Sleep sweetly, if
+thou canst sleep!
+
+Now it is morning.
+
+The new time flings sunshine into the room. The wind still keeps up
+mightily. A wreck is announced--as in the old time.
+
+During the night, down yonder by Loekken, the little fishing village
+with the red-tiled roofs--we can see it up here from the window--a
+ship has come ashore. It has struck, and is fast imbedded in the sand;
+but the rocket apparatus has thrown a rope on board, and formed a
+bridge from the wreck to the mainland; and all on board were saved,
+and reached the land, and were wrapped in warm blankets; and to-day
+they are invited to the farm at the convent of Boerglum. In
+comfortable rooms they encounter hospitality and friendly faces. They
+are addressed in the language of their country, and the piano sounds
+for them with melodies of their native land; and before these have
+died away, and the chord has been struck, the wire of thought, that
+reaches to the land of the sufferers, announces that they are rescued.
+Then their anxieties are dispelled; and at even they join in the dance
+at the feast given in the great hall at Boerglum. Waltzes and Styrian
+dances are given, and Danish popular songs, and melodies of foreign
+lands in these modern times.
+
+Blessed be thou, new time! Speak thou of summer and of purer gales!
+Send thy sunbeams gleaming into our hearts and thoughts! On thy
+glowing canvas let them be painted--the dark legends of the rough hard
+times that are past!
+
+
+
+
+THE SNOW MAN.
+
+
+"It's so wonderfully cold that my whole body crackles!" said the Snow
+Man. "This is a kind of wind that can blow life into one; and how the
+gleaming one up yonder is staring at me." He meant the sun, which was
+just about to set. "It shall not make _me_ wink--I shall manage to
+keep the pieces."
+
+He had two triangular pieces of tile in his head instead of eyes. His
+mouth was made of an old rake, and consequently was furnished with
+teeth.
+
+He had been born amid the joyous shouts of the boys, and welcomed by
+the sound of sledge bells and the slashing of whips.
+
+The sun went down, and the full moon rose, round, large, clear, and
+beautiful in the blue air.
+
+"There it comes again from the other side," said the Snow Man. He
+intended to say the sun is showing himself again. "Ah! I have cured
+him of staring. Now let him hang up there and shine, that I may see
+myself. If I only knew how I could manage to move from this place, I
+should like so much to move. If I could, I would slide along yonder on
+the ice, just as I see the boys slide; but I don't understand it; I
+don't know how to run."
+
+"Away! away!" barked the old Yard Dog. He was quite hoarse, and could
+not pronounce the genuine "bow, wow." He had got the hoarseness from
+the time when he was an indoor dog, and lay by the fire. "The sun will
+teach you to run! I saw that last winter, in your predecessor, and
+before that in _his_ predecessor. Away! away!--and away they all go."
+
+"I don't understand you, comrade," said the Snow Man. "That thing up
+yonder is to teach me to run?" He meant the moon. "Yes, it was running
+itself, when I saw it a little while ago, and now it comes creeping
+from the other side."
+
+"You know nothing at all," retorted the Yard Dog. "But then you've
+only just been patched up. What you see yonder is the moon, and the
+one that went before was the sun. It will come again to-morrow, and
+will teach you to run down into the ditch by the wall. We shall soon
+have a change of weather; I can feel that in my left hind leg, for it
+pricks and pains me: the weather is going to change."
+
+"I don't understand him," said the Snow Man; "but I have a feeling
+that he's talking about something disagreeable. The one who stared so
+just now, and whom he called the sun, is not my friend. I can feel
+that too."
+
+"Away! away!" barked the Yard Dog; and he turned round three times,
+and then crept into his kennel to sleep.
+
+The weather really changed. Towards morning, a thick damp fog lay over
+the whole region; later there came a wind, an icy wind. The cold
+seemed quite to seize upon one; but when the sun rose, what splendour!
+Trees and bushes were covered with hoar frost, and looked like a
+complete forest of coral, and every twig seemed covered with gleaming
+white buds. The many delicate ramifications, concealed in summer by
+the wreath of leaves, now made their appearance: it seemed like a
+lace-work, gleaming white. A snowy radiance sprang from every twig.
+The birch waved in the wind--it had life, like the rest of the trees
+in summer. It was wonderfully beautiful. And when the sun shone, how
+it all gleamed and sparkled, as if diamond dust had been strewn
+everywhere, and big diamonds had been dropped on the snowy carpet of
+the earth! or one could imagine that countless little lights were
+gleaming, whiter than even the snow itself.
+
+"That is wonderfully beautiful," said a young girl, who came with a
+young man into the garden. They both stood still near the Snow Man,
+and contemplated the glittering trees. "Summer cannot show a more
+beautiful sight," said she; and her eyes sparkled.
+
+"And we can't have such a fellow as this in summer-time," replied the
+young man, and he pointed to the Snow Man. "He is capital."
+
+The girl laughed, nodded at the Snow Man, and then danced away over
+the snow with her friend--over the snow that cracked and crackled
+under her tread as if she were walking on starch.
+
+"Who were those two?" the Snow Man inquired of the Yard Dog. "You've
+been longer in the yard than I. Do you know them?"
+
+"Of course I know them," replied the Yard Dog. "She has stroked me,
+and he has thrown me a meat bone. I don't bite those two."
+
+"But what are they?" asked the Snow Man.
+
+"Lovers!" replied the Yard Dog. "They will go to live in the same
+kennel, and gnaw at the same bone. Away! away!"
+
+[Illustration: THE SNOW MAN AND THE YARD DOG.]
+
+"Are they the same kind of beings as you and I?" asked the Snow Man.
+
+"Why, they belong to the master," retorted the Yard Dog. "People
+certainly know very little who were only born yesterday. I can see
+that in you. I have age, and information. I know every one here in the
+house, and I know a time when I did not lie out here in the cold,
+fastened to a chain. Away! away!"
+
+"The cold is charming," said the Snow Man. "Tell me, tell me.--But you
+must not clank with your chain, for it jars within me when you do
+that."
+
+"Away! away!" barked the Yard Dog. "They told me I was a pretty
+little fellow: then I used to lie in a chair covered with velvet, up
+in master's house, and sit in the lap of the mistress of all. They
+used to kiss my nose, and wipe my paws with an embroidered
+handkerchief. I was called 'Ami--dear Ami--sweet Ami.' But afterwards
+I grew too big for them, and they gave me away to the housekeeper. So
+I came to live in the basement storey. You can look into that from
+where you are standing, and you can see into the room where I was
+master; for I was master at the housekeeper's. It was certainly a
+smaller place than upstairs, but I was more comfortable, and was not
+continually taken hold of and pulled about by children as I had been.
+I received just as good food as ever, and even better. I had my own
+cushion, and there was a stove, the finest thing in the world at this
+season. I went under the stove, and could lie down quite beneath it.
+Ah! I still dream of that stove. Away! away!"
+
+"Does a stove look so beautiful?" asked the Snow Man. "Is it at all
+like me?"
+
+"It's just the reverse of you. It's as black as a crow, and has a long
+neck and a brazen drum. It eats firewood, so that the fire spurts out
+of its mouth. One must keep at its side, or under it, and there one is
+very comfortable. You can see it through the window from where you
+stand."
+
+And the Snow Man looked and saw a bright polished thing with a brazen
+drum, and the fire gleamed from the lower part of it. The Snow Man
+felt quite strangely: an odd emotion came over him, he knew not what
+it meant, and could not account for it; but all people who are not
+snow men know the feeling.
+
+"And why did you leave her?" asked the Snow Man, for it seemed to him
+that the stove must be of the female sex. "How could you quit such a
+comfortable place?"
+
+"I was obliged," replied the Yard Dog. "They turned me out of doors,
+and chained me up here. I had bitten the youngest young master in the
+leg, because he kicked away the bone I was gnawing. 'Bone for bone,' I
+thought. They took that very much amiss, and from that time I have
+been fastened to a chain and have lost my voice. Don't you hear how
+hoarse I am? Away! away! I can't talk any more like other dogs. Away!
+away! that was the end of the affair."
+
+But the Snow Man was no longer listening to him. He was looking in at
+the housekeeper's basement lodging, into the room where the stove
+stood on its four iron legs, just the same size as the Snow Man
+himself.
+
+"What a strange crackling within me!" he said. "Shall I ever get in
+there? It is an innocent wish, and our innocent wishes are certain to
+be fulfilled. I must go in there and lean against her, even if I have
+to break through the window."
+
+"You will never get in there," said the Yard Dog; "and if you approach
+the stove you'll melt away--away!"
+
+"I am as good as gone," replied the Snow Man. "I think I am breaking
+up."
+
+The whole day the Snow Man stood looking in through the window. In the
+twilight hour the room became still more inviting: from the stove came
+a mild gleam, not like the sun nor like the moon; no, it was only as
+the stove can glow when he has something to eat. When the room-door
+opened, the flame started out of his mouth; this was a habit the stove
+had. The flame fell distinctly on the white face of the Snow Man, and
+gleamed red upon his bosom.
+
+"I can endure it no longer," said he; "how beautiful it looks when it
+stretches out its tongue!"
+
+The night was long; but it did not appear long to the Snow Man, who
+stood there lost in his own charming reflections, crackling with the
+cold.
+
+In the morning the window-panes of the basement lodging were covered
+with ice. They bore the most beautiful ice-flowers that any snow man
+could desire; but they concealed the stove. The window-panes would not
+thaw; he could not see the stove, which he pictured to himself as a
+lovely female being. It crackled and whistled in him and around him;
+it was just the kind of frosty weather a snow man must thoroughly
+enjoy. But he did not enjoy it; and, indeed, how could he enjoy
+himself when he was stove-sick?
+
+"That's a terrible disease for a Snow Man," said the Yard Dog. "I have
+suffered from it myself, but I got over it. Away! away!" he barked;
+and he added, "the weather is going to change."
+
+And the weather did change; it began to thaw.
+
+The warmth increased, and the Snow Man decreased. He said nothing, and
+made no complaint--and that's an infallible sign.
+
+One morning he broke down. And behold, where he had stood, something
+like a broomstick remained sticking up out of the ground. It was the
+pole round which the boys had built him up.
+
+"Ah! now I can understand why he had such an intense longing," said
+the Yard Dog. "Why, there's a shovel for cleaning out the stove
+fastened to the pole. The Snow Man had a stove-rake in his body, and
+that's what moved within him. Now he has got over that too. Away!
+away!"
+
+And soon they had got over the winter.
+
+"Away! away!" barked the hoarse Yard Dog; but the girls in the house
+sang:
+
+    "Green thyme! from your house come out;
+    Willow, your woolly fingers stretch out;
+    Lark and cuckoo cheerfully sing,
+    For in February is coming the spring.
+    And with the cuckoo I'll sing too,
+    Come thou, dear sun, come out, cuckoo!"
+
+And nobody thought any more of the Snow Man.
+
+
+
+
+TWO MAIDENS.
+
+
+Have you ever seen a maiden? I mean what our paviours call a maiden, a
+thing with which they ram down the paving-stones in the roads. A
+maiden of this kind is made altogether of wood, broad below, and girt
+round with iron rings; at the top she is narrow, and has a stick
+passed across through her waist; and this stick forms the arms of the
+maiden.
+
+In the shed stood two maidens of this kind. They had their place among
+shovels, hand-carts, wheelbarrows, and measuring tapes; and to all
+this company the news had come that the maidens were no longer to be
+called "maidens," but "hand-rammers;" which word was the newest and
+the only correct designation among the paviours for the thing we all
+know from the old times by the name of "the maiden."
+
+Now, there are among us human creatures certain individuals who are
+known as "emancipated women;" as, for instance, principals of
+institutions, dancers who stand professionally on one leg, milliners,
+and sick nurses; and with this class of emancipated women the two
+maidens in the shed associated themselves. They were "maidens" among
+the paviour folk, and determined not to give up this honourable
+appellation, and let themselves be miscalled rammers.
+
+"Maiden is a human name, but hand-rammer is a _thing_, and we won't be
+called _things_--that's insulting us."
+
+"My lover would be ready to give up his engagement," said the
+youngest, who was betrothed to a paviour's hammer; and the hammer is
+the thing which drives great piles into the earth, like a machine, and
+therefore does on a large scale what ten maidens effect in a smaller
+way. "He wants to marry me as a maiden, but whether he would have me,
+were I a hand-rammer, is a question; so I won't have my name changed."
+
+"And I," said the elder one, "would rather have both my arms broken
+off."
+
+But the wheelbarrow was of a different opinion; and the wheelbarrow
+was looked upon as of some consequence, for he considered himself a
+quarter of a coach, because he went about upon one wheel.
+
+"I must submit to your notice," he said, "that the name 'maiden' is
+common enough, and not nearly so refined as 'hand-rammer,' or
+'stamper,' which latter has also been proposed, and through which you
+would be introduced into the category of seals; and only think of the
+great stamp of state, which impresses the royal seal that gives effect
+to the laws! No, in your case I would surrender my maiden name."
+
+"No, certainly not!" exclaimed the elder. "I am too old for that."
+
+"I presume you have never heard of what is called 'European
+necessity?'" observed the honest Measuring Tape. "One must be able to
+adapt oneself to time and circumstances, and if there is a law that
+the 'maiden' is to be called 'hand-rammer,' why, she must be called
+'hand-rammer,' and no pouting will avail, for everything has its
+measure."
+
+"No; if there must be a change," said the younger, "I should prefer to
+be called 'Missy,' for that reminds one a little of maidens."
+
+"But I would rather be chopped to chips," said the elder.
+
+At last they all went to work. The maidens rode--that is, they were
+put in a wheelbarrow, and that was a distinction; but still they were
+called "hand-rammers." "Mai----!" they said, as they were bumped upon
+the pavement. "Mai----!" and they were very nearly pronouncing the
+whole word "maiden;" but they broke off short, and swallowed the last
+syllable; for after mature deliberation they considered it beneath
+their dignity to protest. But they always called each other "maiden,"
+and praised the good old days in which everything had been called by
+its right name, and those who were maidens were called maidens. And
+they remained as they were; for the hammer really broke off his
+engagement with the younger one, for nothing would suit him but he
+must have a maiden for his bride.
+
+
+
+
+THE FARMYARD COCK AND THE WEATHERCOCK.
+
+
+There were two Cocks--one on the dunghill, the other on the roof. Both
+were conceited; but which of the two effected most? Tell us your
+opinion; but we shall keep our own nevertheless.
+
+The poultry-yard was divided by a partition of boards from another
+yard, in which lay a manure-heap, whereon lay and grew a great
+Cucumber, which was fully conscious of being a forcing-bed plant.
+
+"That's a privilege of birth," the Cucumber said to herself. "Not all
+can be born cucumbers; there must be other kinds too. The fowls, the
+ducks, and all the cattle in the neighbouring yard are creatures too.
+I now look up to the Yard Cock on the partition. He certainly is of
+much greater consequence than the Weathercock, who is so highly
+placed, and who can't even creak, much less crow; and he has neither
+hens nor chickens, and thinks only of himself, and perspires
+verdigris. But the Yard Cock--he's something like a cock! His gait is
+like a dance, his crowing is music; and wherever he comes, it is known
+directly. What a trumpeter he is! If he would only come in here! Even
+if he were to eat me up, stalk and all, it would be a blissful death,"
+said the Cucumber.
+
+In the night the weather became very bad. Hens, chickens, and even the
+Cock himself sought shelter. The wind blew down the partition between
+the two yards with a crash; the tiles came tumbling down, but the
+Weathercock sat firm. He did not even turn round; he could not turn
+round, and yet he was young and newly cast, but steady and sedate. He
+had been "born old," and did not at all resemble the birds that fly
+beneath the vault of heaven, such as the sparrows and the swallows. He
+despised those, considering them piping birds of trifling
+stature--ordinary song birds. The pigeons, he allowed, were big and
+shining, and gleamed like mother-o'-pearl, and looked like a kind of
+weathercocks; but then they were fat and stupid, and their whole
+endeavour was to fill themselves with food. "Moreover, they are
+tedious things to converse with," said the Weathercock.
+
+The birds of passage had also paid a visit to the Weathercock, and
+told him tales of foreign lands, of airy caravans, and exciting robber
+stories; of encounters with birds of prey; and that was interesting
+for the first time, but the Weathercock knew that afterwards they
+always repeated themselves, and that was tedious. "They are tedious,
+and all is tedious," he said. "No one is fit to associate with, and
+one and all of them are wearisome and stupid."
+
+"The world is worth nothing," he cried. "The whole thing is a
+stupidity."
+
+The Weathercock was what is called "used up;" and that quality would
+certainly have made him interesting in the eyes of the Cucumber if she
+had known it; but she had only eyes for the Yard Cock, who had now
+actually come into her own yard.
+
+The wind had blown down the plank, but the storm had passed over.
+
+[Illustration: THE WEATHERCOCK.]
+
+"What do you think of _that_ crowing?" the Yard Cock inquired of his
+hens and chickens. "It was a little rough--the elegance was wanting."
+
+And hens and chickens stepped upon the muck-heap, and the Cock
+strutted to and fro on it like a knight.
+
+"Garden plant!" he cried out to the Cucumber; and in this one word she
+understood his deep feeling, and forgot that he was pecking at her and
+eating her up--a happy death!
+
+And the hens came, and the chickens came, and when one of them runs
+the rest run also; and they clucked and chirped, and looked at the
+Cock, and were proud that he was of their kind.
+
+"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" he crowed. "The chickens will grow up large fowls
+if I make a noise in the poultry-yard of the world."
+
+And hens and chickens clucked and chirped, and the Cock told them a
+great piece of news:
+
+"A cock can lay an egg; and do you know what there is in that egg? In
+that egg lies a basilisk. No one can stand the sight of a basilisk.
+Men know that, and now you know it too--you know what is in me, and
+what a cock of the world I am."
+
+And with this the Yard Cock flapped his wings, and made his comb swell
+up, and crowed again; and all of them shuddered--all the hens and the
+chickens; but they were proud that one of their people should be such
+a cock of the world. They clucked and chirped, so that the Weathercock
+heard it; and he heard it, but he never stirred.
+
+"It's all stupid stuff!" said a voice within the Weathercock. "The
+Yard Cock does not lay eggs, and I am too lazy to lay any. If I liked,
+I could lay a wind-egg; but the world is not worth a wind-egg. And now
+I don't like even to sit here any longer."
+
+And with this the Weathercock broke off; but he did not kill the Yard
+Cock, though he intended to do so, as the hens declared. And what does
+the moral say?--"Better to crow than to be 'used up' and break off."
+
+
+
+
+THE PEN AND INKSTAND.
+
+
+In the room of a poet, where his inkstand stood upon the table, it was
+said, "It is wonderful what can come out of an inkstand. What will the
+next thing be? It is wonderful!"
+
+"Yes, certainly," said the Inkstand. "It's extraordinary--that's what
+I always say," he exclaimed to the pen and to the other articles on
+the table that were near enough to hear. "It is wonderful what a
+number of things can come out of me. It's quite incredible. And I
+really don't myself know what will be the next thing, when that man
+begins to dip into me. One drop out of me is enough for half a page of
+paper; and what cannot be contained in half a page? From me all the
+works of the poet go forth--all these living men, whom people can
+imagine they have met--all the deep feeling, the humour, the vivid
+pictures of nature. I myself don't understand how it is, for I am not
+acquainted with nature, but it certainly is in me. From me all these
+things have gone forth, and from me proceed the troops of charming
+maidens, and of brave knights on prancing steeds, and all the lame and
+the blind, and I don't know what more--I assure you I don't think of
+anything."
+
+"There you are right," said the Pen; "you don't think at all; for if
+you did, you would comprehend that you only furnish the fluid. You
+give the fluid, that I may exhibit upon the paper what dwells in me,
+and what I would bring to the day. It is the pen that writes. No man
+doubts that; and, indeed, most people have about as much insight into
+poetry as an old inkstand."
+
+"You have but little experience," replied the Inkstand. "You've hardly
+been in service a week, and are already half worn out. Do you fancy
+you are the poet? You are only a servant; and before you came I had
+many of your sort, some of the goose family, and others of English
+manufacture. I know the quill as well as the steel pen. Many have been
+in my service, and I shall have many more when _he_ comes--the man who
+goes through the motions for me, and writes down what he derives from
+me. I should like to know what will be the next thing he'll take out
+of me."
+
+"Inkpot!" exclaimed the Pen.
+
+Late in the evening the poet came home. He had been to a concert,
+where he had heard a famous violinist, with whose admirable
+performances he was quite enchanted. The player had drawn a wonderful
+wealth of tone from the instrument: sometimes it had sounded like
+tinkling water-drops, like rolling pearls, sometimes like birds
+twittering in chorus, and then again it went swelling on like the wind
+through the fir trees. The poet thought he heard his own heart
+weeping, but weeping melodiously, like the sound of woman's voice. It
+seemed as though not only the strings sounded, but every part of the
+instrument. It was a wonderful performance; and difficult as the piece
+was, the bow seemed to glide easily to and fro over the strings, and
+it looked as though every one might do it. The violin seemed to sound
+of itself, and the bow to move of itself--those two appeared to do
+everything; and the audience forgot the master who guided them and
+breathed soul and spirit into them. The master was forgotten; but the
+poet remembered him, and named him, and wrote down his thoughts
+concerning the subject:
+
+"How foolish it would be of the violin and the bow to boast of their
+achievements. And yet we men often commit this folly--the poet, the
+artist, the labourer in the domain of science, the general--we all do
+it. We are only the instruments which the Almighty uses: to Him alone
+be the honour! We have nothing of which we should be proud."
+
+Yes, that is what the poet wrote down. He wrote it in the form of a
+parable, which he called "The Master and the Instruments."
+
+"That is what you get, madam," said the Pen to the Inkstand, when the
+two were alone again. "Did you not hear him read aloud what I have
+written down?"
+
+"Yes, what I gave you to write," retorted the Inkstand. "That was a
+cut at you, because of your conceit. That you should not even have
+understood that you were being quizzed! I gave you a cut from within
+me--surely I must know my own satire!"
+
+"Ink-pipkin!" cried the Pen.
+
+"Writing-stick!" cried the Inkstand.
+
+And each of them felt a conviction that he had answered well; and it
+is a pleasing conviction to feel that one has given a good answer--a
+conviction on which one can sleep; and accordingly they slept upon it.
+But the poet did not sleep. Thoughts welled up from within him, like
+the tones from the violin, falling like pearls, rushing like the
+storm-wind through the forests. He understood his own heart in these
+thoughts, and caught a ray from the Eternal Master.
+
+To _Him_ be all the honour!
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILD IN THE GRAVE.
+
+
+There was mourning in the house, sorrow in every heart. The youngest
+child, a boy four years old, the joy and hope of his parents, had
+died. There still remained to them two daughters, the elder of whom
+was about to be confirmed--good, charming girls both; but the child
+that one has lost always seems the dearest; and here it was the
+youngest, and a son. It was a heavy trial. The sisters mourned as
+young hearts can, and were especially moved at the sight of their
+parents' sorrow. The father was bowed down, and the mother completely
+struck down by the great grief. Day and night she had been busy about
+the sick child, and had tended, lifted, and carried it; she had felt
+how it was a part of herself. She could not realize that the child was
+dead, and that it must be laid in a coffin and sleep in the ground.
+She thought God _could not_ take this child from her; and when it was
+so, nevertheless, and there could be no more doubt on the subject, she
+said in her feverish pain:
+
+"God did not know it. He has heartless servants here on earth, who do
+according to their own liking, and hear not the prayers of a mother."
+
+In her grief she fell away from God, and then there came dark
+thoughts, thoughts of death, of everlasting death, that man was but
+dust in the dust, and that with this life all was ended. But these
+thoughts gave her no stay, nothing on which she could take hold; and
+she sank into the fathomless abyss of despair.
+
+In her heaviest hours she could weep no more, and she thought not of
+the young daughters who were still left to her. The tears of her
+husband fell upon her forehead, but she did not look at him. Her
+thoughts were with the dead child; her whole thought and being were
+fixed upon it, to call back every remembrance of the little one, every
+innocent childish word it had uttered.
+
+The day of the funeral came. For nights before the mother had not
+slept; but in the morning twilight she now slept, overcome by
+weariness; and in the meantime the coffin was carried into a distant
+room, and there nailed down, that she might not hear the blows of the
+hammer.
+
+When she awoke, and wanted to see her child, the husband said,
+
+"We have nailed down the coffin. It was necessary to do so."
+
+"When God is hard towards me, how should men be better?" she said,
+with sobs and groans.
+
+The coffin was carried to the grave. The disconsolate mother sat with
+her young daughters. She looked at her daughters, and yet did not see
+them, for her thoughts were no longer busy at the domestic hearth. She
+gave herself up to her grief, and grief tossed her to and fro as the
+sea tosses a ship without compass or rudder. So the day of the funeral
+passed away, and similar days followed, of dark, wearying pain. With
+moist eyes and mournful glances, the sorrowing daughters and the
+afflicted husband looked upon her who would not hear their words of
+comfort; and, indeed, what words of comfort could they speak to her,
+when they themselves were heavily bowed down?
+
+It seemed as though she knew sleep no more; and yet he would now have
+been her best friend, who would have strengthened her body, and poured
+peace into her soul. They persuaded her to seek her couch, and she lay
+still there, like one who slept. One night her husband was listening,
+as he often did, to her breathing, and fully believed that she had now
+found rest and relief. He folded his arms and prayed, and soon sank
+into a deep healthy sleep; and thus he did not notice that his wife
+rose, threw on her clothes, and silently glided from the house, to go
+where her thoughts always lingered--to the grave which held her child.
+She stepped through the garden of the house, and over the fields,
+where a path led to the churchyard. No one saw her on her walk--she
+had seen nobody, for her eyes were fixed upon the one goal of her
+journey.
+
+It was a lovely starlight night; the air was still mild; it was in the
+beginning of September. She entered the churchyard, and stood by the
+little grave, which looked like a great nosegay of fragrant flowers.
+She sat down, and bowed her head low over the grave, as if she could
+have seen her child through the intervening earth, her little boy,
+whose smile rose so vividly before her--the gentle expression of whose
+eyes, even on the sick bed, she could never forget. How eloquent had
+that glance been, when she had bent over him, and seized his delicate
+hand, which he had no longer strength to raise! As she had sat by his
+crib, so she now sat by his grave, but here her tears had free course,
+and fell thick upon the grave.
+
+"Thou wouldst gladly go down and be with thy child," said a voice
+quite close to her, a voice that sounded so clear and deep, it went
+straight to her heart. She looked up; and near her stood a man wrapped
+in a black cloak, with a hood drawn closely down over his face. But
+she glanced keenly up, and saw his face under his hood. It was stern,
+but yet awakened confidence, and his eyes beamed with the radiance of
+youth.
+
+"Down to my child!" she repeated; and a despairing supplication spoke
+out of her words.
+
+"Darest thou follow me?" asked the form. "I am Death."
+
+And she bowed her head in acquiescence. Then suddenly it seemed as
+though all the stars were shining with the radiance of the full moon;
+she saw the varied colours of the flowers on the grave, and the
+covering of earth was gradually withdrawn like a floating drapery; and
+she sank down, and the apparition covered her with a black cloak;
+night closed around her, the night of death, and she sank deeper than
+the sexton's spade can penetrate; and the churchyard was as a roof
+over her head.
+
+A corner of the cloak was removed, and she stood in a great hall which
+spread wide and pleasantly around. It was twilight. But in a moment
+her child appeared, and was pressed to her heart, smiling at her in
+greater beauty than he had ever possessed. She uttered a cry, but it
+was inaudible. A glorious swelling strain of music sounded in the
+distance, and then near to her, and then again in the distance: never
+had such tones fallen on her ear; they came from beyond the great dark
+curtain which separated the hall from the great land of eternity
+beyond.
+
+"My sweet darling mother," she heard her child say. It was the
+well-known, much-loved voice, and kiss followed kiss in boundless
+felicity; and the child pointed to the dark curtain.
+
+"It is not so beautiful on earth. Do you see, mother--do you see them
+all? Oh, that is happiness!"
+
+[Illustration: THE MOTHER AT THE GRAVE.]
+
+But the mother saw nothing which the child pointed out--nothing but
+the dark night. She looked with earthly eyes, and could not see as the
+child saw, which God had called to Himself. She could hear the sounds
+of the music, but she heard not the word--_the Word_ in which she was
+to believe.
+
+"Now I can fly, mother--I can fly with all the other happy children
+into the presence of the Almighty. I would fain fly; but, if you weep
+as you are weeping now, I might be lost to you--and yet I would go so
+gladly. May I not fly? And you will come to me soon--will you not,
+dear mother?"
+
+"Oh, stay! stay!" entreated the mother. "Only one moment more--only
+once more I should wish to look at thee, and kiss thee, and press thee
+in my arms."
+
+And she kissed and fondled the child. Then her name was called from
+above--called in a plaintive voice. What might this mean?
+
+"Hearest thou?" asked the child. "It is my father who calls thee."
+
+And in a few moments deep sighs were heard, as of weeping children.
+
+"They are my sisters," said the child. "Mother, you surely have not
+forgotten them?"
+
+And then she remembered those she had left behind. A great terror came
+upon her. She looked out into the night, and above her dim forms were
+flitting past. She seemed to recognize a few more of these. They
+floated through the Hall of Death towards the dark curtain, and there
+they vanished. Would her husband and her daughter thus flit past? No,
+their sighs and lamentations still sounded from above:--and she had
+been nearly forgetting them for the sake of him who was dead!
+
+"Mother, now the bells of heaven are ringing," said the child.
+"Mother, now the sun is going to rise."
+
+And an overpowering light streamed in upon her. The child had
+vanished, and she was borne upwards. It became cold round about her,
+and she lifted up her head, and saw that she was lying in the
+churchyard, on the grave of her child.
+
+But the Lord had been a stay unto her feet, in a dream, and a light to
+her spirit; and she bowed her knees and prayed for forgiveness that
+she had wished to keep back a soul from its immortal flight, and that
+she had forgotten her duties towards the living who were left to her.
+
+And when she had spoken those words, it was as if her heart were
+lightened. Then the sun burst forth, and over her head a little bird
+sang out, and the church bells sounded for early service. Everything
+was holy around her, and her heart was chastened. She acknowledged the
+goodness of God, she acknowledged the duties she had to perform, and
+eagerly she went home. She bent over her husband, who still slept; her
+warm devoted kiss awakened him, and heart-felt words of love came from
+the lips of both. And she was gentle and strong, as a wife can be; and
+from her came the consoling words,
+
+    "God's will is always the best."
+
+Then her husband asked her,
+
+"From whence hast thou all at once derived this strength--this feeling
+of consolation?"
+
+And she kissed him, and kissed her children, and said, "They came from
+God, through the child in the grave."
+
+
+
+
+SOUP ON A SAUSAGE-PEG.
+
+
+I.
+
+"That was a remarkably fine dinner yesterday," observed an old Mouse
+of the female sex to another who had not been at the festive
+gathering. "I sat number twenty-one from the old mouse king, so that I
+was not badly placed. Should you like to hear the order of the
+banquet? The courses were very well arranged--mouldy bread,
+bacon-rind, tallow candle, and sausage--and then the same dishes over
+again from the beginning: it was just as good as having two banquets
+in succession. There was as much joviality and agreeable jesting as in
+the family circle. Nothing was left but the pegs at the ends of the
+sausages. And the discourse turned upon these; and at last the
+expression, 'Soup on sausage-rinds,' or, as they have the proverb in
+the neighbouring country, 'Soup on a sausage-peg,' was mentioned.
+Every one had heard the proverb, but no one had ever tasted the
+sausage-peg soup, much less prepared it. A capital toast was drunk to
+the inventor of the soup, and it was said he deserved to be a
+relieving officer. Was not that witty? And the old mouse king stood
+up, and promised that the young female mouse who could best prepare
+that soup should be his queen; and a year was allowed for the trial."
+
+"That was not at all bad," said the other Mouse; "but how does one
+prepare this soup?"
+
+"Ah, how is it prepared? That is just what all the young female mice,
+and the old ones too, are asking. They would all very much like to be
+queen; but they don't want to take the trouble to go out into the
+world to learn how to prepare the soup, and that they would certainly
+have to do. But every one has not the gift of leaving the family
+circle and the chimney corner. In foreign parts one can't get
+cheese-rinds and bacon every day. No, one must bear hunger, and
+perhaps be eaten up alive by a cat."
+
+Such were probably the considerations by which the majority were
+deterred from going out into the wide world and gaining information.
+Only four mice announced themselves ready to depart. They were young
+and brisk, but poor. Each of them wished to proceed to one of the four
+quarters of the globe, and then it would become manifest which of them
+was favoured by fortune. Every one took a sausage-peg, so as to keep
+in mind the object of the journey. The stiff sausage-peg was to be to
+them as a pilgrim's staff.
+
+It was at the beginning of May that they set out, and they did not
+return till the May of the following year; and then only three of them
+appeared. The fourth did not report herself, nor was there any
+intelligence of her, though the day of trial was close at hand.
+
+"Yes, there's always some drawback in even the pleasantest affair,"
+said the Mouse King.
+
+And then he gave orders that all mice within a circuit of many miles
+should be invited. They were to assemble in the kitchen, where the
+three travelled mice would stand up in a row, while a sausage-peg,
+shrouded in crape, was set up as a memento of the fourth, who was
+missing. No one was to proclaim his opinion till the mouse king had
+settled what was to be said. And now let us hear.
+
+
+II.
+
+_What the first little Mouse had seen and learnt in her travels._
+
+"When I went out into the wide world," said the little Mouse, "I
+thought, as many think at my age, that I had already learnt
+everything; but that was not the case. Years must pass before one gets
+so far. I went to sea at once. I went in a ship that steered towards
+the north. They had told me that the ship's cook must know how to
+manage things at sea; but it is easy enough to manage things when one
+has plenty of sides of bacon, and whole tubs of salt pork, and mouldy
+flour. One has delicate living on board; but one does not learn to
+prepare soup on a sausage-peg. We sailed along for many days and
+nights; the ship rocked fearfully, and we did not get off without a
+wetting. When we at last reached the port to which we were bound, I
+left the ship; and it was high up in the far north.
+
+"It is a wonderful thing, to go out of one's own corner at home, and
+sail in a ship, where one has a sort of corner too, and then suddenly
+to find oneself hundreds of miles away in a strange land. I saw great
+pathless forests of pine and birch, which smelt so strong that I
+sneezed, and thought of sausage. There were great lakes there too.
+When I came close to them the waters were quite clear, but from a
+distance they looked black as ink. Great swans floated upon them: I
+thought at first they were spots of foam, they lay so still; but then
+I saw them walk and fly, and I recognized them. They belong to the
+goose family--one can see that by their walk; for no one can deny his
+parentage. I kept with my own kind. I associated with the forest and
+field mice, who, by the way, know very little, especially as regards
+cookery, though this was the very subject that had brought me abroad.
+The thought that soup might be boiled on a sausage-peg was such a
+startling statement to them, that it flew at once from mouth to mouth
+through the whole forest. They declared the problem could never be
+solved; and little did I think that there, in the very first night, I
+should be initiated into the method of its preparation. It was in the
+height of summer, and that, the mice said, was the reason why the wood
+smelt so strongly, and why the herbs were so fragrant, and the lakes
+so transparent and yet so dark, with their white swimming swans.
+
+"On the margin of the wood, among three or four houses, a pole as tall
+as the mainmast of a ship had been erected, and from its summit hung
+wreaths and fluttering ribbons: this was called a maypole. Men and
+maids danced round the tree, and sang as loudly as they could, to the
+violin of the fiddler. There were merry doings at sundown and in the
+moonlight, but I took no part in them--what has a little mouse to do
+with a May dance? I sat in the soft moss and held my sausage-peg fast.
+The moon threw its beams especially upon one spot, where a tree stood,
+covered with moss so exceedingly fine, I may almost venture to say it
+was as fine as the skin of the mouse king; but it was of a green
+colour, and that is a great relief to the eye.
+
+"All at once, the most charming little people came marching forth.
+They were only tall enough to reach to my knee. They looked like men,
+but were better proportioned: they called themselves elves, and had
+delicate clothes on, of flower leaves trimmed with the wings of flies
+and gnats, which had a very good appearance. Directly they appeared,
+they seemed to be seeking for something--I know not what; but at last
+some of them came towards me, and the chief pointed to my sausage-peg,
+and said, 'That is just such a one as we want--it is pointed--it is
+capital!' and the longer he looked at my pilgrim's staff the more
+delighted he became.
+
+"'I will lend it,' I said, 'but not to keep.'
+
+"'Not to keep!' they all repeated; and they seized the sausage-peg,
+which I gave up to them, and danced away to the spot where the fine
+moss grew; and here they set up the peg in the midst of the green.
+They wanted to have a maypole of their own, and the one they now had
+seemed cut out for them; and they decorated it so that it was
+beautiful to behold.
+
+"First, little spiders spun it round with gold thread, and hung it all
+over with fluttering veils and flags, so finely woven, bleached so
+snowy white in the moonshine, that they dazzled my eyes. They took
+colours from the butterfly's wing, and strewed these over the white
+linen, and flowers and diamonds gleamed upon it, so that I did not
+know my sausage-peg again: there is not in all the world such a
+maypole as they had made of it. And now came the real great party of
+elves. They were quite without clothes, and looked as genteel as
+possible; and they invited me to be present at the feast; but I was to
+keep at a certain distance, for I was too large for them.
+
+"And now began such music! It sounded like thousands of glass bells,
+so full, so rich, that I thought the swans were singing. I fancied
+also that I heard the voice of the cuckoo and the blackbird, and at
+last the whole forest seemed to join in. I heard children's voices,
+the sound of bells, and the song of birds; the most glorious
+melodies--and all came from the elves' maypole, namely, my
+sausage-peg. I should never have believed that so much could come out
+of it; but that depends very much upon the hands into which it falls.
+I was quite touched. I wept, as a little mouse may weep, with pure
+pleasure.
+
+"The night was far too short; but it is not longer up yonder at that
+season. In the morning dawn the breeze began to blow, the mirror of
+the forest lake was covered with ripples, and all the delicate veils
+and flags fluttered away in the air. The waving garlands of spider's
+web, the hanging bridges and balustrades, and whatever else they are
+called, flew away as if they were nothing at all. Six elves brought me
+back my sausage-peg, and asked me at the same time if I had any wish
+that they could gratify; so I asked them if they could tell me how
+soup was made on a sausage-peg.
+
+"'How _we_ do it?' asked the chief of the elves, with a smile. 'Why,
+you have just seen it. I fancy you hardly knew your sausage-peg
+again?'
+
+"'You only mean that as a joke," I replied. And then I told them in so
+many words, why I had undertaken a journey, and what great hopes were
+founded on the operation at home. 'What advantage,' I asked, 'can
+accrue to our mouse king, and to our whole powerful state, from the
+fact of my having witnessed all this festivity? I cannot shake it out
+of the sausage-peg, and say, "Look, here is the peg, now the soup will
+come." That would be a dish that could only be put on the table when
+the guests had dined.'
+
+[Illustration: THE ELVES APPLY FOR THE LOAN OF THE SAUSAGE-PEG.]
+
+"Then the elf dipped his little finger into the cup of a blue violet,
+and said to me:
+
+"'See here! I will anoint your pilgrim's staff; and when you go back
+to your country, and come to the castle of the mouse king, you have
+but to touch him with the staff, and violets will spring forth and
+cover its whole surface, even in the coldest winter-time. And so I
+think I've given you something to carry home, and a little more than
+something!'"
+
+But before the little Mouse said what this "something more" was, she
+stretched her staff out towards the king, and in very truth the most
+beautiful bunch of violets burst forth; and the scent was so powerful,
+that the mouse king incontinently ordered the mice who stood nearest
+the chimney to thrust their tails into the fire and create a smell of
+burning, for the odour of the violets was not to be borne, and was not
+of the kind he liked.
+
+"But what was the 'something more,' of which you spoke?" asked the
+Mouse King.
+
+"Why," the little Mouse answered, "I think it is what they call
+effect!" and herewith she turned the staff round, and lo! there was
+not a single flower to be seen upon it; she only held the naked
+skewer, and lifted this up, as a musical conductor lifts his _baton_.
+
+"'Violets,' the elf said to me, 'are for sight, and smell, and touch.
+Therefore it yet remains to provide for hearing and taste!'" And now
+the little Mouse began to beat time; and music was heard, not such as
+sounded in the forest among the elves, but such as is heard in the
+kitchen. There was a bubbling sound of boiling and roasting; and all
+at once it seemed as if the sound were rushing through every chimney,
+and pots and kettles were boiling over. The fire-shovel hammered upon
+the brass kettle, and then, on a sudden, all was quiet again. They
+heard the quiet subdued song of the tea-kettle, and it was wonderful
+to hear--they could not quite tell if the kettle were beginning to
+sing or leaving off; and the little pot simmered, and the big pot
+simmered, and neither cared for the other: there seemed to be no
+reason at all in the pots. And the little Mouse flourished her _baton_
+more and more wildly; the pots foamed, threw up large bubbles, boiled
+over, and the wind roared and whistled through the chimney. Oh! it
+became so terrible, that the little Mouse lost her stick at last.
+
+"That was a heavy soup!" said the Mouse King. "Shall we not soon hear
+about the preparation?"
+
+"That was all," said the little Mouse, with a bow.
+
+"That is all! Then we should be glad to hear what the next has to
+relate," said the Mouse King.
+
+
+III.
+
+_What the second little Mouse had to tell._
+
+"I was born in the palace library," said the second Mouse. "I and
+several members of our family never knew the happiness of getting into
+the dining-room, much less into the store-room; on my journey, and
+here to-day, are the only times I have seen a kitchen. We have indeed
+often been compelled to suffer hunger in the library, but we got a
+good deal of knowledge. The rumour penetrated even to us, of the royal
+prize offered to those who could cook soup upon a sausage-peg; and it
+was my old grandmother who thereupon ferreted out a manuscript, which
+she certainly could not read, but which she had heard read out, and in
+which it was written: 'Those who are poets can boil soup upon a
+sausage-peg.' She asked me if I were a poet. I felt quite innocent on
+the subject, and then she told me I must go out, and manage to become
+one. I again asked what was requisite in that particular, for it was
+as difficult for me to find that out, as to prepare the soup; but
+grandmother had heard a good deal of reading, and she said that three
+things were especially necessary: 'Understanding, imagination,
+feeling--if you can manage to obtain these three, you are a poet, and
+the sausage-wide peg affair will be quite easy to you.'
+
+"And I went forth, and marched towards the west, away into the world,
+to become a poet.
+
+"Understanding is the most important thing in every affair. I knew
+that, for the two other things are not held in half such respect, and
+consequently I went out first to seek understanding. Yes, where does
+he dwell? 'Go to the ant and be wise,' said the great King of the
+Jews; I knew that from my library experience; and I never stopped till
+I came to the first great ant-hill, and there I placed myself on the
+watch, to become wise.
+
+"The ants are a respectable people. They are understanding itself.
+Everything with them is like a well-worked sum, that comes right. To
+work and to lay eggs, they say, is to live while you live, and to
+provide for posterity; and accordingly that is what they do. They were
+divided into the clean and the dirty ants. The rank of each is
+indicated by a number, and the ant queen is number ONE; and her view
+is the only correct one, she is the receptacle of all wisdom; and that
+was important for me to know. She spoke so much, and it was all so
+clever, that it sounded to me like nonsense. She declared her ant-hill
+was the loftiest thing in the world; though close by it grew a tree,
+which was certainly loftier, much loftier, that could not be denied,
+and therefore it was never mentioned. One evening an ant had lost
+herself upon the tree: she had crept up the stem--not up to the crown,
+but higher than any ant had climbed until then; and when she turned,
+and came back home, she talked of something far higher than the
+ant-hill that she had found in her travels; but the other ants
+considered that an insult to the whole community, and consequently she
+was condemned to wear a muzzle, and to continual solitary confinement.
+But a short time afterwards another ant got on the tree, and made the
+same journey and the same discovery; and this one spoke with emphasis,
+and indistinctly, they said; and as, moreover, she was one of the pure
+ants and very much respected, they believed her; and when she died
+they erected an egg-shell as a memorial of her, for they had a great
+respect for the sciences. I saw," continued the little Mouse, "that
+the ants were always running to and fro with their eggs on their
+backs. One of them once dropped her egg; she exerted herself greatly
+to pick it up again, but she could not succeed. Then two others came
+up, and helped her with all their might, insomuch that they nearly
+dropped their own eggs over it; but then they certainly at once
+relaxed their exertions, for each should think of himself first--the
+ant queen had declared that by so doing they exhibited at once heart
+and understanding.
+
+"'These two qualities,' she said, 'place us ants on the highest step
+among all reasoning beings. Understanding is seen among us all in
+predominant measure, and I have the greatest share of understanding.'
+And so saying, she raised herself on her hind-legs, so that she was
+easily to be recognized. I could not be mistaken, and I ate her up. We
+were to go to the ants to learn wisdom--and I had got the queen!
+
+"I now proceeded nearer to the before-mentioned lofty tree. It was an
+oak, and had a great trunk, and a far-spreading top, and was very old.
+I knew that a living being dwelt here, a Dryad as it is called, who is
+born with the tree, and dies with it. I had heard about this in the
+library; and now I saw an oak tree, and an oak girl. She uttered a
+piercing cry when she saw me so near. Like all females, she was very
+much afraid of mice; and she had more ground for fear than others, for
+I might have gnawed through the stem of the tree on which her life
+depended. I accosted the maiden in a friendly and honest way, and bade
+her take courage. And she took me up in her delicate hand; and when I
+had told her my reason for coming out into the wide world, she
+promised me that perhaps on that very evening I should have one of the
+two treasures of which I was still in quest. She told me that
+Phantasus, the genius of imagination, was her very good friend, that
+he was beautiful as the god of love, and that he rested many an hour
+under the leafy boughs of the tree, which then rustled more strongly
+than ever over the pair of them. He called her his dryad, she said,
+and the tree his tree, for the grand gnarled oak was just to his
+taste, with its root burrowing so deep in the earth, and the stem and
+crown rising so high out in the fresh air, and knowing the beating
+snow, and the sharp wind, and the warm sunshine as they deserve to be
+known. 'Yes,' the Dryad continued, 'the birds sing aloft there in the
+branches, and tell each other of strange countries they have visited;
+and on the only dead bough the stork has built a nest which is highly
+ornamental, and moreover, one gets to hear something of the land of
+the pyramids. All that is very pleasing to Phantasus; but it is not
+enough for him: I myself must talk to him, and tell him of life in the
+woods, and must revert to my childhood, when I was little, and the
+tree such a delicate thing that a stinging-nettle overshadowed it--and
+I have to tell everything, till now that the tree is great and strong.
+Sit you down under the green thyme, and pay attention; and when
+Phantasus comes, I shall find an opportunity to pinch his wings, and
+to pull out a little feather. Take the pen--no better is given to any
+poet--and it will be enough for you!'
+
+"And when Phantasus came the feather was plucked, and I seized it,"
+said the little Mouse. "I put it in water, and held it there till it
+grew soft. It was very hard to digest, but I nibbled it up at last. It
+is very easy to gnaw oneself into being a poet, though there are many
+things one must do. Now I had these two things, imagination and
+understanding, and through these I knew that the third was to be found
+in the library; for a great man has said and written that there are
+romances, whose sole and single use is that they relieve people of
+their superfluous tears, and that they are, in fact, a sort of sponges
+sucking up human emotion. I remembered a few of these old books which
+had always looked especially palatable, and were much thumbed and very
+greasy, having evidently absorbed a great deal of feeling into
+themselves.
+
+"I betook myself back to the library, and, so to speak, devoured a
+whole novel--that is, the essence of it, the interior part, for I left
+the crust or binding. When I had digested this, and a second one in
+addition, I felt a stirring within me, and I ate a bit of a third
+romance, and now I was a poet. I said so to myself, and told the
+others also. I had headache, and chestache, and I can't tell what
+aches besides. I began thinking what kind of stories could be made to
+refer to a sausage-peg; and many pegs, and sticks, and staves, and
+splinters came into my mind--the ant queen must have had a
+particularly fine understanding. I remembered the man who took a white
+stick in his mouth, by which means he could render himself and the
+stick invisible; I thought of stick hobby-horses, of 'stock rhymes,'
+of 'breaking the staff' over an offender, and Heaven knows of how many
+phrases more concerning sticks, stocks, staves, and pegs. All my
+thoughts ran upon sticks, staves, and pegs; and when one is a poet
+(and I am a poet, for I have worked most terribly hard to become one)
+a person can make poetry on these subjects. I shall therefore be able
+to wait upon you every day with a poem or a history--and that's the
+soup I have to offer."
+
+"Let us hear what the third has to say," was now the Mouse King's
+command.
+
+"Peep! peep!" cried a small voice at the kitchen-door, and a little
+mouse--it was the fourth of the mice who had contended for the prize,
+the one whom they looked upon as dead--shot in like an arrow. She
+toppled the sausage-peg with the crape covering over in a moment. She
+had been running day and night, and had travelled on the railway, in
+the goods train, having watched her opportunity, and yet she had
+almost come too late. She pressed forward, looking very much rumpled,
+and she had lost her sausage-peg, but not her voice, for she at once
+took up the word, as if they had been waiting only for her, and wanted
+to hear none but her, and as if everything else in the world were of
+no consequence. She spoke at once, and spoke fully: she had appeared
+so suddenly, that no one found time to object to her speech or to her,
+while she was speaking. And let us hear what she said.
+
+
+IV.
+
+[Illustration: THE GAOLER'S GRANDDAUGHTER TAKES PITY ON THE LITTLE
+MOUSE.]
+
+_What the fourth Mouse, who spoke before the third had spoken, had to
+tell._
+
+"I betook myself immediately to the largest town," she said; "the name
+has escaped me--I have a bad memory for names. From the railway I was
+carried, with some confiscated goods, to the council house, and when I
+arrived there I ran into the dwelling of the gaoler. The gaoler was
+talking of his prisoners, and especially of one who had spoken
+unconsidered words. These words had given rise to others, and these
+latter had been written down and recorded.
+
+"'The whole thing is soup on a sausage-peg,' said the gaoler; 'but the
+soup may cost him his neck.'
+
+"Now, this gave me an interest in the prisoner," continued the Mouse,
+"and I watched my opportunity and slipped into his prison--for there's
+a mouse-hole to be found behind every locked door. The prisoner looked
+pale, and had a great beard, and bright sparkling eyes. The lamp
+flickered and smoked, but the walls were so accustomed to that, that
+they grew none the blacker for it. The prisoner scratched pictures and
+verses in white upon the black ground, but I did not read them. I
+think he found it tedious, and I was a welcome guest. He lured me with
+bread crumbs, with whistling, and with friendly words: he was glad to
+see me, and gradually I got to trust him, and we became good friends.
+He let me run upon his hand, his arm, and into his sleeve; he let me
+creep about in his beard, and called me his little friend. I really
+got to love him, for these things are reciprocal. I forgot my mission
+in the wide world, forgot my sausage-peg: that I had placed in a crack
+in the floor--it's lying there still. I wished to stay where I was,
+for if I went away, the poor prisoner would have no one at all, and
+that's having _too_ little, in this world. _I_ stayed, but _he_ did
+not stay. He spoke to me very mournfully the last time, gave me twice
+as much bread and cheese as usual, and kissed his hand to me; then he
+went away, and never came back. I don't know his history.
+
+"'Soup on a sausage-peg!' said the gaoler, to whom I now went; but I
+should not have trusted him. He took me in his hand, certainly, but he
+popped me into a cage, a treadmill. That's a horrible engine, in which
+you go round and round without getting any farther; and people laugh
+at you into the bargain.
+
+"The gaoler's granddaughter was a charming little thing, with a mass
+of curly hair that shone like gold, and such merry eyes, and such a
+smiling mouth!
+
+"'You poor little mouse,' she said, as she peeped into my ugly cage;
+and she drew out the iron rod, and forth I jumped, to the window
+board, and from thence to the roof spout. Free! free! I thought only
+of that, and not of the goal of my journey.
+
+"It was dark, and night was coming on. I took up my quarters in an old
+tower, where dwelt a watchman and an owl. That is a creature like a
+cat, who has the great failing that she eats mice. But one may be
+mistaken, and so was I, for this was a very respectable, well-educated
+old owl: she knew more than the watchman, and as much as I. The young
+owls were always making a racket; but 'go and make soup on a sausage
+peg' were the hardest words she could prevail on herself to utter, she
+was so fondly attached to her family. Her conduct inspired me with so
+much confidence, that from the crack in which I was crouching I called
+out 'peep!' to her. This confidence of mine pleased her hugely, and
+she assured me I should be under her protection, and that no creature
+should be allowed to do me wrong; she would reserve me for herself,
+for the winter, when there would be short commons.
+
+"She was in every respect a clever woman, and explained to me how the
+watchman could only 'whoop' with the horn that hung at his side,
+adding, 'He is terribly conceited about it, and imagines he's an owl
+in the tower. Wants to do great things, but is very small--soup on a
+sausage-peg!' I begged the owl to give me the recipe for this soup,
+and then she explained the matter to me.
+
+"'Soup on a sausage-peg,' she said, 'was only a human proverb, and was
+to be understood thus: Each thinks his own way the best, but the whole
+signifies nothing.'
+
+"'Nothing!'" I exclaimed. "I was quite struck. Truth is not always
+agreeable, but truth is above everything; and that's what the old owl
+said. I now thought about it, and readily perceived that if I brought
+what was _above everything_ I brought something far beyond soup on a
+sausage-peg. So I hastened away, that I might get home in time, and
+bring the highest and best, that is above everything--namely, _the
+truth_. The mice are an enlightened people, and the king is above them
+all. He is capable of making me queen, for the sake of truth."
+
+"Your truth is a falsehood," said the Mouse who had not yet spoken. "I
+can prepare the soup, and I mean to prepare it."
+
+
+V.
+
+_How it was prepared._
+
+"I did not travel," the third Mouse said. "I remained in my
+country--that's the right thing to do. There's no necessity for
+travelling; one can get everything as good here. I stayed at home.
+I've not learnt what I know from supernatural beings, or gobbled it
+up, or held converse with owls. I have what I know through my own
+reflections. Will you make haste and put that kettle upon the fire?
+So--now water must be poured in--quite full--up to the brim!--So--now
+more fuel--make up the fire, that the water may boil--it must boil
+over and over!--So--I now throw the peg in. Will the king now be
+pleased to dip his tail in the boiling water, and to stir it round
+with the said tail? The longer the king stirs it, the more powerful
+will the soup become. It costs nothing at all--no further materials
+are necessary, only stir it round!"
+
+"Cannot any one else do that?" asked the Mouse King.
+
+"No;" replied the mouse. "The power is contained only in the tail of
+the Mouse King."
+
+And the water boiled and bubbled, and the Mouse King stood close
+beside the kettle--there was almost danger in it--and he put forth his
+tail, as the mice do in the dairy, when they skim the cream from a
+pan of milk, afterwards licking their creamy tails; but his tail only
+penetrated into the hot steam, and then he sprang hastily down from
+the hearth.
+
+"Of course--certainly you are my queen," he said. "We'll adjourn the
+soup question till our golden wedding in fifty years' time, so that
+the poor of my subjects, who will then be fed, may have something to
+which they can look forward with pleasure for a long time."
+
+[Illustration: THE MOUSE KING UNDERSTANDS HOW THE SOUP IS MADE.]
+
+And soon the wedding was held. But many of the mice said, as they were
+returning home, that it could not be really called soup on a
+sausage-peg, but rather soup on a mouse's tail. They said that some of
+the stories had been very cleverly told; but the whole thing might
+have been different. "_I_ should have told it so--and so--and so!"
+
+Thus said the critics, who are always wise--after the fact.
+
+And this story went out into the wide world, everywhere; and opinions
+varied concerning it, but the story remained as it was. And that's the
+best in great things and in small, so also with regard to soup on a
+sausage-peg--not to expect any thanks for it.
+
+
+
+
+THE STONE OF THE WISE MEN.
+
+
+Far away in the land of India, far away towards the East, at the end
+of the world, stood the Tree of the Sun, a noble tree, such as we have
+never seen, and shall probably never see. The crown stretched out
+several miles around: it was really an entire wood; each of its
+smallest branches formed, in its turn, a whole tree. Palms, beech
+trees, pines, plane trees, and various other kinds grew here, which
+are found scattered in all other parts of the world: they shot out
+like small branches from the great boughs, and these large boughs with
+their windings and knots formed, as it were, valleys and hills,
+clothed with velvety green, and covered with flowers. Everything was
+like a wide, blooming meadow, or like the most charming garden. Here
+the birds from all quarters of the world assembled together--birds
+from the primeval forests of America, the rose gardens of Damascus,
+from the deserts of Africa, in which the elephant and the lion boast
+of being the only rulers. The Polar birds came flying hither, and of
+course the stork and the swallow were not absent; but the birds were
+not the only living beings: the stag, the squirrel, the antelope, and
+a hundred other beautiful and light-footed animals were here at home.
+The crown of the tree was a widespread fragrant garden, and in the
+midst of it, where the great boughs raised themselves into a green
+hill, there stood a castle of crystal, with a view towards every
+quarter of heaven. Each tower was reared in the form of a lily.
+Through the stem one could ascend, for within it was a winding-stair;
+one could step out upon the leaves as upon balconies; and up in the
+calyx of the flower itself was the most beautiful, sparkling round
+hall, above which no other roof rose but the blue firmament with sun
+and stars.
+
+Just as much splendour, though in another way, appeared below, in the
+wide halls of the castle. Here, on the walls, the whole world around
+was reflected. One saw everything that was done, so that there was no
+necessity of reading any papers, and indeed papers were not obtainable
+there. Everything was to be seen in living pictures, if one only
+wished to see it; for too much is still too much even for the wisest
+man; and this man dwelt here. His name is very difficult--you will not
+be able to pronounce it; therefore it may remain unmentioned. He knew
+everything that a man on earth can know, or can get to know; every
+invention which had already been or which was yet to be made was
+known to him; but nothing more, for everything in the world has its
+limits. The wise King Solomon was only half as wise as he, and yet he
+was very wise, and governed the powers of nature, and held sway over
+potent spirits: yes, Death itself was obliged to give him every
+morning a list of those who were to die during the day. But King
+Solomon himself was obliged to die too; and this thought it was which
+often in the deepest manner employed the inquirer, the mighty lord in
+the castle on the Tree of the Sun. He also, however high he might
+tower above men in wisdom, must die one day. He knew that, and his
+children also must fade away like the leaves of the forest, and become
+dust. He saw the human race fade away like the leaves on the tree; saw
+new men come to fill their places; but the leaves that fell off never
+sprouted forth again--they fell to dust, or were transformed into
+other parts of plants. "What happens to man?" the wise man asked
+himself, "when the angel of death touches him? What may death be? The
+body is dissolved--and the soul. Yes, what is the soul? whither doth
+it go? To eternal life, says the comforting voice of religion; but
+what is the transition? where does one live, and how? Above, in
+heaven, says the pious man, thither we go. Thither?" repeated the wise
+man, and fixed his eyes upon the moon and the stars; "up yonder?" But
+he saw, from the earthly ball, that above and below were alike
+changing their position, according as one stood here or there on the
+rolling globe; and even if he mounted as high as the loftiest
+mountains of earth rear their heads, to the air which we below call
+clear and transparent--the pure heaven--a black darkness spread abroad
+like a cloth, and the sun had a coppery glow, and sent forth no rays,
+and our earth lay wrapped in an orange-coloured mist. How narrow were
+the limits of the corporeal eye, and how little the eye of the soul
+could see!--how little did even the wisest know of that which is the
+most important to us all!
+
+In the most secret chamber of the castle lay the greatest treasure of
+the earth: the Book of Truth. Leaf for leaf, the wise man read it
+through: every man may read in this book, but only by fragments. To
+many an eye the characters seem to tremble, so that the words cannot
+be put together; on certain pages the writing often seems so pale, so
+blurred, that only a blank leaf appears. The wiser a man becomes, the
+more he will read; and the wisest read most. He knew how to unite the
+sunlight and the moonlight with the light of reason and of hidden
+powers; and through this stronger light many things came clearly
+before him from the page. But in the division of the book whose title
+is "Life after Death" not even one point was to be distinctly seen.
+That pained him. Should he not be able here upon earth to obtain a
+light by which everything should become clear to him that stood
+written in the Book of Truth?
+
+[Illustration: THE BOOK OF TRUTH.]
+
+Like the wise King Solomon, he understood the language of the animals,
+and could interpret their talk and their songs. But that made him none
+the wiser. He found out the forces of plants and metals--the forces to
+be used for the cure of diseases, for delaying death--but none that
+could destroy death. In all created things that were within his reach
+he sought the light that should shine upon the certainty of an eternal
+life; but he found it not. The Book of Truth lay before him with
+leaves that appeared blank. Christianity showed itself to him in the
+Bible with words of promise of an eternal life; but he wanted to read
+it in _his_ book; but here he saw nothing written on the subject.
+
+He had five children--four sons, educated as well as the children of
+the wisest father could be, and a daughter, fair, mild, and clever,
+but blind; yet this appeared no deprivation to her--her father and
+brothers were outward eyes to her, and the vividness of her feelings
+saw for her.
+
+Never had the sons gone farther from the castle than the branches of
+the tree extended, nor had the sister strayed from home. They were
+happy children in the land of childhood--in the beautiful fragrant
+Tree of the Sun. Like all children, they were very glad when any
+history was related to them; and the father told them many things that
+other children would not have understood; but these were just as
+clever as most grown-up people are among us. He explained to them what
+they saw in the pictures of life on the castle walls--the doings of
+men and the march of events in all the lands of the earth; and often
+the sons expressed the wish that they could be present at all the
+great deeds and take part in them; and their father then told them
+that out in the world it was difficult and toilsome--that the world
+was not quite what it appeared to them as they looked forth upon it
+from their beauteous home. He spoke to them of the true, the
+beautiful, and the good, and told them that these three held together
+in the world, and that under the pressure they had to endure they
+became hardened into a precious stone, clearer than the water of the
+diamond--a jewel whose splendour had value with God, whose brightness
+outshone everything, and which was the so-called "Stone of the Wise."
+He told them how men could attain by investigation to the knowledge of
+the existence of God, and that through men themselves one could attain
+to the certainty that such a jewel as the "Stone of the Wise" existed.
+This narration would have exceeded the perception of other children,
+but these children understood it, and at length other children, too,
+will learn to comprehend its meaning.
+
+They questioned their father concerning the true, the beautiful, and
+the good; and he explained it to them, told them many things, and told
+them also that God, when He made man out of the dust of the earth,
+gave five kisses to His work--fiery kisses, heart kisses--which we now
+call the five senses. Through these the true, the beautiful, and the
+good is seen, perceived, and understood; through these it is valued,
+protected, and furthered. Five senses have been given corporeally and
+mentally, inwardly and outwardly, to body and soul.
+
+The children reflected deeply upon these things; they meditated upon
+them by day and by night. Then the eldest of the brothers dreamt a
+splendid dream. Strangely enough, the second brother had the same
+dream, and the third, and the fourth brother likewise; all of them
+dreamt exactly the same thing--namely, that each went out into the
+world and found the "Stone of the Wise," which gleamed like a beaming
+light on his forehead when, in the morning dawn, he rode back on his
+swift horse over the velvety green meadows of his home into the castle
+of his father; and the jewel threw such a heavenly light and radiance
+upon the leaves of the book, that everything was illuminated that
+stood written concerning the life beyond the grave. But the sister
+dreamt nothing about going out into the wide world. It never entered
+her mind. Her world was her father's house.
+
+"I shall ride forth into the wide world," said the eldest brother. "I
+must try what life is like there, and go to and fro among men. I will
+practise only the good and the true; with these I will protect the
+beautiful. Much shall change for the better when I am there." Now his
+thoughts were bold and great, as our thoughts generally are at home,
+before we have gone forth into the world and have encountered wind and
+rain, and thorns and thistles.
+
+In him and in all his brothers the five senses were highly developed,
+inwardly and outwardly; but each of them had _one_ sense which in
+keenness and development surpassed the other four. In the case of the
+eldest this pre-eminent sense was Sight. This was to do him especial
+service. He said he had eyes for all time, eyes for all nations, eyes
+that could look into the depths of the earth, where the treasures lie
+hidden, and deep into the hearts of men, as though nothing but a pane
+of glass were placed before them: he could read more than we can see
+on the cheek that blushes or grows pale, in the eye that droops or
+smiles. Stags and antelopes escorted him to the boundary of his home
+towards the west, and there the wild swans received him and flew
+north-west. He followed them. And now he had gone far out into the
+world--far from the land of his father, that extended eastward to the
+end of the earth.
+
+But how he opened his eyes in astonishment! Many things were here to
+be seen; and many things appear very different when a man beholds them
+with his own eyes, or when he merely sees them in a picture, as the
+son had done in his father's house, however faithful the picture way
+be. At the outset he nearly lost his eyes in astonishment at all the
+rubbish and all the masquerading stuff put forward to represent the
+beautiful; but he did not lose them, and soon found full employment
+for them. He wished to go thoroughly and honestly to work in the
+understanding of the beautiful, the true, and the good. But how were
+these represented in the world? He saw that often the garland that
+belonged to the beautiful was given to the hideous; that the good was
+often passed by without notice, while mediocrity was applauded when it
+should have been hissed off. People looked to the dress, and not to
+the wearer; asked for a name, and not for desert; and went more by
+reputation than by service. It was the same thing everywhere.
+
+"I see I must attack these things vigorously," he said; and attacked
+them with vigour accordingly. But while he was looking for the truth,
+came the Evil One, the father of lies. Gladly would the fiend have
+plucked out the eyes of this Seer; but that would have been too
+direct; the devil works in a more cunning way. He let him see and seek
+the true and the good; but while the young man was contemplating them,
+the evil spirit blew one mote after another into each of his eyes; and
+such a proceeding would be hurtful even to the best sight. Then the
+fiend blew upon the motes, so that they became beams; and the eyes
+were destroyed, and the Seer stood like a blind man in the wide world,
+and had no faith in it: he lost his good opinion of it and himself;
+and when a man gives up the world and himself, all is over with him.
+
+"Over!" said the wild swan, who flew across the sea towards the east.
+"Over!" twittered the swallows, who likewise flew eastward, towards
+the Tree of the Sun. That was no good news that they carried to the
+young man's home.
+
+"I fancy the _Seer_ must have fared badly," said the second brother;
+"but the _Hearer_ may have better fortune." For this one possessed the
+sense of hearing in an eminent degree: he could hear the grass grow,
+so quick was he to hear.
+
+He took a hearty leave of all at home, and rode away, provided with
+good abilities and good intentions. The swallows escorted him, and he
+followed the swans; and he stood far from his home in the wide world.
+
+But he experienced the fact that one may have too much of a good
+thing. His hearing was _too_ fine. He not only heard the grass grow,
+but could hear every man's heart beat, in sorrow and in joy. The whole
+world was to him like a great clockmaker's workshop, wherein all the
+clocks were going "tick, tick!" and all the turret clocks striking
+"ding dong!" It was unbearable. For a long time his ears held out, but
+at last all the noise and screaming became too much, for one man.
+There came blackguard boys of sixty years old--for years alone don't
+make men--and raised a tumult at which the hearer might certainly have
+laughed, but for the applause which followed, and which echoed through
+every house and street, and was audible even in the country high road.
+Falsehood thrust itself forward, and played the master; the bells on
+the fool's cap jangled, and declared they were church bells; and the
+noise became too bad for the _Hearer_, and he thrust his fingers into
+his ears; but still he could hear false singing and bad sounds, gossip
+and idle words, scandal and slander, groaning and moaning without and
+within. Heaven help us! He thrust his fingers deeper and deeper into
+his ears, but at last the drums burst. Now he could hear nothing at
+all of the good, the true, and the beautiful, for his hearing was to
+have been the bridge by which he crossed. He became silent and
+suspicious, trusted no one at last, not even himself, and, no longer
+hoping to find and bring home the costly jewel, he gave it up, and
+gave himself up; and that was the worst of all. The birds who winged
+their flight towards the east brought tidings of this, till the news
+reached the castle in the Tree of the Sun.
+
+"_I_ will try now!" said the third brother. "I have a sharp _nose_!"
+
+Now that was not said in very good taste; but it was his way, and one
+must take him as he was. He had a happy temper, and was a poet, a real
+poet: he could sing many things that he could not say, and many things
+struck him far earlier than they occurred to others. "I can smell
+fire!" he said; and he attributed to the sense of smelling, which he
+possessed in a high degree, a great power in the region of the
+beautiful. "Every fragrant spot in the realm of the beautiful has its
+frequenters," he said. "One man feels at home in the atmosphere of the
+tavern, among the flaring tallow candles, where the smell of spirits
+mingles with the fumes of bad tobacco. Another prefers sitting among
+the overpowering scent of jessamine, or scenting himself with strong
+clove oil. This man seeks out the fresh sea breeze, while that one
+climbs to the highest mountain top and looks down upon the busy little
+life beneath." Thus he spake. It seemed to him as if he had already
+been out in the world, as if he had already associated with men and
+known them. But this experience arose from within himself: it was the
+poet within him, the gift of Heaven, and bestowed on him in his
+cradle.
+
+He bade farewell to his paternal roof in the Tree of the Sun, and
+departed on foot through the pleasant scenery of home. Arrived at its
+confines, he mounted on the back of an ostrich, which runs faster
+than a horse; and afterwards, when he fell in with the wild swans, he
+swung himself on the strongest of them, for he loved change; and away
+he flew over the sea to distant lands with great forests, deep lakes,
+mighty mountains, and proud cities; and wherever he came it seemed as
+if sunshine travelled with him across the fields, for every flower,
+every bush, every tree exhaled a new fragrance, in the consciousness
+that a friend and protector was in the neighbourhood, who understood
+them and knew their value. The crippled rose bush reared up its twigs,
+unfolded its leaves, and bore the most beautiful roses; every one
+could see it, and even the black damp wood-snail noticed its beauty.
+
+"I will give my seal to the flower," said the Snail; "I have spit at
+it, and I can do no more for it."
+
+"Thus it always fares with the beautiful in this world!" said the
+poet; and he sang a song concerning it, sang it in his own way; but
+nobody listened. Then he gave the drummer twopence and a peacock's
+feather, and set the song for the drum, and had it drummed in all the
+streets of the town; and the people heard it, and said, "That's a
+well-constructed song." Then the poet sang several songs of the
+beautiful, the true, and the good. His songs were listened to in the
+tavern, where the tallow candles smoked, in the fresh meadow, in the
+forest, and on the high seas. It appeared as if this brother was to
+have better fortune than the two others. But the evil spirit was angry
+at this, and accordingly he set to work with incense powder and
+incense smoke, which he can prepare so artfully as to confuse an
+angel, and how much more therefore a poor poet! The Evil One knows how
+to take that kind of people! He surrounded the poet so completely with
+incense, that the man lost his head, and forgot his mission and his
+home, and at last himself--and ended in smoke.
+
+But when the little birds heard of this they mourned, and for three
+days they sang not one song. The black wood-snail became blacker
+still, not for grief, but for envy. "They should have strewed incense
+for me," she said, "for it was I who gave him his idea of the most
+famous of his songs, the drum song of 'The Way of the World;' it was I
+who spat at the rose! I can bring witness to the fact."
+
+But no tidings of all this penetrated to the poet's home in India, for
+all the birds were silent for three days; and when the time of
+mourning was over, their grief had been so deep that they had
+forgotten for whom they wept. That's the usual way!
+
+[Illustration: THE DEPARTURE OF THE THIRD BROTHER.]
+
+"Now I shall have to go out into the world, to disappear like the
+rest," said the fourth brother. He had just as good a wit as the
+third, but he was no poet, though he could be witty. Those two had
+filled the castle with cheerfulness, and now the last cheerfulness
+was going away. Sight and hearing has always been looked upon as the
+two chief senses of men, and as the two that it is most desirable to
+sharpen; the other senses are looked upon as of less consequence. But
+that was not the opinion of this son, as he had especially cultivated
+his _taste_ in every respect, and taste is very powerful. It holds
+sway over what goes into the mouth, and also over what penetrates into
+the mind; and consequently this brother tasted everything that was
+stored up in bottles and pots, saying that this was the rough work of
+his office. Every man was to him a vessel in which something was
+seething, every country an enormous kitchen, a kitchen of the mind.
+
+"That was no delicacy," he said, and he wanted to go out and try what
+was delicate. "Perhaps fortune may be more favourable to me than it
+was to my brothers," he said. "I shall start on my travels. But what
+conveyance shall I choose? Are air balloons invented yet?" he asked
+his father, who knew of all inventions that had been made, or that
+were to be made. But air balloons had not yet been invented, nor steam
+ships, nor railways. "Good: then I shall choose an air balloon," he
+said; "my father knows how they are made and guided. Nobody has
+invented them yet, and consequently the people will believe that it is
+an aerial phantom. When I have used the balloon I will burn it, and
+for this purpose you must give me a few pieces of the invention that
+will be made next--I mean chemical matches."
+
+And he obtained what he wanted, and flew away. The birds accompanied
+him farther than they had flown with the other brothers. They were
+curious to know what would be the result of the flight, and more of
+them came sweeping up: they thought he was some new bird; and he soon
+had a goodly following. The air became black with birds, they came on
+like a cloud--like the cloud of locusts over the land of Egypt.
+
+Now he was out in the wide world.
+
+The balloon descended over one of the greatest cities, and the
+aeronaut took up his station on the highest point, on the church
+steeple. The balloon rose again, which it ought not to have done:
+where it went to is not known, but that was not a matter of
+consequence, for it was not yet invented. Then he sat on the church
+steeple. The birds no longer hovered around him, they had got tired of
+him, and he was tired of them.
+
+All the chimneys in the town were smoking merrily. "Those are altars
+erected to thy honour!" said the Wind, who wished to say something
+agreeable to him. He sat boldly up there, and looked down upon the
+people in the street. There was one stepping along, proud of his
+purse, another of the key he carried at his girdle, though he had
+nothing to unlock; one proud of his moth-eaten coat, another of his
+wasted body. "Vanity! I must hasten downward, dip my finger in the
+pot, and taste!" he said. "But for awhile I will still sit here, for
+the wind blows so pleasantly against my back. I'll sit here so long as
+the wind blows. I'll enjoy a slight rest. 'It is good to sleep long in
+the morning, when one has much to do,' says the lazy man. I'll stop
+here so long as this wind blows, for it pleases me."
+
+And there he sat, but he was sitting upon the weathercock of the
+steeple, which kept turning round and round with him, so that he was
+under the false impression that the same wind still blew; so he might
+stay up there a goodly while.
+
+But in India, in the castle in the Tree of the Sun, it was solitary
+and still, since the brothers had gone away one after the other.
+
+"It goes not well with them," said the father; "they will never bring
+the gleaming jewel home; it is not made for me; they are gone, they
+are dead!" And he bent down over the Book of Truth, and gazed at the
+page on which he should read of life after death; but for him nothing
+was to be seen or learned upon it.
+
+The blind daughter was his consolation and joy: she attached herself
+with sincere affection to him; for the sake of his peace and joy she
+wished the costly jewel might be found and brought home. With kindly
+longing she thought of her brothers. Where were they? Where did they
+live? She wished sincerely that she might dream of them, but it was
+strange, not even in dreams could she approach them. But at length,
+one night, she dreamt that the voices of her brothers sounded across
+to her, calling to her from the wide world, and she could not refrain,
+but went far far out, and yet it seemed in her dream that she was
+still in her father's house. She did not meet her brothers, but she
+felt, as it were, a fire burning in her hand, but it did not hurt her,
+for it was the jewel she was bringing to her father. When she awoke,
+she thought for a moment that she still held the stone, but it was the
+knob of her distaff that she was grasping. During the long nights she
+had spun incessantly, and round the distaff was turned a thread, finer
+than the finest web of the spider; human eyes were unable to
+distinguish the separate threads. She had wetted them with her tears,
+and the twist was strong as a cable. She rose, and her resolution was
+taken: the dream must be made a reality. It was night, and her father
+slept. She pressed a kiss on his hand, and then took her distaff, and
+fastened the end of the thread to her father's house. But for this,
+blind as she was, she would never have found her way home; to the
+thread she must hold fast, and trust not to herself or to others. From
+the Tree of the Sun she broke four leaves; these she would confide to
+wind and weather, that they might fly to her brothers as a letter and
+a greeting, in case she did not meet them in the wide world. How would
+she fare out yonder, she, the poor blind child? But she had the
+invisible thread to which she could hold fast. She possessed a gift
+which all the others lacked. This was _thoroughness_; and in virtue of
+this it seemed as if she could see to the tips of her fingers, and
+hear down into her very heart.
+
+And quietly she went forth into the noisy, whirling, wonderful world,
+and wherever she went the sky grew bright--she felt the warm ray--the
+rainbow spread itself out from the dark world through the blue air.
+She heard the song of the birds, and smelt the scent of orange groves
+and apple orchards so strongly that she seemed to taste it. Soft tones
+and charming songs reached her ear, but also howling and roaring, and
+thoughts and opinions, sounded in strange contradiction to each other.
+Into the innermost depths of her heart penetrated the echoes of human
+thoughts and feelings. One chorus sounded darkly--
+
+    "The life of earth is a shadow vain
+    A night created for sorrow!"
+
+but then came another strain--
+
+    "The life of earth is the scent of the rose,
+    With its sunshine and its pleasure."
+
+And if one strophe sounded painfully--
+
+    "Each mortal thinks of himself alone,
+    This truth has been manifested"--
+
+on the other side the answer pealed forth--
+
+    "A mighty stream of warmest love,
+    All through the world shall guide us."
+
+She heard, indeed, the words--
+
+    "In the little petty whirl here below,
+    Each thing shows mean and paltry;"
+
+but then came also the comfort--
+
+    "Many things great and good are achieved,
+    That the ear of man heareth never."
+
+and if sometimes the mocking strain sounded around her--
+
+    "Join in the common cry: with a jest
+    Destroy the good gifts of the Giver."
+
+in the blind girl's heart a stronger voice repeated--
+
+    "To trust in thyself and in God is best;
+    His good will be done for ever."
+
+And whenever she entered the circle of human kind, and appeared among
+young or old, the knowledge of the true, the good, and the beautiful
+beamed into their hearts. Whether she entered the study of the artist,
+or the festive, decorated hall, or the crowded factory, with its
+whirring wheels, it seemed as though a sunbeam were stealing in--as if
+the sweet string sounded, the flower exhaled its perfume, and a living
+dew-drop fell upon the exhausted blood.
+
+[Illustration: THE BLIND GIRL'S MESSENGERS.]
+
+But the evil spirit could not see this and be content. He has more
+cunning than ten thousand men, and he found out a way to compass his
+end. He betook himself to the marsh, collected little bubbles of the
+stagnant water, and passed over them a sevenfold echo of lying words
+to give them strength. Then he pounded up paid-for heroic poems and
+lying epitaphs, as many as he could get, boiled them in tears that
+envy had shed, put upon them rouge he had scraped from faded cheeks,
+and of these he composed a maiden, with the aspect and gait of the
+blessed blind girl, the angel of thoroughness; and then the Evil One's
+plot was in full progress. The world knew not which of the two was the
+true one; and, indeed, how should the world know?
+
+    "To trust in thyself and in God is best;
+    His good will be done for ever,"
+
+sung the blind girl, in full faith. She intrusted the four green
+leaves from the Tree of the Sun to the winds, as a letter and a
+greeting to her brothers, and had full confidence that they would
+reach their destination, and that the jewel would be found which
+outshines all the glories of the world. From the forehead of humanity
+it would gleam even to the castle of her father.
+
+"Even to my father's house," she repeated. "Yes, the place of the
+jewel is on earth, and I shall bring more than the promise of it with
+me. I feel its glow, it swells more and more in my closed hand. Every
+grain of truth, were it ever so fine, which the sharp wind carried up
+and whirled towards me, I took up and treasured; I let it be
+penetrated by the fragrance of the beautiful, of which there is so
+much in the world, even for the blind. I took the sound of the beating
+heart engaged in what is good, and added it to the first. All that I
+bring is but dust, but still it is the dust of the jewel we seek, and
+in plenty. I have my whole hand full of it." And she stretched forth
+her hand towards her father. She was soon at home--she had travelled
+thither in the flight of thoughts, never having quitted her hold of
+the invisible thread from the paternal home.
+
+The evil powers rushed with hurricane fury over the Tree of the Sun,
+pressed with a wind-blast against the open doors, and into the
+sanctuary where lay the Book of Truth.
+
+"It will be blown away by the wind!" said the father, and he seized
+the hand she had opened.
+
+"No," she replied, with quiet confidence, "it cannot be blown away; I
+feel the beam warming my very soul."
+
+And the father became aware of a glancing flame, there where the
+shining dust poured out of her hand over the Book of Truth, that was
+to tell of the certainty of an everlasting life, and on it stood one
+shining word--one only word--"BELIEVE."
+
+And with the father and daughter were again the four brothers. When
+the green leaf fell upon the bosom of each, a longing for home had
+seized them, and led them back. They had arrived. The birds of
+passage, and the stag, the antelope, and all the creatures of the
+forest followed them, for all wished to have a part in their joy.
+
+We have often seen, where a sunbeam bursts through a crack in the door
+into the dusty room, how a whirling column of dust seems circling
+round; but this was not poor and insignificant like common dust, for
+even the rainbow is dead in colour compared with the beauty which
+showed itself. Thus, from the leaf of the book with the beaming word
+"_Believe_," arose every grain of truth, decked with the charms of
+_the beautiful_ and _the good_, burning brighter than the mighty
+pillar of flame that led Moses and the children of Israel through the
+desert; and from the word "_Believe_" the bridge of _Hope_ arose,
+spanning the distance, even to the immeasurable love in the realms of
+the Infinite.
+
+
+
+
+THE BUTTERFLY.
+
+
+The Butterfly wished for a bride; and, as may be imagined, he wanted
+to select a very pretty one from among the flowers; therefore he threw
+a critical glance at all the flower-beds, and found that every flower
+sat quietly and demurely on her stalk, just as a maiden ought to sit,
+before she is engaged; but there were a great many of them, and the
+choice threatened to become wearisome. The Butterfly did not care to
+take much trouble, and consequently he flew off on a visit to the
+daisies. The French call this floweret "Marguerite," and they know
+that Marguerite can prophecy, when lovers pluck off its leaves, and
+ask of every leaf they pluck some question concerning their lovers.
+"Heartily? Painfully? Loves me much? A little? Not at all?" and so on.
+Every one asks in his own language. The Butterfly came to Marguerite
+too, to inquire; but he did not pluck off her leaves: he kissed each
+of them, for he considered that most is to be done with kindness.
+
+"Darling Marguerite daisy!" he said to her, "you are the wisest woman
+among the flowers. Pray, pray tell me, shall I get this one or that?
+Which will be my bride? When I know that, I will directly fly to her,
+and propose for her."
+
+But Marguerite did not answer him. She was angry that he had called
+her a "woman," when she was yet a girl; and there is a great
+difference. He asked for the second and for the third time, and when
+she remained dumb, and answered him not a word, he would wait no
+longer, but flew away to begin his wooing at once.
+
+It was in the beginning of spring; the crocus and the snowdrop were
+blooming around.
+
+"They are very pretty," thought the Butterfly. "Charming little
+lasses, but a little too much of the schoolgirl about them." Like all
+young lads, he looked out for the elder girls.
+
+Then he flew of to the anemones. These were a little too bitter for
+his taste; the violet somewhat too sentimental; the lime blossoms were
+too small, and, moreover, they had too many relations; the apple
+blossoms--they looked like roses, but they bloomed to-day, to fall off
+to-morrow, to fall beneath the first wind that blew; and he thought
+that a marriage with them would last too short a time. The pease
+blossom pleased him best of all: she was white and red, and graceful
+and delicate, and belonged to the domestic maidens who look well, and
+at the same time are useful in the kitchen. He was just about to make
+his offer, when close by the maiden he saw a pod at whose end hung a
+withered flower.
+
+"Who is that?" he asked.
+
+"That is my sister," replied the Pease Blossom.
+
+"Oh, indeed; and you will get to look like her!" he said. And away he
+flew, for he felt quite shocked.
+
+The honeysuckle hung forth blooming from the hedge, but there was a
+number of girls like that, with long faces and sallow complexions. No,
+he did not like her.
+
+But which one did he like?
+
+The spring went by, and the summer drew towards its close; it was
+autumn, but he was still undecided.
+
+And now the flowers appeared in their most gorgeous robes, but in
+vain; they had not the fresh fragrant air of youth. But the heart
+demands fragrance, even when it is no longer young, and there is very
+little of that to be found among the dahlias and dry chrysanthemums,
+therefore the Butterfly turned to the mint on the ground.
+
+You see this plant has no blossom; but indeed it is blossom all over,
+full of fragrance from head to foot, with flower scent in every leaf.
+
+"I shall take her," said the Butterfly.
+
+And he made an offer for her.
+
+But the mint stood silent and stiff, listening to him. At last she
+said,
+
+"Friendship, if you please; but nothing more. I am old, and you are
+old, but we may very well live for one another; but as to
+marrying--no--don't let us appear ridiculous at our age."
+
+And thus it happened that the Butterfly had no wife at all. He had
+been too long choosing, and that is a bad plan. So the Butterfly
+became what we call an old bachelor.
+
+It was late in autumn, with rain and cloudy weather. The wind blew
+cold over the backs of the old willow trees, so that they creaked
+again. It was no weather to be flying about in summer clothes, nor,
+indeed, was the Butterfly in the open air. He had got under shelter by
+chance, where there was fire in the stove and the heat of summer. He
+could live well enough, but he said,
+
+"It's not enough merely to live. One must have freedom, sunshine, and
+a little flower."
+
+And he flew against the window-frame, and was seen and admired, and
+then stuck upon a pin and placed in the box of curiosities; they could
+not do more for him.
+
+"Now I am perched on a stalk, like the flowers," said the Butterfly.
+"It certainly is not very pleasant. It must be something like being
+married, for one is stuck fast."
+
+And he consoled himself in some measure with the thought.
+
+"That's very poor comfort," said the potted Plants in the room.
+
+"But," thought the Butterfly, "one cannot well trust these potted
+Plants. They've had too much to do with mankind."
+
+
+
+
+IN THE UTTERMOST PARTS OF THE SEA.
+
+
+Great ships had been sent up towards the North Pole, to explore the
+most distant coasts, and to try how far men might penetrate up yonder.
+For more than a year they had already been pushing their way among
+ice, and snow, and mist, and their crews had endured many hardships;
+and now the winter was come, and the sun had entirely disappeared from
+those regions. For many many weeks there would now be a long night.
+All around, as far as the eye could reach, was a single field of ice;
+the ships had been made fast to it, and the snow had piled itself up
+in great masses, and of these huts had been built in the form of
+beehives, some of them spacious as the old "Hun's Graves"--others only
+containing room enough to hold two or four men. But it was not dark,
+for the northern lights flamed red and blue, like a great continual
+firework; and the snow glistened and gleamed, so that the night here
+was one long, flaming, twilight hour. When the gleam was brightest,
+the natives came in crowds, wonderful to behold in their rough, hairy,
+fur dresses; and they rode in sledges formed of blocks of ice, and
+brought with them furs and peltry in great bundles, so that the snow
+houses were furnished with warm carpets; and, in turn, the furs also
+served for coverlets when the sailors went to bed under their roofs of
+snow, while outside it froze in far different fashion than here with
+us in the winter. In our regions it was still the late autumn-time;
+and they thought of that up yonder, and often pictured to themselves
+the yellow leaves on the trees of home. The clock showed that it was
+evening, and time to go to sleep; and in the huts two men already had
+stretched themselves out, seeking rest. The younger of these had his
+best, dearest treasure, that he had brought from home--the Bible,
+which his grandmother had given him on his departure. Every night the
+sacred volume rested beneath his head, and he knew from his childish
+years what was written in it. Every day he read in the book, and often
+the holy words came into his mind where it is written, "If I take the
+wings of the morning, and flee into the uttermost parts of the sea,
+even there Thou art with me, and Thy right hand shall uphold me;" and,
+under the influence of the eternal word and of the true faith, he
+closed his eyes, and sleep came upon him, and dreams--the
+manifestation of Providence to the spirit. The soul lived and was
+working while the body was enjoying its rest: he felt this life, and
+it seemed to him as if dear old well-known melodies were sounding; as
+if the mild breezes of summer were playing around him; and over his
+bed he beheld a brightness, as if something were shining in through
+the crust of snow. He lifted up his head, and behold, the bright gleam
+was no ripple down from the snowy roof, but came from the mighty
+pinions of an angel, into whose beaming face he was gazing. As if from
+the cup of a lily the angel arose from among the leaves of the Bible,
+and stretching out his arm, the walls of the snow hut sunk down
+around, as though they had been a light airy veil of mist; the green
+meadows and hills of home, and its ruddy woods, lay spread around him
+in the quiet sunshine of a beauteous autumn day; the nest of the stork
+was empty, but ripe fruit still clung to the wild apple tree, although
+the leaves, had fallen; the red hips gleamed, and the magpie whistled
+in the green cage over the window of the peasant's cottage that was
+his home; the magpie whistled the tune that had been taught him, and
+the grandmother hung green food around the cage, as he, the grandson,
+had been accustomed to do; and the daughter of the blacksmith, very
+young and fair, stood by the well drawing water, and nodded to the
+granddame, and the old woman nodded to her, and showed her a letter
+that had come from a long way off. That very morning the letter had
+arrived from the cold regions of the North--there where the grandson
+was resting in the hand of God. And they smiled and they wept; and he,
+far away among the ice and snow, under the pinions of the angel, he,
+too, smiled and wept with them in spirit, for he saw them and heard
+them. And from the letter they read aloud the words of Holy Writ, that
+in the uttermost parts of the sea HIS right hand would be a stay and a
+safety. And the sound of a beauteous hymn welled up all around; and
+the angel spread his wings like a veil over the sleeping youth. The
+vision had fled, and it grew dark in the snow hut; but the Bible
+rested beneath his head, and faith and hope dwelt in his soul. God was
+with him; and he carried home about with him in his heart, even in the
+uttermost parts of the sea.
+
+
+
+
+THE PHOENIX BIRD.
+
+
+In the Garden of Paradise, beneath the Tree of Knowledge, bloomed a
+rose bush. Here, in the first rose, a bird was born: his flight was
+like the flashing of light, his plumage was beauteous, and his song
+ravishing.
+
+But when Eve plucked the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, when
+she and Adam were driven from Paradise, there fell from the flaming
+sword of the cherub a spark into the nest of the bird, which blazed up
+forthwith. The bird perished in the flames; but from the red egg in
+the nest there fluttered aloft a new one--the one solitary Phoenix
+bird. The fable tells us that he dwells in Arabia, and that every year
+he burns himself to death in his nest; but each time a new Phoenix,
+the only one in the world, rises up from the red egg.
+
+The bird flutters round us, swift as light, beauteous in colour,
+charming in song. When a mother sits by her infant's cradle, he stands
+on the pillow, and, with his wings, forms a glory around the infant's
+head. He flies through the chamber of content, and brings sunshine
+into it, and the violets on the humble table smell doubly sweet.
+
+But the Phoenix is not the bird of Arabia alone. He wings his way
+in the glimmer of the northern lights over the plains of Lapland, and
+hops among the yellow flowers in the short Greenland summer. Beneath
+the copper mountains of Fablun, and England's coal mines, he flies, in
+the shape of a dusty moth, over the hymn-book that rests on the knees
+of the pious miner. On a lotus leaf he floats down the sacred waters
+of the Ganges, and the eye of the Hindoo maid gleams bright when she
+beholds him.
+
+The Phoenix bird, dost thou not know him? The Bird of Paradise, the
+holy swan of song! On the car of Thespis he sat in the guise of a
+chattering raven, and flapped his black wings, smeared with the lees
+of wine; over the sounding harp of Iceland swept the swan's red beak;
+on Shakespeare's shoulder he sat in the guise of Odin's raven, and
+whispered in the poet's ear "Immortality!" and at the minstrels' feast
+he fluttered through the halls of the Wartburg.
+
+The Phoenix bird, dost thou not know him? He sang to thee the
+_Marseillaise_, and thou kissedst the pen that fell from his wing; he
+came in the radiance of Paradise, and perchance thou didst turn away
+from him towards the sparrow who sat with tinsel on his wings.
+
+The Bird of Paradise--renewed each century--born in flame, ending in
+flame! Thy picture, in a golden frame, hangs in the halls of the rich;
+and thou thyself often fliest around, lonely and disregarded, a
+myth--"The Phoenix of Arabia."
+
+In Paradise, when thou wert born in the first rose, beneath the Tree
+of Knowledge, thou receivedst a kiss, and thy right name was given
+thee--thy name, POETRY.
+
+[Illustration]
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales, by
+Hans Christian Andersen
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