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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/35543-8.txt b/35543-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9c38d1a --- /dev/null +++ b/35543-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2434 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Little Boy, by Carl Ewald + +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: My Little Boy + +Author: Carl Ewald + +Commentator: Alexander Woollcott + +Translator: Alexandrer Texeira de Mattos + +Release Date: March 11, 2011 [EBook #35543] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY LITTLE BOY *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Watson, Mark Akrigg and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at +http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + + + + + + + + + MY + LITTLE BOY + + _by + CARL EWALD_ + + TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH + BY + ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS + + + + + MY LITTLE BOY + COPYRIGHT 1906 BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + SOLE AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION + + REPRINTED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH THE PUBLISHERS. NO PART OF THIS + WORK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF + CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + + + +_MY LITTLE BOY_ + + + + +I + + +My little boy is beginning to live. + +Carefully, stumbling now and then on his little knock-kneed legs, he +makes his way over the paving-stones, looks at everything that there is +to look at and bites at every apple, both those which are his due and +those which are forbidden him. + +He is not a pretty child and is the more likely to grow into a fine lad. +But he is charming. + +His face can light up suddenly and become radiant; he can look at you +with quite cold eyes. He has a strong intuition and he is incorruptible. +He has never yet bartered a kiss for barley-sugar. There are people whom +he likes and people whom he dislikes. There is one who has long courted +his favour indefatigably and in vain; and, the other day, he formed a +close friendship with another who had not so much as said "Good day" to +him before he had crept into her lap and nestled there with glowing +resolution. + +He has a habit which I love. + +When we are walking together and there is anything that impresses him, +he lets go my hand for a moment. Then, when he has investigated the +phenomenon and arrived at a result, I feel his little fist in mine +again. + +He has bad habits too. + +He is apt, for instance, suddenly and without the slightest reason, to +go up to people whom he meets in the street and hit them with his little +stick. What is in his mind, when he does so, I do not know; and, so long +as he does not hit me, it remains a matter between himself and the +people concerned. + +He has an odd trick of seizing big words in a grown-up conversation, +storing them up for a while and then asking me for an explanation: + +"Father," he says, "what is life?" + +I give him a tap in his little stomach, roll him over on the carpet and +conceal my emotion under a mighty romp. Then, when we sit breathless and +tired, I answer, gravely: + +"Life is delightful, my little boy. Don't you be afraid of it!" + + + + +II + + +Today my little boy gave me my first lesson. + +It was in the garden. + +I was writing in the shade of the big chestnut-tree, close to where the +brook flows past. He was sitting a little way off, on the grass, in the +sun, with Hans Christian Andersen in his lap. + +Of course, he does not know how to read, but he lets you read to him, +likes to hear the same tales over and over again. The better he knows +them, the better he is pleased. He follows the story page by page, knows +exactly where everything comes and catches you up immediately should you +skip a line. + +There are two tales which he loves more than anything in the world. + +These are Grimm's _Faithful John_ and Andersen's _The Little Mermaid_. +When anyone comes whom he likes, he fetches the big Grimm, with those +heaps of pictures, and asks for _Faithful John_. Then, if the reader +stops, because it is so terribly sad, with all those little dead +children, a bright smile lights up his small, long face and he says, +reassuringly and pleased at "knowing better": + +"Yes, but they come to life again." + +Today, however, it is _The Little Mermaid_. + +"Is that the sort of stories you write?" he asks. + +"Yes," I say, "but I am afraid mine will not be so pretty." + +"You must take pains," he says. + +And I promise. + +For a time he makes no sound. I go on writing and forget about him. + +"Is there a little mermaid down there, in the water?" he asks. + +"Yes, she swims up to the top in the summer." + +He nods and looks out across the brook, which ripples so softly and +smoothly that one can hardly see the water flow. On the opposite side, +the rushes grow green and thick and there is also a bird, hidden in the +rushes, which sings. The dragon-flies are whirling and humming. I am +sitting with my head in my hand, absorbed in my work. + +Suddenly, I hear a splash. + +I jump from my chair, upset the table, dart forward and see that my +little boy is gone. The brook is billowing and foaming; there are wide +circles on the surface. + +In a moment, I am in the water and find him and catch hold of him. + +He stands on the grass, dripping with wet, spluttering and coughing. His +thin clothes are clinging to his thin body, his face is black with mud. +But out of the mud gleams a pair of angry eyes: + +"There was no mermaid," he says. + +I do not at once know what to reply and I have no time to think. + +"Do you write that sort of stories?" he asks. + +"Yes," I say, shamefaced. + +"I don't like any of you," he says. "You make fun of a little boy." + +He turns his back on me and, proud and wet, goes indoors without once +looking round. + +This evening, Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen disappear in a +mysterious manner, which is never explained. He will miss them greatly, +at first; but he will never be fooled again, not if I were to give him +the sun and moon in his hand. + + + + +III + + +My little boy and I have had an exceedingly interesting walk in the +Frederiksberg Park. + +There was a mouse, which was irresistible. There were two chaffinches, +husband and wife, which built their nest right before our eyes, and a +snail, which had no secrets for us. And there were flowers, yellow and +white, and there were green leaves, which told us the oddest adventures: +in fact, as much as we can find room for in our little head. + +Now we are sitting on a bench and digesting our impressions. + +Suddenly the air is shaken by a tremendous roar: + +"What was that?" asks my little boy. + +"That was the lion in the Zoological Gardens," I reply. + +No sooner have I said this than I curse my own stupidity. + +I might have said that it was a gunshot announcing the birth of a +prince; or an earthquake; or a china dish falling from the sky and +breaking into pieces: anything whatever, rather than the truth. + +For now my little boy wants to know what sort of thing the Zoological +Gardens is. + +I tell him. + +The Zoological Gardens is a horrid place, where they lock up wild beasts +who have done no wrong and who are accustomed to walk about freely in +the distant foreign countries where they come from. The lion is there, +whom we have just heard roaring. He is so strong that he can kill a +policeman with one blow of his paw; he has great, haughty eyes and +awfully sharp teeth. He lives in Africa and, at night, when he roars, +all the other beasts tremble in their holes for fear. He is called the +king of beasts. They caught him one day in a cunning trap and bound him +and dragged him here and locked him up in a cage with iron bars to it. +The cage is no more than half as big as Petrine's room. And there the +king walks up and down, up and down, and gnashes his teeth with sorrow +and rage and roars so that you can hear him ever so far away. Outside +his cage stand cowardly people and laugh at him, because he can't get +out and eat them up, and poke their sticks through the rails and tease +him. + +My little boy stands in front of me and looks at me with wide-open eyes: + +"Would he eat them up, if he got out?" he asks. + +"In a moment." + +"But he can't get out, can he?" + +"No. That's awfully sad. He can't get out." + +"Father, let us go and look at the lion." + +I pretend not to hear and go on to tell him of the strange birds there: +great eagles, which used to fly over every church-steeple and over the +highest trees and mountains and swoop down upon lambs and hares and +carry them up to their young in the nest. Now they are sitting in cages, +on a perch, like canaries, with clipped wings and blind eyes. I tell him +of gulls, which used to fly all day long over the stormy sea: now they +splash about in a puddle of water, screaming pitifully. I tell him of +wonderful blue and red birds, which, in their youth, used to live among +wonderful blue and red flowers, in balmy forests a thousand times bigger +than the Frederiksberg Park, where it was as dark as night under the +trees with the brightest sun shining down upon the tree-tops: now they +sit there in very small cages and hang their beaks while they stare at +tiresome boys in dark-blue suits and black stockings and waterproof +boots and sailor-hats. + +"Are those birds really blue?" asks my little boy. + +"Sky-blue," I answer. "And utterly broken-hearted." + +"Father, can't we go and look at the birds?" + +I take my little boy's hands in mine: + +"I don't think we will," I say. "Why should still more silly boys do so? +You can't imagine how it goes to one's heart to look at those poor +captive beasts." + +"Father, I should so much like to go." + +"Take my advice and don't. The animals there are not the real animals, +you see. They are ill and ugly and angry because of their captivity and +their longing and their pain." + +"I should so much like to see them." + +"Now let me tell you something. To go to the Zoological Gardens costs +five cents for you and ten cents for me. That makes fifteen cents +altogether, which is an awful lot of money. We won't go there now, but +we'll buy the biggest money-box we can find: one of those money-boxes +shaped like a pig. Then we'll put fifteen cents in it. And every +Thursday we'll put fifteen cents in the pig. By-and-by, that will grow +into quite a fortune: it will make such a lot of money that, when you +are grown up, you can take a trip to Africa and go to the desert and +hear the wild, the real lion roaring and tremble just like the people +tremble down there. And you can go to the great, dark forests and see +the real blue birds flying proud and free among the flowers. You can't +think how glad you will be, how beautiful they will look and how they +will sing to you. . . ." + +"Father, I would rather go to the Zoological Gardens now." + +My little boy does not understand a word of what I say. And I am at my +wits' end. + +"Shall we go and have some cakes at Josty's?" I ask. + +"I would rather go to the Zoological Gardens." + +I can read in his eyes that he is thinking of the captive lion. Ugly +human instincts are waking up in his soul. The mouse is forgotten and +the snail; and the chaffinches have built their nest to no purpose. + +At last I get up and say, bluntly, without any further explanation: + +"You are _not_ going to the Zoological Gardens. Now we'll go home." + +And home we go. But we are not in a good temper. + +Of course, I get over it and I buy an enormous money-box pig. Also we +put the money into it and he thinks that most interesting. + +But, later in the afternoon, I find him in the bed-room engaged in a +piteous game. + +He has built a cage, in which he has imprisoned the pig. He is teasing +it and hitting it with his whip, while he keeps shouting to it: + +"You can't get out and bite me, you stupid pig! You can't get out!" + + + + +IV + + +We have beer-soup and Aunt Anna to dinner. Now beer-soup is a nasty dish +and Aunt Anna is not very nice either. + +She has yellow teeth and a little hump and very severe eyes, which are +not even both equally severe. She is nearly always scolding us and, when +she sees a chance, she pinches us. + +The worst of all, however, is that she is constantly setting us a good +example, which can easily end by gradually and inevitably driving us to +embrace wickedness. + +Aunt Anna does not like beer-soup any more than we do. But of course she +eats it with a voluptuous expression on her face and looks angrily at my +little boy, who does not even make an attempt to behave nicely: + +"Why doesn't the little boy eat his delicious beer-soup?" she asks. + +A scornful silence. + +"Such delicious beer-soup! I know a poor, wretched boy who would be +awfully glad to have such delicious beer-soup." + +My little boy looks with great interest at Auntie, who is swallowing her +soup with eyes full of ecstatic bliss: + +"Where is he?" he asks. + +Aunt Anna pretends not to hear. + +"Where is the poor boy?" he asks again. + +"Yes, where is he?" I ask. "What's his name?" + +Aunt Anna gives me a furious glance. + +"What's his name, Aunt Anna?" asks my little boy. "Where does he live? +He can have my beer-soup with pleasure." + +"Mine too," I say, resolutely, and I push my plate from me. + +My little boy never takes his great eyes off Aunt Anna's face. +Meanwhile, she has recovered herself: + +"There are many poor boys who would thank God if they could get such +delicious beer-soup," she says. "Very many. Everywhere." + +"Yes, but tell us of one, Auntie," I say. + +My little boy has slipped down from his chair. He stands with his chin +just above the table and both his hands round his plate, ready to march +off with the beer-soup to the poor boy, if only he can get his address. + +But Aunt Anna does not allow herself to be played with: + +"Heaps of poor boys," she says again. "Hun-dreds! And therefore another +little boy, whom I will not name, but who is in this room, ought to be +ashamed that he is not thankful for his beer-soup." + +My little boy stares at Aunt Anna like the bird fascinated by the snake. + + +"Such delicious beer-soup!" she says. "I must really ask for another +little helping." + +Aunt Anna revels in her martyrdom. My little boy stands speechless, with +open mouth and round eyes. + +I push my chair back and say, with genuine exasperation: + +"Now, look here, Aunt Anna, this is really too bad! Here we are, with a +whole lot of beer-soup, which we don't care about in the least and which +we would be very glad to get rid of, if we only knew someone who would +have it. You are the only one that knows of anybody. You know a poor boy +who would dance for joy if he got some beer-soup. You know hundreds. But +you won't tell us their names or where they live." + +"Why, what do you mean?" + +"And you yourself sit quite calmly eating two whole helpings, though you +know quite well that you're going to have an omelette to follow. That's +really very naughty of you, Aunt Anna." + +Aunt Anna chokes with annoyance. My little boy locks his teeth with a +snap and looks with every mark of disgust at that wicked old woman. + +And I turn with calm earnestness to his mother and say: + +"After this, it would be most improper for us ever to have beer-soup +here again. We don't care for it and there are hundreds of little boys +who love it. If it must be made, then Aunt Anna must come every Saturday +and fetch it. She knows where the boys live." + +The omelette is eaten in silence, after which Aunt Anna shakes the dust +from her shoes. She won't have any coffee today. + +While she is standing in the hall and putting on her endless wraps, a +last doubt arises in my little boy's soul. He opens his green eyes wide +before her face and whispers: + +"Aunt Anna, where do the boys live?" + +Aunt Anna pinches him and is shocked and goes off, having suffered a +greater defeat than she can ever repair. + + + + +V + + +My little boy comes into my room and tells me, with a very long face, +that Jean is dead. And we put all nonsense on one side and hurry away to +the Klampenborg train, to go where Jean is. + +For Jean is the biggest dog that has lived for some time. + +He once bit a boy so hard that the boy still walks lame. He once bit his +own master. He could give such a look out of his eyes and open such a +mouth that there was no more horrible sight in the world. And then he +would be the mildest of the mild: my little boy could put his hand in +his mouth and ride on his back and pull his tail. + +When we get there, we hear that Jean is already buried. + +We look at each other in dismay, to think how quickly that happens! And +we go to the grave, which is in the grounds of the factory, where the +tall chimneys stand. + +We sit down and can't understand it. + +We tell each other all the stories that we know of Jean's wonderful size +and strength. The one remembers this, the other that. And, as each story +is told, the whole thing becomes only more awful and obscure. + +At last we go home by train. + +Besides ourselves, there is a kind old gentleman in the compartment, who +would like to make friends with my little boy. But the boy has nothing +to talk about to the kind old gentleman. He stands at the window, which +comes just under his chin, and stares out. + +His eyes light upon some tall chimneys: + +"That's where Jean is buried," he says. + +"Yes." + +The landscape flies past. He can think only of _that_ and see only +_that_ and, when some more chimneys appear, he says again: + +"That's where Jean is buried." + +"No, my little friend," says the kind old gentleman. "That was over +there." + +The boy looks at him with surprise. I hasten to reassure him: + +"Those _are_ Jean's chimneys," I say. + +And, while he is looking out again, I take the old gentleman to the +further corner of the compartment and tell him the state of the case. + +I tell him that, if I live, I hope, in years to come, to explain to the +boy the difference between Petersen's and Hansen's factories and, should +I die, I will confidently leave that part of his education to others. +Yes, even if he should never learn this difference, I would still be +resigned. Today it is a question of other and more important matters. +The strongest, the most living thing he knew is dead. . . . + +"Really?" says the old gentleman, sympathetically. "A relation, +perhaps?" + +"Yes," I say. "Jean is dead, a dog. . . ." + +"A dog?" + +"It is not because of the _dog_--don't you understand?--but of _death_, +which he sees for the first time: death, with all its might, its +mystery. . . ." + +"Father," says my little boy and turns his head towards us. "When do we +die?" + +"When we grow old," says the kind old gentleman. + +"No," says the boy. "Einar has a brother, at home, in the courtyard, and +he is dead. And he was only a little boy." + +"Then Einar's brother was so good and learnt such a lot that he was +already fit to go to Heaven," says the old gentleman. + +"Mind you don't become too good," I say and laugh and tap my little boy +in the stomach. + +And my little boy laughs too and goes back to his window, where new +chimneys rise over Jean's grave. + +But I take the old gentleman by the shoulders and forbid him most +strictly to talk to my little boy again. I give up trying to make him +understand me. I just shake him. He eyes the communication-cord and, +when we reach the station, hurries away. + +I go with my little boy, holding his hand, through the streets full of +live people. In the evening, I sit on the edge of his bed and talk with +him about that incomprehensible thing: Jean, who is dead; Jean, who was +so much alive, so strong, so big. . . . + + + + +VI + + +Our courtyard is full of children and my little boy has picked a +bosom-friend out of the band: his name is Einar and he can be as good as +another. + +My little boy admires him and Einar allows himself to be admired, so +that the friendship is established on the only proper basis. + +"Einar says . . . Einar thinks . . . Einar does," is the daily refrain; +and we arrange our little life accordingly. + +"I can't see anything out of the way in Einar," says the mother of my +little boy. + +"Nor can I," say I. "But our little boy can and that is enough. I once +had a friend who could see nothing at all charming in you. And you +yourself, if I remember right, had three friends who thought _your_ +taste inexcusable. Luckily for our little boy. . . ." + +"Luckily!" + +"It is the feeling that counts," I go on lecturing, "and not the +object." + +"Thanks!" she says. + +Now something big and unusual takes place in our courtyard and makes an +extraordinary impression on the children and gives their small brains +heaps to struggle with for many a long day. + +The scarlatina comes. + +And scarlatina is not like a pain in your stomach, when you have eaten +too many pears, or like a cold, when you have forgotten to put on your +jacket. Scarlatina is something quite different, something powerful and +terrible. It comes at night and takes a little boy who was playing quite +happily that same evening. And then the little boy is gone. + +Perhaps a funny carriage comes driving in through the gate, with two +horses and a coachman and two men with bright brass buttons on their +coats. The two men take out of the carriage a basket, with a red +blanket and white sheets, and carry it up to where the boy lives. +Presently, they carry the basket down again and then the boy is inside. +But nobody can see him, because the sheet is over his face. The basket +is shoved into the carriage, which is shut with a bang, and away goes +the carriage with the boy, while his mother dries her eyes and goes up +to the others. + +Perhaps no carriage comes. But then the sick boy is shut up in his room +and no one may go to him for a long time, because he is infectious. And +anyone can understand that this must be terribly sad. + +The children in the courtyard talk of nothing else. + +They talk with soft voices and faces full of mystery, because they know +nothing for certain. They hear that one of them, who rode away in the +carriage, is dead; but that makes no more impression on them than when +one of them falls ill and disappears. + +Day by day, the little band is being thinned out and not one of them has +yet come back. + +I stand at my open window and look at my little boy, who is sitting on +the steps below with his friend. They have their arms around each +other's necks and see no one except each other; that is to say, Einar +sees himself and my little boy sees Einar. + +"If you fall ill, I will come and see you," says my little boy. + +"No, you won't!" + +"I will come and see you." + +His eyes beam at this important promise. Einar cries as though he were +already ill. + +And the next day he is ill. + +He lies in a little room all by himself. No one is allowed to go to him. +A red curtain hangs before the window. + +My little boy sits alone on the steps outside and stares up at the +curtain. His hands are thrust deep into his pockets. He does not care to +play and he speaks to nobody. + +And I walk up and down the room, uneasy as to what will come next. + +"You are anxious about our little boy," says his mother. "And it will be +a miracle if he escapes." + +"It's not that. We've all had a touch of scarlatina." + +But just as I want to talk to her about it, I hear a fumbling with the +door-handle which there is no mistaking and then he stands before us in +the room. + +I know you so well, my little boy, when you come in sideways like that, +with a long face, and go and sit in a corner and look at the two people +who owe so much happiness to you--look from one to the other. Your eyes +are greener than usual. You can't find your words and you sit huddled up +and you are ever so good. + +"Mother, is Einar ill?" + +"Yes. But he will soon be better again. The doctor says that he is not +so bad." + +"Is he infectious, Mother?" + +"Yes, he is. His little sister has been sent to the country, so that she +may not fall ill too. No one is allowed to go to him except his mother, +who gives him his milk and his medicine and makes his bed." + +A silence. + +The mother of my little boy looks down at her book and suspects nothing. +The father of my little boy looks in great suspense from the window. + +"Mother, I want to go to Einar." + +"You can't go there, my little man. You hear, he's infectious. Just +think, if you should fall ill yourself! Einar isn't bothering at all +about chatting with you. He sleeps the whole day long." + +"But when he wakes, Mother?" + +"You can't go up there." + +This tells upon him and he is nearly crying. I see that the time has +come for me to come to his rescue: + +"Have you promised Einar to go and see him?" I ask. + +"Yes, Father. . . ." + +He is over his trouble. His eyes beam. He stands erect and glad beside +me and puts his little hand in mine. + +"Then of course you must do so," I say, calmly. "So soon as he wakes." + +Our mother closes her book with a bang: + +"Go down to the courtyard and play, while Father and I have a talk." + +The boy runs away. + +And she comes up to me and lays her hand on my shoulder and says, +earnestly: + +"I _daren't_ do that, do you hear?" + +And I take her hand and kiss it and say, quite as earnestly: + +"And I _daren't refuse_!" + +We look at each other, we two, who share the empire, the power and the +glory. + +"I heard our little boy make his promise," I say, "I saw him. Sir +Galahad himself was not more in earnest when swearing his knightly oath. +You see, we have no choice here. He can catch the scarlatina in any case +and it is not even certain that he will catch it. . . ." + +"If it was diphtheria, you wouldn't talk like that!" + +"You may be right. But am I to become a thief for the sake of a nickel, +because I am not sure that I could resist the temptation to steal a +kingdom?" + +"You would not find a living being to agree with you." + +"Except yourself. And that is all I want. The infection is really only a +side matter. It can come this way or that way. We can't safeguard him, +come what may. . . ." + +"But are we to send him straight to where it is?" + +"We're not doing that; it's not we who are doing that." + +She is very much excited. I put my arm round her waist and we walk up +and down the room together: + +"Darling, today our little boy may meet with a great misfortune. He may +receive a shock from which he will never recover. . . ." + +"That is true," she says. + +"If he doesn't keep his promise, the misfortune has occurred. It would +already be a misfortune if he could ever think that it was possible for +him to break it, if it appeared to him that there was anything great or +remarkable about keeping it." + +"Yes, but . . ." + +"Darling, the world is full of careful persons. One step more and +they become mere paltry people. Shall we turn that into a likely thing, +into a virtue, for our little boy? His promise was stupid: let that +pass. . . ." + +"He is so little." + +"Yes, that he is; and God be praised for it! Think what good luck it is +that he did not know the danger, when he made his promise, that he does +not understand it now, when he is keeping it. What a lucky beggar! He is +learning to keep his word, just as he has learnt to be clean. By the +time that he is big enough to know his danger, it will be an +indispensable habit with him. And he gains all that at the risk of a +little scarlatina." + +She lays her head on my shoulder and says nothing more. + +That afternoon, she takes our little boy by the hand and goes up with +him to Einar. They stand on the threshold of his room, bid him good-day +and ask him how he is. + +Einar is not at all well and does not look up and does not answer. + +But that does not matter in the least. + + + + +VII + + +My little boy is given a cent by Petrine with instructions to go to the +baker's and buy some biscuits. + +By that which fools call an accident, but which is really a divine +miracle, if miracles there be, I overhear this instruction. Then I stand +at my window and see him cross the street in his slow way and with bent +head; only, he goes slower than usual and with his head bent more deeply +between his small shoulders. + +He stands long outside the baker's window, where there is a confused +heap of lollipops and chocolates and sugar-sticks and other things +created for a small boy's delight. Then he lifts his young hand, opens +the door, disappears and presently returns with a great paper bag, +eating with all his might. + +And I, who, Heaven be praised, have myself been a thief in my time, run +all over the house and give my orders. + +My little boy enters the kitchen. + +"Put the biscuits on the table," says Petrine. + +He stands still for a moment and looks at her and at the table and at +the floor. Then he goes silently to his mother. + +"You're quite a big boy now, that you can buy biscuits for Petrine," +says she, without looking up from her work. + +His face is very long, but he says nothing. He comes quietly in to me +and sits down on the edge of a chair. + +"You have been over the way, at the baker's." + +He comes up to me, where I am sitting and reading, and presses himself +against me. I do not look at him, but I can perceive what is going on +inside him. + +"What did you buy at the baker's?" + +"Lollipops." + +"Well, I never! What fun! Why, you had some lollipops this morning. Who +gave you the money this time?" + +"Petrine." + +"Really! Well, Petrine is certainly very fond of you. Do you remember +the lovely ball she gave you on your birthday?" + +"Father, Petrine told me to buy a cent's worth of biscuits." + +"Oh, dear!" + +It is very quiet in the room. My little boy cries bitterly and I look +anxiously before me, stroking his hair the while. + +"Now you have fooled Petrine badly. She wants those biscuits, of course, +for her cooking. She thinks they're on the kitchen-table and, when she +goes to look, she won't find any. Mother gave her a cent for biscuits. +Petrine gave you a cent for biscuits and you go and spend it on +lollipops. What are we to do?" + +He looks at me in despair, holds me tight, says a thousand things +without speaking a word. + +"If only we had a cent," I say. "Then you could rush over the way and +fetch the biscuits." + +"Father. . . ." His eyes open very wide and he speaks so softly that I +can hardly hear him. "There is a cent on mother's writing-table." + +"Is there?" I cry with delight. But, at the same moment, I shake my head +and my face is overcast again. "That is no use to us, my little boy. +That cent belongs to mother. The other was Petrine's. People are so +terribly fond of their money and get so angry when you take it from +them. I can understand that, for you can buy such an awful lot of things +with money. You can get biscuits and lollipops and clothes and toys and +half the things in the world. And it is not so easy either to make +money. Most people have to drudge all day long to earn as much as they +want. So it is no wonder that they get angry when you take it. +Especially when it is only for lollipops. Now Petrine . . . she has to +spend the whole day cleaning rooms and cooking dinner and washing up +before she gets her wages. And out of that she has to buy clothes and +shoes . . . and you know that she has a little girl whom she has to pay +for at Madam Olsen's. She must certainly have saved very cleverly before +she managed to buy you that ball." + +We walk up and down the room, hand in hand. He keeps on falling over his +legs, for he can't take his eyes from my face. + +"Father . . . haven't you got a cent?" + +I shake my head and give him my purse: + +"Look for yourself," I say. "There's not a cent in it. I spent the last +this morning." + +We walk up and down. We sit down and get up and walk about again. We are +very gloomy. We are bowed down with sorrow and look at each other in +great perplexity. + +"There might be one hidden away in a drawer somewhere," I say. + +We fly to the drawers. + +We pull out thirty drawers and rummage through them. We fling papers in +disorder, higgledy-piggledy, on the floor: what do we care? If only, if +only we find a cent. . . . + +Hurrah! + +We both, at last, grasp at a cent, as though we would fight for it . . . +we have found a beautiful, large cent. Our eyes gleam and we laugh +through our tears. + +"Hurry now," I whisper. "You can go this way . . . through my door. Then +run back quickly up the kitchen stairs, with the biscuits, and put them +on the table. I shall call Petrine, so that she doesn't see. And we +won't tell anybody." + +He is down the stairs before I have done speaking. I run after him and +call to him: + +"Wasn't it a splendid thing that we found that cent?" I say. + +"Yes," he answers, earnestly. + +And he laughs for happiness and I laugh too and his legs go like +drumsticks across to the baker's. + +From my window, I see him come back, at the same pace, with red cheeks +and glad eyes. He has committed his first crime. He has understood it. +And he has not the sting of remorse in his soul nor the black cockade of +forgiveness in his cap. + +The mother of my little boy and I sit until late at night talking about +money, which seems to us the most difficult matter of all. + +For our little boy must learn to know the power of money and the glamour +of money and the joy of money. He must earn much money and spend much +money. . . . + +Yet there were two people, yesterday, who killed a man to rob him of +four dollars and thirty-seven cents. . . . + + + + +VIII + + +It has been decreed in the privy council that my little boy shall have a +weekly income of one cent. Every Sunday morning, that sum shall be paid +to him, free of income-tax, out of the treasury and he has leave to +dispose of it entirely at his own pleasure. + +He receives this announcement with composure and sits apart for a while +and ponders on it. + +"Every Sunday?" he asks. + +"Every Sunday." + +"All the time till the summer holidays?" + +"All the time till the summer holidays." + +In the summer holidays, he is to go to the country, to stay with his +godmother, in whose house he was pleased to allow himself to be born. +The summer holidays are, consequently, the limits of his calculation of +time: beyond them lies, for the moment, his Nirvana. + +And we employ this restricted horizon of ours to further our true +happiness. + +That is to say, we calculate, with the aid of the almanac, that, if +everything goes as heretofore, there will be fifteen Sundays before the +summer holidays. We arrange a drawer with fifteen compartments and in +each compartment we put one cent. Thus we know exactly what we have and +are able at any time to survey our financial status. + +And, when he sees that great lot of cents lying there, my little boy's +breast is filled with mad delight. He feels endlessly rich, safe for a +long time. The courtyard rings with his bragging, with all that he is +going to do with his money. His special favourites are invited to come +up and view his treasure. + +The first Sunday passes in a normal fashion, as was to be expected. + +He takes his cent and turns it straightway into a stick of chocolate of +the best sort, with almonds on it and sugar, in short, an ideal stick in +every way. The whole performance is over in five minutes: by that time, +the stick of chocolate is gone, with the sole exception of a remnant in +the corners of our mouth, which our ruthless mother wipes away, and a +stain on our collar, which annoys us. + +He sits by me, with a vacant little face, and swings his legs. I open +the drawer and look at the empty space and at the fourteen others: + +"So _that's_ gone," I say. + +My accent betrays a certain melancholy, which finds an echo in his +breast. But he does not deliver himself of it at once. + +"Father . . . is it long till next Sunday?" + +"Very long, my boy; ever so many days." + +We sit a little, steeped in our own thoughts. Then I say, pensively: + +"Now, if you had bought a top, you would perhaps have had more pleasure +out of it. I know a place where there is a lovely top: red, with a green +ring round it. It is just over the way, in the toy-shop. I saw it +yesterday. I should be greatly mistaken if the toy-man was not willing +to sell it for a cent. And you've got a whip, you know." + +We go over the way and look at the top in the shop-window. It is really +a splendid top. + +"The shop's shut," says my little boy, despondently. + +I look at him with surprise: + +"Yes, but what does that matter to us? Anyway, we can't buy the top +before next Sunday. You see, you've spent your cent on chocolate. Give +me your handkerchief: there's still a bit on your cheek." + +There is no more to be said. Crestfallen and pensively, we go home. We +sit a long time at the dining-room window, from which we can see the +window of the shop. + +During the course of the week, we look at the top daily, for it does not +do to let one's love grow cold. One might so easily forget it. And the +top shines always more seductively. We go in and make sure that the +price is really in keeping with our means. We make the shop-keeper take +a solemn oath to keep the top for us till Sunday morning, even if boys +should come and bid him much higher sums for it. + +On Sunday morning, we are on the spot before nine o'clock and acquire +our treasure with trembling hands. And we play with it all day and sleep +with it at night, until, on Wednesday morning, it disappears without a +trace, after the nasty manner which tops have. + +When the turn comes of the next cent, something remarkable happens. + +There is a boy in the courtyard who has a skipping-rope and my little +boy, therefore, wants to have a skipping-rope too. But this is a +difficult matter. Careful enquiries establish the fact that a +skipping-rope of the sort used by the upper classes is nowhere to be +obtained for less than five cents. + +The business is discussed as early as Saturday: + +"It's the simplest thing in the world," I say. "You must not spend your +cent tomorrow. Next Sunday you must do the same and the next and the +next. On the Sunday after that, you will have saved your five cents and +can buy your skipping-rope at once." + +"When shall I get my skipping-rope then?" + +"In five Sundays from now." + +He says nothing, but I can see that he does not think my idea very +brilliant. In the course of the day, he derives, from sources unknown +to me, an acquaintance with financial circumstances which he serves up +to me on Sunday morning in the following words: + +"Father, you must lend me five cents for the skipping-rope. If you will +lend me five cents for the skipping-rope, I'll give you _forty_ cents +back. . . ." + +He stands close to me, very red in the face and quite confused. I +perceive that he is ripe for falling into the claws of the usurers: + +"I don't do that sort of business, my boy," I say. "It wouldn't do you +any good either. And you're not even in a position to do it, for you +have only thirteen cents, as you know." + +He collapses like one whose last hope is gone. + +"Let us just see," I say. + +And we go to our drawer and stare at it long and deeply. + +"We might perhaps manage it this way, that I give you five cents now. +And then I should have your cent and the next four cents. . . ." + +He interrupts me with a loud shout. I take out my purse, give him five +cents and take one cent out of the drawer: + +"That won't be pleasant next Sunday," I say, "and the next and the next +and the next. . . ." + +But the thoughtless youth is gone. + +Of course, the instalments of his debt are paid off with great ceremony. +He is always on the spot himself when the drawer is opened and sees how +the requisite cent is removed and finds its way into my pocket instead +of his. + +The first time, all goes well. It is simply an amusing thing that I +should have the cent; and the skipping-rope is still fresh in his +memory, because of the pangs which he underwent before its purchase. +Next Sunday, already the thing is not _quite_ so pleasant and, when the +fourth instalment falls due, my little boy's face looks very gloomy: + +"Is anything the matter?" I ask. + +"I should so much like a stick of chocolate," he says, without looking +at me. + +"Is that all? You can get one in a fortnight. By that time, you will +have paid for the skipping-rope and the cent will be your own again." + +"I should so much like to have the stick of chocolate now." + +Of course, I am full of the sincerest compassion, but I can't help it. +What's gone is gone. We saw it with our own eyes and we know exactly +where it has gone to. And, that Sunday morning, we part in a dejected +mood. + +Later in the day, however, I find him standing over the drawer with +raised eyebrows and a pursed-up mouth. I sit down quietly and wait. And +I do not have to wait long before I learn that his development as an +economist is taking quite its normal course. + +"Father, suppose we moved the cent now from here into this Sunday's +place and I took it and bought the chocolate-stick. . . ." + +"Why, then you won't have your cent for the other Sunday." + +"I don't mind that, Father. . . ." + +We talk about it, and then we do it. And, with that, as a matter of +course, we enter upon the most reckless peculations. + +The very next Sunday, he is clever enough to take the furthest cent, +which lies just before the summer holidays. He pursues the path of vice +without a scruple, until, at last, the blow falls and five long Sundays +come in a row without the least chance of a cent. + +Where should they come from? They were there. We know that. They are +gone. We have spent them ourselves. + +But, during those drab days of poverty, we sit every morning over the +empty drawer and talk long and profoundly about that painful phenomenon, +which is so simple and so easy to understand and which one must needs +make the best of. + +And we hope and trust that our experience will do us good, when, after +our trip, we start a new set of cents. + + + + +IX + + +My little boy is engaged to be married. + +She is a big, large-limbed young woman, three years his senior, and no +doubt belongs to the minor aristocracy. Her name is Gertie. By a +misunderstanding, however, which is pardonable at his age and moreover +quite explained by Gertie's appearance, he calls her Dirty--little +Dirty--and by this name she will be handed down to history. + +He met her on the boulevard, where he was playing, in the fine spring +weather, with other children. His reason for the engagement is good +enough: + +"I wanted a girl for myself," he says. + +Either I know very little of mankind or he has made a fortunate choice. +No one is likely to take Dirty from him. + +Like the gentleman that he is, he at once brings the girl home to us and +introduces her. In consequence of the formality of the occasion, he does +not go in by the kitchen way, as usual, but rings the front-door bell. I +open the door myself. There he stands on the mat, hand in hand with +Dirty, his bride, and, with radiant eyes: + +"Father," he says, "this is little Dirty. She is my sweetheart. We are +going to be married." + +"That is what people usually do with their sweethearts," I answer, +philosophically. "Pray, Dirty, come in and be welcomed by the family." + +"Wipe your feet, Dirty," says my little boy. + +The mother of my little boy does not think much of the match. She has +even spoken of forbidding Dirty the house. + +"We can't do that," I say. "I am not in ecstasies over it either, but it +is not at all certain that it will last." + +"Yes, but . . ." + +"Do you remember what little use it was when your mother forbade me the +house? We used to meet in the most incredible places and kiss each other +terribly. I can quite understand that you have forgotten, but you ought +to bear it in mind now that your son's beginning. And you ought to value +the loyalty of his behaviour towards his aged parents." + +"My dear! . . ." + +"And then I must remind you that it is spring. The trees are budding. +You can't see it, perhaps, from the kitchen-window or from your +work-table, but I, who go about all day, have noticed it. You know what +Byron says: + + March has its hares, and May must have its heroine." + +And so Dirty is accepted. + +But, when she calls, she has first to undergo a short quarantine, while +the mother of my little boy washes her and combs her hair thoroughly. + +Dirty does not like this, but the boy does. He looks on with +extraordinary interest and at once complains if there is a place that +has escaped the sponge. I can't make out what goes on within him on +these occasions. There is a good deal of cruelty in love; and he himself +hates to be washed. Perhaps he is rapt in fancies and wants to see his +sweetheart rise daily from the waves, like Venus Anadyomene. Perhaps it +is merely his sense of duty: last Friday, in cold blood, he allowed +Dirty to wait outside, on the step, for half an hour, until his mother +came home. + +Another of his joys is to see Dirty eat. + +I can quite understand that. Here, as at her toilet, there is something +worth looking at. The mother of my little boy and I would be glad too to +watch her, if there were any chance of giving Dirty her fill. But there +is none. At least, not with my income. + +When I see all that food disappear, without as much as a shade of +satisfaction coming into her eyes, I tremble for the young couple's +future. But he is cheerful and unconcerned. + +Of course, there are also clouds in their sky. + +A few days ago, they were sitting quietly together in the dining-room +and talking of their wedding. My little boy described what the house +would be like and the garden and the horses. Dirty made no remarks and +she had no grounds for doing so, for everything was particularly nice. +But, after that, things went wrong: + +"We shall have fourteen children," said the boy. + +"No," said Dirty. "We shall only have two: a boy and a girl." + +"I want to have fourteen." + +"I won't have more than two." + +"Fourteen." + +"Two." + +There was no coming to an agreement. My little boy was speechless at +Dirty's meanness. And Dirty pinched her lips together and nodded her +head defiantly. Then he burst into tears. + +I could have explained to him that Dirty, who sits down every day as the +seventh at the children's table at home, cannot look upon children with +his eyes, as things forming an essential part of every well-regulated +family, but must regard them rather as bandits who eat up other people's +food. But I did not feel entitled to discuss the young lady's domestic +circumstances unasked. + +One good thing about Dirty is that she is not dependent upon her family +nor they upon her. It has not yet happened that any inquiries have been +made after her, however long she remained with us. We know just where +she lives and what her father's name is. Nothing more. + +However, we notice in another way that our daughter-in-law is not +without relations. + +Whenever, for instance, we give her a pair of stockings or some other +article of clothing, it is always gone the next day; and so on until all +the six brothers and sisters have been supplied. Not till then do we +have the pleasure of seeing Dirty look neat. She has been so long +accustomed to going shares that she does so in every conceivable +circumstance. + +And I console the mother of my little boy by saying that, should he fall +out with Dirty, he can take one of the sisters and that, in this way, +nothing would be lost. + + + + +X + + +My little boy confides to me that he would like a pear. + +Now pears fall within his mother's province and I am sure that he has +had as many as he is entitled to. And so we are at once agreed that what +he wants is a wholly irrelevant, uncalled-for, delightful extra pear. + +Unfortunately, it also appears that the request has already been laid +before Mamma and met with a positive refusal. + +The situation is serious, but not hopeless. For I am a man who knows how +mean is the supply of pears to us poor wretched children of men and how +wonderful an extra pear tastes. + +And I am glad that my little boy did not give up all hope of the pear at +the first obstacle. I can see by the longing in his green eyes how big +the pear is and I reflect with lawful paternal pride that he will win +his girl and his position in life when their time comes. + +We now discuss the matter carefully. + +First comes the prospect of stomach-ache: + +"Never mind about that," says he. + +I quite agree with his view. + +Then perhaps Mother will be angry. + +No, Mother is never angry. She is sorry; and that is not nice. But then +we must see and make it up to her in another way. + +So we slink in and steal the pear. + +I put it to him whether, perhaps--when we have eaten the pear--we ought +to tell Mother. But that does not appeal to him: + +"Then I shan't get one this evening," he says. + +And when I suggest that, possibly, Mother might be impressed with such +audacious candour, he shakes his head decisively: + +"You don't know Mother," he says. + +So I, of course, have nothing to say. + +Shortly after this, the mother of my little boy and I are standing at +the window laughing at the story. + +We catch sight of him below, in the courtyard. + +He is sitting on the steps with his arm round little Dirty's neck. They +have shared the pear. Now they are both singing, marvellously out of +tune and with a disgustingly sentimental expression on their faces, a +song which Dirty knows: + + For riches are only a lo-oan from Heaven + And poverty is a reward. + +And we are overcome with a great sense of desolation. + +We want to make life green and pleasant for our little boy, to make his +eyes open wide to see it, his hands strong to grasp it. But we feel +powerless in the face of all the contentment and patience and +resignation that are preached from cellar to garret, in church and in +school: all those second-rate virtues, which may lighten an old man's +last few steps as he stumbles on towards the grave, but which are only +so many shabby lies for the young. + + + + +XI + + +Dirty is paying us a visit and my little boy is sitting at her feet. + +She has buried her fingers in her hair and is reading, reading +reading. . . . + +She is learning the Ten Commandments by heart. She stammers and repeats +herself, with eyes fixed in her head and a despairing mouth: + +"Thou shalt . . . Thou shalt not . . . Thou shalt . . ." + +The boy watches her with tender compassion. + +He has already learnt a couple of the commandments by listening to her +and helps her, now and then, with a word. Then he comes to me and asks, +anxiously: + +"Father, must Dirty do all that the Ten Commandments say?" + +"Yes." + +He sits down by her again. His heart is overflowing with pity, his eyes +are moist. She does not look at him, but plods on bravely: + +"Thou shalt . . . Thou shalt not . . ." + +"Father, when I grow big, must I also do all that the Ten Commandments +say?" + +"Ye-es." + +He looks at me in utter despair. Then he goes back to Dirty and listens, +but now he keeps his thoughts to himself. + +Suddenly, something seems to flash across his mind. + +He comes to me again, puts his arms on my knee and looks with his green +eyes firmly into mine: + +"Father, do you do all that the Ten Commandments say?" + +"Ye-e-es." + +He looks like a person whose last hope has escaped him. I would so much +like to help him; but what, in Heaven's name, can I do? + +Then he collects himself, shakes his head a little and says, with great +tears in his eyes: + +"Father, I don't believe that I can do all those things that the Ten +Commandments say." + +And I draw him to me and we cry together because life is so difficult, +while Dirty plods away like a good girl. + + + + +XII + + +This we all know, that sin came into the world by the law. + +Dirty's Ten Commandments have brought it to us. + +When she comes, she now always has Luther's terrible Little Catechism[1] +and Balslev's equally objectionable work with her. Her parents evidently +look upon it as most natural that she should also cultivate her soul at +our house. + +[Footnote 1: _Luther's Lille Katekismus_, the Lutheran catechism in +general use in Denmark.--A. T. de M.] + +Her copies of these two classics were not published yesterday. They are +probably heirlooms in Dirty's family. They are covered in thick brown +paper, which again is protected by a heavy layer of dirt against any +touch of clean fingers. They can be smelt at a distance. + +But my little boy is no snob. + +When Dirty has finished her studies--she always reads out aloud--he asks +her permission to turn over the pages of the works in which she finds +those strange words. He stares respectfully at the letters which he +cannot read. And then he asks questions. + +He asks Dirty, he asks the servant, he asks us. Before anyone suspects +it, he is at home in the whole field of theology. + +He knows that God is in Heaven, where all good people go to Him, while +the wicked are put down below in Hell. That God created the world in six +days and said that we must not do anything on Sundays. That God can do +everything and knows everything and sees everything. + +He often prays, creeps upstairs as high as he can go, so as to be nearer +Heaven, and shouts as loud as he can. The other day I found him at the +top of the folding-steps: + +"Dear God! You must please give us fine weather tomorrow, for we are +going to the wood." + +He says _Du_ to everybody except God and the grocer. + +He never compromises. + +The servant is laying the table; we have guests coming and we call her +attention to a little hole in the cloth: + +"I must lay it so that no one can see it," she says. + +"God will see it." + +"He is not coming this evening," says the blasphemous hussy. + +"Yes, He is everywhere," answers my little boy, severely. + +He looks after me in particular: + +"You mustn't say 'gad,' Father. Dirty's teacher says that people who say +'gad' go to Hell." + +"I shan't say it again," I reply, humbly. + +One Sunday morning, he finds me writing and upbraids me seriously. + +"My little boy," I say, distressfully, "I must work every day. If I do +nothing on Sunday, I do nothing on Monday either. If I do nothing on +Monday, I am idle on Tuesday too. And so on." + +He ponders; and I continue, with the courage of despair: + +"You must have noticed that Dirty wants a new catechism? The one she has +is dirty and old." + +He agrees to this. + +"She will never have one, you see," I say, emphatically. "Her father +rests so tremendously on Sunday that he is hardly able to do anything on +the other days. He never earns enough to buy a new catechism." + +I have won--this engagement. But the war is continued without cessation +of hostilities. + +The mother of my little boy and I are sitting in the twilight by his +bedside and softly talking about this. + +"What are we to do?" she asks. + +"We can do nothing?" I reply. "Dirty is right: God is everywhere. We +can't keep Him out. And if we could, for a time: what then? A day would +come perhaps when our little boy was ill or sad and the priests would +come to him with their God as a new and untried miraculous remedy and +bewilder his mind and his senses. Our little boy too will have to go +through Luther and Balslev and Assens and confirmation and all the rest +of it. Then this will become a commonplace to him; and one day he will +form his own views, as we have done." + +But, when he comes and asks how big God is, whether He is bigger than +the Round Tower, how far it is to Heaven, why the weather was not fine +on the day when he prayed so hard for it: then we fly from the face of +the Lord and hide like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. + +And we leave Dirty to explain. + + + + +XIII + + +My little boy has got a rival, whose name is Henrik, a popinjay who not +only is six years old, but has an unlimited supply of liquorice at his +disposal. And, to fill the measure of my little boy's bitterness, Henrik +is to go to the dancing-school; and I am, therefore, not surprised when +my little boy asks to be taught to dance, so that he may not be left +quite behind in the contest. + +"I don't advise you to do that," I say. "The dancing which you learn at +school is not pretty and does not play so great a part in love as you +imagine. I don't know how to dance; and many charming ladies used to +prefer me to the most accomplished ornaments of the ball-room. Besides, +you know, you are knock-kneed." + +And, to cheer him up, I sing a little song which we composed when we +were small and had a dog and did not think about women: + + See, my son, that little basset, + Running with his knock-kneed legs! + His own puppy, he can't catch it: + He'll fall down as sure as eggs! + Knock-kneed Billy! + Isn't he silly? + Silly Billy! + + +But poetry fails to comfort him. Dark is his face and desperate his +glance. And, when I see that the case is serious, I resolve to resort to +serious measures. + +I take him with me to a ball, a real ball, where people who have learnt +to dance go to enjoy themselves. It is difficult to keep him in a more +or less waking condition, but I succeed. + +We sit quietly in a corner and watch the merry throng. I say not a word, +but look at his wide-open eyes. + +"Father, why does that man jump like that, when he is so awfully hot?" + +"Yes; can you understand it?" + +"Why does that lady with her head on one side look so tired? . . . Why +does that fat woman hop about so funnily, Father? . . . Father, what +queer legs that man there has!" + +It rains questions and observations. We make jokes and laugh till the +tears come to our eyes. We whisper naughty things to each other and go +into a side-room and mimic a pair of crooked legs till we can't hold +ourselves for laughter. We sit and wait till a steam thrashing-machine +on its round comes past us; and we are fit to die when we hear it puff +and blow. + +We enjoy ourselves beyond measure. + +And we make a hit. + +The steam thrashing-machine and the crooked legs and the fat woman and +the hot gentleman and others crowd round us and admire the dear little +boy. We accept their praises, for we have agreed not to say what we +think to anybody, except to Mother, when we come home, and then, of +course, to Dirty. + +And we wink our eyes and enjoy our delightful fun until we fall asleep +and are driven home and put to bed. + +And then we have done with the dancing-school. + +My little boy paints in strong colours, for his Dirty's benefit, what +Henrik will look like when he dances. It is no use for that young man to +deny all that my little boy says and to execute different elegant steps. +I was prepared for this; and my little boy tells exultantly that this is +only something with which they lure stupid people at the start and that +it will certainly end with Henrik's getting very hot and hopping round +on crooked legs with a fat woman and a face of despair. + +In the meantime, of course, I do not forget that, if we pull down +without building up we shall end by landing ourselves in an unwholesome +scepticism. + +We therefore invent various dances, which my little boy executes in the +courtyard to Dirty's joy and to Henrik's most jealous envy. We point +emphatically to the fact that the dances are our own, that they are +composed only for the woman we love and performed only for her. + +There is, for instance, a dance with a stick, which my little boy +wields, while Henrik draws back. Another with a pair of new mittens for +Dirty. And, lastly, the liquorice dance, which expresses an +extraordinary contempt for that foodstuff. + +That Dirty should suck a stick of liquorice, which she has received from +Henrik, while enjoying her other admirer's satire, naturally staggers my +little boy. But I explain to him that that is because she is a woman and +that _that_ is a thing which can't be helped. + +What Bournonville[2] would say, if he could look down upon us from his +place in Heaven, I do not know. + +But I don't believe that he can. + +If he, up there, could see how people dance down here, he really would +not stay there. + +[Footnote 2: A famous French ballet-master who figured at the Copenhagen +Opera House in the eighteenth century.--A. T. de M.] + + + + +XIV + + +There is a battle royal and a great hullabaloo among the children in the +courtyard. + +I hear them shouting "Jew!" and I go to the window and see my little boy +in the front rank of the bandits, screaming, fighting with clenched +fists and without his cap. + +I sit down quietly to my work again, certain that he will appear before +long and ease his heart. + +And he comes directly after. + +He stands still, as is his way, by my side and says nothing. I steal a +glance at him: he is greatly excited and proud and glad, like one who +has fearlessly done his duty. + +"What fun you've been having down there!" + +"Oh," he says, modestly, "it was only a Jew boy whom we were licking." + +I jump up so quickly that I upset my chair: + +"A Jew boy? Were you licking him? What had he done?" + +"Nothing. . . ." + +His voice is not very certain, for I look so queer. + +And that is only the beginning. For now I snatch my hat and run out of +the door as fast as I can and shout: + +"Come . . . come . . . we must find him and beg his pardon!" + +My little boy hurries after me. He does not understand a word of it, but +he is terribly in earnest. We look in the courtyard, we shout and call. +We rush into the street and round the corner, so eager are we to come up +with him. Breathlessly, we ask three passers-by if they have not seen a +poor, ill-used Jew boy. + +All in vain: the Jew boy and all his persecutors are blown away into +space. + +So we go and sit up in my room again, the laboratory where our soul is +crystallized out of the big events of our little life. My forehead is +wrinkled and I drum disconsolately with my fingers on the table. The boy +has both his hands in his pockets and does not take his eyes from my +face. + +"Well," I say, decidedly, "there is nothing more to be done. I hope you +will meet that Jew boy one day, so that you can give him your hand and +ask him to forgive you. You must tell him that you did that only because +you were stupid. But if, another time, anyone does him any harm, I hope +you will help him and lick the other one as long as you can stir a +limb." + +I can see by my little boy's face that he is ready to do what I wish. +For he is still a mercenary, who does not ask under which flag, so long +as there is a battle and booty to follow. It is my duty to train him to +be a brave recruit, who will defend his fair mother-land, and so I +continue: + +"Let me tell you, the Jews are by way of being quite wonderful people. +You remember David, about whom Dirty reads at school: he was a Jew boy. +And the Child Jesus, Whom everybody worships and loves, although He died +two thousand years ago: He was a little Jew also." + +My little boy stands with his arms on my knee and I go on with my story. + +The old Hebrews rise before our eyes in all their splendour and power, +quite different from Dirty's Balslev. They ride on their camels in coats +of many colours and with long beards: Moses and Joseph and his brethren +and Samson and David and Saul. We hear wonderful stories. The walls of +Jericho fall at the sound of the trumpet. + +"And what next?" says my little boy, using the expression which he +employed when he was much smaller and which still comes to his lips +whenever he is carried away. + +We hear of the destruction of Jerusalem and how the Jews took their +little boys by the hand and wandered from place to place, scoffed at, +despised and ill-treated. How they were allowed to own neither house nor +land, but could only be merchants, and how the Christian robbers took +all the money which they had got together. How, nevertheless, they +remained true to their God and kept up their old sacred customs in the +midst of the strangers who hated and persecuted them. + +The whole day is devoted to the Jews. + +We look at old books on the shelves which I love best to read and which +are written by a Jew with a wonderful name, which a little boy can't +remember at all. We learn that the most famous man now living in Denmark +is a Jew. + +And, when evening comes and Mother sits down at the piano and sings the +song which Father loves above all other songs, it appears that the words +were written by one Jew and the melody composed by another. + +My little boy is hot and red when he falls to sleep that night. He turns +restlessly in bed and talks in his sleep. + +"He is a little feverish," says his mother. + +And I bend down and kiss his forehead and answer, calmly: + +"That is not surprising. Today I have vaccinated him against the meanest +of all mean and vulgar diseases." + + + + +XV + + +We are staying in the country, a long way out, where the real country +is. + +Cows and horses, pigs and sheep, a beautiful dog and hens and ducks form +our circle of acquaintances. In addition to these, there are of course +the two-legged beings who own and look after the four-legged ones and +who, in my little boy's eyes, belong to quite the same kind. + +The great sea lies at the foot of the slope. Ships float in the distance +and have nothing to say to us. The sun burns us and bronzes us. We eat +like thrashers, sleep like guinea-pigs and wake like larks. The only +real sorrow that we have suffered is that we were not allowed to have +our breeches made with a flap at the side, like the old wood-cutter's. + +Presently, it happens that, for better or worse, we get neighbours. + +They are regular Copenhageners. They were prepared not to find electric +light in the farm-house; but, if they had known that there was no water +in the kitchen, God knows they would not have come. They trudge through +the clover as though it were mire and are sorry to find so few +cornflowers in the rye. A cow going loose along the roads fills them +with a terror which might easily have satisfied a royal tiger. + +The pearl of the family is Erna. + +Erna is five years old; her very small face is pale green, with watery +blue eyes and yellow curls. She is richly and gaily dressed in a broad +and slovenly sash, daintily-embroidered pantalets, short open-work socks +and patent-leather shoes. She falls if she but moves a foot, for she is +used only to gliding over polished floors or asphalt. + +I at once perceive that my little boy's eyes have seen a woman. + +He has seen the woman that comes to us all at one time or another and +turns our heads with her rustling silks and her glossy hair and wears +her soul in her skirts and our poor hearts under her heel. + +"Now comes the perilous moment for Dirty," I say to the mother of my +little boy. + +This time it is my little boy's turn to be superior. + +He knows the business thoroughly and explains it all to Erna. When he +worries the horse, she trembles, impressed with his courage and +manliness. When she has a fit of terror at the sight of a hen, he is +charmed with her delicacy. He knows the way to the smith's, he dares to +roll down the high slope, he chivalrously carries her ridiculous little +cape. + +Altogether, there is no doubt as to the condition of his heart. And, +while Erna's family apparently favour the position--for which may the +devil take them!--I must needs wait with resignation like one who knows +that love is every man's master. + +One morning he proposes. + +He is sitting with his beloved on the lawn. Close to them, her aunt is +nursing her chlorosis under a red parasol and with a novel in her bony +lap. Up in the balcony above sit I, as Providence, and see everything, +myself unseen. + +"You shall be my sweetheart," says my little boy. + +"Yes," says Erna. + +"I have a sweetheart already in Copenhagen," he says, proudly. + +This communication naturally by no means lowers Erna's suitor in her +eyes. But it immediately arouses all Auntie's moral instincts: + +"If you have a sweetheart, you must be true to her." + +"Erna shall be my sweetheart." + +Auntie turns her eyes up to Heaven: + +"Listen, child," she says. "You're a very naughty boy. If you have given +Dir--Dir----" + +"Dirty," says the boy. + +"Well, that's an extraordinary name! But, if you have given her your +word, you must keep it till you die. Else you'll never, never be happy." + +My little boy understands not a word and answers not a word. Erna +begins to cry at the prospect that this good match may not come off. +But I bend down over the baluster and raise my hat: + +"I beg your pardon, Fröken. Was it not you who jilted Hr. Petersen? . . ." + +"Good heavens! . . ." + +She packs up her chlorosis and disappears with Erna, mumbling something +about like father, like son, and goodness knows what. + +Presently, my little boy comes up to me and stands and hangs about. + +"Where has Erna gone to?" I ask my little boy. + +"She mustn't go out," he says, dejectedly. + +He puts his hands in his pockets and looks straight before him. + +"Father," he says, "can't you have two sweethearts?" + +The question comes quite unexpectedly and, at the moment, I don't know +what to answer. + +"Well?" says the mother of my little boy, amiably, and looks up from her +newspaper. + +And I pull my waistcoat down and my collar up: + +"Yes," I say, firmly. "You can. But it is wrong. It leads to more fuss +and unpleasantness than you can possibly conceive." + +A silence. + +"Are you so fond of Erna?" asks our mother. + +"Yes." + +"Do you want to marry her?" + +"Yes." + +I get up and rub my hands: + +"Then the thing is settled," I say. "We'll write to Dirty and give her +notice. There's nothing else to be done. I will write now and you can +give the letter yourself to the postman, when he comes this afternoon. +If you take my advice, you will make her a present of your ball. Then +she will not be so much upset." + +"She can have my gold-fish too, if she likes," says the boy. + +"Excellent, excellent. We will give her the gold-fish. Then she will +really have nothing in the world to complain of." + +My little boy goes away. But, presently, he returns: + +"Father, have you written the letter to Dirty?" + +"Not yet, my boy. There is time enough. I sha'n't forget it." + +"Father, I am so fond of Dirty." + +"She was certainly a dear little girl." + +A silence. + +"Father, I am also so fond of Erna." + +We look at each other. This is no joke: + +"Perhaps we had better wait with the letter till tomorrow," I say. "Or +perhaps it would be best if we talked to Dirty ourselves, when we get +back to town." + +We both ponder over the matter and really don't know what to do. + +Then my eyes surprise an indescribable smile on our mother's face. All a +woman's incapacity to understand man's honesty is contained within that +smile and I resent it greatly: + +"Come," I say and give my hand to my little boy. "Let us go." + +And we go to a place we know of, far away behind the hedge, where we lie +on our backs and look up at the blue sky and talk together sensibly, as +two gentlemen should. + + + + +XVI + + +My little boy is to go to school. + +We can't keep him at home any longer, says his mother. He himself is +glad to go, of course, because he does not know what school is. + +I know what it is and I know also that there is no escape for him, that +he must go. But I am sick at heart. All that is good within me revolts +against the inevitable. + +So we go for our last morning walk, along the road where something +wonderful has always happened to us. It looks to me as if the trees have +crape wound round their tops and the birds sing in a minor key and the +people stare at me with earnest and sympathetic eyes. + +But my little boy sees nothing. He is only excited at the prospect. He +talks and asks questions without stopping. + +We sit down by the edge of our usual ditch--alas, that ditch! + +And suddenly my heart triumphs over my understanding. The voice of my +clear conscience penetrates through the whole well-trained and +harmonious choir which is to give the concert; and it sings its solo in +the ears of my little boy: + +"I just want to tell you that school is a horrid place," I say. "You can +have no conception of what you will have to put up with there. They will +tell you that two and two are four. . . ." + +"Mother has taught me that already," says he, blithely. + +"Yes, but that is wrong, you poor wretch!" I cry. "Two and two are never +four, or only very seldom. And that's not all. They will try to make you +believe that Teheran is the capital of Persia and that Mont Blanc is +15,781 feet high and you will take them at their word. But I tell you +that both Teheran and Persia are nothing at all, an empty sound, a +stupid joke. And Mont Blanc is not half as big as the mound in the +tallow-chandler's back-garden. And listen: you will never have any more +time to play in the courtyard with Einar. When he shouts to you to come +out, you'll have to sit and read about a lot of horrible old kings who +have been dead for hundreds and hundreds of years, if they ever existed +at all, which I, for my part, simply don't believe." + +My little boy does not understand me. But he sees that I am sad and puts +his hand in mine: + +"Mother says that you must go to school to become a clever boy," he +says. "Mother says that Einar is ever so much too small and stupid to go +to school." + +I bow my head and nod and say nothing. + +That is past. + +And I take him to school and see how he storms up the steps without so +much as turning his head to look back at me. + + + + +XVII + + +Here ends this book about my little boy. + +What more can there be to tell? + +He is no longer mine. I have handed him over to society. Hr. Petersen, +candidate in letters, Hr. Nielsen, student of theology, and Fröken +Hansen, certificated teacher, will now set their distinguished example +before him for five hours daily. He will form himself in their likeness. +Their spirit hovers over him at school: he brings it home with him, it +overshadows him when he is learning the lessons which they zealously +mete out to him. + +I don't know these people. But I pay them. + +I, who have had a hard fight to keep my thoughts free and my limbs +unrestrained and who have not retired from the fight without deep wounds +of which I am reminded when the weather changes, I have, of my own free +will, brought him to the institution for maiming human beings. I, who at +times have soared to peaks that were my own, because the other birds +dared not follow me, have myself brought him to the place where wings +are clipped for flying respectably, with the flock. + +"There was nothing else to be done," says the mother of my little boy. + +"Really?" I reply, bitterly. "Was there nothing else to be done? But +suppose that I had put by some money, so that I could have saved Messrs. +Petersen and Nielsen and Fröken Hansen their trouble and employed my day +in myself opening out lands for that little traveller whom I myself have +brought into the land? Suppose that I had looked round the world for +people with small boys who think as I do and that we had taken upon us +to bring up these young animals so that they kept sight of horns and +tails and fairy-tales?" + +"Yes," she says. + +"Small boys have a bad time of it, you know." + +"They had a worse time of it in the old days." + +"That is a poor comfort. And it can become worse again. The world is +full of parents and teachers who shake their foolish heads and turn up +their old eyes and cross their flat chests with horror at the depravity +of youth: children are so disobedient, so naughty, so self-willed and +talk so disrespectfully to their elders! . . . And what do we do, we who +know better?" + +"We do what we can." + +But I walk about the room, more and more indignant and ashamed of the +pitiful part which I am playing: + +"Do you remember, a little while ago, he came to me and said that he +longed so for the country and asked if we couldn't go there for a +little? There were horses and cows and green fields to be read in his +eyes. Well, I couldn't leave my work. And I couldn't afford it. So I +treated him to a shabby and high-class sermon about the tailor to whom I +owed money. Don't you understand that I let my little boy do _my_ work, +that I let him pay _my_ debt? . . ." I bend down over her and say +earnestly, "You must know; do please tell me--God help me, I do not +know--if I ought not rather to have paid my debt to the boy and cheated +the other?" + +"You know quite well," she says. + +She says it in such a way and looks at me with two such sensible eyes +and is so strong and so true that I suddenly think things look quite +well for our little boy; and I become restful and cheerful like herself: + +"Let Petersen and Nielsen and Hansen look out!" I say. "My little boy, +for what I care, may take from them all the English and geography and +history that he can. But they shall throw no dust in his eyes. I shall +keep him awake and we shall have great fun and find them out." + +"And I shall help him with his English and geography and history," says +she. + + + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE + +Minor variations in spelling and punctuation have been preserved. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Little Boy, by Carl Ewald + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY LITTLE BOY *** + +***** This file should be named 35543-8.txt or 35543-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/5/4/35543/ + +Produced by Barbara Watson, Mark Akrigg and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at +http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: My Little Boy + +Author: Carl Ewald + +Commentator: Alexander Woollcott + +Translator: Alexandrer Texeira de Mattos + +Release Date: March 11, 2011 [EBook #35543] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY LITTLE BOY *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Watson, Mark Akrigg and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at +http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;"> +<img src="images/title.jpg" width="300" height="240" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h5>TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH</h5> +<h5>BY</h5> +<h4>ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS</h4> + +<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<h6>MY LITTLE BOY<br /> +COPYRIGHT 1906 BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br /> +SOLE AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION</h6> + +<h6>REPRINTED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH THE PUBLISHERS. NO PART OF THIS<br /> +WORK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF<br /> +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</h6> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<h2><i>MY LITTLE BOY</i></h2> + +<p><br /></p> +<h3>I</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My</span> little boy is beginning to live.</p> + +<p>Carefully, stumbling now and then on his little knock-kneed legs, he +makes his way over the paving-stones, looks at everything that there is +to look at and bites at every apple, both those which are his due and +those which are forbidden him.</p> + +<p>He is not a pretty child and is the more likely to grow into a fine lad. +But he is charming.</p> + +<p>His face can light up suddenly and become radiant; he can look at you +with quite cold eyes. He has a strong intuition and he is incorruptible. +He has never yet bartered a kiss for barley-sugar. There are people whom +he likes and people whom he dislikes. There is one who has long courted +his favour indefatigably and in vain; and, the other day, he formed a +close friendship with another who had not so much as said "Good day" to +him before he had crept into her lap and nestled there with glowing +resolution.</p> + +<p>He has a habit which I love.</p> + +<p>When we are walking together and there is anything that impresses him, +he lets go my hand for a moment. Then, when he has investigated the +phenomenon and arrived at a result, I feel his little fist in mine +again.</p> + +<p>He has bad habits too.</p> + +<p>He is apt, for instance, suddenly and without the slightest reason, to +go up to people whom he meets in the street and hit them with his little +stick. What is in his mind, when he does so, I do not know; and, so long +as he does not hit me, it remains a matter between himself and the +people concerned.</p> + +<p>He has an odd trick of seizing big words in a grown-up conversation, +storing them up for a while and then asking me for an explanation:</p> + +<p>"Father," he says, "what is life?"</p> + +<p>I give him a tap in his little stomach, roll him over on the carpet and +conceal my emotion under a mighty romp. Then, when we sit breathless and +tired, I answer, gravely:</p> + +<p>"Life is delightful, my little boy. Don't you be afraid of it!"</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Today</span> my little boy gave me my first lesson.</p> + +<p>It was in the garden.</p> + +<p>I was writing in the shade of the big chestnut-tree, close to where the +brook flows past. He was sitting a little way off, on the grass, in the +sun, with Hans Christian Andersen in his lap.</p> + +<p>Of course, he does not know how to read, but he lets you read to him, +likes to hear the same tales over and over again. The better he knows +them, the better he is pleased. He follows the story page by page, knows +exactly where everything comes and catches you up immediately should you +skip a line.</p> + +<p>There are two tales which he loves more than anything in the world.</p> + +<p>These are Grimm's <i>Faithful John</i> and Andersen's <i>The Little Mermaid</i>. +When anyone comes whom he likes, he fetches the big Grimm, with those +heaps of pictures, and asks for <i>Faithful John</i>. Then, if the reader +stops, because it is so terribly sad, with all those little dead +children, a bright smile lights up his small, long face and he says, +reassuringly and pleased at "knowing better":</p> + +<p>"Yes, but they come to life again."</p> + +<p>Today, however, it is <i>The Little Mermaid</i>.</p> + +<p>"Is that the sort of stories you write?" he asks.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I say, "but I am afraid mine will not be so pretty."</p> + +<p>"You must take pains," he says.</p> + +<p>And I promise.</p> + +<p>For a time he makes no sound. I go on writing and forget about him.</p> + +<p>"Is there a little mermaid down there, in the water?" he asks.</p> + +<p>"Yes, she swims up to the top in the summer."</p> + +<p>He nods and looks out across the brook, which ripples so softly and +smoothly that one can hardly see the water flow. On the opposite side, +the rushes grow green and thick and there is also a bird, hidden in the +rushes, which sings. The dragon-flies are whirling and humming. I am +sitting with my head in my hand, absorbed in my work.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, I hear a splash.</p> + +<p>I jump from my chair, upset the table, dart forward and see that my +little boy is gone. The brook is billowing and foaming; there are wide +circles on the surface.</p> + +<p>In a moment, I am in the water and find him and catch hold of him.</p> + +<p>He stands on the grass, dripping with wet, spluttering and coughing. His +thin clothes are clinging to his thin body, his face is black with mud. +But out of the mud gleams a pair of angry eyes:</p> + +<p>"There was no mermaid," he says.</p> + +<p>I do not at once know what to reply and I have no time to think.</p> + +<p>"Do you write that sort of stories?" he asks.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I say, shamefaced.</p> + +<p>"I don't like any of you," he says. "You make fun of a little boy."</p> + +<p>He turns his back on me and, proud and wet, goes indoors without once +looking round.</p> + +<p>This evening, Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen disappear in a +mysterious manner, which is never explained. He will miss them greatly, +at first; but he will never be fooled again, not if I were to give him +the sun and moon in his hand.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>III</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My</span> little boy and I have had an exceedingly interesting walk in the +Frederiksberg Park.</p> + +<p>There was a mouse, which was irresistible. There were two chaffinches, +husband and wife, which built their nest right before our eyes, and a +snail, which had no secrets for us. And there were flowers, yellow and +white, and there were green leaves, which told us the oddest adventures: +in fact, as much as we can find room for in our little head.</p> + +<p>Now we are sitting on a bench and digesting our impressions.</p> + +<p>Suddenly the air is shaken by a tremendous roar:</p> + +<p>"What was that?" asks my little boy.</p> + +<p>"That was the lion in the Zoological Gardens," I reply.</p> + +<p>No sooner have I said this than I curse my own stupidity.</p> + +<p>I might have said that it was a gunshot announcing the birth of a +prince; or an earthquake; or a china dish falling from the sky and +breaking into pieces: anything whatever, rather than the truth.</p> + +<p>For now my little boy wants to know what sort of thing the Zoological +Gardens is.</p> + +<p>I tell him.</p> + +<p>The Zoological Gardens is a horrid place, where they lock up wild beasts +who have done no wrong and who are accustomed to walk about freely in +the distant foreign countries where they come from. The lion is there, +whom we have just heard roaring. He is so strong that he can kill a +policeman with one blow of his paw; he has great, haughty eyes and +awfully sharp teeth. He lives in Africa and, at night, when he roars, +all the other beasts tremble in their holes for fear. He is called the +king of beasts. They caught him one day in a cunning trap and bound him +and dragged him here and locked him up in a cage with iron bars to it. +The cage is no more than half as big as Petrine's room. And there the +king walks up and down, up and down, and gnashes his teeth with sorrow +and rage and roars so that you can hear him ever so far away. Outside +his cage stand cowardly people and laugh at him, because he can't get +out and eat them up, and poke their sticks through the rails and tease +him.</p> + +<p>My little boy stands in front of me and looks at me with wide-open eyes:</p> + +<p>"Would he eat them up, if he got out?" he asks.</p> + +<p>"In a moment."</p> + +<p>"But he can't get out, can he?"</p> + +<p>"No. That's awfully sad. He can't get out."</p> + +<p>"Father, let us go and look at the lion."</p> + +<p>I pretend not to hear and go on to tell him of the strange birds there: +great eagles, which used to fly over every church-steeple and over the +highest trees and mountains and swoop down upon lambs and hares and +carry them up to their young in the nest. Now they are sitting in cages, +on a perch, like canaries, with clipped wings and blind eyes. I tell him +of gulls, which used to fly all day long over the stormy sea: now they +splash about in a puddle of water, screaming pitifully. I tell him of +wonderful blue and red birds, which, in their youth, used to live among +wonderful blue and red flowers, in balmy forests a thousand times bigger +than the Frederiksberg Park, where it was as dark as night under the +trees with the brightest sun shining down upon the tree-tops: now they +sit there in very small cages and hang their beaks while they stare at +tiresome boys in dark-blue suits and black stockings and waterproof +boots and sailor-hats.</p> + +<p>"Are those birds really blue?" asks my little boy.</p> + +<p>"Sky-blue," I answer. "And utterly broken-hearted."</p> + +<p>"Father, can't we go and look at the birds?"</p> + +<p>I take my little boy's hands in mine:</p> + +<p>"I don't think we will," I say. "Why should still more silly boys do so? +You can't imagine how it goes to one's heart to look at those poor +captive beasts."</p> + +<p>"Father, I should so much like to go."</p> + +<p>"Take my advice and don't. The animals there are not the real animals, +you see. They are ill and ugly and angry because of their captivity and +their longing and their pain."</p> + +<p>"I should so much like to see them."</p> + +<p>"Now let me tell you something. To go to the Zoological Gardens costs +five cents for you and ten cents for me. That makes fifteen cents +altogether, which is an awful lot of money. We won't go there now, but +we'll buy the biggest money-box we can find: one of those money-boxes +shaped like a pig. Then we'll put fifteen cents in it. And every +Thursday we'll put fifteen cents in the pig. By-and-by, that will grow +into quite a fortune: it will make such a lot of money that, when you +are grown up, you can take a trip to Africa and go to the desert and +hear the wild, the real lion roaring and tremble just like the people +tremble down there. And you can go to the great, dark forests and see +the real blue birds flying proud and free among the flowers. You can't +think how glad you will be, how beautiful they will look and how they +will sing to you. . . ."</p> + +<p>"Father, I would rather go to the Zoological Gardens now."</p> + +<p>My little boy does not understand a word of what I say. And I am at my +wits' end.</p> + +<p>"Shall we go and have some cakes at Josty's?" I ask.</p> + +<p>"I would rather go to the Zoological Gardens."</p> + +<p>I can read in his eyes that he is thinking of the captive lion. Ugly +human instincts are waking up in his soul. The mouse is forgotten and +the snail; and the chaffinches have built their nest to no purpose.</p> + +<p>At last I get up and say, bluntly, without any further explanation:</p> + +<p>"You are <i>not</i> going to the Zoological Gardens. Now we'll go home."</p> + +<p>And home we go. But we are not in a good temper.</p> + +<p>Of course, I get over it and I buy an enormous money-box pig. Also we +put the money into it and he thinks that most interesting.</p> + +<p>But, later in the afternoon, I find him in the bed-room engaged in a +piteous game.</p> + +<p>He has built a cage, in which he has imprisoned the pig. He is teasing +it and hitting it with his whip, while he keeps shouting to it:</p> + +<p>"You can't get out and bite me, you stupid pig! You can't get out!"</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>IV</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">We</span> have beer-soup and Aunt Anna to dinner. Now beer-soup is a nasty dish +and Aunt Anna is not very nice either.</p> + +<p>She has yellow teeth and a little hump and very severe eyes, which are +not even both equally severe. She is nearly always scolding us and, when +she sees a chance, she pinches us.</p> + +<p>The worst of all, however, is that she is constantly setting us a good +example, which can easily end by gradually and inevitably driving us to +embrace wickedness.</p> + +<p>Aunt Anna does not like beer-soup any more than we do. But of course she +eats it with a voluptuous expression on her face and looks angrily at my +little boy, who does not even make an attempt to behave nicely:</p> + +<p>"Why doesn't the little boy eat his delicious beer-soup?" she asks.</p> + +<p>A scornful silence.</p> + +<p>"Such delicious beer-soup! I know a poor, wretched boy who would be +awfully glad to have such delicious beer-soup."</p> + +<p>My little boy looks with great interest at Auntie, who is swallowing her +soup with eyes full of ecstatic bliss:</p> + +<p>"Where is he?" he asks.</p> + +<p>Aunt Anna pretends not to hear.</p> + +<p>"Where is the poor boy?" he asks again.</p> + +<p>"Yes, where is he?" I ask. "What's his name?"</p> + +<p>Aunt Anna gives me a furious glance.</p> + +<p>"What's his name, Aunt Anna?" asks my little boy. "Where does he live? +He can have my beer-soup with pleasure."</p> + +<p>"Mine too," I say, resolutely, and I push my plate from me.</p> + +<p>My little boy never takes his great eyes off Aunt Anna's face. +Meanwhile, she has recovered herself:</p> + +<p>"There are many poor boys who would thank God if they could get such +delicious beer-soup," she says. "Very many. Everywhere."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but tell us of one, Auntie," I say.</p> + +<p>My little boy has slipped down from his chair. He stands with his chin +just above the table and both his hands round his plate, ready to march +off with the beer-soup to the poor boy, if only he can get his address.</p> + +<p>But Aunt Anna does not allow herself to be played with:</p> + +<p>"Heaps of poor boys," she says again. "Hun-dreds! And therefore another +little boy, whom I will not name, but who is in this room, ought to be +ashamed that he is not thankful for his beer-soup."</p> + +<p>My little boy stares at Aunt Anna like the bird fascinated by the snake.</p> + +<p>"Such delicious beer-soup!" she says. "I must really ask for another +little helping."</p> + +<p>Aunt Anna revels in her martyrdom. My little boy stands speechless, with +open mouth and round eyes.</p> + +<p>I push my chair back and say, with genuine exasperation:</p> + +<p>"Now, look here, Aunt Anna, this is really too bad! Here we are, with a +whole lot of beer-soup, which we don't care about in the least and which +we would be very glad to get rid of, if we only knew someone who would +have it. You are the only one that knows of anybody. You know a poor boy +who would dance for joy if he got some beer-soup. You know hundreds. But +you won't tell us their names or where they live."</p> + +<p>"Why, what do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"And you yourself sit quite calmly eating two whole helpings, though you +know quite well that you're going to have an omelette to follow. That's +really very naughty of you, Aunt Anna."</p> + +<p>Aunt Anna chokes with annoyance. My little boy locks his teeth with a +snap and looks with every mark of disgust at that wicked old woman.</p> + +<p>And I turn with calm earnestness to his mother and say:</p> + +<p>"After this, it would be most improper for us ever to have beer-soup +here again. We don't care for it and there are hundreds of little boys +who love it. If it must be made, then Aunt Anna must come every Saturday +and fetch it. She knows where the boys live."</p> + +<p>The omelette is eaten in silence, after which Aunt Anna shakes the dust +from her shoes. She won't have any coffee today.</p> + +<p>While she is standing in the hall and putting on her endless wraps, a +last doubt arises in my little boy's soul. He opens his green eyes wide +before her face and whispers:</p> + +<p>"Aunt Anna, where do the boys live?"</p> + +<p>Aunt Anna pinches him and is shocked and goes off, having suffered a +greater defeat than she can ever repair.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>V</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My</span> little boy comes into my room and tells me, with a very long face, +that Jean is dead. And we put all nonsense on one side and hurry away to +the Klampenborg train, to go where Jean is.</p> + +<p>For Jean is the biggest dog that has lived for some time.</p> + +<p>He once bit a boy so hard that the boy still walks lame. He once bit his +own master. He could give such a look out of his eyes and open such a +mouth that there was no more horrible sight in the world. And then he +would be the mildest of the mild: my little boy could put his hand in +his mouth and ride on his back and pull his tail.</p> + +<p>When we get there, we hear that Jean is already buried.</p> + +<p>We look at each other in dismay, to think how quickly that happens! And +we go to the grave, which is in the grounds of the factory, where the +tall chimneys stand.</p> + +<p>We sit down and can't understand it.</p> + +<p>We tell each other all the stories that we know of Jean's wonderful size +and strength. The one remembers this, the other that. And, as each story +is told, the whole thing becomes only more awful and obscure.</p> + +<p>At last we go home by train.</p> + +<p>Besides ourselves, there is a kind old gentleman in the compartment, who +would like to make friends with my little boy. But the boy has nothing +to talk about to the kind old gentleman. He stands at the window, which +comes just under his chin, and stares out.</p> + +<p>His eyes light upon some tall chimneys:</p> + +<p>"That's where Jean is buried," he says.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>The landscape flies past. He can think only of <i>that</i> and see only +<i>that</i> and, when some more chimneys appear, he says again:</p> + +<p>"That's where Jean is buried."</p> + +<p>"No, my little friend," says the kind old gentleman. "That was over +there."</p> + +<p>The boy looks at him with surprise. I hasten to reassure him:</p> + +<p>"Those <i>are</i> Jean's chimneys," I say.</p> + +<p>And, while he is looking out again, I take the old gentleman to the +further corner of the compartment and tell him the state of the case.</p> + +<p>I tell him that, if I live, I hope, in years to come, to explain to the +boy the difference between Petersen's and Hansen's factories and, should +I die, I will confidently leave that part of his education to others. +Yes, even if he should never learn this difference, I would still be +resigned. Today it is a question of other and more important matters. +The strongest, the most living thing he knew is dead. . . .</p> + +<p>"Really?" says the old gentleman, sympathetically. "A relation, +perhaps?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," I say. "Jean is dead, a dog. . . ."</p> + +<p>"A dog?"</p> + +<p>"It is not because of the <i>dog</i>—don't you understand?—but of <i>death</i>, +which he sees for the first time: death, with all its might, its +mystery. . . ."</p> + +<p>"Father," says my little boy and turns his head towards us. "When do we +die?"</p> + +<p>"When we grow old," says the kind old gentleman.</p> + +<p>"No," says the boy. "Einar has a brother, at home, in the courtyard, and +he is dead. And he was only a little boy."</p> + +<p>"Then Einar's brother was so good and learnt such a lot that he was +already fit to go to Heaven," says the old gentleman.</p> + +<p>"Mind you don't become too good," I say and laugh and tap my little boy +in the stomach.</p> + +<p>And my little boy laughs too and goes back to his window, where new +chimneys rise over Jean's grave.</p> + +<p>But I take the old gentleman by the shoulders and forbid him most +strictly to talk to my little boy again. I give up trying to make him +understand me. I just shake him. He eyes the communication-cord and, +when we reach the station, hurries away.</p> + +<p>I go with my little boy, holding his hand, through the streets full of +live people. In the evening, I sit on the edge of his bed and talk with +him about that incomprehensible thing: Jean, who is dead; Jean, who was +so much alive, so strong, so big. . . .</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>VI</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Our</span> courtyard is full of children and my little boy has picked a +bosom-friend out of the band: his name is Einar and he can be as good as +another.</p> + +<p>My little boy admires him and Einar allows himself to be admired, so +that the friendship is established on the only proper basis.</p> + +<p>"Einar says . . . Einar thinks . . . Einar does," is the daily refrain; +and we arrange our little life accordingly.</p> + +<p>"I can't see anything out of the way in Einar," says the mother of my +little boy.</p> + +<p>"Nor can I," say I. "But our little boy can and that is enough. I once +had a friend who could see nothing at all charming in you. And you +yourself, if I remember right, had three friends who thought <i>your</i> +taste inexcusable. Luckily for our little boy. . . ."</p> + +<p>"Luckily!"</p> + +<p>"It is the feeling that counts," I go on lecturing, "and not the +object."</p> + +<p>"Thanks!" she says.</p> + +<p>Now something big and unusual takes place in our courtyard and makes an +extraordinary impression on the children and gives their small brains +heaps to struggle with for many a long day.</p> + +<p>The scarlatina comes.</p> + +<p>And scarlatina is not like a pain in your stomach, when you have eaten +too many pears, or like a cold, when you have forgotten to put on your +jacket. Scarlatina is something quite different, something powerful and +terrible. It comes at night and takes a little boy who was playing quite +happily that same evening. And then the little boy is gone.</p> + +<p>Perhaps a funny carriage comes driving in through the gate, with two +horses and a coachman and two men with bright brass buttons on their +coats. The two men take out of the carriage a basket, with a red +blanket and white sheets, and carry it up to where the boy lives. +Presently, they carry the basket down again and then the boy is inside. +But nobody can see him, because the sheet is over his face. The basket +is shoved into the carriage, which is shut with a bang, and away goes +the carriage with the boy, while his mother dries her eyes and goes up +to the others.</p> + +<p>Perhaps no carriage comes. But then the sick boy is shut up in his room +and no one may go to him for a long time, because he is infectious. And +anyone can understand that this must be terribly sad.</p> + +<p>The children in the courtyard talk of nothing else.</p> + +<p>They talk with soft voices and faces full of mystery, because they know +nothing for certain. They hear that one of them, who rode away in the +carriage, is dead; but that makes no more impression on them than when +one of them falls ill and disappears.</p> + +<p>Day by day, the little band is being thinned out and not one of them has +yet come back.</p> + +<p>I stand at my open window and look at my little boy, who is sitting on +the steps below with his friend. They have their arms around each +other's necks and see no one except each other; that is to say, Einar +sees himself and my little boy sees Einar.</p> + +<p>"If you fall ill, I will come and see you," says my little boy.</p> + +<p>"No, you won't!"</p> + +<p>"I will come and see you."</p> + +<p>His eyes beam at this important promise. Einar cries as though he were +already ill.</p> + +<p>And the next day he is ill.</p> + +<p>He lies in a little room all by himself. No one is allowed to go to him. +A red curtain hangs before the window.</p> + +<p>My little boy sits alone on the steps outside and stares up at the +curtain. His hands are thrust deep into his pockets. He does not care to +play and he speaks to nobody.</p> + +<p>And I walk up and down the room, uneasy as to what will come next.</p> + +<p>"You are anxious about our little boy," says his mother. "And it will be +a miracle if he escapes."</p> + +<p>"It's not that. We've all had a touch of scarlatina."</p> + +<p>But just as I want to talk to her about it, I hear a fumbling with the +door-handle which there is no mistaking and then he stands before us in +the room.</p> + +<p>I know you so well, my little boy, when you come in sideways like that, +with a long face, and go and sit in a corner and look at the two people +who owe so much happiness to you—look from one to the other. Your eyes +are greener than usual. You can't find your words and you sit huddled up +and you are ever so good.</p> + +<p>"Mother, is Einar ill?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. But he will soon be better again. The doctor says that he is not +so bad."</p> + +<p>"Is he infectious, Mother?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he is. His little sister has been sent to the country, so that she +may not fall ill too. No one is allowed to go to him except his mother, +who gives him his milk and his medicine and makes his bed."</p> + +<p>A silence.</p> + +<p>The mother of my little boy looks down at her book and suspects nothing. +The father of my little boy looks in great suspense from the window.</p> + +<p>"Mother, I want to go to Einar."</p> + +<p>"You can't go there, my little man. You hear, he's infectious. Just +think, if you should fall ill yourself! Einar isn't bothering at all +about chatting with you. He sleeps the whole day long."</p> + +<p>"But when he wakes, Mother?"</p> + +<p>"You can't go up there."</p> + +<p>This tells upon him and he is nearly crying. I see that the time has +come for me to come to his rescue:</p> + +<p>"Have you promised Einar to go and see him?" I ask.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Father. . . ."</p> + +<p>He is over his trouble. His eyes beam. He stands erect and glad beside +me and puts his little hand in mine.</p> + +<p>"Then of course you must do so," I say, calmly. "So soon as he wakes."</p> + +<p>Our mother closes her book with a bang:</p> + +<p>"Go down to the courtyard and play, while Father and I have a talk."</p> + +<p>The boy runs away.</p> + +<p>And she comes up to me and lays her hand on my shoulder and says, +earnestly:</p> + +<p>"I <i>daren't</i> do that, do you hear?"</p> + +<p>And I take her hand and kiss it and say, quite as earnestly:</p> + +<p>"And I <i>daren't refuse</i>!"</p> + +<p>We look at each other, we two, who share the empire, the power and the +glory.</p> + +<p>"I heard our little boy make his promise," I say, "I saw him. Sir +Galahad himself was not more in earnest when swearing his knightly oath. +You see, we have no choice here. He can catch the scarlatina in any case +and it is not even certain that he will catch it. . . ."</p> + +<p>"If it was diphtheria, you wouldn't talk like that!"</p> + +<p>"You may be right. But am I to become a thief for the sake of a nickel, +because I am not sure that I could resist the temptation to steal a +kingdom?"</p> + +<p>"You would not find a living being to agree with you."</p> + +<p>"Except yourself. And that is all I want. The infection is really only a +side matter. It can come this way or that way. We can't safeguard him, +come what may. . . ."</p> + +<p>"But are we to send him straight to where it is?"</p> + +<p>"We're not doing that; it's not we who are doing that."</p> + +<p>She is very much excited. I put my arm round her waist and we walk up +and down the room together:</p> + +<p>"Darling, today our little boy may meet with a great misfortune. He may +receive a shock from which he will never recover. . . ."</p> + +<p>"That is true," she says.</p> + +<p>"If he doesn't keep his promise, the misfortune has occurred. It would +already be a misfortune if he could ever think that it was possible for +him to break it, if it appeared to him that there was anything great or +remarkable about keeping it."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but . . ."</p> + +<p>"Darling, the world is full of careful persons. One step more and +they become mere paltry people. Shall we turn that into a likely thing, +into a virtue, for our little boy? His promise was stupid: let that +pass. . . ."</p> + +<p>"He is so little."</p> + +<p>"Yes, that he is; and God be praised for it! Think what good luck it is +that he did not know the danger, when he made his promise, that he does +not understand it now, when he is keeping it. What a lucky beggar! He is +learning to keep his word, just as he has learnt to be clean. By the +time that he is big enough to know his danger, it will be an +indispensable habit with him. And he gains all that at the risk of a +little scarlatina."</p> + +<p>She lays her head on my shoulder and says nothing more.</p> + +<p>That afternoon, she takes our little boy by the hand and goes up with +him to Einar. They stand on the threshold of his room, bid him good-day +and ask him how he is.</p> + +<p>Einar is not at all well and does not look up and does not answer.</p> + +<p>But that does not matter in the least.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>VII</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My</span> little boy is given a cent by Petrine with instructions to go to the +baker's and buy some biscuits.</p> + +<p>By that which fools call an accident, but which is really a divine +miracle, if miracles there be, I overhear this instruction. Then I stand +at my window and see him cross the street in his slow way and with bent +head; only, he goes slower than usual and with his head bent more deeply +between his small shoulders.</p> + +<p>He stands long outside the baker's window, where there is a confused +heap of lollipops and chocolates and sugar-sticks and other things +created for a small boy's delight. Then he lifts his young hand, opens +the door, disappears and presently returns with a great paper bag, +eating with all his might.</p> + +<p>And I, who, Heaven be praised, have myself been a thief in my time, run +all over the house and give my orders.</p> + +<p>My little boy enters the kitchen.</p> + +<p>"Put the biscuits on the table," says Petrine.</p> + +<p>He stands still for a moment and looks at her and at the table and at +the floor. Then he goes silently to his mother.</p> + +<p>"You're quite a big boy now, that you can buy biscuits for Petrine," +says she, without looking up from her work.</p> + +<p>His face is very long, but he says nothing. He comes quietly in to me +and sits down on the edge of a chair.</p> + +<p>"You have been over the way, at the baker's."</p> + +<p>He comes up to me, where I am sitting and reading, and presses himself +against me. I do not look at him, but I can perceive what is going on +inside him.</p> + +<p>"What did you buy at the baker's?"</p> + +<p>"Lollipops."</p> + +<p>"Well, I never! What fun! Why, you had some lollipops this morning. Who +gave you the money this time?"</p> + +<p>"Petrine."</p> + +<p>"Really! Well, Petrine is certainly very fond of you. Do you remember +the lovely ball she gave you on your birthday?"</p> + +<p>"Father, Petrine told me to buy a cent's worth of biscuits."</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear!"</p> + +<p>It is very quiet in the room. My little boy cries bitterly and I look +anxiously before me, stroking his hair the while.</p> + +<p>"Now you have fooled Petrine badly. She wants those biscuits, of course, +for her cooking. She thinks they're on the kitchen-table and, when she +goes to look, she won't find any. Mother gave her a cent for biscuits. +Petrine gave you a cent for biscuits and you go and spend it on +lollipops. What are we to do?"</p> + +<p>He looks at me in despair, holds me tight, says a thousand things +without speaking a word.</p> + +<p>"If only we had a cent," I say. "Then you could rush over the way and +fetch the biscuits."</p> + +<p>"Father. . . ." His eyes open very wide and he speaks so softly that I +can hardly hear him. "There is a cent on mother's writing-table."</p> + +<p>"Is there?" I cry with delight. But, at the same moment, I shake my head +and my face is overcast again. "That is no use to us, my little boy. +That cent belongs to mother. The other was Petrine's. People are so +terribly fond of their money and get so angry when you take it from +them. I can understand that, for you can buy such an awful lot of things +with money. You can get biscuits and lollipops and clothes and toys and +half the things in the world. And it is not so easy either to make +money. Most people have to drudge all day long to earn as much as they +want. So it is no wonder that they get angry when you take it. +Especially when it is only for lollipops. Now Petrine . . . she has to +spend the whole day cleaning rooms and cooking dinner and washing up +before she gets her wages. And out of that she has to buy clothes and +shoes . . . and you know that she has a little girl whom she has to pay +for at Madam Olsen's. She must certainly have saved very cleverly before +she managed to buy you that ball."</p> + +<p>We walk up and down the room, hand in hand. He keeps on falling over his +legs, for he can't take his eyes from my face.</p> + +<p>"Father . . . haven't you got a cent?"</p> + +<p>I shake my head and give him my purse:</p> + +<p>"Look for yourself," I say. "There's not a cent in it. I spent the last +this morning."</p> + +<p>We walk up and down. We sit down and get up and walk about again. We are +very gloomy. We are bowed down with sorrow and look at each other in +great perplexity.</p> + +<p>"There might be one hidden away in a drawer somewhere," I say.</p> + +<p>We fly to the drawers.</p> + +<p>We pull out thirty drawers and rummage through them. We fling papers in +disorder, higgledy-piggledy, on the floor: what do we care? If only, if +only we find a cent. . . .</p> + +<p>Hurrah!</p> + +<p>We both, at last, grasp at a cent, as though we would fight for it . . . +we have found a beautiful, large cent. Our eyes gleam and we laugh +through our tears.</p> + +<p>"Hurry now," I whisper. "You can go this way . . . through my door. Then +run back quickly up the kitchen stairs, with the biscuits, and put them +on the table. I shall call Petrine, so that she doesn't see. And we +won't tell anybody."</p> + +<p>He is down the stairs before I have done speaking. I run after him and +call to him:</p> + +<p>"Wasn't it a splendid thing that we found that cent?" I say.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he answers, earnestly.</p> + +<p>And he laughs for happiness and I laugh too and his legs go like +drumsticks across to the baker's.</p> + +<p>From my window, I see him come back, at the same pace, with red cheeks +and glad eyes. He has committed his first crime. He has understood it. +And he has not the sting of remorse in his soul nor the black cockade of +forgiveness in his cap.</p> + +<p>The mother of my little boy and I sit until late at night talking about +money, which seems to us the most difficult matter of all.</p> + +<p>For our little boy must learn to know the power of money and the glamour +of money and the joy of money. He must earn much money and spend much +money. . . .</p> + +<p>Yet there were two people, yesterday, who killed a man to rob him of +four dollars and thirty-seven cents. . . .</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>VIII</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> has been decreed in the privy council that my little boy shall have a +weekly income of one cent. Every Sunday morning, that sum shall be paid +to him, free of income-tax, out of the treasury and he has leave to +dispose of it entirely at his own pleasure.</p> + +<p>He receives this announcement with composure and sits apart for a while +and ponders on it.</p> + +<p>"Every Sunday?" he asks.</p> + +<p>"Every Sunday."</p> + +<p>"All the time till the summer holidays?"</p> + +<p>"All the time till the summer holidays."</p> + +<p>In the summer holidays, he is to go to the country, to stay with his +godmother, in whose house he was pleased to allow himself to be born. +The summer holidays are, consequently, the limits of his calculation of +time: beyond them lies, for the moment, his Nirvana.</p> + +<p>And we employ this restricted horizon of ours to further our true +happiness.</p> + +<p>That is to say, we calculate, with the aid of the almanac, that, if +everything goes as heretofore, there will be fifteen Sundays before the +summer holidays. We arrange a drawer with fifteen compartments and in +each compartment we put one cent. Thus we know exactly what we have and +are able at any time to survey our financial status.</p> + +<p>And, when he sees that great lot of cents lying there, my little boy's +breast is filled with mad delight. He feels endlessly rich, safe for a +long time. The courtyard rings with his bragging, with all that he is +going to do with his money. His special favourites are invited to come +up and view his treasure.</p> + +<p>The first Sunday passes in a normal fashion, as was to be expected.</p> + +<p>He takes his cent and turns it straightway into a stick of chocolate of +the best sort, with almonds on it and sugar, in short, an ideal stick in +every way. The whole performance is over in five minutes: by that time, +the stick of chocolate is gone, with the sole exception of a remnant in +the corners of our mouth, which our ruthless mother wipes away, and a +stain on our collar, which annoys us.</p> + +<p>He sits by me, with a vacant little face, and swings his legs. I open +the drawer and look at the empty space and at the fourteen others:</p> + +<p>"So <i>that's</i> gone," I say.</p> + +<p>My accent betrays a certain melancholy, which finds an echo in his +breast. But he does not deliver himself of it at once.</p> + +<p>"Father . . . is it long till next Sunday?"</p> + +<p>"Very long, my boy; ever so many days."</p> + +<p>We sit a little, steeped in our own thoughts. Then I say, pensively:</p> + +<p>"Now, if you had bought a top, you would perhaps have had more pleasure +out of it. I know a place where there is a lovely top: red, with a green +ring round it. It is just over the way, in the toy-shop. I saw it +yesterday. I should be greatly mistaken if the toy-man was not willing +to sell it for a cent. And you've got a whip, you know."</p> + +<p>We go over the way and look at the top in the shop-window. It is really +a splendid top.</p> + +<p>"The shop's shut," says my little boy, despondently.</p> + +<p>I look at him with surprise:</p> + +<p>"Yes, but what does that matter to us? Anyway, we can't buy the top +before next Sunday. You see, you've spent your cent on chocolate. Give +me your handkerchief: there's still a bit on your cheek."</p> + +<p>There is no more to be said. Crestfallen and pensively, we go home. We +sit a long time at the dining-room window, from which we can see the +window of the shop.</p> + +<p>During the course of the week, we look at the top daily, for it does not +do to let one's love grow cold. One might so easily forget it. And the +top shines always more seductively. We go in and make sure that the +price is really in keeping with our means. We make the shop-keeper take +a solemn oath to keep the top for us till Sunday morning, even if boys +should come and bid him much higher sums for it.</p> + +<p>On Sunday morning, we are on the spot before nine o'clock and acquire +our treasure with trembling hands. And we play with it all day and sleep +with it at night, until, on Wednesday morning, it disappears without a +trace, after the nasty manner which tops have.</p> + +<p>When the turn comes of the next cent, something remarkable happens.</p> + +<p>There is a boy in the courtyard who has a skipping-rope and my little +boy, therefore, wants to have a skipping-rope too. But this is a +difficult matter. Careful enquiries establish the fact that a +skipping-rope of the sort used by the upper classes is nowhere to be +obtained for less than five cents.</p> + +<p>The business is discussed as early as Saturday:</p> + +<p>"It's the simplest thing in the world," I say. "You must not spend your +cent tomorrow. Next Sunday you must do the same and the next and the +next. On the Sunday after that, you will have saved your five cents and +can buy your skipping-rope at once."</p> + +<p>"When shall I get my skipping-rope then?"</p> + +<p>"In five Sundays from now."</p> + +<p>He says nothing, but I can see that he does not think my idea very +brilliant. In the course of the day, he derives, from sources unknown +to me, an acquaintance with financial circumstances which he serves up +to me on Sunday morning in the following words:</p> + +<p>"Father, you must lend me five cents for the skipping-rope. If you will +lend me five cents for the skipping-rope, I'll give you <i>forty</i> cents +back. . . ."</p> + +<p>He stands close to me, very red in the face and quite confused. I +perceive that he is ripe for falling into the claws of the usurers:</p> + +<p>"I don't do that sort of business, my boy," I say. "It wouldn't do you +any good either. And you're not even in a position to do it, for you +have only thirteen cents, as you know."</p> + +<p>He collapses like one whose last hope is gone.</p> + +<p>"Let us just see," I say.</p> + +<p>And we go to our drawer and stare at it long and deeply.</p> + +<p>"We might perhaps manage it this way, that I give you five cents now. +And then I should have your cent and the next four cents. . . ."</p> + +<p>He interrupts me with a loud shout. I take out my purse, give him five +cents and take one cent out of the drawer:</p> + +<p>"That won't be pleasant next Sunday," I say, "and the next and the next +and the next. . . ."</p> + +<p>But the thoughtless youth is gone.</p> + +<p>Of course, the instalments of his debt are paid off with great ceremony. +He is always on the spot himself when the drawer is opened and sees how +the requisite cent is removed and finds its way into my pocket instead +of his.</p> + +<p>The first time, all goes well. It is simply an amusing thing that I +should have the cent; and the skipping-rope is still fresh in his +memory, because of the pangs which he underwent before its purchase. +Next Sunday, already the thing is not <i>quite</i> so pleasant and, when the +fourth instalment falls due, my little boy's face looks very gloomy:</p> + +<p>"Is anything the matter?" I ask.</p> + +<p>"I should so much like a stick of chocolate," he says, without looking +at me.</p> + +<p>"Is that all? You can get one in a fortnight. By that time, you will +have paid for the skipping-rope and the cent will be your own again."</p> + +<p>"I should so much like to have the stick of chocolate now."</p> + +<p>Of course, I am full of the sincerest compassion, but I can't help it. +What's gone is gone. We saw it with our own eyes and we know exactly +where it has gone to. And, that Sunday morning, we part in a dejected +mood.</p> + +<p>Later in the day, however, I find him standing over the drawer with +raised eyebrows and a pursed-up mouth. I sit down quietly and wait. And +I do not have to wait long before I learn that his development as an +economist is taking quite its normal course.</p> + +<p>"Father, suppose we moved the cent now from here into this Sunday's +place and I took it and bought the chocolate-stick. . . ."</p> + +<p>"Why, then you won't have your cent for the other Sunday."</p> + +<p>"I don't mind that, Father. . . ."</p> + +<p>We talk about it, and then we do it. And, with that, as a matter of +course, we enter upon the most reckless peculations.</p> + +<p>The very next Sunday, he is clever enough to take the furthest cent, +which lies just before the summer holidays. He pursues the path of vice +without a scruple, until, at last, the blow falls and five long Sundays +come in a row without the least chance of a cent.</p> + +<p>Where should they come from? They were there. We know that. They are +gone. We have spent them ourselves.</p> + +<p>But, during those drab days of poverty, we sit every morning over the +empty drawer and talk long and profoundly about that painful phenomenon, +which is so simple and so easy to understand and which one must needs +make the best of.</p> + +<p>And we hope and trust that our experience will do us good, when, after +our trip, we start a new set of cents.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>IX</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My</span> little boy is engaged to be married.</p> + +<p>She is a big, large-limbed young woman, three years his senior, and no +doubt belongs to the minor aristocracy. Her name is Gertie. By a +misunderstanding, however, which is pardonable at his age and moreover +quite explained by Gertie's appearance, he calls her Dirty—little +Dirty—and by this name she will be handed down to history.</p> + +<p>He met her on the boulevard, where he was playing, in the fine spring +weather, with other children. His reason for the engagement is good +enough:</p> + +<p>"I wanted a girl for myself," he says.</p> + +<p>Either I know very little of mankind or he has made a fortunate choice. +No one is likely to take Dirty from him.</p> + +<p>Like the gentleman that he is, he at once brings the girl home to us and +introduces her. In consequence of the formality of the occasion, he does +not go in by the kitchen way, as usual, but rings the front-door bell. I +open the door myself. There he stands on the mat, hand in hand with +Dirty, his bride, and, with radiant eyes:</p> + +<p>"Father," he says, "this is little Dirty. She is my sweetheart. We are +going to be married."</p> + +<p>"That is what people usually do with their sweethearts," I answer, +philosophically. "Pray, Dirty, come in and be welcomed by the family."</p> + +<p>"Wipe your feet, Dirty," says my little boy.</p> + +<p>The mother of my little boy does not think much of the match. She has +even spoken of forbidding Dirty the house.</p> + +<p>"We can't do that," I say. "I am not in ecstasies over it either, but it +is not at all certain that it will last."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but . . ."</p> + +<p>"Do you remember what little use it was when your mother forbade me the +house? We used to meet in the most incredible places and kiss each other +terribly. I can quite understand that you have forgotten, but you ought +to bear it in mind now that your son's beginning. And you ought to value +the loyalty of his behaviour towards his aged parents."</p> + +<p>"My dear! . . ."</p> + +<p>"And then I must remind you that it is spring. The trees are budding. +You can't see it, perhaps, from the kitchen-window or from your +work-table, but I, who go about all day, have noticed it. You know what +Byron says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>March has its hares, and May must have its heroine."</p> +</div> + +<p>And so Dirty is accepted.</p> + +<p>But, when she calls, she has first to undergo a short quarantine, while +the mother of my little boy washes her and combs her hair thoroughly.</p> + +<p>Dirty does not like this, but the boy does. He looks on with +extraordinary interest and at once complains if there is a place that +has escaped the sponge. I can't make out what goes on within him on +these occasions. There is a good deal of cruelty in love; and he himself +hates to be washed. Perhaps he is rapt in fancies and wants to see his +sweetheart rise daily from the waves, like Venus Anadyomene. Perhaps it +is merely his sense of duty: last Friday, in cold blood, he allowed +Dirty to wait outside, on the step, for half an hour, until his mother +came home.</p> + +<p>Another of his joys is to see Dirty eat.</p> + +<p>I can quite understand that. Here, as at her toilet, there is something +worth looking at. The mother of my little boy and I would be glad too to +watch her, if there were any chance of giving Dirty her fill. But there +is none. At least, not with my income.</p> + +<p>When I see all that food disappear, without as much as a shade of +satisfaction coming into her eyes, I tremble for the young couple's +future. But he is cheerful and unconcerned.</p> + +<p>Of course, there are also clouds in their sky.</p> + +<p>A few days ago, they were sitting quietly together in the dining-room +and talking of their wedding. My little boy described what the house +would be like and the garden and the horses. Dirty made no remarks and +she had no grounds for doing so, for everything was particularly nice. +But, after that, things went wrong:</p> + +<p>"We shall have fourteen children," said the boy.</p> + +<p>"No," said Dirty. "We shall only have two: a boy and a girl."</p> + +<p>"I want to have fourteen."</p> + +<p>"I won't have more than two."</p> + +<p>"Fourteen."</p> + +<p>"Two."</p> + +<p>There was no coming to an agreement. My little boy was speechless at +Dirty's meanness. And Dirty pinched her lips together and nodded her +head defiantly. Then he burst into tears.</p> + +<p>I could have explained to him that Dirty, who sits down every day as the +seventh at the children's table at home, cannot look upon children with +his eyes, as things forming an essential part of every well-regulated +family, but must regard them rather as bandits who eat up other people's +food. But I did not feel entitled to discuss the young lady's domestic +circumstances unasked.</p> + +<p>One good thing about Dirty is that she is not dependent upon her family +nor they upon her. It has not yet happened that any inquiries have been +made after her, however long she remained with us. We know just where +she lives and what her father's name is. Nothing more.</p> + +<p>However, we notice in another way that our daughter-in-law is not +without relations.</p> + +<p>Whenever, for instance, we give her a pair of stockings or some other +article of clothing, it is always gone the next day; and so on until all +the six brothers and sisters have been supplied. Not till then do we +have the pleasure of seeing Dirty look neat. She has been so long +accustomed to going shares that she does so in every conceivable +circumstance.</p> + +<p>And I console the mother of my little boy by saying that, should he fall +out with Dirty, he can take one of the sisters and that, in this way, +nothing would be lost.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>X</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My</span> little boy confides to me that he would like a pear.</p> + +<p>Now pears fall within his mother's province and I am sure that he has +had as many as he is entitled to. And so we are at once agreed that what +he wants is a wholly irrelevant, uncalled-for, delightful extra pear.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, it also appears that the request has already been laid +before Mamma and met with a positive refusal.</p> + +<p>The situation is serious, but not hopeless. For I am a man who knows how +mean is the supply of pears to us poor wretched children of men and how +wonderful an extra pear tastes.</p> + +<p>And I am glad that my little boy did not give up all hope of the pear at +the first obstacle. I can see by the longing in his green eyes how big +the pear is and I reflect with lawful paternal pride that he will win +his girl and his position in life when their time comes.</p> + +<p>We now discuss the matter carefully.</p> + +<p>First comes the prospect of stomach-ache:</p> + +<p>"Never mind about that," says he.</p> + +<p>I quite agree with his view.</p> + +<p>Then perhaps Mother will be angry.</p> + +<p>No, Mother is never angry. She is sorry; and that is not nice. But then +we must see and make it up to her in another way.</p> + +<p>So we slink in and steal the pear.</p> + +<p>I put it to him whether, perhaps—when we have eaten the pear—we ought +to tell Mother. But that does not appeal to him:</p> + +<p>"Then I shan't get one this evening," he says.</p> + +<p>And when I suggest that, possibly, Mother might be impressed with such +audacious candour, he shakes his head decisively:</p> + +<p>"You don't know Mother," he says.</p> + +<p>So I, of course, have nothing to say.</p> + +<p>Shortly after this, the mother of my little boy and I are standing at +the window laughing at the story.</p> + +<p>We catch sight of him below, in the courtyard.</p> + +<p>He is sitting on the steps with his arm round little Dirty's neck. They +have shared the pear. Now they are both singing, marvellously out of +tune and with a disgustingly sentimental expression on their faces, a +song which Dirty knows:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For riches are only a lo-oan from Heaven<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And poverty is a reward.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And we are overcome with a great sense of desolation.</p> + +<p>We want to make life green and pleasant for our little boy, to make his +eyes open wide to see it, his hands strong to grasp it. But we feel +powerless in the face of all the contentment and patience and +resignation that are preached from cellar to garret, in church and in +school: all those second-rate virtues, which may lighten an old man's +last few steps as he stumbles on towards the grave, but which are only +so many shabby lies for the young.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>XI</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Dirty</span> is paying us a visit and my little boy is sitting at her feet.</p> + +<p>She has buried her fingers in her hair and is reading, reading, reading. +. . .</p> + +<p>She is learning the Ten Commandments by heart. She stammers and repeats +herself, with eyes fixed in her head and a despairing mouth:</p> + +<p>"Thou shalt . . . Thou shalt not . . . Thou shalt . . ."</p> + +<p>The boy watches her with tender compassion.</p> + +<p>He has already learnt a couple of the commandments by listening to her +and helps her, now and then, with a word. Then he comes to me and asks, +anxiously:</p> + +<p>"Father, must Dirty do all that the Ten Commandments say?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>He sits down by her again. His heart is overflowing with pity, his eyes +are moist. She does not look at him, but plods on bravely:</p> + +<p>"Thou shalt . . . Thou shalt not . . ."</p> + +<p>"Father, when I grow big, must I also do all that the Ten Commandments +say?"</p> + +<p>"Ye-es."</p> + +<p>He looks at me in utter despair. Then he goes back to Dirty and listens, +but now he keeps his thoughts to himself.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, something seems to flash across his mind.</p> + +<p>He comes to me again, puts his arms on my knee and looks with his green +eyes firmly into mine:</p> + +<p>"Father, do you do all that the Ten Commandments say?"</p> + +<p>"Ye-e-es."</p> + +<p>He looks like a person whose last hope has escaped him. I would so much +like to help him; but what, in Heaven's name, can I do?</p> + +<p>Then he collects himself, shakes his head a little and says, with great +tears in his eyes:</p> + +<p>"Father, I don't believe that I can do all those things that the Ten +Commandments say."</p> + +<p>And I draw him to me and we cry together because life is so difficult, +while Dirty plods away like a good girl.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>XII</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">This</span> we all know, that sin came into the world by the law.</p> + +<p>Dirty's Ten Commandments have brought it to us.</p> + +<p>When she comes, she now always has Luther's terrible Little Catechism<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> +and Balslev's equally objectionable work with her. Her parents evidently +look upon it as most natural that she should also cultivate her soul at +our house.</p> + +<p>Her copies of these two classics were not published yesterday. They are +probably heirlooms in Dirty's family. They are covered in thick brown +paper, which again is protected by a heavy layer of dirt against any +touch of clean fingers. They can be smelt at a distance.</p> + +<p>But my little boy is no snob.</p> + +<p>When Dirty has finished her studies—she always reads out aloud—he asks +her permission to turn over the pages of the works in which she finds +those strange words. He stares respectfully at the letters which he +cannot read. And then he asks questions.</p> + +<p>He asks Dirty, he asks the servant, he asks us. Before anyone suspects +it, he is at home in the whole field of theology.</p> + +<p>He knows that God is in Heaven, where all good people go to Him, while +the wicked are put down below in Hell. That God created the world in six +days and said that we must not do anything on Sundays. That God can do +everything and knows everything and sees everything.</p> + +<p>He often prays, creeps upstairs as high as he can go, so as to be nearer +Heaven, and shouts as loud as he can. The other day I found him at the +top of the folding-steps:</p> + +<p>"Dear God! You must please give us fine weather tomorrow, for we are +going to the wood."</p> + +<p>He says <i>Du</i> to everybody except God and the grocer.</p> + +<p>He never compromises.</p> + +<p>The servant is laying the table; we have guests coming and we call her +attention to a little hole in the cloth:</p> + +<p>"I must lay it so that no one can see it," she says.</p> + +<p>"God will see it."</p> + +<p>"He is not coming this evening," says the blasphemous hussy.</p> + +<p>"Yes, He is everywhere," answers my little boy, severely.</p> + +<p>He looks after me in particular:</p> + +<p>"You mustn't say 'gad,' Father. Dirty's teacher says that people who say +'gad' go to Hell."</p> + +<p>"I shan't say it again," I reply, humbly.</p> + +<p>One Sunday morning, he finds me writing and upbraids me seriously.</p> + +<p>"My little boy," I say, distressfully, "I must work every day. If I do +nothing on Sunday, I do nothing on Monday either. If I do nothing on +Monday, I am idle on Tuesday too. And so on."</p> + +<p>He ponders; and I continue, with the courage of despair:</p> + +<p>"You must have noticed that Dirty wants a new catechism? The one she has +is dirty and old."</p> + +<p>He agrees to this.</p> + +<p>"She will never have one, you see," I say, emphatically. "Her father +rests so tremendously on Sunday that he is hardly able to do anything on +the other days. He never earns enough to buy a new catechism."</p> + +<p>I have won—this engagement. But the war is continued without cessation +of hostilities.</p> + +<p>The mother of my little boy and I are sitting in the twilight by his +bedside and softly talking about this.</p> + +<p>"What are we to do?" she asks.</p> + +<p>"We can do nothing?" I reply. "Dirty is right: God is everywhere. We +can't keep Him out. And if we could, for a time: what then? A day would +come perhaps when our little boy was ill or sad and the priests would +come to him with their God as a new and untried miraculous remedy and +bewilder his mind and his senses. Our little boy too will have to go +through Luther and Balslev and Assens and confirmation and all the rest +of it. Then this will become a commonplace to him; and one day he will +form his own views, as we have done."</p> + +<p>But, when he comes and asks how big God is, whether He is bigger than +the Round Tower, how far it is to Heaven, why the weather was not fine +on the day when he prayed so hard for it: then we fly from the face of +the Lord and hide like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.</p> + +<p>And we leave Dirty to explain.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>XIII</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My</span> little boy has got a rival, whose name is Henrik, a popinjay who not +only is six years old, but has an unlimited supply of liquorice at his +disposal. And, to fill the measure of my little boy's bitterness, Henrik +is to go to the dancing-school; and I am, therefore, not surprised when +my little boy asks to be taught to dance, so that he may not be left +quite behind in the contest.</p> + +<p>"I don't advise you to do that," I say. "The dancing which you learn at +school is not pretty and does not play so great a part in love as you +imagine. I don't know how to dance; and many charming ladies used to +prefer me to the most accomplished ornaments of the ball-room. Besides, +you know, you are knock-kneed."</p> + +<p>And, to cheer him up, I sing a little song which we composed when we +were small and had a dog and did not think about women:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">See, my son, that little basset,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Running with his knock-kneed legs!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His own puppy, he can't catch it:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">He'll fall down as sure as eggs!<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Knock-kneed Billy!<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Isn't he silly?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Silly Billy!<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>But poetry fails to comfort him. Dark is his face and desperate his +glance. And, when I see that the case is serious, I resolve to resort to +serious measures.</p> + +<p>I take him with me to a ball, a real ball, where people who have learnt +to dance go to enjoy themselves. It is difficult to keep him in a more +or less waking condition, but I succeed.</p> + +<p>We sit quietly in a corner and watch the merry throng. I say not a word, +but look at his wide-open eyes.</p> + +<p>"Father, why does that man jump like that, when he is so awfully hot?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; can you understand it?"</p> + +<p>"Why does that lady with her head on one side look so tired? . . . Why +does that fat woman hop about so funnily, Father? . . . Father, what +queer legs that man there has!"</p> + +<p>It rains questions and observations. We make jokes and laugh till the +tears come to our eyes. We whisper naughty things to each other and go +into a side-room and mimic a pair of crooked legs till we can't hold +ourselves for laughter. We sit and wait till a steam thrashing-machine +on its round comes past us; and we are fit to die when we hear it puff +and blow.</p> + +<p>We enjoy ourselves beyond measure.</p> + +<p>And we make a hit.</p> + +<p>The steam thrashing-machine and the crooked legs and the fat woman and +the hot gentleman and others crowd round us and admire the dear little +boy. We accept their praises, for we have agreed not to say what we +think to anybody, except to Mother, when we come home, and then, of +course, to Dirty.</p> + +<p>And we wink our eyes and enjoy our delightful fun until we fall asleep +and are driven home and put to bed.</p> + +<p>And then we have done with the dancing-school.</p> + +<p>My little boy paints in strong colours, for his Dirty's benefit, what +Henrik will look like when he dances. It is no use for that young man to +deny all that my little boy says and to execute different elegant steps. +I was prepared for this; and my little boy tells exultantly that this is +only something with which they lure stupid people at the start and that +it will certainly end with Henrik's getting very hot and hopping round +on crooked legs with a fat woman and a face of despair.</p> + +<p>In the meantime, of course, I do not forget that, if we pull down +without building up we shall end by landing ourselves in an unwholesome +scepticism.</p> + +<p>We therefore invent various dances, which my little boy executes in the +courtyard to Dirty's joy and to Henrik's most jealous envy. We point +emphatically to the fact that the dances are our own, that they are +composed only for the woman we love and performed only for her.</p> + +<p>There is, for instance, a dance with a stick, which my little boy +wields, while Henrik draws back. Another with a pair of new mittens for +Dirty. And, lastly, the liquorice dance, which expresses an +extraordinary contempt for that foodstuff.</p> + +<p>That Dirty should suck a stick of liquorice, which she has received from +Henrik, while enjoying her other admirer's satire, naturally staggers my +little boy. But I explain to him that that is because she is a woman and +that <i>that</i> is a thing which can't be helped.</p> + +<p>What Bournonville<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> would say, if he could look down upon us from his +place in Heaven, I do not know.</p> + +<p>But I don't believe that he can.</p> + +<p>If he, up there, could see how people dance down here, he really would +not stay there.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>XIV</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">There</span> is a battle royal and a great hullabaloo among the children in the +courtyard.</p> + +<p>I hear them shouting "Jew!" and I go to the window and see my little boy +in the front rank of the bandits, screaming, fighting with clenched +fists and without his cap.</p> + +<p>I sit down quietly to my work again, certain that he will appear before +long and ease his heart.</p> + +<p>And he comes directly after.</p> + +<p>He stands still, as is his way, by my side and says nothing. I steal a +glance at him: he is greatly excited and proud and glad, like one who +has fearlessly done his duty.</p> + +<p>"What fun you've been having down there!"</p> + +<p>"Oh," he says, modestly, "it was only a Jew boy whom we were licking."</p> + +<p>I jump up so quickly that I upset my chair:</p> + +<p>"A Jew boy? Were you licking him? What had he done?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. . . ."</p> + +<p>His voice is not very certain, for I look so queer.</p> + +<p>And that is only the beginning. For now I snatch my hat and run out of +the door as fast as I can and shout:</p> + +<p>"Come . . . come . . . we must find him and beg his pardon!"</p> + +<p>My little boy hurries after me. He does not understand a word of it, but +he is terribly in earnest. We look in the courtyard, we shout and call. +We rush into the street and round the corner, so eager are we to come up +with him. Breathlessly, we ask three passers-by if they have not seen a +poor, ill-used Jew boy.</p> + +<p>All in vain: the Jew boy and all his persecutors are blown away into +space.</p> + +<p>So we go and sit up in my room again, the laboratory where our soul is +crystallized out of the big events of our little life. My forehead is +wrinkled and I drum disconsolately with my fingers on the table. The boy +has both his hands in his pockets and does not take his eyes from my +face.</p> + +<p>"Well," I say, decidedly, "there is nothing more to be done. I hope you +will meet that Jew boy one day, so that you can give him your hand and +ask him to forgive you. You must tell him that you did that only because +you were stupid. But if, another time, anyone does him any harm, I hope +you will help him and lick the other one as long as you can stir a +limb."</p> + +<p>I can see by my little boy's face that he is ready to do what I wish. +For he is still a mercenary, who does not ask under which flag, so long +as there is a battle and booty to follow. It is my duty to train him to +be a brave recruit, who will defend his fair mother-land, and so I +continue:</p> + +<p>"Let me tell you, the Jews are by way of being quite wonderful people. +You remember David, about whom Dirty reads at school: he was a Jew boy. +And the Child Jesus, Whom everybody worships and loves, although He died +two thousand years ago: He was a little Jew also."</p> + +<p>My little boy stands with his arms on my knee and I go on with my story.</p> + +<p>The old Hebrews rise before our eyes in all their splendour and power, +quite different from Dirty's Balslev. They ride on their camels in coats +of many colours and with long beards: Moses and Joseph and his brethren +and Samson and David and Saul. We hear wonderful stories. The walls of +Jericho fall at the sound of the trumpet.</p> + +<p>"And what next?" says my little boy, using the expression which he +employed when he was much smaller and which still comes to his lips +whenever he is carried away.</p> + +<p>We hear of the destruction of Jerusalem and how the Jews took their +little boys by the hand and wandered from place to place, scoffed at, +despised and ill-treated. How they were allowed to own neither house nor +land, but could only be merchants, and how the Christian robbers took +all the money which they had got together. How, nevertheless, they +remained true to their God and kept up their old sacred customs in the +midst of the strangers who hated and persecuted them.</p> + +<p>The whole day is devoted to the Jews.</p> + +<p>We look at old books on the shelves which I love best to read and which +are written by a Jew with a wonderful name, which a little boy can't +remember at all. We learn that the most famous man now living in Denmark +is a Jew.</p> + +<p>And, when evening comes and Mother sits down at the piano and sings the +song which Father loves above all other songs, it appears that the words +were written by one Jew and the melody composed by another.</p> + +<p>My little boy is hot and red when he falls to sleep that night. He turns +restlessly in bed and talks in his sleep.</p> + +<p>"He is a little feverish," says his mother.</p> + +<p>And I bend down and kiss his forehead and answer, calmly:</p> + +<p>"That is not surprising. Today I have vaccinated him against the meanest +of all mean and vulgar diseases."</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>XV</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">We</span> are staying in the country, a long way out, where the real country +is.</p> + +<p>Cows and horses, pigs and sheep, a beautiful dog and hens and ducks form +our circle of acquaintances. In addition to these, there are of course +the two-legged beings who own and look after the four-legged ones and +who, in my little boy's eyes, belong to quite the same kind.</p> + +<p>The great sea lies at the foot of the slope. Ships float in the distance +and have nothing to say to us. The sun burns us and bronzes us. We eat +like thrashers, sleep like guinea-pigs and wake like larks. The only +real sorrow that we have suffered is that we were not allowed to have +our breeches made with a flap at the side, like the old wood-cutter's.</p> + +<p>Presently, it happens that, for better or worse, we get neighbours.</p> + +<p>They are regular Copenhageners. They were prepared not to find electric +light in the farm-house; but, if they had known that there was no water +in the kitchen, God knows they would not have come. They trudge through +the clover as though it were mire and are sorry to find so few +cornflowers in the rye. A cow going loose along the roads fills them +with a terror which might easily have satisfied a royal tiger.</p> + +<p>The pearl of the family is Erna.</p> + +<p>Erna is five years old; her very small face is pale green, with watery +blue eyes and yellow curls. She is richly and gaily dressed in a broad +and slovenly sash, daintily-embroidered pantalets, short open-work socks +and patent-leather shoes. She falls if she but moves a foot, for she is +used only to gliding over polished floors or asphalt.</p> + +<p>I at once perceive that my little boy's eyes have seen a woman.</p> + +<p>He has seen the woman that comes to us all at one time or another and +turns our heads with her rustling silks and her glossy hair and wears +her soul in her skirts and our poor hearts under her heel.</p> + +<p>"Now comes the perilous moment for Dirty," I say to the mother of my +little boy.</p> + +<p>This time it is my little boy's turn to be superior.</p> + +<p>He knows the business thoroughly and explains it all to Erna. When he +worries the horse, she trembles, impressed with his courage and +manliness. When she has a fit of terror at the sight of a hen, he is +charmed with her delicacy. He knows the way to the smith's, he dares to +roll down the high slope, he chivalrously carries her ridiculous little +cape.</p> + +<p>Altogether, there is no doubt as to the condition of his heart. And, +while Erna's family apparently favour the position—for which may the +devil take them!—I must needs wait with resignation like one who knows +that love is every man's master.</p> + +<p>One morning he proposes.</p> + +<p>He is sitting with his beloved on the lawn. Close to them, her aunt is +nursing her chlorosis under a red parasol and with a novel in her bony +lap. Up in the balcony above sit I, as Providence, and see everything, +myself unseen.</p> + +<p>"You shall be my sweetheart," says my little boy.</p> + +<p>"Yes," says Erna.</p> + +<p>"I have a sweetheart already in Copenhagen," he says, proudly.</p> + +<p>This communication naturally by no means lowers Erna's suitor in her +eyes. But it immediately arouses all Auntie's moral instincts:</p> + +<p>"If you have a sweetheart, you must be true to her."</p> + +<p>"Erna shall be my sweetheart."</p> + +<p>Auntie turns her eyes up to Heaven:</p> + +<p>"Listen, child," she says. "You're a very naughty boy. If you have given +Dir—Dir——"</p> + +<p>"Dirty," says the boy.</p> + +<p>"Well, that's an extraordinary name! But, if you have given her your +word, you must keep it till you die. Else you'll never, never be happy."</p> + +<p>My little boy understands not a word and answers not a word. Erna +begins to cry at the prospect that this good match may not come off. +But I bend down over the baluster and raise my hat:</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon, Fröken. Was it not you who jilted Hr. Petersen? +. . ."</p> + +<p>"Good heavens! . . ."</p> + +<p>She packs up her chlorosis and disappears with Erna, mumbling something +about like father, like son, and goodness knows what.</p> + +<p>Presently, my little boy comes up to me and stands and hangs about.</p> + +<p>"Where has Erna gone to?" I ask my little boy.</p> + +<p>"She mustn't go out," he says, dejectedly.</p> + +<p>He puts his hands in his pockets and looks straight before him.</p> + +<p>"Father," he says, "can't you have two sweethearts?"</p> + +<p>The question comes quite unexpectedly and, at the moment, I don't know +what to answer.</p> + +<p>"Well?" says the mother of my little boy, amiably, and looks up from her +newspaper.</p> + +<p>And I pull my waistcoat down and my collar up:</p> + +<p>"Yes," I say, firmly. "You can. But it is wrong. It leads to more fuss +and unpleasantness than you can possibly conceive."</p> + +<p>A silence.</p> + +<p>"Are you so fond of Erna?" asks our mother.</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Do you want to marry her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>I get up and rub my hands:</p> + +<p>"Then the thing is settled," I say. "We'll write to Dirty and give her +notice. There's nothing else to be done. I will write now and you can +give the letter yourself to the postman, when he comes this afternoon. +If you take my advice, you will make her a present of your ball. Then +she will not be so much upset."</p> + +<p>"She can have my gold-fish too, if she likes," says the boy.</p> + +<p>"Excellent, excellent. We will give her the gold-fish. Then she will +really have nothing in the world to complain of."</p> + +<p>My little boy goes away. But, presently, he returns:</p> + +<p>"Father, have you written the letter to Dirty?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet, my boy. There is time enough. I sha'n't forget it."</p> + +<p>"Father, I am so fond of Dirty."</p> + +<p>"She was certainly a dear little girl."</p> + +<p>A silence.</p> + +<p>"Father, I am also so fond of Erna."</p> + +<p>We look at each other. This is no joke:</p> + +<p>"Perhaps we had better wait with the letter till tomorrow," I say. "Or +perhaps it would be best if we talked to Dirty ourselves, when we get +back to town."</p> + +<p>We both ponder over the matter and really don't know what to do.</p> + +<p>Then my eyes surprise an indescribable smile on our mother's face. All a +woman's incapacity to understand man's honesty is contained within that +smile and I resent it greatly:</p> + +<p>"Come," I say and give my hand to my little boy. "Let us go."</p> + +<p>And we go to a place we know of, far away behind the hedge, where we lie +on our backs and look up at the blue sky and talk together sensibly, as +two gentlemen should.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>XVI</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My</span> little boy is to go to school.</p> + +<p>We can't keep him at home any longer, says his mother. He himself is +glad to go, of course, because he does not know what school is.</p> + +<p>I know what it is and I know also that there is no escape for him, that +he must go. But I am sick at heart. All that is good within me revolts +against the inevitable.</p> + +<p>So we go for our last morning walk, along the road where something +wonderful has always happened to us. It looks to me as if the trees have +crape wound round their tops and the birds sing in a minor key and the +people stare at me with earnest and sympathetic eyes.</p> + +<p>But my little boy sees nothing. He is only excited at the prospect. He +talks and asks questions without stopping.</p> + +<p>We sit down by the edge of our usual ditch—alas, that ditch!</p> + +<p>And suddenly my heart triumphs over my understanding. The voice of my +clear conscience penetrates through the whole well-trained and +harmonious choir which is to give the concert; and it sings its solo in +the ears of my little boy:</p> + +<p>"I just want to tell you that school is a horrid place," I say. "You can +have no conception of what you will have to put up with there. They will +tell you that two and two are four. . . ."</p> + +<p>"Mother has taught me that already," says he, blithely.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but that is wrong, you poor wretch!" I cry. "Two and two are never +four, or only very seldom. And that's not all. They will try to make you +believe that Teheran is the capital of Persia and that Mont Blanc is +15,781 feet high and you will take them at their word. But I tell you +that both Teheran and Persia are nothing at all, an empty sound, a +stupid joke. And Mont Blanc is not half as big as the mound in the +tallow-chandler's back-garden. And listen: you will never have any more +time to play in the courtyard with Einar. When he shouts to you to come +out, you'll have to sit and read about a lot of horrible old kings who +have been dead for hundreds and hundreds of years, if they ever existed +at all, which I, for my part, simply don't believe."</p> + +<p>My little boy does not understand me. But he sees that I am sad and puts +his hand in mine:</p> + +<p>"Mother says that you must go to school to become a clever boy," he +says. "Mother says that Einar is ever so much too small and stupid to go +to school."</p> + +<p>I bow my head and nod and say nothing.</p> + +<p>That is past.</p> + +<p>And I take him to school and see how he storms up the steps without so +much as turning his head to look back at me.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h3>XVII</h3> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Here</span> ends this book about my little boy.</p> + +<p>What more can there be to tell?</p> + +<p>He is no longer mine. I have handed him over to society. Hr. Petersen, +candidate in letters, Hr. Nielsen, student of theology, and Fröken +Hansen, certificated teacher, will now set their distinguished example +before him for five hours daily. He will form himself in their likeness. +Their spirit hovers over him at school: he brings it home with him, it +overshadows him when he is learning the lessons which they zealously +mete out to him.</p> + +<p>I don't know these people. But I pay them.</p> + +<p>I, who have had a hard fight to keep my thoughts free and my limbs +unrestrained and who have not retired from the fight without deep wounds +of which I am reminded when the weather changes, I have, of my own free +will, brought him to the institution for maiming human beings. I, who at +times have soared to peaks that were my own, because the other birds +dared not follow me, have myself brought him to the place where wings +are clipped for flying respectably, with the flock.</p> + +<p>"There was nothing else to be done," says the mother of my little boy.</p> + +<p>"Really?" I reply, bitterly. "Was there nothing else to be done? But +suppose that I had put by some money, so that I could have saved Messrs. +Petersen and Nielsen and Fröken Hansen their trouble and employed my day +in myself opening out lands for that little traveller whom I myself have +brought into the land? Suppose that I had looked round the world for +people with small boys who think as I do and that we had taken upon us +to bring up these young animals so that they kept sight of horns and +tails and fairy-tales?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she says.</p> + +<p>"Small boys have a bad time of it, you know."</p> + +<p>"They had a worse time of it in the old days."</p> + +<p>"That is a poor comfort. And it can become worse again. The world is +full of parents and teachers who shake their foolish heads and turn up +their old eyes and cross their flat chests with horror at the depravity +of youth: children are so disobedient, so naughty, so self-willed and +talk so disrespectfully to their elders! . . . And what do we do, we who +know better?"</p> + +<p>"We do what we can."</p> + +<p>But I walk about the room, more and more indignant and ashamed of the +pitiful part which I am playing:</p> + +<p>"Do you remember, a little while ago, he came to me and said that he +longed so for the country and asked if we couldn't go there for a +little? There were horses and cows and green fields to be read in his +eyes. Well, I couldn't leave my work. And I couldn't afford it. So I +treated him to a shabby and high-class sermon about the tailor to whom I +owed money. Don't you understand that I let my little boy do <i>my</i> work, +that I let him pay <i>my</i> debt? . . ." I bend down over her and say +earnestly, "You must know; do please tell me—God help me, I do not +know—if I ought not rather to have paid my debt to the boy and cheated +the other?"</p> + +<p>"You know quite well," she says.</p> + +<p>She says it in such a way and looks at me with two such sensible eyes +and is so strong and so true that I suddenly think things look quite +well for our little boy; and I become restful and cheerful like herself:</p> + +<p>"Let Petersen and Nielsen and Hansen look out!" I say. "My little boy, +for what I care, may take from them all the English and geography and +history that he can. But they shall throw no dust in his eyes. I shall +keep him awake and we shall have great fun and find them out."</p> + +<p>"And I shall help him with his English and geography and history," says +she.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<p><br /></p> +<h4><big>FOOTNOTES</big></h4> +<p><br /></p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Luther's Lille Katekismus</i>, the Lutheran catechism in +general use in Denmark.—A. T. de M.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> A famous French ballet-master who figured at the Copenhagen +Opera House in the eighteenth century.—A. T. de M.</p> +<p><br /></p> +</div> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + +<h4><big>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE</big></h4> +<p><br /></p> + +<p class="center">Minor variations in spelling and punctuation have been preserved.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Little Boy, by Carl Ewald + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY LITTLE BOY *** + +***** This file should be named 35543-h.htm or 35543-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/5/4/35543/ + +Produced by Barbara Watson, Mark Akrigg and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at +http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: My Little Boy + +Author: Carl Ewald + +Commentator: Alexander Woollcott + +Translator: Alexandrer Texeira de Mattos + +Release Date: March 11, 2011 [EBook #35543] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY LITTLE BOY *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Watson, Mark Akrigg and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at +http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + + + + + + + + + MY + LITTLE BOY + + _by + CARL EWALD_ + + TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH + BY + ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS + + + + + MY LITTLE BOY + COPYRIGHT 1906 BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + SOLE AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION + + REPRINTED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH THE PUBLISHERS. NO PART OF THIS + WORK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF + CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + + + +_MY LITTLE BOY_ + + + + +I + + +My little boy is beginning to live. + +Carefully, stumbling now and then on his little knock-kneed legs, he +makes his way over the paving-stones, looks at everything that there is +to look at and bites at every apple, both those which are his due and +those which are forbidden him. + +He is not a pretty child and is the more likely to grow into a fine lad. +But he is charming. + +His face can light up suddenly and become radiant; he can look at you +with quite cold eyes. He has a strong intuition and he is incorruptible. +He has never yet bartered a kiss for barley-sugar. There are people whom +he likes and people whom he dislikes. There is one who has long courted +his favour indefatigably and in vain; and, the other day, he formed a +close friendship with another who had not so much as said "Good day" to +him before he had crept into her lap and nestled there with glowing +resolution. + +He has a habit which I love. + +When we are walking together and there is anything that impresses him, +he lets go my hand for a moment. Then, when he has investigated the +phenomenon and arrived at a result, I feel his little fist in mine +again. + +He has bad habits too. + +He is apt, for instance, suddenly and without the slightest reason, to +go up to people whom he meets in the street and hit them with his little +stick. What is in his mind, when he does so, I do not know; and, so long +as he does not hit me, it remains a matter between himself and the +people concerned. + +He has an odd trick of seizing big words in a grown-up conversation, +storing them up for a while and then asking me for an explanation: + +"Father," he says, "what is life?" + +I give him a tap in his little stomach, roll him over on the carpet and +conceal my emotion under a mighty romp. Then, when we sit breathless and +tired, I answer, gravely: + +"Life is delightful, my little boy. Don't you be afraid of it!" + + + + +II + + +Today my little boy gave me my first lesson. + +It was in the garden. + +I was writing in the shade of the big chestnut-tree, close to where the +brook flows past. He was sitting a little way off, on the grass, in the +sun, with Hans Christian Andersen in his lap. + +Of course, he does not know how to read, but he lets you read to him, +likes to hear the same tales over and over again. The better he knows +them, the better he is pleased. He follows the story page by page, knows +exactly where everything comes and catches you up immediately should you +skip a line. + +There are two tales which he loves more than anything in the world. + +These are Grimm's _Faithful John_ and Andersen's _The Little Mermaid_. +When anyone comes whom he likes, he fetches the big Grimm, with those +heaps of pictures, and asks for _Faithful John_. Then, if the reader +stops, because it is so terribly sad, with all those little dead +children, a bright smile lights up his small, long face and he says, +reassuringly and pleased at "knowing better": + +"Yes, but they come to life again." + +Today, however, it is _The Little Mermaid_. + +"Is that the sort of stories you write?" he asks. + +"Yes," I say, "but I am afraid mine will not be so pretty." + +"You must take pains," he says. + +And I promise. + +For a time he makes no sound. I go on writing and forget about him. + +"Is there a little mermaid down there, in the water?" he asks. + +"Yes, she swims up to the top in the summer." + +He nods and looks out across the brook, which ripples so softly and +smoothly that one can hardly see the water flow. On the opposite side, +the rushes grow green and thick and there is also a bird, hidden in the +rushes, which sings. The dragon-flies are whirling and humming. I am +sitting with my head in my hand, absorbed in my work. + +Suddenly, I hear a splash. + +I jump from my chair, upset the table, dart forward and see that my +little boy is gone. The brook is billowing and foaming; there are wide +circles on the surface. + +In a moment, I am in the water and find him and catch hold of him. + +He stands on the grass, dripping with wet, spluttering and coughing. His +thin clothes are clinging to his thin body, his face is black with mud. +But out of the mud gleams a pair of angry eyes: + +"There was no mermaid," he says. + +I do not at once know what to reply and I have no time to think. + +"Do you write that sort of stories?" he asks. + +"Yes," I say, shamefaced. + +"I don't like any of you," he says. "You make fun of a little boy." + +He turns his back on me and, proud and wet, goes indoors without once +looking round. + +This evening, Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen disappear in a +mysterious manner, which is never explained. He will miss them greatly, +at first; but he will never be fooled again, not if I were to give him +the sun and moon in his hand. + + + + +III + + +My little boy and I have had an exceedingly interesting walk in the +Frederiksberg Park. + +There was a mouse, which was irresistible. There were two chaffinches, +husband and wife, which built their nest right before our eyes, and a +snail, which had no secrets for us. And there were flowers, yellow and +white, and there were green leaves, which told us the oddest adventures: +in fact, as much as we can find room for in our little head. + +Now we are sitting on a bench and digesting our impressions. + +Suddenly the air is shaken by a tremendous roar: + +"What was that?" asks my little boy. + +"That was the lion in the Zoological Gardens," I reply. + +No sooner have I said this than I curse my own stupidity. + +I might have said that it was a gunshot announcing the birth of a +prince; or an earthquake; or a china dish falling from the sky and +breaking into pieces: anything whatever, rather than the truth. + +For now my little boy wants to know what sort of thing the Zoological +Gardens is. + +I tell him. + +The Zoological Gardens is a horrid place, where they lock up wild beasts +who have done no wrong and who are accustomed to walk about freely in +the distant foreign countries where they come from. The lion is there, +whom we have just heard roaring. He is so strong that he can kill a +policeman with one blow of his paw; he has great, haughty eyes and +awfully sharp teeth. He lives in Africa and, at night, when he roars, +all the other beasts tremble in their holes for fear. He is called the +king of beasts. They caught him one day in a cunning trap and bound him +and dragged him here and locked him up in a cage with iron bars to it. +The cage is no more than half as big as Petrine's room. And there the +king walks up and down, up and down, and gnashes his teeth with sorrow +and rage and roars so that you can hear him ever so far away. Outside +his cage stand cowardly people and laugh at him, because he can't get +out and eat them up, and poke their sticks through the rails and tease +him. + +My little boy stands in front of me and looks at me with wide-open eyes: + +"Would he eat them up, if he got out?" he asks. + +"In a moment." + +"But he can't get out, can he?" + +"No. That's awfully sad. He can't get out." + +"Father, let us go and look at the lion." + +I pretend not to hear and go on to tell him of the strange birds there: +great eagles, which used to fly over every church-steeple and over the +highest trees and mountains and swoop down upon lambs and hares and +carry them up to their young in the nest. Now they are sitting in cages, +on a perch, like canaries, with clipped wings and blind eyes. I tell him +of gulls, which used to fly all day long over the stormy sea: now they +splash about in a puddle of water, screaming pitifully. I tell him of +wonderful blue and red birds, which, in their youth, used to live among +wonderful blue and red flowers, in balmy forests a thousand times bigger +than the Frederiksberg Park, where it was as dark as night under the +trees with the brightest sun shining down upon the tree-tops: now they +sit there in very small cages and hang their beaks while they stare at +tiresome boys in dark-blue suits and black stockings and waterproof +boots and sailor-hats. + +"Are those birds really blue?" asks my little boy. + +"Sky-blue," I answer. "And utterly broken-hearted." + +"Father, can't we go and look at the birds?" + +I take my little boy's hands in mine: + +"I don't think we will," I say. "Why should still more silly boys do so? +You can't imagine how it goes to one's heart to look at those poor +captive beasts." + +"Father, I should so much like to go." + +"Take my advice and don't. The animals there are not the real animals, +you see. They are ill and ugly and angry because of their captivity and +their longing and their pain." + +"I should so much like to see them." + +"Now let me tell you something. To go to the Zoological Gardens costs +five cents for you and ten cents for me. That makes fifteen cents +altogether, which is an awful lot of money. We won't go there now, but +we'll buy the biggest money-box we can find: one of those money-boxes +shaped like a pig. Then we'll put fifteen cents in it. And every +Thursday we'll put fifteen cents in the pig. By-and-by, that will grow +into quite a fortune: it will make such a lot of money that, when you +are grown up, you can take a trip to Africa and go to the desert and +hear the wild, the real lion roaring and tremble just like the people +tremble down there. And you can go to the great, dark forests and see +the real blue birds flying proud and free among the flowers. You can't +think how glad you will be, how beautiful they will look and how they +will sing to you. . . ." + +"Father, I would rather go to the Zoological Gardens now." + +My little boy does not understand a word of what I say. And I am at my +wits' end. + +"Shall we go and have some cakes at Josty's?" I ask. + +"I would rather go to the Zoological Gardens." + +I can read in his eyes that he is thinking of the captive lion. Ugly +human instincts are waking up in his soul. The mouse is forgotten and +the snail; and the chaffinches have built their nest to no purpose. + +At last I get up and say, bluntly, without any further explanation: + +"You are _not_ going to the Zoological Gardens. Now we'll go home." + +And home we go. But we are not in a good temper. + +Of course, I get over it and I buy an enormous money-box pig. Also we +put the money into it and he thinks that most interesting. + +But, later in the afternoon, I find him in the bed-room engaged in a +piteous game. + +He has built a cage, in which he has imprisoned the pig. He is teasing +it and hitting it with his whip, while he keeps shouting to it: + +"You can't get out and bite me, you stupid pig! You can't get out!" + + + + +IV + + +We have beer-soup and Aunt Anna to dinner. Now beer-soup is a nasty dish +and Aunt Anna is not very nice either. + +She has yellow teeth and a little hump and very severe eyes, which are +not even both equally severe. She is nearly always scolding us and, when +she sees a chance, she pinches us. + +The worst of all, however, is that she is constantly setting us a good +example, which can easily end by gradually and inevitably driving us to +embrace wickedness. + +Aunt Anna does not like beer-soup any more than we do. But of course she +eats it with a voluptuous expression on her face and looks angrily at my +little boy, who does not even make an attempt to behave nicely: + +"Why doesn't the little boy eat his delicious beer-soup?" she asks. + +A scornful silence. + +"Such delicious beer-soup! I know a poor, wretched boy who would be +awfully glad to have such delicious beer-soup." + +My little boy looks with great interest at Auntie, who is swallowing her +soup with eyes full of ecstatic bliss: + +"Where is he?" he asks. + +Aunt Anna pretends not to hear. + +"Where is the poor boy?" he asks again. + +"Yes, where is he?" I ask. "What's his name?" + +Aunt Anna gives me a furious glance. + +"What's his name, Aunt Anna?" asks my little boy. "Where does he live? +He can have my beer-soup with pleasure." + +"Mine too," I say, resolutely, and I push my plate from me. + +My little boy never takes his great eyes off Aunt Anna's face. +Meanwhile, she has recovered herself: + +"There are many poor boys who would thank God if they could get such +delicious beer-soup," she says. "Very many. Everywhere." + +"Yes, but tell us of one, Auntie," I say. + +My little boy has slipped down from his chair. He stands with his chin +just above the table and both his hands round his plate, ready to march +off with the beer-soup to the poor boy, if only he can get his address. + +But Aunt Anna does not allow herself to be played with: + +"Heaps of poor boys," she says again. "Hun-dreds! And therefore another +little boy, whom I will not name, but who is in this room, ought to be +ashamed that he is not thankful for his beer-soup." + +My little boy stares at Aunt Anna like the bird fascinated by the snake. + + +"Such delicious beer-soup!" she says. "I must really ask for another +little helping." + +Aunt Anna revels in her martyrdom. My little boy stands speechless, with +open mouth and round eyes. + +I push my chair back and say, with genuine exasperation: + +"Now, look here, Aunt Anna, this is really too bad! Here we are, with a +whole lot of beer-soup, which we don't care about in the least and which +we would be very glad to get rid of, if we only knew someone who would +have it. You are the only one that knows of anybody. You know a poor boy +who would dance for joy if he got some beer-soup. You know hundreds. But +you won't tell us their names or where they live." + +"Why, what do you mean?" + +"And you yourself sit quite calmly eating two whole helpings, though you +know quite well that you're going to have an omelette to follow. That's +really very naughty of you, Aunt Anna." + +Aunt Anna chokes with annoyance. My little boy locks his teeth with a +snap and looks with every mark of disgust at that wicked old woman. + +And I turn with calm earnestness to his mother and say: + +"After this, it would be most improper for us ever to have beer-soup +here again. We don't care for it and there are hundreds of little boys +who love it. If it must be made, then Aunt Anna must come every Saturday +and fetch it. She knows where the boys live." + +The omelette is eaten in silence, after which Aunt Anna shakes the dust +from her shoes. She won't have any coffee today. + +While she is standing in the hall and putting on her endless wraps, a +last doubt arises in my little boy's soul. He opens his green eyes wide +before her face and whispers: + +"Aunt Anna, where do the boys live?" + +Aunt Anna pinches him and is shocked and goes off, having suffered a +greater defeat than she can ever repair. + + + + +V + + +My little boy comes into my room and tells me, with a very long face, +that Jean is dead. And we put all nonsense on one side and hurry away to +the Klampenborg train, to go where Jean is. + +For Jean is the biggest dog that has lived for some time. + +He once bit a boy so hard that the boy still walks lame. He once bit his +own master. He could give such a look out of his eyes and open such a +mouth that there was no more horrible sight in the world. And then he +would be the mildest of the mild: my little boy could put his hand in +his mouth and ride on his back and pull his tail. + +When we get there, we hear that Jean is already buried. + +We look at each other in dismay, to think how quickly that happens! And +we go to the grave, which is in the grounds of the factory, where the +tall chimneys stand. + +We sit down and can't understand it. + +We tell each other all the stories that we know of Jean's wonderful size +and strength. The one remembers this, the other that. And, as each story +is told, the whole thing becomes only more awful and obscure. + +At last we go home by train. + +Besides ourselves, there is a kind old gentleman in the compartment, who +would like to make friends with my little boy. But the boy has nothing +to talk about to the kind old gentleman. He stands at the window, which +comes just under his chin, and stares out. + +His eyes light upon some tall chimneys: + +"That's where Jean is buried," he says. + +"Yes." + +The landscape flies past. He can think only of _that_ and see only +_that_ and, when some more chimneys appear, he says again: + +"That's where Jean is buried." + +"No, my little friend," says the kind old gentleman. "That was over +there." + +The boy looks at him with surprise. I hasten to reassure him: + +"Those _are_ Jean's chimneys," I say. + +And, while he is looking out again, I take the old gentleman to the +further corner of the compartment and tell him the state of the case. + +I tell him that, if I live, I hope, in years to come, to explain to the +boy the difference between Petersen's and Hansen's factories and, should +I die, I will confidently leave that part of his education to others. +Yes, even if he should never learn this difference, I would still be +resigned. Today it is a question of other and more important matters. +The strongest, the most living thing he knew is dead. . . . + +"Really?" says the old gentleman, sympathetically. "A relation, +perhaps?" + +"Yes," I say. "Jean is dead, a dog. . . ." + +"A dog?" + +"It is not because of the _dog_--don't you understand?--but of _death_, +which he sees for the first time: death, with all its might, its +mystery. . . ." + +"Father," says my little boy and turns his head towards us. "When do we +die?" + +"When we grow old," says the kind old gentleman. + +"No," says the boy. "Einar has a brother, at home, in the courtyard, and +he is dead. And he was only a little boy." + +"Then Einar's brother was so good and learnt such a lot that he was +already fit to go to Heaven," says the old gentleman. + +"Mind you don't become too good," I say and laugh and tap my little boy +in the stomach. + +And my little boy laughs too and goes back to his window, where new +chimneys rise over Jean's grave. + +But I take the old gentleman by the shoulders and forbid him most +strictly to talk to my little boy again. I give up trying to make him +understand me. I just shake him. He eyes the communication-cord and, +when we reach the station, hurries away. + +I go with my little boy, holding his hand, through the streets full of +live people. In the evening, I sit on the edge of his bed and talk with +him about that incomprehensible thing: Jean, who is dead; Jean, who was +so much alive, so strong, so big. . . . + + + + +VI + + +Our courtyard is full of children and my little boy has picked a +bosom-friend out of the band: his name is Einar and he can be as good as +another. + +My little boy admires him and Einar allows himself to be admired, so +that the friendship is established on the only proper basis. + +"Einar says . . . Einar thinks . . . Einar does," is the daily refrain; +and we arrange our little life accordingly. + +"I can't see anything out of the way in Einar," says the mother of my +little boy. + +"Nor can I," say I. "But our little boy can and that is enough. I once +had a friend who could see nothing at all charming in you. And you +yourself, if I remember right, had three friends who thought _your_ +taste inexcusable. Luckily for our little boy. . . ." + +"Luckily!" + +"It is the feeling that counts," I go on lecturing, "and not the +object." + +"Thanks!" she says. + +Now something big and unusual takes place in our courtyard and makes an +extraordinary impression on the children and gives their small brains +heaps to struggle with for many a long day. + +The scarlatina comes. + +And scarlatina is not like a pain in your stomach, when you have eaten +too many pears, or like a cold, when you have forgotten to put on your +jacket. Scarlatina is something quite different, something powerful and +terrible. It comes at night and takes a little boy who was playing quite +happily that same evening. And then the little boy is gone. + +Perhaps a funny carriage comes driving in through the gate, with two +horses and a coachman and two men with bright brass buttons on their +coats. The two men take out of the carriage a basket, with a red +blanket and white sheets, and carry it up to where the boy lives. +Presently, they carry the basket down again and then the boy is inside. +But nobody can see him, because the sheet is over his face. The basket +is shoved into the carriage, which is shut with a bang, and away goes +the carriage with the boy, while his mother dries her eyes and goes up +to the others. + +Perhaps no carriage comes. But then the sick boy is shut up in his room +and no one may go to him for a long time, because he is infectious. And +anyone can understand that this must be terribly sad. + +The children in the courtyard talk of nothing else. + +They talk with soft voices and faces full of mystery, because they know +nothing for certain. They hear that one of them, who rode away in the +carriage, is dead; but that makes no more impression on them than when +one of them falls ill and disappears. + +Day by day, the little band is being thinned out and not one of them has +yet come back. + +I stand at my open window and look at my little boy, who is sitting on +the steps below with his friend. They have their arms around each +other's necks and see no one except each other; that is to say, Einar +sees himself and my little boy sees Einar. + +"If you fall ill, I will come and see you," says my little boy. + +"No, you won't!" + +"I will come and see you." + +His eyes beam at this important promise. Einar cries as though he were +already ill. + +And the next day he is ill. + +He lies in a little room all by himself. No one is allowed to go to him. +A red curtain hangs before the window. + +My little boy sits alone on the steps outside and stares up at the +curtain. His hands are thrust deep into his pockets. He does not care to +play and he speaks to nobody. + +And I walk up and down the room, uneasy as to what will come next. + +"You are anxious about our little boy," says his mother. "And it will be +a miracle if he escapes." + +"It's not that. We've all had a touch of scarlatina." + +But just as I want to talk to her about it, I hear a fumbling with the +door-handle which there is no mistaking and then he stands before us in +the room. + +I know you so well, my little boy, when you come in sideways like that, +with a long face, and go and sit in a corner and look at the two people +who owe so much happiness to you--look from one to the other. Your eyes +are greener than usual. You can't find your words and you sit huddled up +and you are ever so good. + +"Mother, is Einar ill?" + +"Yes. But he will soon be better again. The doctor says that he is not +so bad." + +"Is he infectious, Mother?" + +"Yes, he is. His little sister has been sent to the country, so that she +may not fall ill too. No one is allowed to go to him except his mother, +who gives him his milk and his medicine and makes his bed." + +A silence. + +The mother of my little boy looks down at her book and suspects nothing. +The father of my little boy looks in great suspense from the window. + +"Mother, I want to go to Einar." + +"You can't go there, my little man. You hear, he's infectious. Just +think, if you should fall ill yourself! Einar isn't bothering at all +about chatting with you. He sleeps the whole day long." + +"But when he wakes, Mother?" + +"You can't go up there." + +This tells upon him and he is nearly crying. I see that the time has +come for me to come to his rescue: + +"Have you promised Einar to go and see him?" I ask. + +"Yes, Father. . . ." + +He is over his trouble. His eyes beam. He stands erect and glad beside +me and puts his little hand in mine. + +"Then of course you must do so," I say, calmly. "So soon as he wakes." + +Our mother closes her book with a bang: + +"Go down to the courtyard and play, while Father and I have a talk." + +The boy runs away. + +And she comes up to me and lays her hand on my shoulder and says, +earnestly: + +"I _daren't_ do that, do you hear?" + +And I take her hand and kiss it and say, quite as earnestly: + +"And I _daren't refuse_!" + +We look at each other, we two, who share the empire, the power and the +glory. + +"I heard our little boy make his promise," I say, "I saw him. Sir +Galahad himself was not more in earnest when swearing his knightly oath. +You see, we have no choice here. He can catch the scarlatina in any case +and it is not even certain that he will catch it. . . ." + +"If it was diphtheria, you wouldn't talk like that!" + +"You may be right. But am I to become a thief for the sake of a nickel, +because I am not sure that I could resist the temptation to steal a +kingdom?" + +"You would not find a living being to agree with you." + +"Except yourself. And that is all I want. The infection is really only a +side matter. It can come this way or that way. We can't safeguard him, +come what may. . . ." + +"But are we to send him straight to where it is?" + +"We're not doing that; it's not we who are doing that." + +She is very much excited. I put my arm round her waist and we walk up +and down the room together: + +"Darling, today our little boy may meet with a great misfortune. He may +receive a shock from which he will never recover. . . ." + +"That is true," she says. + +"If he doesn't keep his promise, the misfortune has occurred. It would +already be a misfortune if he could ever think that it was possible for +him to break it, if it appeared to him that there was anything great or +remarkable about keeping it." + +"Yes, but . . ." + +"Darling, the world is full of careful persons. One step more and +they become mere paltry people. Shall we turn that into a likely thing, +into a virtue, for our little boy? His promise was stupid: let that +pass. . . ." + +"He is so little." + +"Yes, that he is; and God be praised for it! Think what good luck it is +that he did not know the danger, when he made his promise, that he does +not understand it now, when he is keeping it. What a lucky beggar! He is +learning to keep his word, just as he has learnt to be clean. By the +time that he is big enough to know his danger, it will be an +indispensable habit with him. And he gains all that at the risk of a +little scarlatina." + +She lays her head on my shoulder and says nothing more. + +That afternoon, she takes our little boy by the hand and goes up with +him to Einar. They stand on the threshold of his room, bid him good-day +and ask him how he is. + +Einar is not at all well and does not look up and does not answer. + +But that does not matter in the least. + + + + +VII + + +My little boy is given a cent by Petrine with instructions to go to the +baker's and buy some biscuits. + +By that which fools call an accident, but which is really a divine +miracle, if miracles there be, I overhear this instruction. Then I stand +at my window and see him cross the street in his slow way and with bent +head; only, he goes slower than usual and with his head bent more deeply +between his small shoulders. + +He stands long outside the baker's window, where there is a confused +heap of lollipops and chocolates and sugar-sticks and other things +created for a small boy's delight. Then he lifts his young hand, opens +the door, disappears and presently returns with a great paper bag, +eating with all his might. + +And I, who, Heaven be praised, have myself been a thief in my time, run +all over the house and give my orders. + +My little boy enters the kitchen. + +"Put the biscuits on the table," says Petrine. + +He stands still for a moment and looks at her and at the table and at +the floor. Then he goes silently to his mother. + +"You're quite a big boy now, that you can buy biscuits for Petrine," +says she, without looking up from her work. + +His face is very long, but he says nothing. He comes quietly in to me +and sits down on the edge of a chair. + +"You have been over the way, at the baker's." + +He comes up to me, where I am sitting and reading, and presses himself +against me. I do not look at him, but I can perceive what is going on +inside him. + +"What did you buy at the baker's?" + +"Lollipops." + +"Well, I never! What fun! Why, you had some lollipops this morning. Who +gave you the money this time?" + +"Petrine." + +"Really! Well, Petrine is certainly very fond of you. Do you remember +the lovely ball she gave you on your birthday?" + +"Father, Petrine told me to buy a cent's worth of biscuits." + +"Oh, dear!" + +It is very quiet in the room. My little boy cries bitterly and I look +anxiously before me, stroking his hair the while. + +"Now you have fooled Petrine badly. She wants those biscuits, of course, +for her cooking. She thinks they're on the kitchen-table and, when she +goes to look, she won't find any. Mother gave her a cent for biscuits. +Petrine gave you a cent for biscuits and you go and spend it on +lollipops. What are we to do?" + +He looks at me in despair, holds me tight, says a thousand things +without speaking a word. + +"If only we had a cent," I say. "Then you could rush over the way and +fetch the biscuits." + +"Father. . . ." His eyes open very wide and he speaks so softly that I +can hardly hear him. "There is a cent on mother's writing-table." + +"Is there?" I cry with delight. But, at the same moment, I shake my head +and my face is overcast again. "That is no use to us, my little boy. +That cent belongs to mother. The other was Petrine's. People are so +terribly fond of their money and get so angry when you take it from +them. I can understand that, for you can buy such an awful lot of things +with money. You can get biscuits and lollipops and clothes and toys and +half the things in the world. And it is not so easy either to make +money. Most people have to drudge all day long to earn as much as they +want. So it is no wonder that they get angry when you take it. +Especially when it is only for lollipops. Now Petrine . . . she has to +spend the whole day cleaning rooms and cooking dinner and washing up +before she gets her wages. And out of that she has to buy clothes and +shoes . . . and you know that she has a little girl whom she has to pay +for at Madam Olsen's. She must certainly have saved very cleverly before +she managed to buy you that ball." + +We walk up and down the room, hand in hand. He keeps on falling over his +legs, for he can't take his eyes from my face. + +"Father . . . haven't you got a cent?" + +I shake my head and give him my purse: + +"Look for yourself," I say. "There's not a cent in it. I spent the last +this morning." + +We walk up and down. We sit down and get up and walk about again. We are +very gloomy. We are bowed down with sorrow and look at each other in +great perplexity. + +"There might be one hidden away in a drawer somewhere," I say. + +We fly to the drawers. + +We pull out thirty drawers and rummage through them. We fling papers in +disorder, higgledy-piggledy, on the floor: what do we care? If only, if +only we find a cent. . . . + +Hurrah! + +We both, at last, grasp at a cent, as though we would fight for it . . . +we have found a beautiful, large cent. Our eyes gleam and we laugh +through our tears. + +"Hurry now," I whisper. "You can go this way . . . through my door. Then +run back quickly up the kitchen stairs, with the biscuits, and put them +on the table. I shall call Petrine, so that she doesn't see. And we +won't tell anybody." + +He is down the stairs before I have done speaking. I run after him and +call to him: + +"Wasn't it a splendid thing that we found that cent?" I say. + +"Yes," he answers, earnestly. + +And he laughs for happiness and I laugh too and his legs go like +drumsticks across to the baker's. + +From my window, I see him come back, at the same pace, with red cheeks +and glad eyes. He has committed his first crime. He has understood it. +And he has not the sting of remorse in his soul nor the black cockade of +forgiveness in his cap. + +The mother of my little boy and I sit until late at night talking about +money, which seems to us the most difficult matter of all. + +For our little boy must learn to know the power of money and the glamour +of money and the joy of money. He must earn much money and spend much +money. . . . + +Yet there were two people, yesterday, who killed a man to rob him of +four dollars and thirty-seven cents. . . . + + + + +VIII + + +It has been decreed in the privy council that my little boy shall have a +weekly income of one cent. Every Sunday morning, that sum shall be paid +to him, free of income-tax, out of the treasury and he has leave to +dispose of it entirely at his own pleasure. + +He receives this announcement with composure and sits apart for a while +and ponders on it. + +"Every Sunday?" he asks. + +"Every Sunday." + +"All the time till the summer holidays?" + +"All the time till the summer holidays." + +In the summer holidays, he is to go to the country, to stay with his +godmother, in whose house he was pleased to allow himself to be born. +The summer holidays are, consequently, the limits of his calculation of +time: beyond them lies, for the moment, his Nirvana. + +And we employ this restricted horizon of ours to further our true +happiness. + +That is to say, we calculate, with the aid of the almanac, that, if +everything goes as heretofore, there will be fifteen Sundays before the +summer holidays. We arrange a drawer with fifteen compartments and in +each compartment we put one cent. Thus we know exactly what we have and +are able at any time to survey our financial status. + +And, when he sees that great lot of cents lying there, my little boy's +breast is filled with mad delight. He feels endlessly rich, safe for a +long time. The courtyard rings with his bragging, with all that he is +going to do with his money. His special favourites are invited to come +up and view his treasure. + +The first Sunday passes in a normal fashion, as was to be expected. + +He takes his cent and turns it straightway into a stick of chocolate of +the best sort, with almonds on it and sugar, in short, an ideal stick in +every way. The whole performance is over in five minutes: by that time, +the stick of chocolate is gone, with the sole exception of a remnant in +the corners of our mouth, which our ruthless mother wipes away, and a +stain on our collar, which annoys us. + +He sits by me, with a vacant little face, and swings his legs. I open +the drawer and look at the empty space and at the fourteen others: + +"So _that's_ gone," I say. + +My accent betrays a certain melancholy, which finds an echo in his +breast. But he does not deliver himself of it at once. + +"Father . . . is it long till next Sunday?" + +"Very long, my boy; ever so many days." + +We sit a little, steeped in our own thoughts. Then I say, pensively: + +"Now, if you had bought a top, you would perhaps have had more pleasure +out of it. I know a place where there is a lovely top: red, with a green +ring round it. It is just over the way, in the toy-shop. I saw it +yesterday. I should be greatly mistaken if the toy-man was not willing +to sell it for a cent. And you've got a whip, you know." + +We go over the way and look at the top in the shop-window. It is really +a splendid top. + +"The shop's shut," says my little boy, despondently. + +I look at him with surprise: + +"Yes, but what does that matter to us? Anyway, we can't buy the top +before next Sunday. You see, you've spent your cent on chocolate. Give +me your handkerchief: there's still a bit on your cheek." + +There is no more to be said. Crestfallen and pensively, we go home. We +sit a long time at the dining-room window, from which we can see the +window of the shop. + +During the course of the week, we look at the top daily, for it does not +do to let one's love grow cold. One might so easily forget it. And the +top shines always more seductively. We go in and make sure that the +price is really in keeping with our means. We make the shop-keeper take +a solemn oath to keep the top for us till Sunday morning, even if boys +should come and bid him much higher sums for it. + +On Sunday morning, we are on the spot before nine o'clock and acquire +our treasure with trembling hands. And we play with it all day and sleep +with it at night, until, on Wednesday morning, it disappears without a +trace, after the nasty manner which tops have. + +When the turn comes of the next cent, something remarkable happens. + +There is a boy in the courtyard who has a skipping-rope and my little +boy, therefore, wants to have a skipping-rope too. But this is a +difficult matter. Careful enquiries establish the fact that a +skipping-rope of the sort used by the upper classes is nowhere to be +obtained for less than five cents. + +The business is discussed as early as Saturday: + +"It's the simplest thing in the world," I say. "You must not spend your +cent tomorrow. Next Sunday you must do the same and the next and the +next. On the Sunday after that, you will have saved your five cents and +can buy your skipping-rope at once." + +"When shall I get my skipping-rope then?" + +"In five Sundays from now." + +He says nothing, but I can see that he does not think my idea very +brilliant. In the course of the day, he derives, from sources unknown +to me, an acquaintance with financial circumstances which he serves up +to me on Sunday morning in the following words: + +"Father, you must lend me five cents for the skipping-rope. If you will +lend me five cents for the skipping-rope, I'll give you _forty_ cents +back. . . ." + +He stands close to me, very red in the face and quite confused. I +perceive that he is ripe for falling into the claws of the usurers: + +"I don't do that sort of business, my boy," I say. "It wouldn't do you +any good either. And you're not even in a position to do it, for you +have only thirteen cents, as you know." + +He collapses like one whose last hope is gone. + +"Let us just see," I say. + +And we go to our drawer and stare at it long and deeply. + +"We might perhaps manage it this way, that I give you five cents now. +And then I should have your cent and the next four cents. . . ." + +He interrupts me with a loud shout. I take out my purse, give him five +cents and take one cent out of the drawer: + +"That won't be pleasant next Sunday," I say, "and the next and the next +and the next. . . ." + +But the thoughtless youth is gone. + +Of course, the instalments of his debt are paid off with great ceremony. +He is always on the spot himself when the drawer is opened and sees how +the requisite cent is removed and finds its way into my pocket instead +of his. + +The first time, all goes well. It is simply an amusing thing that I +should have the cent; and the skipping-rope is still fresh in his +memory, because of the pangs which he underwent before its purchase. +Next Sunday, already the thing is not _quite_ so pleasant and, when the +fourth instalment falls due, my little boy's face looks very gloomy: + +"Is anything the matter?" I ask. + +"I should so much like a stick of chocolate," he says, without looking +at me. + +"Is that all? You can get one in a fortnight. By that time, you will +have paid for the skipping-rope and the cent will be your own again." + +"I should so much like to have the stick of chocolate now." + +Of course, I am full of the sincerest compassion, but I can't help it. +What's gone is gone. We saw it with our own eyes and we know exactly +where it has gone to. And, that Sunday morning, we part in a dejected +mood. + +Later in the day, however, I find him standing over the drawer with +raised eyebrows and a pursed-up mouth. I sit down quietly and wait. And +I do not have to wait long before I learn that his development as an +economist is taking quite its normal course. + +"Father, suppose we moved the cent now from here into this Sunday's +place and I took it and bought the chocolate-stick. . . ." + +"Why, then you won't have your cent for the other Sunday." + +"I don't mind that, Father. . . ." + +We talk about it, and then we do it. And, with that, as a matter of +course, we enter upon the most reckless peculations. + +The very next Sunday, he is clever enough to take the furthest cent, +which lies just before the summer holidays. He pursues the path of vice +without a scruple, until, at last, the blow falls and five long Sundays +come in a row without the least chance of a cent. + +Where should they come from? They were there. We know that. They are +gone. We have spent them ourselves. + +But, during those drab days of poverty, we sit every morning over the +empty drawer and talk long and profoundly about that painful phenomenon, +which is so simple and so easy to understand and which one must needs +make the best of. + +And we hope and trust that our experience will do us good, when, after +our trip, we start a new set of cents. + + + + +IX + + +My little boy is engaged to be married. + +She is a big, large-limbed young woman, three years his senior, and no +doubt belongs to the minor aristocracy. Her name is Gertie. By a +misunderstanding, however, which is pardonable at his age and moreover +quite explained by Gertie's appearance, he calls her Dirty--little +Dirty--and by this name she will be handed down to history. + +He met her on the boulevard, where he was playing, in the fine spring +weather, with other children. His reason for the engagement is good +enough: + +"I wanted a girl for myself," he says. + +Either I know very little of mankind or he has made a fortunate choice. +No one is likely to take Dirty from him. + +Like the gentleman that he is, he at once brings the girl home to us and +introduces her. In consequence of the formality of the occasion, he does +not go in by the kitchen way, as usual, but rings the front-door bell. I +open the door myself. There he stands on the mat, hand in hand with +Dirty, his bride, and, with radiant eyes: + +"Father," he says, "this is little Dirty. She is my sweetheart. We are +going to be married." + +"That is what people usually do with their sweethearts," I answer, +philosophically. "Pray, Dirty, come in and be welcomed by the family." + +"Wipe your feet, Dirty," says my little boy. + +The mother of my little boy does not think much of the match. She has +even spoken of forbidding Dirty the house. + +"We can't do that," I say. "I am not in ecstasies over it either, but it +is not at all certain that it will last." + +"Yes, but . . ." + +"Do you remember what little use it was when your mother forbade me the +house? We used to meet in the most incredible places and kiss each other +terribly. I can quite understand that you have forgotten, but you ought +to bear it in mind now that your son's beginning. And you ought to value +the loyalty of his behaviour towards his aged parents." + +"My dear! . . ." + +"And then I must remind you that it is spring. The trees are budding. +You can't see it, perhaps, from the kitchen-window or from your +work-table, but I, who go about all day, have noticed it. You know what +Byron says: + + March has its hares, and May must have its heroine." + +And so Dirty is accepted. + +But, when she calls, she has first to undergo a short quarantine, while +the mother of my little boy washes her and combs her hair thoroughly. + +Dirty does not like this, but the boy does. He looks on with +extraordinary interest and at once complains if there is a place that +has escaped the sponge. I can't make out what goes on within him on +these occasions. There is a good deal of cruelty in love; and he himself +hates to be washed. Perhaps he is rapt in fancies and wants to see his +sweetheart rise daily from the waves, like Venus Anadyomene. Perhaps it +is merely his sense of duty: last Friday, in cold blood, he allowed +Dirty to wait outside, on the step, for half an hour, until his mother +came home. + +Another of his joys is to see Dirty eat. + +I can quite understand that. Here, as at her toilet, there is something +worth looking at. The mother of my little boy and I would be glad too to +watch her, if there were any chance of giving Dirty her fill. But there +is none. At least, not with my income. + +When I see all that food disappear, without as much as a shade of +satisfaction coming into her eyes, I tremble for the young couple's +future. But he is cheerful and unconcerned. + +Of course, there are also clouds in their sky. + +A few days ago, they were sitting quietly together in the dining-room +and talking of their wedding. My little boy described what the house +would be like and the garden and the horses. Dirty made no remarks and +she had no grounds for doing so, for everything was particularly nice. +But, after that, things went wrong: + +"We shall have fourteen children," said the boy. + +"No," said Dirty. "We shall only have two: a boy and a girl." + +"I want to have fourteen." + +"I won't have more than two." + +"Fourteen." + +"Two." + +There was no coming to an agreement. My little boy was speechless at +Dirty's meanness. And Dirty pinched her lips together and nodded her +head defiantly. Then he burst into tears. + +I could have explained to him that Dirty, who sits down every day as the +seventh at the children's table at home, cannot look upon children with +his eyes, as things forming an essential part of every well-regulated +family, but must regard them rather as bandits who eat up other people's +food. But I did not feel entitled to discuss the young lady's domestic +circumstances unasked. + +One good thing about Dirty is that she is not dependent upon her family +nor they upon her. It has not yet happened that any inquiries have been +made after her, however long she remained with us. We know just where +she lives and what her father's name is. Nothing more. + +However, we notice in another way that our daughter-in-law is not +without relations. + +Whenever, for instance, we give her a pair of stockings or some other +article of clothing, it is always gone the next day; and so on until all +the six brothers and sisters have been supplied. Not till then do we +have the pleasure of seeing Dirty look neat. She has been so long +accustomed to going shares that she does so in every conceivable +circumstance. + +And I console the mother of my little boy by saying that, should he fall +out with Dirty, he can take one of the sisters and that, in this way, +nothing would be lost. + + + + +X + + +My little boy confides to me that he would like a pear. + +Now pears fall within his mother's province and I am sure that he has +had as many as he is entitled to. And so we are at once agreed that what +he wants is a wholly irrelevant, uncalled-for, delightful extra pear. + +Unfortunately, it also appears that the request has already been laid +before Mamma and met with a positive refusal. + +The situation is serious, but not hopeless. For I am a man who knows how +mean is the supply of pears to us poor wretched children of men and how +wonderful an extra pear tastes. + +And I am glad that my little boy did not give up all hope of the pear at +the first obstacle. I can see by the longing in his green eyes how big +the pear is and I reflect with lawful paternal pride that he will win +his girl and his position in life when their time comes. + +We now discuss the matter carefully. + +First comes the prospect of stomach-ache: + +"Never mind about that," says he. + +I quite agree with his view. + +Then perhaps Mother will be angry. + +No, Mother is never angry. She is sorry; and that is not nice. But then +we must see and make it up to her in another way. + +So we slink in and steal the pear. + +I put it to him whether, perhaps--when we have eaten the pear--we ought +to tell Mother. But that does not appeal to him: + +"Then I shan't get one this evening," he says. + +And when I suggest that, possibly, Mother might be impressed with such +audacious candour, he shakes his head decisively: + +"You don't know Mother," he says. + +So I, of course, have nothing to say. + +Shortly after this, the mother of my little boy and I are standing at +the window laughing at the story. + +We catch sight of him below, in the courtyard. + +He is sitting on the steps with his arm round little Dirty's neck. They +have shared the pear. Now they are both singing, marvellously out of +tune and with a disgustingly sentimental expression on their faces, a +song which Dirty knows: + + For riches are only a lo-oan from Heaven + And poverty is a reward. + +And we are overcome with a great sense of desolation. + +We want to make life green and pleasant for our little boy, to make his +eyes open wide to see it, his hands strong to grasp it. But we feel +powerless in the face of all the contentment and patience and +resignation that are preached from cellar to garret, in church and in +school: all those second-rate virtues, which may lighten an old man's +last few steps as he stumbles on towards the grave, but which are only +so many shabby lies for the young. + + + + +XI + + +Dirty is paying us a visit and my little boy is sitting at her feet. + +She has buried her fingers in her hair and is reading, reading +reading. . . . + +She is learning the Ten Commandments by heart. She stammers and repeats +herself, with eyes fixed in her head and a despairing mouth: + +"Thou shalt . . . Thou shalt not . . . Thou shalt . . ." + +The boy watches her with tender compassion. + +He has already learnt a couple of the commandments by listening to her +and helps her, now and then, with a word. Then he comes to me and asks, +anxiously: + +"Father, must Dirty do all that the Ten Commandments say?" + +"Yes." + +He sits down by her again. His heart is overflowing with pity, his eyes +are moist. She does not look at him, but plods on bravely: + +"Thou shalt . . . Thou shalt not . . ." + +"Father, when I grow big, must I also do all that the Ten Commandments +say?" + +"Ye-es." + +He looks at me in utter despair. Then he goes back to Dirty and listens, +but now he keeps his thoughts to himself. + +Suddenly, something seems to flash across his mind. + +He comes to me again, puts his arms on my knee and looks with his green +eyes firmly into mine: + +"Father, do you do all that the Ten Commandments say?" + +"Ye-e-es." + +He looks like a person whose last hope has escaped him. I would so much +like to help him; but what, in Heaven's name, can I do? + +Then he collects himself, shakes his head a little and says, with great +tears in his eyes: + +"Father, I don't believe that I can do all those things that the Ten +Commandments say." + +And I draw him to me and we cry together because life is so difficult, +while Dirty plods away like a good girl. + + + + +XII + + +This we all know, that sin came into the world by the law. + +Dirty's Ten Commandments have brought it to us. + +When she comes, she now always has Luther's terrible Little Catechism[1] +and Balslev's equally objectionable work with her. Her parents evidently +look upon it as most natural that she should also cultivate her soul at +our house. + +[Footnote 1: _Luther's Lille Katekismus_, the Lutheran catechism in +general use in Denmark.--A. T. de M.] + +Her copies of these two classics were not published yesterday. They are +probably heirlooms in Dirty's family. They are covered in thick brown +paper, which again is protected by a heavy layer of dirt against any +touch of clean fingers. They can be smelt at a distance. + +But my little boy is no snob. + +When Dirty has finished her studies--she always reads out aloud--he asks +her permission to turn over the pages of the works in which she finds +those strange words. He stares respectfully at the letters which he +cannot read. And then he asks questions. + +He asks Dirty, he asks the servant, he asks us. Before anyone suspects +it, he is at home in the whole field of theology. + +He knows that God is in Heaven, where all good people go to Him, while +the wicked are put down below in Hell. That God created the world in six +days and said that we must not do anything on Sundays. That God can do +everything and knows everything and sees everything. + +He often prays, creeps upstairs as high as he can go, so as to be nearer +Heaven, and shouts as loud as he can. The other day I found him at the +top of the folding-steps: + +"Dear God! You must please give us fine weather tomorrow, for we are +going to the wood." + +He says _Du_ to everybody except God and the grocer. + +He never compromises. + +The servant is laying the table; we have guests coming and we call her +attention to a little hole in the cloth: + +"I must lay it so that no one can see it," she says. + +"God will see it." + +"He is not coming this evening," says the blasphemous hussy. + +"Yes, He is everywhere," answers my little boy, severely. + +He looks after me in particular: + +"You mustn't say 'gad,' Father. Dirty's teacher says that people who say +'gad' go to Hell." + +"I shan't say it again," I reply, humbly. + +One Sunday morning, he finds me writing and upbraids me seriously. + +"My little boy," I say, distressfully, "I must work every day. If I do +nothing on Sunday, I do nothing on Monday either. If I do nothing on +Monday, I am idle on Tuesday too. And so on." + +He ponders; and I continue, with the courage of despair: + +"You must have noticed that Dirty wants a new catechism? The one she has +is dirty and old." + +He agrees to this. + +"She will never have one, you see," I say, emphatically. "Her father +rests so tremendously on Sunday that he is hardly able to do anything on +the other days. He never earns enough to buy a new catechism." + +I have won--this engagement. But the war is continued without cessation +of hostilities. + +The mother of my little boy and I are sitting in the twilight by his +bedside and softly talking about this. + +"What are we to do?" she asks. + +"We can do nothing?" I reply. "Dirty is right: God is everywhere. We +can't keep Him out. And if we could, for a time: what then? A day would +come perhaps when our little boy was ill or sad and the priests would +come to him with their God as a new and untried miraculous remedy and +bewilder his mind and his senses. Our little boy too will have to go +through Luther and Balslev and Assens and confirmation and all the rest +of it. Then this will become a commonplace to him; and one day he will +form his own views, as we have done." + +But, when he comes and asks how big God is, whether He is bigger than +the Round Tower, how far it is to Heaven, why the weather was not fine +on the day when he prayed so hard for it: then we fly from the face of +the Lord and hide like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. + +And we leave Dirty to explain. + + + + +XIII + + +My little boy has got a rival, whose name is Henrik, a popinjay who not +only is six years old, but has an unlimited supply of liquorice at his +disposal. And, to fill the measure of my little boy's bitterness, Henrik +is to go to the dancing-school; and I am, therefore, not surprised when +my little boy asks to be taught to dance, so that he may not be left +quite behind in the contest. + +"I don't advise you to do that," I say. "The dancing which you learn at +school is not pretty and does not play so great a part in love as you +imagine. I don't know how to dance; and many charming ladies used to +prefer me to the most accomplished ornaments of the ball-room. Besides, +you know, you are knock-kneed." + +And, to cheer him up, I sing a little song which we composed when we +were small and had a dog and did not think about women: + + See, my son, that little basset, + Running with his knock-kneed legs! + His own puppy, he can't catch it: + He'll fall down as sure as eggs! + Knock-kneed Billy! + Isn't he silly? + Silly Billy! + + +But poetry fails to comfort him. Dark is his face and desperate his +glance. And, when I see that the case is serious, I resolve to resort to +serious measures. + +I take him with me to a ball, a real ball, where people who have learnt +to dance go to enjoy themselves. It is difficult to keep him in a more +or less waking condition, but I succeed. + +We sit quietly in a corner and watch the merry throng. I say not a word, +but look at his wide-open eyes. + +"Father, why does that man jump like that, when he is so awfully hot?" + +"Yes; can you understand it?" + +"Why does that lady with her head on one side look so tired? . . . Why +does that fat woman hop about so funnily, Father? . . . Father, what +queer legs that man there has!" + +It rains questions and observations. We make jokes and laugh till the +tears come to our eyes. We whisper naughty things to each other and go +into a side-room and mimic a pair of crooked legs till we can't hold +ourselves for laughter. We sit and wait till a steam thrashing-machine +on its round comes past us; and we are fit to die when we hear it puff +and blow. + +We enjoy ourselves beyond measure. + +And we make a hit. + +The steam thrashing-machine and the crooked legs and the fat woman and +the hot gentleman and others crowd round us and admire the dear little +boy. We accept their praises, for we have agreed not to say what we +think to anybody, except to Mother, when we come home, and then, of +course, to Dirty. + +And we wink our eyes and enjoy our delightful fun until we fall asleep +and are driven home and put to bed. + +And then we have done with the dancing-school. + +My little boy paints in strong colours, for his Dirty's benefit, what +Henrik will look like when he dances. It is no use for that young man to +deny all that my little boy says and to execute different elegant steps. +I was prepared for this; and my little boy tells exultantly that this is +only something with which they lure stupid people at the start and that +it will certainly end with Henrik's getting very hot and hopping round +on crooked legs with a fat woman and a face of despair. + +In the meantime, of course, I do not forget that, if we pull down +without building up we shall end by landing ourselves in an unwholesome +scepticism. + +We therefore invent various dances, which my little boy executes in the +courtyard to Dirty's joy and to Henrik's most jealous envy. We point +emphatically to the fact that the dances are our own, that they are +composed only for the woman we love and performed only for her. + +There is, for instance, a dance with a stick, which my little boy +wields, while Henrik draws back. Another with a pair of new mittens for +Dirty. And, lastly, the liquorice dance, which expresses an +extraordinary contempt for that foodstuff. + +That Dirty should suck a stick of liquorice, which she has received from +Henrik, while enjoying her other admirer's satire, naturally staggers my +little boy. But I explain to him that that is because she is a woman and +that _that_ is a thing which can't be helped. + +What Bournonville[2] would say, if he could look down upon us from his +place in Heaven, I do not know. + +But I don't believe that he can. + +If he, up there, could see how people dance down here, he really would +not stay there. + +[Footnote 2: A famous French ballet-master who figured at the Copenhagen +Opera House in the eighteenth century.--A. T. de M.] + + + + +XIV + + +There is a battle royal and a great hullabaloo among the children in the +courtyard. + +I hear them shouting "Jew!" and I go to the window and see my little boy +in the front rank of the bandits, screaming, fighting with clenched +fists and without his cap. + +I sit down quietly to my work again, certain that he will appear before +long and ease his heart. + +And he comes directly after. + +He stands still, as is his way, by my side and says nothing. I steal a +glance at him: he is greatly excited and proud and glad, like one who +has fearlessly done his duty. + +"What fun you've been having down there!" + +"Oh," he says, modestly, "it was only a Jew boy whom we were licking." + +I jump up so quickly that I upset my chair: + +"A Jew boy? Were you licking him? What had he done?" + +"Nothing. . . ." + +His voice is not very certain, for I look so queer. + +And that is only the beginning. For now I snatch my hat and run out of +the door as fast as I can and shout: + +"Come . . . come . . . we must find him and beg his pardon!" + +My little boy hurries after me. He does not understand a word of it, but +he is terribly in earnest. We look in the courtyard, we shout and call. +We rush into the street and round the corner, so eager are we to come up +with him. Breathlessly, we ask three passers-by if they have not seen a +poor, ill-used Jew boy. + +All in vain: the Jew boy and all his persecutors are blown away into +space. + +So we go and sit up in my room again, the laboratory where our soul is +crystallized out of the big events of our little life. My forehead is +wrinkled and I drum disconsolately with my fingers on the table. The boy +has both his hands in his pockets and does not take his eyes from my +face. + +"Well," I say, decidedly, "there is nothing more to be done. I hope you +will meet that Jew boy one day, so that you can give him your hand and +ask him to forgive you. You must tell him that you did that only because +you were stupid. But if, another time, anyone does him any harm, I hope +you will help him and lick the other one as long as you can stir a +limb." + +I can see by my little boy's face that he is ready to do what I wish. +For he is still a mercenary, who does not ask under which flag, so long +as there is a battle and booty to follow. It is my duty to train him to +be a brave recruit, who will defend his fair mother-land, and so I +continue: + +"Let me tell you, the Jews are by way of being quite wonderful people. +You remember David, about whom Dirty reads at school: he was a Jew boy. +And the Child Jesus, Whom everybody worships and loves, although He died +two thousand years ago: He was a little Jew also." + +My little boy stands with his arms on my knee and I go on with my story. + +The old Hebrews rise before our eyes in all their splendour and power, +quite different from Dirty's Balslev. They ride on their camels in coats +of many colours and with long beards: Moses and Joseph and his brethren +and Samson and David and Saul. We hear wonderful stories. The walls of +Jericho fall at the sound of the trumpet. + +"And what next?" says my little boy, using the expression which he +employed when he was much smaller and which still comes to his lips +whenever he is carried away. + +We hear of the destruction of Jerusalem and how the Jews took their +little boys by the hand and wandered from place to place, scoffed at, +despised and ill-treated. How they were allowed to own neither house nor +land, but could only be merchants, and how the Christian robbers took +all the money which they had got together. How, nevertheless, they +remained true to their God and kept up their old sacred customs in the +midst of the strangers who hated and persecuted them. + +The whole day is devoted to the Jews. + +We look at old books on the shelves which I love best to read and which +are written by a Jew with a wonderful name, which a little boy can't +remember at all. We learn that the most famous man now living in Denmark +is a Jew. + +And, when evening comes and Mother sits down at the piano and sings the +song which Father loves above all other songs, it appears that the words +were written by one Jew and the melody composed by another. + +My little boy is hot and red when he falls to sleep that night. He turns +restlessly in bed and talks in his sleep. + +"He is a little feverish," says his mother. + +And I bend down and kiss his forehead and answer, calmly: + +"That is not surprising. Today I have vaccinated him against the meanest +of all mean and vulgar diseases." + + + + +XV + + +We are staying in the country, a long way out, where the real country +is. + +Cows and horses, pigs and sheep, a beautiful dog and hens and ducks form +our circle of acquaintances. In addition to these, there are of course +the two-legged beings who own and look after the four-legged ones and +who, in my little boy's eyes, belong to quite the same kind. + +The great sea lies at the foot of the slope. Ships float in the distance +and have nothing to say to us. The sun burns us and bronzes us. We eat +like thrashers, sleep like guinea-pigs and wake like larks. The only +real sorrow that we have suffered is that we were not allowed to have +our breeches made with a flap at the side, like the old wood-cutter's. + +Presently, it happens that, for better or worse, we get neighbours. + +They are regular Copenhageners. They were prepared not to find electric +light in the farm-house; but, if they had known that there was no water +in the kitchen, God knows they would not have come. They trudge through +the clover as though it were mire and are sorry to find so few +cornflowers in the rye. A cow going loose along the roads fills them +with a terror which might easily have satisfied a royal tiger. + +The pearl of the family is Erna. + +Erna is five years old; her very small face is pale green, with watery +blue eyes and yellow curls. She is richly and gaily dressed in a broad +and slovenly sash, daintily-embroidered pantalets, short open-work socks +and patent-leather shoes. She falls if she but moves a foot, for she is +used only to gliding over polished floors or asphalt. + +I at once perceive that my little boy's eyes have seen a woman. + +He has seen the woman that comes to us all at one time or another and +turns our heads with her rustling silks and her glossy hair and wears +her soul in her skirts and our poor hearts under her heel. + +"Now comes the perilous moment for Dirty," I say to the mother of my +little boy. + +This time it is my little boy's turn to be superior. + +He knows the business thoroughly and explains it all to Erna. When he +worries the horse, she trembles, impressed with his courage and +manliness. When she has a fit of terror at the sight of a hen, he is +charmed with her delicacy. He knows the way to the smith's, he dares to +roll down the high slope, he chivalrously carries her ridiculous little +cape. + +Altogether, there is no doubt as to the condition of his heart. And, +while Erna's family apparently favour the position--for which may the +devil take them!--I must needs wait with resignation like one who knows +that love is every man's master. + +One morning he proposes. + +He is sitting with his beloved on the lawn. Close to them, her aunt is +nursing her chlorosis under a red parasol and with a novel in her bony +lap. Up in the balcony above sit I, as Providence, and see everything, +myself unseen. + +"You shall be my sweetheart," says my little boy. + +"Yes," says Erna. + +"I have a sweetheart already in Copenhagen," he says, proudly. + +This communication naturally by no means lowers Erna's suitor in her +eyes. But it immediately arouses all Auntie's moral instincts: + +"If you have a sweetheart, you must be true to her." + +"Erna shall be my sweetheart." + +Auntie turns her eyes up to Heaven: + +"Listen, child," she says. "You're a very naughty boy. If you have given +Dir--Dir----" + +"Dirty," says the boy. + +"Well, that's an extraordinary name! But, if you have given her your +word, you must keep it till you die. Else you'll never, never be happy." + +My little boy understands not a word and answers not a word. Erna +begins to cry at the prospect that this good match may not come off. +But I bend down over the baluster and raise my hat: + +"I beg your pardon, Froeken. Was it not you who jilted Hr. Petersen? . . ." + +"Good heavens! . . ." + +She packs up her chlorosis and disappears with Erna, mumbling something +about like father, like son, and goodness knows what. + +Presently, my little boy comes up to me and stands and hangs about. + +"Where has Erna gone to?" I ask my little boy. + +"She mustn't go out," he says, dejectedly. + +He puts his hands in his pockets and looks straight before him. + +"Father," he says, "can't you have two sweethearts?" + +The question comes quite unexpectedly and, at the moment, I don't know +what to answer. + +"Well?" says the mother of my little boy, amiably, and looks up from her +newspaper. + +And I pull my waistcoat down and my collar up: + +"Yes," I say, firmly. "You can. But it is wrong. It leads to more fuss +and unpleasantness than you can possibly conceive." + +A silence. + +"Are you so fond of Erna?" asks our mother. + +"Yes." + +"Do you want to marry her?" + +"Yes." + +I get up and rub my hands: + +"Then the thing is settled," I say. "We'll write to Dirty and give her +notice. There's nothing else to be done. I will write now and you can +give the letter yourself to the postman, when he comes this afternoon. +If you take my advice, you will make her a present of your ball. Then +she will not be so much upset." + +"She can have my gold-fish too, if she likes," says the boy. + +"Excellent, excellent. We will give her the gold-fish. Then she will +really have nothing in the world to complain of." + +My little boy goes away. But, presently, he returns: + +"Father, have you written the letter to Dirty?" + +"Not yet, my boy. There is time enough. I sha'n't forget it." + +"Father, I am so fond of Dirty." + +"She was certainly a dear little girl." + +A silence. + +"Father, I am also so fond of Erna." + +We look at each other. This is no joke: + +"Perhaps we had better wait with the letter till tomorrow," I say. "Or +perhaps it would be best if we talked to Dirty ourselves, when we get +back to town." + +We both ponder over the matter and really don't know what to do. + +Then my eyes surprise an indescribable smile on our mother's face. All a +woman's incapacity to understand man's honesty is contained within that +smile and I resent it greatly: + +"Come," I say and give my hand to my little boy. "Let us go." + +And we go to a place we know of, far away behind the hedge, where we lie +on our backs and look up at the blue sky and talk together sensibly, as +two gentlemen should. + + + + +XVI + + +My little boy is to go to school. + +We can't keep him at home any longer, says his mother. He himself is +glad to go, of course, because he does not know what school is. + +I know what it is and I know also that there is no escape for him, that +he must go. But I am sick at heart. All that is good within me revolts +against the inevitable. + +So we go for our last morning walk, along the road where something +wonderful has always happened to us. It looks to me as if the trees have +crape wound round their tops and the birds sing in a minor key and the +people stare at me with earnest and sympathetic eyes. + +But my little boy sees nothing. He is only excited at the prospect. He +talks and asks questions without stopping. + +We sit down by the edge of our usual ditch--alas, that ditch! + +And suddenly my heart triumphs over my understanding. The voice of my +clear conscience penetrates through the whole well-trained and +harmonious choir which is to give the concert; and it sings its solo in +the ears of my little boy: + +"I just want to tell you that school is a horrid place," I say. "You can +have no conception of what you will have to put up with there. They will +tell you that two and two are four. . . ." + +"Mother has taught me that already," says he, blithely. + +"Yes, but that is wrong, you poor wretch!" I cry. "Two and two are never +four, or only very seldom. And that's not all. They will try to make you +believe that Teheran is the capital of Persia and that Mont Blanc is +15,781 feet high and you will take them at their word. But I tell you +that both Teheran and Persia are nothing at all, an empty sound, a +stupid joke. And Mont Blanc is not half as big as the mound in the +tallow-chandler's back-garden. And listen: you will never have any more +time to play in the courtyard with Einar. When he shouts to you to come +out, you'll have to sit and read about a lot of horrible old kings who +have been dead for hundreds and hundreds of years, if they ever existed +at all, which I, for my part, simply don't believe." + +My little boy does not understand me. But he sees that I am sad and puts +his hand in mine: + +"Mother says that you must go to school to become a clever boy," he +says. "Mother says that Einar is ever so much too small and stupid to go +to school." + +I bow my head and nod and say nothing. + +That is past. + +And I take him to school and see how he storms up the steps without so +much as turning his head to look back at me. + + + + +XVII + + +Here ends this book about my little boy. + +What more can there be to tell? + +He is no longer mine. I have handed him over to society. Hr. Petersen, +candidate in letters, Hr. Nielsen, student of theology, and Froeken +Hansen, certificated teacher, will now set their distinguished example +before him for five hours daily. He will form himself in their likeness. +Their spirit hovers over him at school: he brings it home with him, it +overshadows him when he is learning the lessons which they zealously +mete out to him. + +I don't know these people. But I pay them. + +I, who have had a hard fight to keep my thoughts free and my limbs +unrestrained and who have not retired from the fight without deep wounds +of which I am reminded when the weather changes, I have, of my own free +will, brought him to the institution for maiming human beings. I, who at +times have soared to peaks that were my own, because the other birds +dared not follow me, have myself brought him to the place where wings +are clipped for flying respectably, with the flock. + +"There was nothing else to be done," says the mother of my little boy. + +"Really?" I reply, bitterly. "Was there nothing else to be done? But +suppose that I had put by some money, so that I could have saved Messrs. +Petersen and Nielsen and Froeken Hansen their trouble and employed my day +in myself opening out lands for that little traveller whom I myself have +brought into the land? Suppose that I had looked round the world for +people with small boys who think as I do and that we had taken upon us +to bring up these young animals so that they kept sight of horns and +tails and fairy-tales?" + +"Yes," she says. + +"Small boys have a bad time of it, you know." + +"They had a worse time of it in the old days." + +"That is a poor comfort. And it can become worse again. The world is +full of parents and teachers who shake their foolish heads and turn up +their old eyes and cross their flat chests with horror at the depravity +of youth: children are so disobedient, so naughty, so self-willed and +talk so disrespectfully to their elders! . . . And what do we do, we who +know better?" + +"We do what we can." + +But I walk about the room, more and more indignant and ashamed of the +pitiful part which I am playing: + +"Do you remember, a little while ago, he came to me and said that he +longed so for the country and asked if we couldn't go there for a +little? There were horses and cows and green fields to be read in his +eyes. Well, I couldn't leave my work. And I couldn't afford it. So I +treated him to a shabby and high-class sermon about the tailor to whom I +owed money. Don't you understand that I let my little boy do _my_ work, +that I let him pay _my_ debt? . . ." I bend down over her and say +earnestly, "You must know; do please tell me--God help me, I do not +know--if I ought not rather to have paid my debt to the boy and cheated +the other?" + +"You know quite well," she says. + +She says it in such a way and looks at me with two such sensible eyes +and is so strong and so true that I suddenly think things look quite +well for our little boy; and I become restful and cheerful like herself: + +"Let Petersen and Nielsen and Hansen look out!" I say. "My little boy, +for what I care, may take from them all the English and geography and +history that he can. But they shall throw no dust in his eyes. I shall +keep him awake and we shall have great fun and find them out." + +"And I shall help him with his English and geography and history," says +she. + + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE + +Minor variations in spelling and punctuation have been preserved. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Little Boy, by Carl Ewald + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY LITTLE BOY *** + +***** This file should be named 35543.txt or 35543.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/5/4/35543/ + +Produced by Barbara Watson, Mark Akrigg and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at +http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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