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+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: 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:
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