the bell in the breast of the young man was heard in countries where
his feet had never wandered. The tones went forth over the wide
ocean to every part of the round world.
We will now follow the career of the old bell. It was, as we
have said, carried far away from Marbach and sold as old copper;
then sent to Bavaria to be melted down in a furnace. And then what
happened?
In the royal city of Bavaria, many years after the bell had been
removed from the tower and melted down, some metal was required for
a monument in honor of one of the most celebrated characters which a
German people or a German land could produce. And now we see how
wonderfully things are ordered. Strange things sometimes happen in
this world.
In Denmark, in one of those green islands where the foliage of the
beech-woods rustles in the wind, and where many Huns' graves may be
seen, was another poor boy born. He wore wooden shoes, and when his
father worked in a ship-yard, the boy, wrapped up in an old worn-out
shawl, carried his dinner to him every day. This poor child was now
the pride of his country; for the sculptured marble, the work of his
hands, had astonished the world.* To him was offered the honor of
forming from the clay, a model of the figure of him whose name,
"John Christopher Frederick," had been written by his father in the
Bible. The bust was cast in bronze, and part of the metal used for
this purpose was the old church bell, whose tones had died away from
the memory of those at home and elsewhere. The metal, glowing with
heat, flowed into the mould, and formed the head and bust of the
statue which was unveiled in the square in front of the old castle.
The statue represented in living, breathing reality, the form of him
who was born in poverty, the boy from Marbach, the pupil of the
military school, the fugitive who struggled against poverty and
oppression, from the outer world; Germany's great and immortal poet,
who sung of Switzerland's deliverer, William Tell, and of the
heaven-inspired Maid of Orleans.
* The Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen.
It was a beautiful sunny day; flags were waving from tower and
roof in royal Stuttgart, and the church bells were ringing a joyous
peal. One bell was silent; but it was illuminated by the bright
sunshine which streamed from the head and bust of the renowned figure,
of which it formed a part. On this day, just one hundred years had
passed since the day on which the chiming of the old church bell at
Marbach had filled the mother's heart with trust and joy- the day on
which her child was born in poverty, and in a humble home; the same
who, in after-years, became rich, became the noble woman-hearted poet,
a blessing to the world- the glorious, the sublime, the immortal bard,
John Christoper Frederick Schiller!
THE END
.
1872
FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
THE OLD GRAVE-STONE
by Hans Christian Andersen
IN a house, with a large courtyard, in a provincial town, at
that time of the year in which people say the evenings are growing
longer, a family circle were gathered together at their old home. A
lamp burned on the table, although the weather was mild and warm,
and the long curtains hung down before the open windows, and without
the moon shone brightly in the dark-blue sky.
But they were not talking of the moon, but of a large, old stone
that lay below in the courtyard not very far from the kitchen door.
The maids often laid the clean copper saucepans and kitchen vessels on
this stone, that they might dry in the sun, and the children were fond
of playing on it. It was, in fact, an old grave-stone.
"Yes," said the master of the house, "I believe the stone came
from the graveyard of the old church of the convent which was pulled
down, and the pulpit, the monuments, and the grave-stones sold. My
father bought the latter; most of them were cut in two and used for
paving-stones, but that one stone was preserved whole, and laid in the
courtyard."
"Any one can see that it is a grave-stone," said the eldest of the
children; "the representation of an hour-glass and part of the
figure of an angel can still be traced, but the inscription beneath is
quite worn out, excepting the name 'Preben,' and a large 'S' close
by it, and a little farther down the name of 'Martha' can be easily
read. But nothing more, and even that cannot be seen unless it has
been raining, or when we have washed the stone."
"Dear me! how singular. Why that must be the grave-stone of Preben
Schwane and his wife."
The old man who said this looked old enough to be the
grandfather of all present in the room.
"Yes," he continued, "these people were among the last who were
buried in the churchyard of the old convent. They were a very worthy
old couple, I can remember them well in the days of my boyhood.
Every one knew them, and they were esteemed by all. They were the
oldest residents in the town, and people said they possessed a ton
of gold, yet they were always very plainly dressed, in the coarsest
stuff, but with linen of the purest whiteness. Preben and Martha
were a fine old couple, and when they both sat on the bench, at the
top of the steep stone steps, in front of their house, with the
branches of the linden-tree waving above them, and nodded in a gentle,
friendly way to passers by, it really made one feel quite happy.
They were very good to the poor; they fed them and clothed them, and
in their benevolence there was judgment as well as true
Christianity. The old woman died first; that day is still quite
vividly before my eyes. I was a little boy, and had accompanied my
father to the old man's house. Martha had fallen into the sleep of
death just as we arrived there. The corpse lay in a bedroom, near to
the one in which we sat, and the old man was in great distress and
weeping like a child. He spoke to my father, and to a few neighbors
who were there, of how lonely he should feel now she was gone, and how
good and true she, his dead wife, had been during the number of
years that they had passed through life together, and how they had
become acquainted, and learnt to love each other. I was, as I have
said, a boy, and only stood by and listened to what the others said;
but it filled me with a strange emotion to listen to the old man,
and to watch how the color rose in his cheeks as he spoke of the
days of their courtship, of how beautiful she was, and how many little
tricks he had been guilty of, that he might meet her. And then he
talked of his wedding-day; and his eyes brightened, and he seemed to
be carried back, by his words, to that joyful time. And yet there
she was, lying in the next room, dead- an old woman, and he was an old
man, speaking of the days of hope, long passed away. Ah, well, so it
is; then I was but a child, and now I am old, as old as Preben Schwane
then was. Time passes away, and all things changed. I can remember
quite well the day on which she was buried, and how Old Preben
walked close behind the coffin.
"A few years before this time the old couple had had their
grave-stone prepared, with an inscription and their names, but not the
date. In the evening the stone was taken to the churchyard, and laid
on the grave. A year later it was taken up, that Old Preben might be
laid by the side of his wife. They did not leave behind them wealth,
they left behind them far less than people had believed they
possessed; what there was went to families distantly related to
them, of whom, till then, no one had ever heard. The old house, with
its balcony of wickerwork, and the bench at the top of the high steps,
under the lime-tree, was considered, by the road-inspectors, too old
and rotten to be left standing. Afterwards, when the same fate
befell the convent church, and the graveyard was destroyed, the
grave-stone of Preben and Martha, like everything else, was sold to
whoever would buy it. And so it happened that this stone was not cut
in two as many others had been, but now lies in the courtyard below, a
scouring block for the maids, and a playground for the children. The
paved street now passes over the resting place of Old Preben and his
wife; no one thinks of them any more now."
And the old man who had spoken of all this shook his head
mournfully, and said, "Forgotten! Ah, yes, everything will be
forgotten!" And then the conversation turned on other matters.
But the youngest child in the room, a boy, with large, earnest
eyes, mounted upon a chair behind the window curtains, and looked
out into the yard, where the moon was pouring a flood of light on
the old gravestone,- the stone that had always appeared to him so dull
and flat, but which lay there now like a great leaf out of a book of
history. All that the boy had heard of Old Preben and his wife
seemed clearly defined on the stone, and as he gazed on it, and
glanced at the clear, bright moon shining in the pure air, it was as
if the light of God's countenance beamed over His beautiful world.
"Forgotten! Everything will be forgotten!" still echoed through
the room, and in the same moment an invisible spirit whispered to
the heart of the boy, "Preserve carefully the seed that has been
entrusted to thee, that it may grow and thrive. Guard it well. Through
thee, my child, shall the obliterated inscription on the old,
weather-beaten grave-stone go forth to future generations in clear,
golden characters. The old pair shall again wander through the streets
arm-in-arm, or sit with their fresh, healthy cheeks on the bench under
the lime-tree, and smile and nod at rich and poor. The seed of this
hour shall ripen in the course of years into a beautiful poem. The
beautiful and the good are never forgotten, they live always in
story or in song."
THE END
.
1872
FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
THE OLD HOUSE
by Hans Christian Andersen
A VERY old house stood once in a street with several that were
quite new and clean. The date of its erection had been carved on one
of the beams, and surrounded by scrolls formed of tulips and
hop-tendrils; by this date it could be seen that the old house was
nearly three hundred years old. Verses too were written over the
windows in old-fashioned letters, and grotesque faces, curiously
carved, grinned at you from under the cornices. One story projected
a long way over the other, and under the roof ran a leaden gutter,
with a dragon's head at the end. The rain was intended to pour out
at the dragon's mouth, but it ran out of his body instead, for there
was a hole in the gutter. The other houses in the street were new
and well built, with large window panes and smooth walls. Any one
could see they had nothing to do with the old house. Perhaps they
thought, "How long will that heap of rubbish remain here to be a
disgrace to the whole street. The parapet projects so far forward that
no one can see out of our windows what is going on in that
direction. The stairs are as broad as the staircase of a castle, and
as steep as if they led to a church-tower. The iron railing looks like
the gate of a cemetery, and there are brass knobs upon it. It is
really too ridiculous."
Opposite to the old house were more nice new houses, which had
just the same opinion as their neighbors.
At the window of one of them sat a little boy with fresh rosy
cheeks, and clear sparkling eyes, who was very fond of the old
house, in sunshine or in moonlight. He would sit and look at the
wall from which the plaster had in some places fallen off, and fancy
all sorts of scenes which had been in former times. How the street
must have looked when the houses had all gable roofs, open staircases,
and gutters with dragons at the spout. He could even see soldiers
walking about with halberds. Certainly it was a very good house to
look at for amusement.
An old man lived in it, who wore knee-breeches, a coat with
large brass buttons, and a wig, which any one could see was a real
wig. Every morning an old man came to clean the rooms, and to wait
upon him, otherwise the old man in the knee-breeches would have been
quite alone in the house. Sometimes he came to one of the windows
and looked out; then the little boy nodded to him, and the old man
nodded back again, till they became acquainted, and were friends,
although they had never spoken to each other; but that was of no
consequence.
The little boy one day heard his parents say, "The old man
opposite is very well off, but is terribly lonely." The next Sunday
morning the little boy wrapped something in a piece of paper and
took it to the door of the old house, and said to the attendant who
waited upon the old man, "Will you please give this from me to the
gentleman who lives here; I have two tin soldiers, and this is one
of them, and he shall have it, because I know he is terribly lonely."
And the old attendant nodded and looked very pleased, and then
he carried the tin soldier into the house.
Afterwards he was sent over to ask the little boy if he would
not like to pay a visit himself. His parents gave him permission,
and so it was that he gained admission to the old house.
The brassy knobs on the railings shone more brightly than ever, as
if they had been polished on account of his visit; and on the door
were carved trumpeters standing in tulips, and it seemed as if they
were blowing with all their might, their cheeks were so puffed out.
"Tanta-ra-ra, the little boy is coming; Tanta-ra-ra, the little boy is
coming."
Then the door opened. All round the hall hung old portraits of
knights in armor, and ladies in silk gowns; and the armor rattled, and
