Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/117



AUNTY TOOTHACHE

HERE did we get this story?

Would you like to know?

We got it from the tub in which the waste paper is kept.

Many a good and rare old book has found its way to the butterman's and the grocer's, not to be read, but to be used as packing paper for starch and coffee, or to wrap up salted herrings, butter, and cheese. Manuscripts and letters also find their way to the tub.

We often throw into the waste-paper tub what ought not to go there.

I know a grocer's assistant, the son of a butterman; he has risen from serving in the cellar to serving in the front shop, and is a well-read person, his reading consisting of the matter, printed and written, found on the paper he used for packing. He has an interesting collection; and in this are to be found many important official documents from the waste-paper baskets of several busy and absent-minded officials, a few confidential letters from one lady friend to another—bits of scandal which were to go no further, and were not to be mentioned by any one. He is a living salvage-institution for not an inconsiderable portion of our literature, and his collection covers a wide field; he has the run of his parents' shop and that of his present master, and has there saved many a book, or leaves of a book, well worth reading more than once.

He has shown me his collection of printed and written matter from the waste-paper tub; the most valuable has come from the butterman's. I noticed a couple of leaves from a large exercise book; the unusually clear and neat handwriting attracted my attention at once.

"That's what the student wrote," he said; "the student who lived opposite here and died about a month ago. One can see he must have suffered terribly from toothache. It is very interesting reading. This is only part of what he wrote; there was a whole book and more besides; my parents gave the student's landlady half a pound of soft soap for it. This is all I have been able to save."

I borrowed it, I read it, and now I give it to the world. The title was: 85