Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/244

212 tried it, but I know that if you pour only a small drop of it on the floor, you have at once before you a beautiful woodland lake, with water-lilies, flowering rushes, and wild mint. You need pour only two drops upon an old exercise-book, even on those from the lowest class in the school, and the book becomes a sentimental comedy which is good enough to be performed, and over which people would be sure to fall asleep, so strong is the perfume of it. It is supposed to be out of compliment to me that the label on the bottle bears the inscription, 'The Brew of the Woman from the Marsh.'

"Here stands the bottle of 'Scandal." It looks as if there were only dirty water in it; and it is dirty water, but with effervescing powder of town gossip, three ounces of falsehood, and two grains of truth, stirred about with a birch-twig, not taken from a rod that has been in pickle or fresh from the bleeding back of sinners; no, taken right from the broom which has been used to sweep the gutter with.

"Here is the bottle with 'Pious Poetry,' set to psalm tunes. Every drop has a ring about it, like the slamming of the gates of hell, and has been prepared from the blood and sweat of the penitent. Some say it is only the gall of the dove, but doves are the gentlest of creatures; they have no gall, people say who do not know their natural history.

"Here stood the bottle of all bottles, — it took up half the cupboard, — the bottle with 'Stories of Every-dav Life.' It was covered over both with bladder and hogskin, for it would n't do to lose any of its strength. Every nation could here get its own soup; it all depended on how you turned and shifted the bottle. Here was old German blood-soup, with robber-dumplings; also thin cottagers' -soup, with real court officials, who lay like carrots at the bottom, while philosophical fat floated on the top. There was English governess-soup, and the French pótage à la coq, made from cocks' legs and sparrows' eggs, in Danish called cancan-soup; but the best of all the soups was Copenhagen-soup. That's what the family said.

"Here, in a champagne-bottle, 'Tragedy' used to stand; it could go off with grand effect, and that was necessary. 'Comedy' looked just like fine sand to throw in people's eyes — that is to say, the refined comedy; the coarser was also to be found in bottle, but consisted only of play-bills of future productions, the most attractive of which were the titles of the pieces. There were capital titles for comedies, such as: 'Dare You Spit on the Watchworks?' 'One On the Jaw,' 'The Darling Ass,' and 'She is Dead Drunk.'" The man stood musing, but the thoughts of the woman from the marsh went further; she wanted to put an end to it all.

"I suppose you have seen enough now of the medicine-chest," she said, "now you know what there is in it; but there is something more important that you ought to know, and which you don't know — the will-o'-the-wisps are in town. That is of far greater importance than