Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/358

326 newspaper. It was a foolish joke on the part of the storm. It did not recollect that a newspaper writer is not at all to be triHed with. He is king in his own paper and in his own opinion.

The weathercock flew across to the neighbor's roof opposite, and there it stood, the very picture of blackest malice, said the neighbors. The cooper's barrel got fixed under a sign, "Ladies' trimmings."

The bill of fare at the cookshop, which hung near the door in a heavy frame, was pitched by the storm above the entrance of the theater, which nobody went to. It was a funny bill: "Horse-radish soup and stuffed cabbage." But then plenty of people came to the theater.

The fox-skin of the furridr, the honorable sign of his trade, was shifted to the bell-pull of a young man who always went to early church service, and who looked like a shut-down umbrella, and was always searching for truth, and was a "model young man," as his aunt said.

The inscription, "Institute for Higher Education," was blown over to the billiard club, and the institute itself got another sign-board in exchange: "Children reared here by the bottle." This was not at all witty, only rude ; but the storm had done it, and one cannot control the storm.

It was a terrible night, and in the morning — just fancy! — nearly all the sign-boards in the town had been shifted, and at some places it was done with such malice that grandfather would not talk about it; but, I noticed, he laughed to himself, and it is possible he was up to some mischief.

The unft)rtunate inhabitants of the big town, and especially the strangers, went wrong altogether when they tried to find people. Nor could they do otherwise, since they went by the sign-boards. Some people were going to a very solemn meeting of elders, where most important things were to be settled, and they found themselves in a noisy boys' school, where the boys were just about to jump on the tables.

There were people who mistook the church for the theater, and that was really too terrible !

Such a storm has never raged in our days. It is only grandfiither who has experienced such a one, and that was when he was quite a little bt)y. Such a storm may not occur in our time, but perhaps it may in that of our grandchildren, and we can only hope and pray that they will keep indoors while the storm is shifting the sign-boards.