Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/17

Rh oftener, and he was also visited frequently by men and women of high position. Not only were his last days brightened by these attentions, but from his own hopeful and poetic character.

Days passed and as he grew weaker he was greatly comforted by the tender care that surrounded him, and while talking with his visitors he would often cut out and paste together a little figure in which the poetic art would show itself, even as in his fairy tales the charm of the characters introduced would represent his own poetic imagination.



Hans Christian Andersen died August 4th, 1875, at the age of 70. He had on that day been sleeping peacefully for some hours, and at about eleven o’clock at night Frau Melchior left the bedside for a moment, and