Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/714

702 Petershoï, and be silent, almost sullen — never failing to remark and return the salutation of passers-by, however — for a time; then he would begin to poke about on the ground with his invariable stick, looking exactly like an old bone-picker, until he had found a bone, a pebble, a twig, a bit of rag — any unconsidered trifle of the wayside, when he would stand still, scratching his left cheek, and look fixedly at the thing he had in the palm of his hand. After a little, he would call his companion up with a gesture and begin, — "Once in a fair land there lived," etc, and trace the bit of bone back to the animal it had belonged to, and to its brief life in the pastures, the twig to its forest-kin, the pebble to its countless fellows on the illimitable shore in the morning of time, the rag to its threads in the loom and its share in a court costume or an infant's robe, until one began to wonder whether it could be fancy, or were all true. He loved children, storks, and flowers with something approaching passion, of which, otherwise, there was no trace in him. To children he yielded place, which no "big people" ever expected from him. He would bear interruption by a child, and patiently answer its questions, always becoming more childlike himself in doing so; he understood children and they understood him, after the occult fashion of the higher animals, and he might be commonly seen built up in a bower of children, with one on each foot — where there was plenty of room for it — and an outer hedge of them as the less privileged audience. To them he was "dear And'sen," too, and a play-fellow, also a confidant and helper. Many a tooth has been extracted, many a dose of medicine administered, under the influence of a story from Andersen; and the Copenhagen children's favourite toys are the personages of his stories made in terra-cotta. The chief favourite is "Ole Luckoï," who comes to visit the little ones in their sleep — never until they are fast asleep, though — and whispers to them pleasant dreams of the coming of Santa Claus. "Ole Luckoï" is a comical little fellow, with two umbrellas tucked under his arm, one, to be held over the heads of good children, bringing good dreams; the other to be held over the heads of children who have thought or done "what the good God does not like," bringing dreams of discomfiture. Andersen never invented a story or created a personage to frighten a child, to produce any feeling of suspense or repulsion; Luckoï was not to be waited for in the dark, with trembling limbs and beating heart; he could never be seen, and he always knew, when he trod upon the stair, whether the child was really sleeping. In every order his descriptions, and the accessories of his stories, impromptu as they always were, were wonderfully accurate, and people wondered, for he never studied botany or any other science from books, yet when he gave a soul and a costume to a flower, he never departed from its colour or its character, — for instance, in his wonderful story of the despotic father-carrot, and his lovely daughter, in her pale yellow gown, with the feathery green necklace. This story he improvised to reward a little girl who had obeyed her mother's injunctions that she should eat a tough old carrot which was in her plate of soup. To get him on the subject of storks was whimsically pleasant. He had so closely studied a colony of these birds, that every one had a character and a history for him; stork family-life, stork heart, stork brain, every reality and every fancy that even his imagination could bring out, would reward the questioner as to stork character and qualities, "What a pity it is Andersen cannot have a stork-wife!" was more than once said. All things animate, and the things we call inanimate responded to the call of his delightful fancy, and he revelled in his own power. That it could have a rival in attractiveness, or that it ever could bore others, no more occurred to him than it occurs to an only child to suspect the existence of a rival with its parents. Wherever he was, he was not only first, but all, as a matter of course. The "name-day" of the "English rose," as he called her, befel while she was in the same house with the poet, and several other guests were also there. After the pretty Danish fashion, her hostess gave her a name-fete of which the rose was queen, with the right to choose a king for the day. Her privileges were explained, and she prepared to declare her choice, but she had reckoned without "dear And'sen," who greeted her at once with, — "I — I — yes, And'sen himself will be your choice; you shall say that And'sen was your name-day king," — and so it had to be. He never left her side all day; he was as constant as one of his own storks, and his entire conviction of her proud content was so simple and so manifest, that 