Page:The Garden of Romance - 1897.djvu/236

224 was this that they chiefly sold, so that the German clerk in Denmark was called a "pepper dealer." Before they left home they had to promise that they would not marry while they were away; many of them, too, were very old, and they had to look after themselves, find for themselves, and light their own fires, if they had any; so it was that some of them grew such queer old fellows, with their own peculiar thoughts and ways; and it is because of them that men who grow old without having married are called "Pebersvend," or "Pepper-dealers." All this can be seen and understood in this story.

People make fun of the pepper-dealers, bidding them go put their nightcaps on, pull them down over their eyes, and go to bed—

Yes, that is what they sing about them! They laugh at the pepper-dealer and his nightcap, just because they know nothing about either one or the other. Alas! it is a nightcap no one need wish for! And why so? Well, listen, and you shall hear.

In the "Street of Small Houses," in the old times, there was no pavement; people stumbled out of one hole into another, as though it were a dirty cart-track, and it was very narrow. The booths stood close beside each other, and with so little distance between the two rows, that in the summer time they stretched a sail from one side of the street to the other, and then the air was more full than ever of the spicy smells of pepper and saffron and ginger.