Fairy Tales (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Hans Christian Andersen

  You think? No, beg pardon, what?

  You think it will end up in naught?

  You surely know it’s merely ring-a-ding.

  I’ll not say more, dear honored gathering.

  And let you have your own view of this thing.

  The poem was superbly delivered and was very well received. Among the audience was the intern from the hospital, who seemed to have forgotten his adventure of the night before. He was wearing the galoshes since no one had claimed them, and since the street was muddy, they were useful to him.

  He liked the poem.

  He was very taken with the notion and would really have liked to have such glasses. Maybe if they were used correctly, you could look right into people’s hearts. That was really more interesting, he thought, than to find out what would happen next year. After all, you’ll find that out, but never the other. “Imagine if one could look into the hearts of that row of ladies and gentlemen there in the first row. There would have to be some kind of opening, a kind of shop; how my eyes would go shopping then! In that lady over there I would most likely find a dress shop. At that one over there—the store is empty, but it needs to be cleaned out. But there are some well established shops too! Well, well,” he sighed. “I know one in which everything is of the best, but there is already a clerk there, and he is the only thing wrong with the whole store! Some of them would call out, ‘Please come in.’ Oh, I wish I could go in, like a lovely little thought right through their hearts.”

  See, that was enough for the galoshes. The intern shrunk together and began a most unusual trip right through the hearts of the audience in the front row. The first heart he passed through was a woman’s, but he thought at once that he was at the Orthopedic Institute, which is what you call those places where doctors take off growths to help people straighten their backs. He was in the room where the plaster casts of the deformed limbs were hanging on the walls. The difference was that at the Institute they were cast when the patients come in, but here in this heart they were preserved as the healed patients went out. The casts of the physical and mental flaws of friends were preserved here.

  Then he quickly passed into another woman’s heart, but this one seemed to him like a big, holy church. The white dove of innocence was fluttering over the high altar, and he would have sunk to his knees here, but he had to hurry into the next heart. He could still hear the organ music, and he felt that he had become a new and better person. He did not feel unworthy to set foot in the next shrine which was a poor garret with a sick mother, but God’s warm sun was shining through the open window. Lovely roses were nodding from the little wooden crate by the roof, and two sky-blue birds were singing about childhood’s joy, while the sick mother prayed for blessings for her daughter.

  Then he crept on his hands and feet through an overfilled butcher shop. All he saw was meat and more meat. This was the heart of a rich, respectable man, whose name you would know from the newspaper.

  Next he was in the heart of the rich man’s wife. It was an old, run-down pigeon coop. The husband’s picture was the weather vane and was connected to the doors, and these opened and closed as the man moved.

  Then he quickly passed into another woman’s heart, but this one seemed to him like a big, holy church.

  Then he came into a room of mirrors like the one in Rosenborg Castle, but here the mirrors enlarged objects to a great extent. In the middle of the floor sat, like the Dali Lama, the person’s insignificant self, amazed to see its own greatness.

  After that he thought he was in a cramped needle case full of sharp needles. This must be the “heart of an old maid,” he thought, but that was not the case. It was a quite young military man with several medals. A man of both spirit and heart, it was said.

  The poor intern came out of the last heart in the row terribly dizzy. He wasn’t able to gather his thoughts, and thought that his overactive imagination had run away with him.

  “Dear God,” he sighed. “I definitely have a touch of madness! It’s also incredibly hot in here! The blood is rushing to my head.” Then he remembered the big adventure of the night before when his head had been stuck between the iron bars at the hospital. “That’s where I must have caught it,” he thought. “I have to nip this in the bud. A steam bath would be good. I wish I were already lying on the top bench.”

  And then he was lying on the top bench in the steam bath, but he had all his clothes on including his boots and galoshes. The hot water from the roof dripped on his face.

  “Yikes!” he cried and hurried down to get a shower. The attendant also gave a loud cry when he saw a fully dressed man in there.

  The intern was quick minded enough to whisper to him, “It’s a bet.” But the first thing he did when he got to his own room was to apply a big Spanish-fly plaster to the back of his neck and one down his back, to draw out the craziness.

  The next morning he had a bloody back, and that’s all he got from Good Fortune’s galoshes.

  5. THE CLERK’S TRANSFORMATION

  In the meantime the watchman, whom we haven’t forgotten, remembered the galoshes that he had found and brought along to the hospital. He picked them up there, but when neither the lieutenant nor anyone else in the street claimed them, they were delivered to the police department.

  “They look just like my own galoshes,” said one of the clerks, as he observed the lost property and set them side by side with his own. “Not even a shoemaker’s eye could tell them apart!”

  “Look here!” said an employee who came in with some papers.

  The clerk turned around and talked to the man, but when he was finished and looked at the galoshes again, he was completely bewildered about whether his were the ones on the left or those on the right. “Mine must be the wet ones,” he thought, but that was wrong because they were Good Fortune’s. But why can’t the police also make mistakes? He put them on and put some papers in his pocket and others under his arm. He was going to read through and sign them at home, but it was Sunday morning, and the weather was nice. He thought it would do him good to take a little walk to Frederiksberg, and so he went out there.

  No one could be more unassuming and diligent than this young man, and we won’t begrudge him his little walk. It will undoubtedly be good for him because he sits so much. In the beginning he just walked without thinking about anything so the galoshes did not have a chance to show their magic power.

  On the street he met an acquaintance, a young poet, who told him that he was going on a summer trip the next day.

  “So, you’re off again!” said the clerk. “You’re a lucky, free spirit! You can go wherever you want. The rest of us have chains on our feet.”

  “But they’re attached to a breadfruit tree,” answered the poet. “You don’t have to worry about tomorrow, and when you’re old, you’ll get a pension.”

  “But you’re better off!” said the clerk. “It’s a pleasure to sit and write poetry. The whole world pays you compliments, and you’re your own boss. You should try sitting in court with trivial cases!”

  The poet shook his head. The clerk shook his head, too. Each retained his own opinion, and so they separated.

  “Those poets are a race apart,” the clerk said. “I should try becoming such a nature, become a poet myself. I’m sure I wouldn’t write such wimpy verse as the others do! This really is a spring day for a poet! The air is so unusually clear, the clouds so pretty, and there is such fragrance in all the greenery! I haven’t felt like I do at this moment for many years.”

  We notice that he has become a poet already. It wasn’t exactly glaring, since it’s a foolish conceit to think that a poet is different from other people. These can have much more poetic natures among them than many a great and famous poet. The difference is just that the poet has a better spiritual memory. He can maintain ideas and feelings until they clearly flow over into words. Others can’t do that. But to change from an everyday nature to a gifted one is always a transition, and the clerk had now done that.


  “Oh what a lovely smell,” he said. “How it reminds me of the violets at Aunt Lona’s house. That was when I was a little boy. Dear God, I haven’t thought about that for a very long time! Dear old auntie. She lived there behind the stock exchange. She always had a twig or a couple of green shoots standing in water, no matter how cold the winter was. I smelled the violets as I laid warmed-up copper pennies on the frozen windowpane and made peepholes—what a strange perspective! Out in the canal the boats lay frozen in ice, deserted by all hands. The only crew was a shrieking crow. But things got busy when the spring breezes came. They cut the ice apart, singing and shouting ”hurrah.” The ships were tarred and rigged and then departed for foreign lands. I remained behind here and must always remain. Sit always at the police station and see others get passports to travel abroad. That’s my fate! Alas.” He sighed deeply, but then stopped suddenly. “Dear God, what’s become of me? I have never thought or felt like this before! It must be the spring air. It’s both worrying and pleasant.” He grasped the papers in his pocket. “This will give me something else to think about,” he said and skimmed through the first page. “Mrs. Sigbrith, original tragedy in five acts,” he read. “What’s this? But it’s my own handwriting! Have I written this play? Intrigue on the Ramparts or Big Holiday. Comedy.—But where have I gotten this? Someone must have put it in my pocket. Here’s a letter.” It was from the theater director. Both pieces were rejected, and the letter itself was not at all polite. “Hm, hm,” the clerk said and sat down on a bench. His thoughts were so agitated, his heart so moved. Spontaneously he picked one of the closest flowers. It was a simple little daisy, and it proclaimed in a minute what the botanists tell us in many lectures. It told the myth of its birth and of the power of the sunshine that develops the fine petals and forces their scent. Then he thought about life’s struggles that awaken feelings in our breasts in the same way. The air and light were the flower’s lovers, but light was the favorite. It turned to the light, and if that disappeared, it rolled its petals together and slept in the embrace of the air. “It’s light that adorns me,” said the flower. “But the air lets you breathe,” whispered the poet’s voice.

  A boy was standing nearby hitting a muddy ditch with a stick. Drops of water flew up into the green branches, and the clerk thought about the millions of invisible little animals in the drops that were hurled so high that, for their size, it would be as if we were flung high over the clouds. As the clerk was thinking about this and about the change that had happened to him, he smiled. “I’m sleeping and dreaming! But it’s remarkable anyway, that you can dream so naturally and still know that it’s a dream. I wish I could remember it tomorrow when I wake up! I seem to be in an unusually good mood right now. I have an open eye for everything and feel so fit, but I’m sure that when I remember parts of it tomorrow, it’ll all be nonsense. I’ve experienced that before. All the wisdom and magnificence you hear and see in dreams is like the gold of the mound people. When you get it, it’s splendid and glorious, but seen in the light of day, it’s just rocks and shriveled leaves, alas.” He sighed quite sadly and looked at the chirping birds hopping from branch to branch quite happily. “They are better off than I am. To be able to fly is a wonderful skill. How lucky they are who are born with that ability! If I were to be anything other than what I am, I’d be a little lark like that!”

  At once his sleeves and arms changed into wings. His clothes became feathers, and the galoshes turned to claws. He noticed it all and laughed to himself. “Well, now I can see that I’m dreaming, but I’ve never dreamed anything so silly before.” Then he flew up into the branches and sang, but there was no poetry in the song because the poetic nature was gone. As is the case with anything done thoroughly, the galoshes could only do one thing at a time. He wanted to be a poet, and he became one. Then he wanted to be a little bird, but in becoming that, he gave up the former characteristic feature.

  “This is good though,” he said. “During the day I sit at the police station in piles of prosaic papers, and at night I dream of flying like a lark in Frederiksberg Garden. You could actually write a whole play about it.”

  Then he flew down into the grass and turned his head from side to side and pecked with his beak at the soft blades of grass that, in comparison to his size now, were as big as palm trees in North Africa.

  Within a second everything was as black as midnight around him. Some monstrous object was thrown over him. It was a big cap that a boy from Nyboder had thrown over the bird. A hand came in and grabbed the clerk around his body and wings, so he peeped. In his first fright he called aloud, “You impertinent pup! I’m a clerk at the police department,” but to the boy it sounded just like chirping. He slapped the bird’s beak and wandered off.

  On the street he met two upper-class schoolboys. Upper class as people, that is to say. From a spiritual point of view, they were among the school’s lowest. They bought the bird for 25 cents, and in this way the clerk came to Copenhagen, home to a family in Gothers Street.

  “It’s a good thing I’m dreaming,” said the clerk, “otherwise I’d be really angry. First I was a poet, now a lark. It was my poetic nature that transported me into the little animal. But it’s a pitiful thing, especially when you fall into the hands of boys like these. I would like to know how this will end.”

  The boys brought him into an extremely elegant living room where they were greeted by a fat, laughing woman. She was not at all happy that a simple field bird, as she called the lark, was brought in. She’d let it pass today, however, and told them to put the bird in the empty cage by the window. “Maybe it will amuse Poppy-boy,” she added and laughed at a big green parrot that was swinging proudly on his ring in a magnificent brass cage. “It’s Poppy-boy’s birthday,” she said childishly, “and the little field bird is here to congratulate him.”

  Poppy-boy didn’t say a single word in reply, but just kept rocking in a dignified way back and forth. But, in contrast, a beautiful canary, which had been brought there the past summer from its warm, luxuriant native land, began to sing loudly.

  “Loudmouth!” the woman said and threw a white handkerchief over its cage.

  “Pip, pip,” it sighed, “What a terrible snowstorm,” and then it fell silent.

  The clerk, or the field bird, as the woman called him, was placed in a little cage close to the canary and not far from the parrot. The only human sentence the parrot could prattle was, “Come, let’s now be human,” which was often quite comical. Everything else he said was as unintelligible as the song of the canary except to the clerk, who was now himself a bird and could understand his companions very well.

  “I flew under the green palms and the flowering almond trees,” sang the canary. “I flew with my brothers and sisters above the splendid flowers and over the crystal clear sea with plants waving on the bottom. I also saw many lovely parrots who told the most amusing stories—long ones and so many of them!”

  “Those were wild birds,” said the parrot. “They had no education. Come, let’s now be human! Why aren’t you laughing? If the woman and all the strangers can laugh, so can you. It’s a great flaw not to be able to appreciate the comical. Come, let’s now be human.”

  “Oh, do you remember the beautiful girls who danced under the tents stretched from the flowering trees? Do you remember the soft fruit and the soothing juices of the wild herbs?”

  “Yes, yes,” answered the parrot. “But I’m much better off here! I get good food and am treated very well. I know that I’m clever, and I don’t need anything more. Come, let’s now be human. You are a poetic soul, as they call it, but I have deep knowledge and wit. You have your genius but no moderation. You fly into these high natural raptures, and that’s why they cover you up. They don’t do that to me because I have cost them a lot more. I tell jokes by the beaker-full and impress them with that. Come, let’s now be human!”

  “Oh, my warm, flowering native land!” the canary sang. “I’ll sing about your dark green trees,
about your quiet coves, where the branches kiss the clear surface of the water. I’ll sing about all my brilliant brothers’ and sisters’ joy, where the desert’s plant source13 grows.”

  “Lay off those whining notes,” said the parrot. “Say something we can laugh at. Laughter is a sign of the highest spiritual stage. See if a dog or a horse can laugh. No, they can cry, but laughter only belongs to people. Ho, ho, ho,” laughed Poppy-boy and added his joke, “Come, let’s now be human.”

  “You little grey Danish bird,” said the canary. “You have also been captured. It must be cold in your forests, but at least there’s freedom there. Fly away! They have forgotten to close the cage, and the upper window is open. Fly, fly!”

  And that’s what the clerk did. In a second he was out of the cage. At the same moment the half-opened door to the next room creaked, and the housecat with green shining eyes snuck lithely in and started hunting him. The canary fluttered around in its cage. The parrot flapped his wings and shrieked, “Come, let’s now be human!” The clerk felt a deadly fear and flew away through the window over houses and streets. Finally he had to rest for a while.

  The house across the street had something familiar about it, and a window was open. He flew in there and found that it was his own room! He sat down on the table.

  “Come, let’s now be human,” he said without thinking about what he said. He was copying the parrot, but in the same instance he became the clerk again, but he was sitting on the table.

  “God save us!” he said, “How did I get up here and then fall asleep? That was really a troubling dream I had. The whole thing was a lot of stupid nonsense.”

  6. THE BEST THING THE GALOSHES BROUGHT

  Early the next morning when the clerk was still in bed, someone knocked on his door. It was his neighbor on the same floor, a student who was studying to become a minister. He walked in.