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The Shoes of Fortune
Hans Christian Anderson
III. The Watchman's Adventure
"Why, there is a pair of galoshes, as sure as I'm
alive!" said the watchman, awaking from a gentle slumber. "They belong no doubt
to the lieutenant who lives over the way. They lie close to the door."
The worthy man was inclined to ring and deliver them at
the house, for there was still a light in the window; but he did not like
disturbing the other people in their beds, and so very considerately he left the
matter alone.
"Such a pair of shoes must be very warm and
comfortable," said he; "the leather is so soft and supple." They fitted his feet
as though they had been made for him. "'Tis a curious world we live in,"
continued he, soliloquizing. "There is the lieutenant, now, who might go quietly
to bed if he chose, where no doubt he could stretch himself at his ease; but
does he do it? No; he saunters up and down his room, because, probably, he has
enjoyed too many of the good things of this world at his dinner. That's a happy
fellow! He has neither an infirm mother, nor a whole troop of everlastingly
hungry children to torment him. Every evening he goes to a party, where his nice
supper costs him nothing: would to Heaven I could but change with him! How happy
should I be!"
While expressing his wish, the charm of the shoes, which
he had put on, began to work; the watchman entered into the being and nature of
the lieutenant. He stood in the handsomely furnished apartment, and held between
his fingers a small sheet of rose-colored paper, on which some verses were
written--written indeed by the officer himself; for who has not', at least once
in his life, had a lyrical moment? And if one then marks down one's thoughts,
poetry is produced. But here was written:
OH, WERE I RICH!
"Oh, were I rich! Such was my wish, yea such
When hardly three feet high, I longed for much.
Oh, were I rich! an officer were I,
With sword, and uniform, and plume so high.
And the time came, and officer was I!
But yet I grew not rich. Alas, poor me!
Have pity, Thou, who all man's wants dost see.
"I sat one evening sunk in dreams of bliss,
A maid of seven years old gave me a kiss,
I at that time was rich in poesy
And tales of old, though poor as poor could be;
But all she asked for was this poesy.
Then was I rich, but not in gold, poor me!
As Thou dost know, who all men's hearts canst see.
"Oh, were I rich! Oft asked I for this boon.
The child grew up to womanhood full soon.
She is so pretty, clever, and so kind
Oh, did she know what's hidden in my mind--
A tale of old. Would she to me were kind!.
But I'm condemned to silence! oh, poor me!
As Thou dost know, who all men's hearts canst see.
"Oh, were I rich in calm and peace of mind,
My grief you then would not here written find!
O thou, to whom I do my heart devote,
Oh read this page of glad days now remote,
A dark, dark tale, which I tonight devote!
Dark is the future now. Alas, poor me!
Have pity Thou, who all men's pains dost see."
Such verses as these people write when they are in love!
But no man in his senses ever thinks of printing them. Here one of the sorrows
of life, in which there is real poetry, gave itself vent; not that barren grief
which the poet may only hint at, but never depict in its detail--misery and
want: that animal necessity, in short, to snatch at least at a fallen leaf of
the bread-fruit tree, if not at the fruit itself. The higher the position in
which one finds oneself transplanted, the greater is the suffering. Everyday
necessity is the stagnant pool of life--no lovely picture reflects itself
therein. Lieutenant, love, and lack of money--that is a symbolic triangle, or
much the same as the half of the shattered die of Fortune. This the lieutenant
felt most poignantly, and this was the reason he leant his head against the
window, and sighed so deeply.
"The poor watchman out there in the street is far
happier than I. He knows not what I term privation. He has a home, a wife, and
children, who weep with him over his sorrows, who rejoice with him when he is
glad. Oh, far happier were I, could I exchange with him my being--with his
desires and with his hopes perform the weary pilgrimage of life! Oh, he is a
hundred times happier than I!"
In the same moment the watchman was again watchman. It
was the shoes that caused the metamorphosis by means of which, unknown to
himself, he took upon him the thoughts and feelings of the officer; but, as we
have just seen, he felt himself in his new situation much less contented, and
now preferred the very thing which but some minutes before he had rejected. So
then the watchman was again watchman.
"That was an unpleasant dream," said he; "but 'twas
droll enough altogether. I fancied that I was the lieutenant over there: and yet
the thing was not very much to my taste after all. I missed my good old mother
and the dear little ones; who almost tear me to pieces for sheer love."
He seated himself once more and nodded: the dream
continued to haunt him, for he still had the shoes on his feet. A falling star
shone in the dark firmament.
"There falls another star," said he: "but what does it
matter; there are always enough left. I should not much mind examining the
little glimmering things somewhat nearer, especially the moon; for that would
not slip so easily through a man's fingers. When we die--so at least says the
student, for whom my wife does the washing--we shall fly about as light as a
feather from one such a star to the other. That's, of course, not true: but 'twould
be pretty enough if it were so. If I could but once take a leap up there, my
body might stay here on the steps for what I care."
Behold--there are certain things in the world to which
one ought never to give utterance except with the greatest caution; but doubly
careful must one be when we have the Shoes of Fortune on our feet. Now just
listen to what happened to the watchman.
As to ourselves, we all know the speed produced by the
employment of steam; we have experienced it either on railroads, or in boats
when crossing the sea; but such a flight is like the travelling of a sloth in
comparison with the velocity with which light moves. It flies nineteen million
times faster than the best race-horse; and yet electricity is quicker still.
Death is an electric shock which our heart receives; the freed soul soars
upwards on the wings of electricity. The sun's light wants eight minutes and
some seconds to perform a journey of more than twenty million of our Danish*
miles; borne by electricity, the soul wants even some minutes less to accomplish
the same flight. To it the space between the heavenly bodies is not greater than
the distance between the homes of our friends in town is for us, even if they
live a short way from each other; such an electric shock in the heart, however,
costs us the use of the body here below; unless, like the watchman of East
Street, we happen to have on the Shoes of Fortune.
*A Danish mile is nearly 4
3/4 English.
In a few seconds the watchman had done the fifty-two
thousand of our miles up to the moon, which, as everyone knows, was formed out
of matter much lighter than our earth; and is, so we should say, as soft as
newly-fallen snow. He found himself on one of the many circumjacent
mountain-ridges with which we are acquainted by means of Dr. Madler's "Map of
the Moon." Within, down it sunk perpendicularly into a caldron, about a Danish
mile in depth; while below lay a town, whose appearance we can, in some measure,
realize to ourselves by beating the white of an egg in a glass Of water. The
matter of which it was built was just as soft, and formed similar towers, and
domes, and pillars, transparent and rocking in the thin air; while above his
head our earth was rolling like a large fiery ball.
He perceived immediately a quantity of beings who were
certainly what we call "men"; yet they looked different to us. A far more,
correct imagination than that of the pseudo-Herschel* had created them; and if
they had been placed in rank and file, and copied by some skilful painter's
hand, one would, without doubt, have exclaimed involuntarily, "What a beautiful
arabesque!"
*This relates to a book published some
years ago in Germany, and said to be by Herschel, which contained a description
of the moon and its inhabitants, written with such a semblance of truth that
many were deceived by the imposture.
Probably a translation of the celebrated Moon hoax,
written by Richard A. Locke, and originally published in New York.
They had a language too; but surely nobody can expect
that the soul of the watchman should understand it. Be that as it may, it did
comprehend it; for in our souls there germinate far greater powers than we poor
mortals, despite all our cleverness, have any notion of. Does she not show
us--she the queen in the land of enchantment--her astounding dramatic talent in
all our dreams? There every acquaintance appears and speaks upon the stage, so
entirely in character, and with the same tone of voice, that none of us, when
awake, were able to imitate it. How well can she recall persons to our mind, of
whom we have not thought for years; when suddenly they step forth "every inch a
man," resembling the real personages, even to the finest features, and become
the heroes or heroines of our world of dreams. In reality, such remembrances are
rather unpleasant: every sin, every evil thought, may, like a clock with alarm
or chimes, be repeated at pleasure; then the question is if we can trust
ourselves to give an account of every unbecoming word in our heart and on our
lips.
The watchman's spirit understood the language of the
inhabitants of the moon pretty well. The Selenites* disputed variously about our
earth, and expressed their doubts if it could be inhabited: the air, they said,
must certainly be too dense to allow any rational dweller in the moon the
necessary free respiration. They considered the moon alone to be inhabited: they
imagined it was the real heart of the universe or planetary system, on which the
genuine Cosmopolites, or citizens of the world, dwelt. What strange things
men--no, what strange things Selenites sometimes take into their heads!
*Dwellers in the moon.
About politics they had a good deal to say. But little
Denmark must take care what it is about, and not run counter to the moon; that
great realm, that might in an ill-humor bestir itself, and dash down a
hail-storm in our faces, or force the Baltic to overflow the sides of its
gigantic basin.
We will, therefore, not listen to what was spoken, and
on no condition run in the possibility of telling tales out of school; but we
will rather proceed, like good quiet citizens, to East Street, and observe what
happened meanwhile to the body of the watchman.
He sat lifeless on the steps: the morning-star,* that is
to say, the heavy wooden staff, headed with iron spikes, and which had nothing
else in common with its sparkling brother in the sky, had glided from his hand;
while his eyes were fixed with glassy stare on the moon, looking for the good
old fellow of a spirit which still haunted it.
*The watchmen in Germany, had formerly, and in some
places they still carry with them, on their rounds at night, a sort of mace or
club, known in ancient times by the above denomination.
"What's the hour, watchman?" asked a passer-by. But
when the watchman gave no reply, the merry roysterer, who was now returning home
from a noisy drinking bout, took it into his bead to try what a tweak of the
nose would do, on which the supposed sleeper lost his balance, the body lay
motionless, stretched out on the pavement: the man was dead. When the patrol
came up, all his comrades, who comprehended nothing of the whole affair, were
seized with a dreadful fright, for dead be was, and he remained so. The proper
authorities were informed of the circumstance, people talked a good deal about
it, and in the morning the body was carried to the hospital.
Now that would be a very pretty joke, if the spirit when
it came back and looked for the body in East Street, were not to find one. No
doubt it would, in its anxiety, run off to the police, and then to the "Hue and
Cry" office, to announce that "the finder will be handsomely rewarded," and at
last away to the hospital; yet we may boldly assert that the soul is shrewdest
when it shakes off every fetter, and every sort of leading-string--the body only
makes it stupid.
The seemingly dead body of the watchman wandered, as we
have said, to the hospital, where it was brought into the general viewing-room:
and the first thing that was done here was naturally to pull off the
galoshes--when the spirit, that was merely gone out on adventures, must have
returned with the quickness of lightning to its earthly tenement. It took its
direction towards the body in a straight line; and a few seconds after, life
began to show itself in the man. He asserted that the preceding night had been
the worst that ever the malice of fate had allotted him; he would not for two
silver marks again go through what he had endured while moon-stricken; but now,
however, it was over.
The same day he was discharged from the hospital as
perfectly cured; but the Shoes meanwhile remained behind.
Next
IV. A Moment of Head Importance--An Evening's "Dramatic Readings"--A Most
Strange Journey
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