Chapter 1 - Page 2

crib, was the abode of my childhood; the walls,
however, were covered with pictures, and over the work-bench was a
cupboard containing books and songs; the little kitchen was full of
shining plates and metal pans, and by means of a ladder it was possible
to go out on the roof, where, in the gutters between and the neighbor's
house, there stood a great chest filled with soil, my mother's sole
garden, and where she grew her vegetables. In my story of the Snow
Queen that garden still blooms.

I was the only child, and was extremely spoiled, but I continually
heard from my mother how very much happier I was than she had been, and
that I was brought up like a nobleman's child. She, as a child, had
been driven out by her parents to beg, and once when she was not able
to do it, she had sate for a whole day under a bridge and wept. I have
drawn her character in two different aspects, in old Dominica, in the
Improvisatore, and in the mother of Christian, in Only a Fiddler.

My father gratified me in all my wishes. I possessed his whole heart;
he lived for me. On Sundays, he made me perspective glasses, theatres,
and pictures which could be changed; he read to me from Holberg's plays
and the Arabian Tales; it was only in such moments as these that I can
remember to have seen him really cheerful, for he never felt himself
happy in his life and as a handicrafts-man. His parents had been
country people in good circumstances, but upon whom many misfortunes
had fallen; the cattle had died; the farm house had been burned down;
and lastly, the husband had lost his reason. On this the wife had
removed with him to Odense, and there put her son, whose mind was full
of intelligence, apprentice to a shoemaker; it could not be otherwise,
although it was his ardent wish to be able to attend the Grammar
School, where he might have learned Latin. A few well-to-do citizens
had at one time spoken of this, of clubbing together a sufficient sum
to pay for his board and education, and thus giving him a start in
life; but it never went beyond words. My poor father saw his dearest
wish unfulfilled; and he never lost the remembrance of it. I recollect
that once, as a child, I saw tears in his eyes, and it was when a youth
from the Grammar School came to our house to be measured for a new pair
of boots, and showed us his books and told us what he learned.

"That was the path upon which I ought to have gone!" said my father,
kissed me passionately, and was silent the whole evening.

He very seldom associated with his equals. He went out into the woods
on Sundays, when he took me with him; he did not talk much when he was
out, but would sit silently, sunk in deep thought, whilst I ran about
and strung strawberries on a