to be dismissed. But Sara refused to leave the house: she became the
staff in time of trouble, and kept the household together, working
till late in the night to earn the daily bread through the labour of
her hands; for no relative came forward to assist the family, and the
widow become weaker every day, and lay for months together on the bed
of sickness. Sara worked hard, and in the intervals sat kindly
ministering by the sick-bed: she was gentle and pious, an angel of
blessing in the poverty-stricken house.
"Yonder on the table lies the Bible," said the sick woman to Sara.
"Read me something from it, for the night appears to be so long--oh,
so long!--and my soul thirsts for the word of the Lord."
And Sara bowed her head. She took the book, and folded her hands over
the Bible of the Christians, and opened it, and read to the sick
woman. Tears stood in her eyes, which gleamed and shone with ecstacy,
and light shone in her heart.
"O my mother," she whispered to herself; "thy child may not receive the
baptism of the Christians, or be admitted into the congregation--thou hast
willed it so, and I shall respect thy command: we will remain in union
together here on earth; but beyond this earth there is a higher union, even
union in God! He will be at our side, and lead us through the valley of
death. It is He that descendeth upon the earth when it is athirst, and
covers it with fruitfulness. I understand it--I know not how I came to
learn the truth; but it is through Him, through Christ!"
And she started as she pronounced the sacred name, and there came upon
her a baptism as of flames of fire, and her frame shook, and her limbs
tottered so that she sank down fainting, weaker even than the sick
woman by whose couch she had watched.
"Poor Sara!" said the people; "she is overcome with night watching and
toil!"
They carried her out into the hospital for the sick poor. There she
died; and from thence they carried her to the grave, but not to the
churchyard of the Christians, for yonder was no room for the Jewish
girl; outside, by the wall, her grave was dug.
But God's sun, that shines upon the graves of the Christians, throws
its beams also upon the grave of the Jewish girl beyond the wall; and
when the psalms are sung in the churchyard of the Christians, they
echo likewise over her lonely resting-place; and she who sleeps
beneath is included in the call to the resurrection, in the name of
Him who spake to his disciples:
"John baptized you with water, but I will baptize you with the Holy
Ghost!"
THE THORNY ROAD OF HONOUR
An old story yet lives of the "Thorny Road of Honour," of a marksman,
who indeed attained to rank and office, but only after a lifelong and
weary strife against difficulties. Who has not, in reading this story,
thought of his own strife, and of his own numerous "difficulties?" The
story is very closely akin to reality; but still it has its harmonious
explanation here on earth, while reality often points beyond the
confines of life to the regions of eternity. The history of the world
is like a magic lantern that displays to us, in light pictures upon
the dark ground of the present, how the benefactors of mankind, the
martyrs of genius, wandered along the thorny road of honour.
From all periods, and from every country, these shining pictures
display themselves to us; each only appears for a few moments, but
each represents a whole life, sometimes a whole age, with its
conflicts and victories. Let us contemplate here and there one of the
company of martyrs--the company which will receive new members until
the world itself shall pass away.
We look down upon a crowded amphitheatre. Out of the "Clouds" of
Aristophanes, satire and humour are pouring down in streams upon the
audience; on the stage Socrates, the most remarkable man in Athens, he
who had been the shield and defence of the people against the thirty
tyrants, is held up mentally and bodily to ridicule--Socrates, who
saved Alcibiades and Xenophon in the turmoil of battle, and whose
genius soared far above the gods of the ancients. He himself is
present; he has risen from the spectator's bench, and has stepped
forward, that the laughing Athenians may well appreciate the likeness
between himself and the caricature on the stage: there he stands
before them, towering high above them all.
Thou juicy, green, poisonous hemlock, throw thy shadow over
Athens--not thou, olive tree of fame!
Seven cities contended for the honour of giving birth to Homer--that
is to say, they contended after his death! Let us look at him as he
was in his lifetime. He wanders on foot through the cities, and
recites his verses for a livelihood; the thought for the morrow turns
his hair grey! He, the great seer, is blind, and painfully pursues his
way--the sharp thorn tears the mantle of the king of poets. His song
yet lives, and through that alone live all the heroes and gods of
antiquity.
[Illustration: THE KING OF POETS.]
One picture after another springs up from the east, from the west, far
removed from each other in time and place, and yet each one forming a
portion of the thorny road of honour, on which the thistle indeed
displays a flower, but only to adorn the grave.
The camels pass along under the palm trees; they are richly laden with
indigo and other treasures of price, sent by the ruler of the land to
him whose songs are the delight of the people, the fame of the
country: he whom envy and falsehood have driven into exile has been
found, and the caravan approaches the little town in which he has
taken refuge. A poor corpse is carried out of the town-gate, and the
funeral procession causes the caravan to halt. The dead man is he whom
they have been sent to seek--Firdusi--who has wandered the thorny road
of honour even to the end.
The African, with blunt features, thick lips, and woolly hair, sits on
the marble steps of the palace in the capital of Portugal, and begs:
he is the submissive slave of Camoens, and but for him, and for the
copper coins thrown to him by the passers by, his master, the poet of
the "Lusiad," would die of hunger. Now, a costly monument marks the
grave of Camoens.
There is a new picture.
Behind the iron grating a man appears, pale as death, with long
unkempt beard.
"I have made a discovery," he says, "the greatest that has been made
for centuries; and they have kept me locked up here for more than
twenty years!"
"Who is the man?
"A madman," replies the keeper of the madhouse. "What whimsical ideas
these lunatics have! He imagines that one can propel things by means
of steam. It is Solomon de Cares, the discoverer of the power of
steam, whose theory, expressed in dark words, is not understood by
Richelieu--and he dies in the madhouse!"
Here stands Columbus, whom the street boys used once to follow and
jeer, because he wanted to discover a new world--and he has discovered
it. Shouts of joy greet him from the breasts of all, and the clash of
bells sounds to celebrate his triumphant return; but the clash of the
bells of envy soon drowns the others. The discoverer of a world, he
who lifted the American gold land from the sea, and gave it to his
king--he is rewarded with iron chains. He wishes that these chains may
be placed in his coffin, for they witness of the world, and of the way
in which a man's contemporaries reward good service.
One picture after another comes crowding on; the thorny path of honour
and of fame is over-filled.
Here in dark night sits the man who measured the mountains in the
moon; he who forced his way out into the endless space, among stars
and planets; he, the mighty man who understood the spirit of nature,
and felt the earth moving beneath his feet--Galileo. Blind and deaf he
sits--an old man thrust through with the spear of suffering, and amid
the torments of neglect, scarcely able to lift his foot--that foot
with which, in the anguish of his soul, when men denied the truth, he
stamped upon the ground with the exclamation, "_Yet_ it moves!"
Here stands a woman of childlike mind, yet full of faith and
inspiration; she carries the banner in front of the combating army,
and brings victory and salvation to her fatherland. The sound of
shouting arises, and the pile flames up: they are burning the witch,
Joan of Arc. Yes, and a future century jeers at the white lily.
Voltaire, the satyr of human intellect, writes "_La Pucelle_."
At the _Thing_ or assembly at Viborg, the Danish nobles burn the laws
of the king--they flame up high, illuminating the period and the
lawgiver, and throw a glory into the dark prison tower, where an old
man is growing grey and bent. With his finger he marks out a groove in
the stone table. It is the popular king who sits there, once the ruler
of three kingdoms, the friend of the citizen and the peasant: it is
Christian the Second. Enemies wrote his history. Let us remember his
improvements of seven and twenty years, if we cannot forget his crime.
A ship sails away, quitting the Danish shores; a man leans against the
mast, casting a last glance towards the Island Hueen. It is Tycho
Brahe. He raised the name of Denmark to the stars, and was rewarded
with injury, loss, and sorrow. He is going to a strange country.
"The vault of heaven is above me everywhere," he says, "and what do I
want more?" And away sails the famous Dane, the astronomer, to live
honoured and free in a strange land.
"Ay, free, if only from the unbearable sufferings of the body!" comes
in a sigh through time, and strikes upon our ear. What a picture!
Griffenfeldt, a Danish Prometheus, bound to the rocky island of
Munkholm.
We are in America, on the margin of one of the largest rivers; an
innumerable crowd has gathered, for it is said that a ship is to sail
against wind and weather, bidding defiance to the elements; the man
who thinks he can solve the problem is named Robert Fulton. The ship
begins its passage, but suddenly it stops. The crowd begins to laugh
and whistle and hiss--the very father of the man whistles with the
rest.
"Conceit! Foolery!" is the cry. "It has happened just as he deserved:
put the crack-brain under lock and key!"
Then suddenly a little nail breaks, which had stopped the machine for
a few moments; and now the wheels turn again, the floats break the
force of the waters, and the ship continues its course--and the beam
of the steam-engine shortens the distance between far lands from hours
into minutes.
O human race, canst thou grasp the happiness of such a minute of
consciousness, this penetration of the soul by its mission, the moment
in which all dejection, and every wound--even those caused by own
fault--is changed into health and strength and clearness--when discord
is converted to harmony--the minute in which men seem to recognize the
manifestation of the heavenly grace in one man, and feel how this one
imparts it to all?
Thus the thorny path of honour shows itself as a glory, surrounding
the earth with its beams: thrice happy he who is chosen to be a
wanderer there, and, without merit of his own, to be placed between
the builder of the bridge and the earth, between Providence and the
human race!
On mighty wings the spirit of history floats through the ages, and
shows--giving courage and comfort, and awakening gentle thoughts--on
the dark nightly background, but in gleaming pictures, the thorny path
of honour; which does not, like a fairy tale, end in brilliancy and
joy here on earth, but stretches out beyond all time, even into
eternity!
THE OLD GRAVESTONE
In a little provincial town, in the time of the year when people say
"the evenings are drawing in," there was one evening quite a social
gathering in the home of a father of a family. The weather was still
mild and warm. The lamp gleamed on the table; the long curtains hung
down in folds before the open windows, by which stood many
flower-pots; and outside, beneath the dark blue sky, was the most
beautiful moonshine. But they were not talking about this. They were
talking about the old great stone which lay below in the courtyard,
close by the kitchen door, and on which the maids often laid the
cleaned copper kitchen utensils that they might dry in the sun, and
where the children were fond of playing. It was, in fact, an old
gravestone.
"Yes," said the master of the house, "I believe the stone comes from
the old convent churchyard; for from the church yonder, the pulpit,
the memorial boards, and the gravestones were sold. My father bought
the latter, and they were cut in two to be used as paving-stones; but
that old stone was kept back, and has been lying in the courtyard ever
since."
[Illustration: PREBEN SCHWANE AND HIS WIFE MARTHA.]
"One can very well see that it is a gravestone," observed the eldest
of the children; "we can still decipher on it an hour-glass and a
piece of an angel; but the inscription which stood below it is quite
effaced, except that you may read the name of _Preben_, and a great
_S_ close behind it, and a little farther down the name of _Martha_.
But nothing more can be distinguished, and even that is only plain
when it has been raining, or when we have washed the stone.
"On my word, that must be the gravestone of Preben Schwane and his
wife!"
These words were spoken by an old man; so old, that he might well have
been the grandfather of all who were present in the room.
"Yes, they were one of the last pairs that were buried in the old
churchyard of the convent. They were an honest old couple. I can
remember them from the days of my boyhood. Every one knew them, and
every one esteemed them. They were the oldest pair here in the town.
The people declared that they had more than a tubful of gold; and yet
they went about very plainly dressed, in the coarsest stuffs, but
always with splendidly clean linen. They were a fine old pair, Preben
and Martha! When both of them sat on the bench at the top of the steep
stone stairs in front of the house, with the old linden tree spreading
its branches above them, and nodded at one in their kind gentle way,
it seemed quite to do one good. They were very kind to the poor; they
fed them and clothed them; and there was judgment in their benevolence
and true Christianity. The old woman died first: that day is still
quite clear before my mind. I was a little boy, and had accompanied my
father over there, and we were just there when she fell asleep. The
old man was very much moved, and wept like a child. The corpse lay in
the room next to the one where we sat; and he spoke to my father and
to a few neighbours who were there, and said how lonely it would be
now in his house, and how good and faithful she (his dead wife) had
been, how many years they had wandered together through life, and how
it had come about that they came to know each other and to fall in
love. I was, as I have told you, a boy, and only stood by and listened
to what the others said; but it filled me with quite a strange emotion
to listen to the old man, and to watch how his cheeks gradually
flushed red when he spoke of the days of their courtship, and told how
beautiful she was, and how many little innocent pretexts he had
invented to meet her. And then he talked of the wedding-day, and his
eyes gleamed; he seemed to talk himself back into that time of joy.
And yet she was lying in the next room--dead--an old woman; and he was
an old man, speaking of the past days of hope! Yes, yes, thus it is!
Then I was but a child, and now I am old--as old as Preben Schwane was
then. Time passes away, and all things change. I can very well
remember the day when she was buried, and how Preben Schwane walked
close behind the coffin. A few years before, the couple had caused
their gravestone to be prepared, and their names to be engraved on it,
with the inscription, all but the date. In the evening the stone was
taken to the churchyard, and laid over the grave; and the year
afterwards it was taken up, that old Preben Schwane might be laid to
rest beside his wife. They did not leave behind them anything like the
wealth people had attributed to them: what there was went to families
distantly related to them--to people of whom until then one had known
nothing. The old wooden house, with the seat at the top of the steps,
beneath the lime tree, was taken down by the corporation; it was too
old and rotten to be left standing. Afterwards, when the same fate
befell the convent church, and the graveyard was levelled, Preben's
and Martha's tombstone was sold, like everything else, to any one who
would buy it; and that is how it has happened that this stone was not
hewn in two, as many another has been, but that it still lies below in
the yard as a scouring-bench for the maids and a plaything for the
children. The high-road now goes over the resting-place of old Preben
and his wife. No one thinks of them any more."
And the old man who had told all this shook his head scornfully.
"Forgotten! Everything will be forgotten!" he said.
And then they spoke in the room of other things; but the youngest
child, a boy with great serious eyes, mounted up on a chair behind the
window-curtains, and looked out into the yard, where the moon was
pouring its radiance over the old stone--the old stone that had always
appeared to him so tame and flat, but which lay there now like a great
leaf out of a book of chronicles. All that the boy had heard about old
Preben and his wife seemed concentrated in the stone; and he gazed at
it, and looked at the pure bright moon and up into the clear air, and
it seemed as though the countenance of the Creator was beaming over
His world.
"Forgotten! Everything will be forgotten!" was repeated in the room.
But in that moment an invisible angel kissed the boy's forehead, and
whispered to him:
"Preserve the seed-corn that has been entrusted to thee, that it may
bear fruit. Guard it well! Through thee, my child, the obliterated
inscription on the old tombstone shall be chronicled in golden letters
to future generations! The old pair shall wander again arm-in-arm
through the streets, and smile, and sit with their fresh healthy faces
under the lime tree on the bench by the steep stairs, and nod at rich
and poor. The seed-corn of this hour shall ripen in the course of time
to a blooming poem. The beautiful and the good shall not be forgotten;
it shall live on in legend and in song."
THE OLD BACHELOR'S NIGHTCAP.
There is a street in Copenhagen that has this strange name--"Hysken
Straede." Whence comes this name, and what is its meaning? It is said
to be German; but injustice has been done to the Germans in this
matter, for it would have to be "Haeuschen," and not "Hysken." For here
stood, once upon a time, and indeed for a great many years, a few
little houses, which were principally nothing more than wooden booths,
just as we see now in the market-places at fair-time. They were,
perhaps, a little larger, and had windows; but the panes consisted of
horn or bladder, for glass was then too expensive to be used in every
house. But then we are speaking of a long time ago--so long since,
that grandfather and great-grandfather, when they talked about them,
used to speak of them as "the old times"--in fact, it is several
centuries ago.
The rich merchants in Bremen and Lubeck carried on trade with
Copenhagen. They did not reside in the town themselves, but sent their
clerks, who lived in the wooden booths in the Haeuschen Street, and
sold beer and spices. The German beer was good, and there were many
kinds of it, as there were, for instance, Bremen, and Prussinger, and
Sous beer, and even Brunswick mumm; and quantities of spices were
sold--saffron, and aniseed, and ginger, and especially pepper. Yes,
pepper was the chief article here, and so it happened that the German
clerks got the nickname "pepper gentry;" and there was a condition
made with them in Lubeck and in Bremen, that they would not marry at
Copenhagen, and many of them became very old. They had to care for
themselves, and to look after their own comforts, and to put out their
own fires--when they had any; and some of them became very solitary
old boys, with eccentric ideas and eccentric habits. From them all
unmarried men, who have attained a certain age, are called in Denmark
"pepper gentry;" and this must be understood by all who wish to
comprehend this history.
The "pepper gentleman" becomes a butt for ridicule, and is continually
told that he ought to put on his nightcap, and draw it down over his
eyes, and do nothing but sleep. The boys sing,
"Cut, cut wood!
Poor bachelor so good.
Go, take your nightcap, go to rest,
For 'tis the nightcap suits you best!"
Yes, that's what they sing about the "pepperer"--thus they make game
of the poor bachelor and his nightcap, and turn it into ridicule, just
because they know very little about either. Ah, that kind of nightcap
no one should wish to earn! And why not?--We shall hear.
[Illustration: THE PEPPERER'S BOOTH.]
In the old times the "Housekin Street" was not paved, and the people
stumbled out of one hole into another, as in a neglected bye-way; and
it was narrow too. The booths leaned side by side, and stood so close
together that in the summer time a sail was often stretched from one
booth to its opposite neighbour, on which occasion the fragrance of
pepper, saffron, and ginger became doubly powerful. Behind the
counters young men were seldom seen. The clerks were generally old
boys; but they did not look like what we should fancy them, namely,
with wig, and nightcap, and plush small-clothes, and with waistcoat
and coat buttoned up to the chin. No, grandfather's great-grandfather
may look like that, and has been thus portrayed, but the "pepper
gentry" had no superfluous means, and accordingly did not have their
portraits taken; though, indeed, it would be interesting now to have a
picture of one of them, as he stood behind the counter or went to
church on holy days. His hat was high-crowned and broad-brimmed, and
sometimes one of the youngest clerks would mount a feather. The
woollen shirt was hidden behind a broad linen collar, the close jacket
was buttoned up to the chin, and the cloak hung loose over it; and the
trousers were tucked into the broad-toed shoes, for the clerks did not
wear stockings. In their girdles they sported a dinner-knife and
spoon, and a larger knife was placed there also for the defence of the
owner; and this weapon was often very necessary. Just so was Anthony,
one of the oldest clerks, clad on high days and holy days, except
that, instead of a high-crowned hat, he wore a low bonnet, and under
it a knitted cap (a regular nightcap), to which he had grown so
accustomed that it was always on his head; and he had two of
them--nightcaps, of course. The old fellow was a subject for a
painter. He was as thin as a lath, had wrinkles clustering round his
eyes and mouth, and long bony fingers, and bushy grey eyebrows: over
the left eye hung quite a tuft of hair, and that did not look very
handsome, though it made him very noticeable. People knew that he came
from Bremen; but that was not his native place, though his master
lived there. His own native place was in Thuringia, the town of
Eisenach, close by the Wartburg. Old Anthony did not speak much of
this, but he thought of it all the more.
The old clerks of the Haeuschen Street did not often come together.
Each one remained in his booth, which was closed early in the evening;
and then it looked dark enough in the street: only a faint glimmer of
light forced its way through the little horn-pane in the roof; and in
the booth sat, generally on his bed, the old bachelor, his German
hymn-book in his hand, singing an evening psalm in a low voice; or he
went about in the booth till late into the night, and busied himself
about all sorts of things. It was certainly not an amusing life. To be
a stranger in a strange land is a bitter lot: nobody cares for you,
unless you happen to get in anybody's way.