Your letter of the 20th ult. received, and contents noted, and I now beg
to reply that it is not very convenient, for the reason that old folk's
talk is mostly about winter storms and seldom about summer, when the sun
shines, and the lambs frisk and throw their tails high in the air. But,
you see, they were tups all three, which was not unlooked-for after such
a ram, and consequently no letter can be expected from me before autumn,
when the sea gets some life in it and a grown man's voice, so to speak,
for now it lies--God bless me--like a basin of milk, to the inward
vexation of folk who know what the sea should be in Nature's household
with ships and storms and wreckage, and a decent number of wrecks at
those places where the structure of the coast permits the rescue of men
and a distribution of the wreck if it be of wood, but some trash are now
of iron. And I am now as parched in the hide as I was that time in
Naples when the helmsman sailed the brig on to the pier-head because a
hurricane had risen, and Skipper Worse and I stood on the quay and
cried, though he swore mostly, and I had a basket on my arm with
something that they called bananas, which they fry in butter. And it is
not very nice nowadays, when the sun rises and sets in nothing but blue
sky, and not a cloud to be seen, as if it were the Mediterranean of my
young days, and I smell the bananas, but we here have no other stinking
stuff, that I know, than ware and cods' heads. But, Mr. Editor, the
young are dull and heavy with the sunshine; I myself went about singing,
and wanted to show the flabby wenches of Varhaug how one once danced a
real _molinask_, as it was Sunday and the young folk hung round the
walls like half-dead flies in the heat. But there had been grease burnt,
which made it more slippery than soft soap on the deck, and there lay
the whole master-pilot in the middle of the _molinask_, and bit off the
stalk of his clay pipe, but he kept his tooth, which has already been
spoken about, and to his shame had to be lifted by four firm-handed
fellows with much laughing, wherefore I have sat myself down in my chair
to wait for the autumn, because I cannot speak or write about the
drought, but only get angry and unreasonable.
Yours very truly,
LAURITZ BOLDEMANN SEEHUS.
KRYDSVIG, October 20, 1889.