"In the world it's always going up and down; and now I can't go up
any higher!" So said Ole the tower-keeper. "Most people have to try
both the ups and the downs; and, rightly considered, we all get to
be watchmen at last, and look down upon life from a height."
Such was the speech of Ole, my friend, the old tower-keeper, a
strange, talkative old fellow, who seemed to speak out everything that
came into his head, and who for all that had many a serious thought
deep in his heart. Yes, he was the child of respectable people, and
there were even some who said that he was the son of a privy
councillor, or that he might have been. He had studied, too, and had
been assistant teacher and deputy clerk; but of what service was all
that to him? In those days he lived in the clerk's house, and was to
have everything in the house--to be at free quarters, as the saying
is; but he was still, so to speak, a fine young gentleman. He wanted
to have his boots cleaned with patent blacking, and the clerk could
only afford ordinary grease; and upon that point they split. One spoke
of stinginess, the other of vanity, and the blacking became the
black cause of enmity between them, and at last they parted.
This is what he demanded of the world in general, namely, patent
blacking, and he got nothing but grease. Accordingly, he at last
drew back from all men, and became a hermit; but the church tower is
the only place in a great city where hermitage, office and bread can
be found together. So he betook himself up thither, and smoked his
pipe as he made his solitary rounds. He looked upward and downward,
and had his own thoughts, and told in his own way of what he read in
books and in himself. I often lent him books--good books; and you
may know by the company he keeps. He loved neither the English
governess novels nor the French ones, which he called a mixture of
empty wind and raisin-stalks: he wanted biographies, and
descriptions of the wonders of, the world. I visited him at least once
a year, generally directly after New Year's day, and then he always
spoke of this and that which the change of the year had put into his
head.
I will tell the story of three of these visits, and will reproduce
his own words whenever I can remember them.