Almost every one has read the story of The Ugly Duckling. In the story,
the little duck just out of the shell looked about him and said, “How
wide the world is!” And his mother replied, “This is not all the world.
The world stretches far across the garden, quite into the parson’s
field.”
Now that duck might have lived in the back yard of a small house in the
town of Odense, which lies in the center of an island in the middle of
Denmark, with water all around it. That is where the man who wrote the
story of The Ugly Duckling lived. That man was Hans Christian Andersen.
The boy Hans might have been that Ugly Duckling himself. At least the
world in which he lived was as hard for the boy as the poultry yard was
for the duck. Hans’s father was a poor man who made and mended shoes for
a living. He died when Hans was only eleven years old. Hans’s mother
washed clothes for other people, to earn money enough to buy food. As
she stood on the river bank washing, Hans sat by and dreamed his dreams
of fairy people. Perhaps that is where he saw Thumbelina sailing on a
water lily.
[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF HANS ANDERSEN]
Other boys made fun of Hans. So the lonely boy made playmates for
himself in his dreams. He made the darning needle walk and talk; his tin
soldier became a great hero. He cut fairy figures out of scrap paper.
But Hans dreamed other dreams too. He wanted to do great things in the
real world. His mother said, “You must go to work to earn money. The
tailor will let you work in his shop.” Hans was unhappy at the thought
of sitting on a stool all day sewing and sewing. So he left the town of
Odense and went to the big city of Copenhagen. He said, “I’ll go on the
stage and act parts in plays.” And he tried to act, but he was so
awkward that he never could act well. Then he said, “I’ll sing beautiful
songs on the stage.” But the teachers said that his voice was not good
enough.
He made some friends in the city. They helped him get money to go to a
good school. By that time he was older than the other young people
studying at the school. They were not friendly to him. So once more he
forgot his loneliness by dreaming dreams, and writing the stories he
dreamed.
Many, many children love the Snow Queen, and the Little Match Girl. Hans
Christian Andersen wrote the stories about them. He wrote many, many
other tales too and won even greater fame than he had ever dreamed for
himself.
[Illustration: PAPER CUTTING DONE BY HANS ANDERSEN]
He travelled much in other lands. Everywhere he went he found children
reading his books or listening to his tales. Some men would have felt
very important to have so much fame. But Hans Christian Andersen said,
“When I see how far my thoughts have flown, I am frightened. I wonder
whether I have kept my thoughts pure enough for so many children to read
them.”
Little did he dream just how great was his fame. He wrote those fairy
tales more than a hundred years ago. And even today no stories are more
loved by children all over the world than the stories by that great
teller of tales.
But perhaps the children of Denmark hear the most about the man who
wrote those tales, for he was born in their country. A few years ago,
the children of Denmark celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Hans Christian Andersen. At the schools they acted the stories
that Andersen wrote. In Copenhagen movie cameras took pictures of the
plays acted by the school children. Those pictures are still shown to
many children in Denmark.
In the town of Odense still stands the house where Hans Christian
Andersen was born. The people of Denmark have built a building beside
that old house in which to keep the things which belonged to Andersen.
The street in front of that house looks much the same as it looked when
the little boy, Hans, played there.
On the shelves in Andersen’s old home are his fairy tales in Danish, in
English, in French, in Spanish, and in other languages too. Andersen
wrote the stories in the Danish language, of course. But people in other
lands wanted their children to read those wonderful tales too. So the
stories have been rewritten in nearly every language in the world.
[Illustration: DOLLS DRESSED LIKE THE CHARACTERS IN ANDERSEN’S STORIES]
When children visit that building, they like to look into the case in
which stand dolls dressed like the characters in their best-loved
stories. Those dolls were dressed by little girls who lived when
Andersen was writing his tales. Many children like, too, the fairy
figures which Hans cut from paper. Some of those paper cuttings lie in a
glass case, and beside them are the scissors Hans used when he cut them.
[Illustration: STATUE OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN]
In the hall of that building to the memory of Andersen stands a statue
of Hans Christian Andersen. Many other statues of Andersen have been
erected, but none is liked better by Danish children than this one in
which he is the children’s teller of tales.