The Bodleys telling stories . it; the sailors paraded the city, with music,and Hags flying, and two of the boldest would stand and wrestleupon a ])lauk placed between two boats, and the one not throwninto the water was victor. When he was a very little child, was a ^var, and Spaniards were in the town — brown foreign-ers, who h;df-fascinated, half-frightened him. He giew u[) (juite by himself, living in a strange world, whichhe peopled with his imagination. His lather died, and he lived alonewith his lijird-workinu mother, learning: very little, but busvinu him-self about the dolls,
The Bodleys telling stories . it; the sailors paraded the city, with music,and Hags flying, and two of the boldest would stand and wrestleupon a ])lauk placed between two boats, and the one not throwninto the water was victor. When he was a very little child, was a ^var, and Spaniards were in the town — brown foreign-ers, who h;df-fascinated, half-frightened him. He giew u[) (juite by himself, living in a strange world, whichhe peopled with his imagination. His lather died, and he lived alonewith his lijird-workinu mother, learning: very little, but busvinu him-self about the dolls, which he dressed and set uj) in a little theatreof his own. He wrote a play, too, and introduced a king and queenamongst the characters. I thought, he says, that it was notquite right that these dignified personages should speak like othermen and women. I asked mv mother, and diflerent people, how aking ought properly to speak, but no one knew exactly. They saidthat it was so many years since a king had l)een in Odense! but. HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN LAST STORIES. 2ID that he certainly spoke in a foreign language. I procured myself,therefore, a sort of lexicon, in which were German, French, andEnglish words, with Danish meaning, and this helped me. 1 took aword out of each language and inserted them into the speeches ofmy king and queen. It w^as a regular Babel-like language, which Iconsidered only suitable for such elevated personages. He grew into a tall, ungainly lad, as shy as a girl, and yet sosimple-hearted that he was ready to confide to the utmost in anyone who smiled on him. At a charity school he learned just a little,but that little so carelessly that long afterwards he suffered for thelack of such common knowledge even as how to spell. It Avas now,too, that he began to associate more wdth others, and, like his com-panions, to go through the catechism, preparatory to tells a little story here of himself, wdiicli shows where Tlie RedShoes came from. ^A
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookidbodleystellingst00scud
