Adolph Anderssen

“ He led Paul on to the platform again and opened a sort of cupboard or closet. 'That's where we keeps the brooms and lamp-rags, and them,' he said; 'it ain't what you may call tidy, but if I lock you in no one won't trouble you.'
It was perfectly dark and the rags smelt unpleasantly, but Mr. Bultitude was very glad of this second ark of refuge, even though he did bruise his legs over the broom-handles; he was gladder still by-and-by, when he heard a rapid heavy footfall outside, and a voice he knew only too well, saying, 'I want to see the station-master. Ha, there he is. ”

“ I can use that, and together we may be able to hold them off until we can find some means of escape."
"It won't work, lady," replied Anderssen. "They would only get us both, and then Ay couldn't do you no good at all. Think of the kid, lady, and what it would be for you both to fall into Rokoff's hands again. For his sake you must do what Ay say. Here, take my rifle and ammunition; you may need them."
He shoved the gun and bandoleer into the shelter beside Jane. Then he was gone.
She watched him as he returned along the path to meet the oncoming safari of the Russian. ”

“ Anson's eyes scanned the faces. Half a dozen humans: Chiang Chung-Chen, DuFrere Marie, Gonzales Alonzo and his wife Nora who was Anson's sister, Dougald Joan, Masefield Philip—No sign of Ellen.
"Anse! Anse!" The voices almost sobbed out of the dim-lit hollowness. Joan and Nora sprang forward as if to touch their brother, make sure he was alive and no vision of the night, but Janazik waved them back with his sword.
"No noise," hissed the Khazaki's fierce whisper. "No noise, by all the thirteen hells! Volakech's burats are all over the city. ”

“ It was this spirit of Andersen’s, which to the end found beauty and joy in life, that makes his stories so fresh and eternal. For though Hans Andersen died a long time ago, he still lives in his writings. In nearly all countries they are known and read. For the truly great works of men are a gift to the whole world, and belong to all countries and to all time. I think these stories of Hans Andersen’s will probably live for ever, long after we are gone—perhaps so long as this world shall last. ”

“ Adam Andersen was over forty when he left a wife and four children, and a comfortable home, and went, not to the bad — that was not the word for it — but to that which is outside the good or the bad, to freedom from all cords and weights of civilized life. He lived, anyway, on the outskirts of civilization, where he could hear and see, and smell with his sharpened nostrils, that which was outside. He lived in one of the far Western States, on a fine farm which he himself had wrested from the wild. ”

“ Then, too, the desire of discovery is as old as the world, and Andersen in setting himself free had become at once as old and as young as the world. It was therefore that he went on with the men to the mines. But he was the one of them all who made a rich find, although it was not for a year's time, and in the mean time there had been hardships which he had borne lightly, since he had not born them with his soul. Frost-bites which do not affect the soul have little sting in them, and neither has hunger under burning suns. ”

“ This contest excited intense interest throughout the continent of Europe. Herr Anderssen exjoyed the reputation in France, German and elsewhere of being the first player in Europe. It will be remembered that he successfully competed for the highest honors and defeated Mr. ”

“ Anse said grimly. "Every day that goes by, more of our friends will be found out and killed, more places will be searched for Ellen, Volakech's grip on the city will grow stronger." He put the spiked helmet back on his head, and buckled the sword about his mailed waist. "Come on, Janazik. The rest stay here and wait for word. If we're utterly defeated, such of us as survive will manage to get back and lead you out of Krakenau—somehow." ”

“ And then, while the children revel in the fun and the fancy of Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, let the sorrowful or sore or wounded heart turn to them for solace, soothing or healing. Hans Andersen enjoys a very special “popularity” and yet some, who have learned to love and value him, doubt whether justice has yet been done to his work. Because it is matchless for the young, it may be easily forgotten that it can be so, only by some quality which makes it matchless for all others. ”

“ No nobleman's child could, at all events, be brought up with less restraint, or more completely left to his own fancies. Poor as were his parents, he never felt want; he had no care; he was fed and clothed without any thought on his part; he lived his own dreamy life, nourished by scraps of plays, songs, and all manner of traditionary stories. There was a theatre at Odense, and young Andersen was now and then taken to it by his parents. ”

“ The more vehemently he contests and resents, the louder is the laugh against him. Whether the right is upon his side, time alone can show; time alone can redress his wrongs. When the poet has written his best, he has done all his part. If he cannot feel perfectly tranquil as to the result, let him at least affect tranquillity—let him be silent, and silence will soon bring that peace it typifies.
Henceforward, however, upon the whole, the career of Andersen is prosperous, and his life genial. ”

“ Adam Andersen had simply attired himself in some stout clothes and put a few necessaries in the rude old knapsack which he had borne over his shoulders when he first came to those parts, and one night when his wife and family were at a Christmas gathering in the school-house, three miles away, he had stepped — or rather leaped, so glad was the new sense of freedom in him — over the indefinite barrier which kept the settlement from the wild, the civilized man from the savage, and in a trice he was what he had been before he had known himself. ”

“ He held forth the dripping sword. "He stowed away—was going to take over the ship. Alonzo threw him off balance by turning the rockets back on. He killed Alonzo. Then I killed him. He needed it. He was a traitor and a murderer, Ellen."
"He was my brother," she whispered. And suddenly she was sobbing in Anse's arms, great racking sobs that seemed to tear her slender body apart.
But she'd get over it.
Anse looked at Janazik over her shoulder, and while he ruffled her shining hair his eyes locked with the Khazaki's. This is the end. Once we land, we can never see each other, not ever again. ”

“ Who knows whether little Jonas might not become the first singer on the Danish stage? Yes, if he received education of mind and voice, who knows? I could really have, pleasure in attempting it, and help every one on in the world, before I myself am rightly in the way!”
“If he is born to a beggar’s estate,” said Otto, “let him as beggar live and die, and learn nothing higher. That is better, that is more to be desired!”
Wilhelm seated himself at the piano-forte, and played some of his own compositions. “That is difficult,” said he; “every one cannot play that.” ”

“ Farther down, the great railroad bridge crossed the stream, and at all hours he could catch the swift glisten of the train-windows as they shot past.
Anderson's office was about twelve by fourteen, and lined with shelves on two sides. On these he had books, not law-books. Those he had relegated to the library at home. He had probably in the depths of his consciousness a sensation of melancholy at the contemplation of those reminders of his balked career. No man, no matter how gracefully he may yield to it, cares to contemplate failures. ”

“ I ain't quite sech a cur as that comes to, particular when a young gent saves me from the 'orrors, and gives me a 'arf-suffering. I'll see you through, you make yourself easy about that.'
Half an hour went slowly by for Mr. Bultitude in his darkness and solitude. The platform gradually filled, as he could tell by the tread of feet, the voices, and the scent of cigars, and at last, welcome sound, he heard the station bell ringing for the up-train.
It ran in the next minute, shaking the cupboard in which Paul crouched, till the brushes rattled. ”

“ A form that for any one else would be a circuitous route to the goal, a hindrance and a disguise, becomes for Andersen a mask behind which alone he feels truly free, truly happy and secure. His childlike genius, like the well-known child forms of antiquity, plays with the mask, elicits laughter, awakens delight and terror. Thus the nursery story's mode of expression, which with all its frankness is masked, becomes the natural, indeed, the classic cadence of his voice, that but very rarely becomes overstrained or out of tune. ”

“ The poor are as defenseless as the child. Furthermore, Andersen loves the child, because he is able to portray it, not so much in the direct psychologic way of the romance,—he is by no means a direct psychologist,—as indirectly, by transporting himself with a bound into the child's world, and he acts as though no other course were possible. Rarely, therefore, has charge been more unjust than that of Kierkegaard when he accused Andersen of being unable to depict children ”

“ To the last, and in the presence of his immortal little masterpieces, he continued to be slightly scandalized at the liberties he had persuaded himself to take with classical Danish.
Perhaps there never existed a more remarkable instance of the adaptation of extraordinary circumstances to the purposes of a unique genius than was seen in the case of the early training of Andersen. His childish days had been spent in strange places, in still stranger company. He must have been about five years of age when he went with his parents to dine with the jailer of the common prison in Odense. ”

“ Andersen is a tall gentleman, with a thin face,—the features of which are far from handsome,—and iron-gray hair. His countenance is always covered with smiles when he speaks, and his whole manner is child-like and simple. He is full of the love of God and of man, which seems to shine out in his face, and to be the interpretation of his ever-present smile. His dress was scrupulously neat and nice in every detail.
The doctor told him about the Academy squadron, of which he had read a brief notice in the newspapers, and invited him to visit the ship, which he promised to do, on the following day. ”

“ That it is a sign of immaturity of intellect is undeniable; and in Andersen's case it is one of the many indications that intellectually [Pg 164] he never outgrew his childhood. He never possessed the power of judgment that we expect in a grown-up man. His opinions on social and political questions were naïve and quite worthless. And yet, in spite of all these limitations, he was a poet of rare power; nay, I may say in consequence of them. The vitality which in other authors goes toward intellectual development, produced in him strength and intensity of imagination. ”

“ Indeed, Andersen’s great gift is that he appeals to so many different sorts of people, that he himself has so many sides. He is tender, sad, and wistful, but also absurd,192 fantastic, and amusing. At one moment he makes us cry, the next instant we laugh. Andersen had been able to keep the imagination of a child of five or six, though he was a grown-up man of over thirty when he began to publish his stories. ”

“ Hans Andersen's father dying when the boy was still young, the mother married again, and Hans was left even more to himself. He read and wrote and recited all day, so that it became generally understood that he was to be a poet; and as nothing is so absurd to the eyes of healthy normal boys as a poet, he was the victim of not a little ridicule. His mother's wish to apprentice [Pg 34] him to a tailor precipitated his fate. Rather than that he would go, he declared, to Copenhagen and join the theatre. To deny her son anything was beyond her power ”

“ The Danish critics have generally no open eye for nature: even the highest and most cultivated monthly periodical of literature in Denmark censured me once because, in a poem I had described a rainbow by moonlight. That too was my fancy, which, said they, carried me too far. When I said in the Bazaar, "if I were a painter, I would paint this bridge; but, as I am no painter, but a poet, I must therefore speak," &c. Upon this the critic says, "He is so vain, that he tells us himself that he is a poet." There is something so pitiful in such criticism, that one cannot be wounded by it ”

“ Shall there be war with—Earth herself?"
"To Shantuzik with that," growled Anse. "These are our enemies, to be fought and beaten. Out there is the great civilization of the Galaxy, and they would keep us from it for generations yet, and make it in the end our foe. And Volakech is a murderer with no right to the throne of Krakenau. I say let's get at his liver!"
"Well—" Ellen looked away. When she turned back, there was torment in her eyes, but her voice was low and steady: "I'm with you in whatever you plan. But on one condition. Carse is not to be harmed."
"Not harmed!" exploded Janazik. ”

“ It grew with time; Volakech's patrols were drawn by the noise, loyalists crouched in hiding heard of the attack and sped to join it. Anse and Janazik fought side by side, human brawn and Khazaki swiftness, and the corpses were heaped where they went.
A pike raked Anse's hand. He dropped his sword and the enemy leaped in with drawn knife. Anse did not reach for his own dirk—no human had a chance in a knife fight with a Khazaki—but his arms snaked out, his hands closed on the native's waist, and he lifted the enemy up and hurled him against another. ”