Nils

“ The boy screwed up his shoulders. “Aw, Nils, I can't dance. My feet are too big; I look silly.”
“Don't be thinking about yourself. It doesn't matter how boys look.”
Nils had never spoken to him so sharply before, and Eric made haste to scramble out of his corner and brush the straw from his coat.
Clara nodded approvingly. “Good for you, Nils. I've been trying to get hold of him. They dance very nicely together; I sometimes play for them.”
“I'm obliged to you for teaching him. There's no reason why he should grow up to be a lout.” ”

“ The ploughing is behindhand, and Lars Falkenberg and I are both at it, field and meadow land.
Nils, queer creature that he was, began to find things intolerable at Øvrebø again, and talked of throwing up his place and going off altogether. But he couldn't bear the disgrace of leaving his service like that. Nils had his own clear notions of honour, handed down through many generations. A young man from a big farm could not behave like a lad from a cottar's holding. ”

“ The strangers were amazed at a man’s thus calmly refusing a fortune that was within his easy grasp, for they did not doubt that Nils, with his entirely unconventional manner of playing, and yet with that extraordinary moving quality in his play, would become the rage both in Europe and America, as a kind of heaven-born, untutored genius, and fill both his own pockets and theirs with shekels. ”

“ Nils walked home that night plunged in deep meditation. He vowed to himself that he would never more try to catch the Nixy’s strain. But the next day, when he seized the violin, there it was again, and, strive as he might, he could not forbear trying to catch it.
Wise Nils is many years older now; has a good wife and several children, and is a happy man; but to this day, resolve as he will, he has never been able to abandon the effort to catch the Nixy’s strain. Sometimes he thinks he has half caught it, but when he tries to play it, it is always gone. ”

“ What other man do you know who carries a six-year-old little fellow about with him in rain and shine, storm and quiet?
“Well,” Nils invariably answered, “I like him and he likes me. He brings me luck.”
This was a standing dispute between Nils and Inga, his wife, and they never came to an agreement. She knew as well as her husband that before little Hans was born there was want and misery in their cottage. ”

“ Olaf still stared at the ground, his head down. He wanted to ask Nils what he had been doing all these years, that he didn’t have a business somewhere he couldn’t afford to leave; why he hadn’t more pride than to come back with only a little sole-leather trunk to show for himself, and to present himself as the only failure in the family. He did not ask one of these questions, but he made them all felt distinctly.
“Humph!” Nils thought. “No wonder the man never talks, when he can butt his ideas into you like that without ever saying a word. ”

“ Going and visiting and making yourself sweet to folk when you find them all alone. But not for me, thank you!”
Nils comes up to us now, guessing, no doubt, what's the trouble, and ready to put in a word for me, like the good comrade he is. He catches the last words, and gives me a testimonial on the spot, to the effect that he's never seen anything wrong about me all the time I've been on the place.
But Lars Falkenberg bridles up at once and puts on airs, looking Nils up and down with contempt. He has a grudge against Nils already. ”

“ He and Munumqueh became great [28] cronies, and exchanged names, Nils being thereafter known to his native friends as the Woodchuck, and bestowing upon Munumqueh the proud name of his grandfather, Nils the Bear-Slayer.
"It will never do for us to sit quiet here until Knutson returns," said Nils when at Midsummer nothing had been seen of the ships. "We shall be at one another's throats or quarreling with the savages." He had been inquiring about the nature of the country, and had learned that westward a great river led to five inland seas, so connected that canoes could go from one to another. ”

“ But, strange to say, though the Nixy’s mysterious melody still sounded vaguely through the water’s roar, and the Hulder seemed to titter behind the tree-trunks and vanish in the underbrush, a real, unmistakable view was never vouchsafed to Nils, and the three wishes which were to make his fortune he had no chance of propounding. ”

“ He dived like a man, he did. He has washed the dirt off his snout now; that was the reason he took such a big plunge.”
Nils never failed to reach his boat-hook after the log little Hans indicated, for he liked to humor him, and little Hans liked to be humored. He had an idea that he was directing his father’s work, and Nils invented all sorts of innocent devices to flatter little Hans’s dignity, and make him think himself indispensable. It was of no use, therefore, for poor Inga to beg little Hans to go home with her. ”

“ Akka said no more, and after Smirre had sent up a few more yowls, all was still. The boy lay all the while awake. Now it was Akka's words to the fox that prevented him from sleeping. Never had he dreamed that he should hear anything so great as that anyone was willing to risk life for his sake. From that moment, it could no longer be said of Nils Holgersson that he did not care for anyone. ”

“ I like to lock up myself.”
Nils put his hand on Eric's shoulder, and the two tramped down the hill and across the sand creek into the dusty highroad beyond. Neither spoke. They swung along at an even gait, Nils puffing at his pipe. There was no moon, and the white road and the wide fields lay faint in the starlight. Over everything was darkness and thick silence, and the smell of dust and sunflowers. The brothers followed the road for a mile or more without finding a place to sit down. Finally, Nils perched on a stile over the wire fence, and Eric sat on the lower step. ”

“ M. Goefle and Christian Waldo shook hands upon this agreement. Nils, whose services had been confined to eating his breakfast during the conversation, was now well wrapped up in furs by his master, who was obliged to lift him upon the driver’s seat of the sleigh, and to place the reins and whip in his hands. Once seated, however, he drove off like an arrow, and descended the steep slope of the rock with skill and confidence. To drive a horse was the one thing that he knew how to do, and did without murmuring. ”

“ They were not in the least afraid lest the logs should jump the chute, as they had often done before, killing or maiming the unhappy man that came too near. For was not little Hans’s life charmed, so that no harm could befall him?
Now, it happened that Inga, little Hans’s mother, came one day to the river to see how he was getting on. Nils was then standing on a raft hooking the floating logs with his boat-hook, while the boy was watching him from the shore, shouting to him, throwing chips into the water, and amusing himself as best he could. ”

“ His face seemed childlike, too, Nils thought, and he had the open, wandering eyes of a little boy. All the others had been men at his age.
After supper Nils went out to the front porch and sat down on the step to smoke a pipe. Mrs. Ericson drew a rocking-chair up near him and began to knit busily. It was one of the few Old World customs she had kept up, for she could not bear to sit with idle hands.
“Where's little Eric, Mother?”
“He's helping Hilda with the dishes. He does it of his own will; I don't like a boy to be too handy about the house.”
“He seems like a nice kid.” ”

“ This Nils did not like, but, as she was very useful to him in the coal forest, he was careful not to betray his thoughts, and said he would think over the matter. [171]
One day he went to church, where he had not been for many years, and what he heard there set him to thinking as he had not thought since he was an innocent child. He began to reflect whether he had not made a misstep, and if it might not be a Troll woman who had so willingly lent him her company and help. ”

“ The boy took to Jantje at once, and when he began to call her "Mama," she wept with joy, and had to run and find Nils Petter that he might hear it too. He tried to get the child to call him "Papa," but here he was disappointed; Rasper would not call him anything but "Nils Petter," as he had heard everybody else do.
The first night, one of the richest heirs in the country slept in a washing-basket, to the great delight of Nils Petter, who amused himself swinging basket and boy together over his head till the child fell asleep. ”

“ You just help yourself as well as you can; and you may be thankful that we do not form a league against you, and drive you back to your own kind!"
This was just the sort of answer the boy would not have let go unpunished, in the days when he was Nils the goose boy. But now he was only fearful lest the wild geese, too, had found out how wicked he could be. He had been so anxious for fear he wouldn't be permitted to stay with the wild geese, that he hadn't dared to get into the least little mischief since he joined their company. ”

“ He thought sometimes that he heard a faint, girlish giggle, full of teasing provocation and suppressed glee, among the underbrush, and once he imagined that he saw a gleam of scarlet and gold vanish in a dense alder copse.
But very little good did that do him, when he could not fix the vision, talk with it face to face, and extort the fulfilment of the three regulation wishes.
“I am probably not good enough,” thought Nils. “I know I am a selfish fellow, and cruel, too, some-times, to birds and beasts. ”

“ Although, to be sure, my old one is pretty shabby,” he adds, with a regretful glance at his patched sleeves.
“Well, we will see, we will see,” responds Nils, pulling off his bear-skin mittens and gliding in among the trees in which the traps are set. “The good Lord, who looks after the poor man as well as the rich, may send us enough to attend to the wants of us all.” ”

“ He was but a little fellow when he learned that Nils, the tailor, was his father; and just when he came to the age when children most love strange, romantic things, he also learned what sort of man Nils was. But the grandmother had strictly forbidden the very mention of his name; her mind was set only upon extending Kampen and making it their own property, so that Margit and the boy might be independent. Taking advantage of the landowner's poverty, she bought the place, paid off part of the purchase-money every year, and managed her farm like a man ”

“ Arne ran about his father, shooting with a bow and arrow. Nils had himself made them for the boy. Thus they passed on directly [30] up toward the road leading past the church and parsonage, down to what was called the broad valley. Nils seated himself on a stone by the roadside and fell to dreaming; the boy shot into the road and sprang after his arrow,—it was in the direction of the church. "Not too far away!" said the father. While the boy was playing there, he paused, as though listening. "Father, I hear music!" ”

“ And round about them other heads bobbed up; for all the lumbermen who were on the raft had plunged into the water with Nils when they saw that little Hans was in danger. A dozen more were running down the slope as fast as their legs could carry them; and they gave a tremendous cheer when they saw little Hans’s face above the water. He looked a trifle pale and shivery, and he gave a funny little snort, so that the water spurted from his nose. ”

“ Nils and Thorolf agreed that the Wind-wife was right when she said that the country of the Skroelings was like Norway but had no end.
"The trouble is," reflected Nils as he set down the day's happenings on a birch-bark scroll, "that nobody will believe us when we tell how great the land is."
At the end of the fifth and largest lake they found people with some knowledge of the country beyond. It seemed that after crossing the Big Woods one came to great open plains where a ferocious and cruel race of warriors hunted animals as large as the moose, with hoofs and short horns and curly brown fur. ”

“ When Akka, the leader-goose, talked in this way, the boy stepped briskly forward. It had distressed him that the goosey-gander, who had spoken up so glibly for himself, should give such evasive answers when it concerned him. "I don't care to make a secret of who I am," said he. "My name is Nils Holgersson. I'm a farmer's son, and, until to-day, I have been a human being; but this morning—" He got no further. As soon as he had said that he was human the leader-goose staggered three steps backward, and the rest of them even farther back. ”

“ By licentiousness, mysticism and astrological speculations his mind became unsettled. It had been predicted that a blond man would dethrone him. Eric at first made his brother John the subject of his suspicions. After the duke’s imprisonment he suspected a rival in Nils Sture, who also was a blond. Eric accused him of ill behavior in the battle of Axtorna. The king’s court sentenced him to death, but Lord Nils escaped with a contumelious entry of mockery into Stockholm, on a miserable horse, and a crown of straw on his head. ”

“ Niel, a pure Keltic word, which was adopted by the Northmen, and became naturalized in Scandinavia and Normandy, has also been 92translated by Nicolas, but quite incorrectly. Nils is the only real Nicolaus except Klaus used in the North, though Niel, and even Nigel, are sometimes confounded with it. Denmark has had a King Klaus; otherwise this popular name has only been on the throne in the instance of that great Tzar whom we had respected till the last year of his life, when his aggression forced us into war. ”