Household Tales | Page 9

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shudder!" for he was afraid. Or when stories were told by the fire at
night which made the flesh creep, the listeners sometimes said "Oh, it
makes us shudder!" The younger sat in a corner and listened with the
rest of them, and could not imagine what they could mean. "They are
always saying 'it makes me shudder, it makes me shudder!' It does not
make me shudder," thought he. "That, too, must be an art of which I
understand nothing."
Now it came to pass that his father said to him one day "Hearken to me,
thou fellow in the corner there, thou art growing tall and strong, and
thou too must learn something by which thou canst earn thy living.
Look how thy brother works, but thou dost not even earn thy salt."
"Well, father," he replied, "I am quite willing to learn
something---indeed, if it could but be managed, I should like to learn
how to shudder. I don't understand that at all yet." The elder brother
smiled when he heard that, and thought to himself, "Good God, what a
blockhead that brother of mine is! He will never be good for anything
as long as he lives. He who wants to be a sickle must bend himself
betimes."
The father sighed, and answered him "thou shalt soon learn what it is to
shudder, but thou wilt not earn thy bread by that."
Soon after this the sexton came to the house on a visit, and the father
bewailed his trouble, and told him how his younger son was so
backward in every respect that he knew nothing and learnt nothing.
"Just think," said he, "when I asked him how he was going to earn his
bread, he actually wanted to learn to shudder." "If that be all," replied
the sexton, "he can learn that with me. Send him to me, and I will soon
polish him." The father was glad to do it, for he thought, "It will train
the boy a little." The sexton therefore took him into his house, and he
had to ring the bell. After a day or two, the sexton awoke him at
midnight, and bade him arise and go up into the church tower and ring

the bell. "Thou shalt soon learn what shuddering is," thought he, and
secretly went there before him; and when the boy was at the top of the
tower and turned round, and was just going to take hold of the bell rope,
he saw a white figure standing on the stairs opposite the sounding hole.
"Who is there?" cried he, but the figure made no reply, and did not
move or stir. "Give an answer," cried the boy, "or take thy self off, thou
hast no business here at night."
The sexton, however, remained standing motionless that the boy might
think he was a ghost. The boy cried a second time, "What do you want
here?---speak if thou art an honest fellow, or I will throw thee down the
steps!" The sexton thought, "he can't intend to be as bad as his words,"
uttered no sound and stood as if he were made of stone. Then the boy
called to him for the third time, and as that was also to no purpose, he
ran against him and pushed the ghost down the stairs, so that it fell
down ten steps and remained lying there in a corner. Thereupon he rang
the bell, went home, and without saying a word went to bed, and fell
asleep. The sexton's wife waited a long time for her husband, but he did
not come back. At length she became uneasy, and wakened the boy,
and asked, "Dost thou not know where my husband is? He climbed up
the tower before thou didst." "No, I don't know," replied the boy, "but
some one was standing by the sounding hole on the other side of the
steps, and as he would neither give an answer nor go away, I took him
for a scoundrel, and threw him downstairs, just go there and you will
see if it was he. I should be sorry if it were." The woman ran away and
found her husband, who was lying moaning in the corner, and had
broken his leg.
She carried him down, and then with loud screams she hastened to the
boy's father. "Your boy," cried she, "has been the cause of a great
misfortune! He has thrown my husband down the steps and made him
break his leg. Take the good-for-nothing fellow away from our house."
The father was terrified, and ran thither and scolded the boy. "What
wicked tricks are these?" said he, "the devil must have put this into thy
head." "Father," he replied, "do listen to me.