Immensee

Immensee (English tran.) [with
accents]

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Immensee, by Theodore W. Storm
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Title: Immensee
Author: Theodore W. Storm
Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6650] [Yes, we are more than

one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on January 9,
2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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IMMENSEE ***

Delphine Lettau, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.

IMMENSEE
BY THEODOR W. STORM
TRANSLATED BY C. W. BELL M. A.

PREFACE

We are at the beginning of a new era which will, it is to be hoped, be
marked by a general rapprochement between the nations. The
need to know and understand one another is being felt more and more.
It follows that the study of foreign languages will assume an ever-
increasing importance; indeed, so far as language, literature, and music
are concerned, one may safely assert that fas est et ab hoste
doceri.
All those who wish to make acquaintance with the speech of their
neighbours, or who have allowed their former knowledge to grow rusty,
will welcome this edition, which will enable them, independently of
bulky dictionaries, to devote to language study the moments of leisure
which offer themselves in the course of the day.
The texts have been selected from the double point of view of their
literary worth and of the usefulness of their vocabulary; in the
translations, also, the endeavour has been to unite qualities of style with

strict fidelity to the original.

INTRODUCTION

Theodor W. Storm, poet and short-story writer (1817-1888), was born
in Schleswig. He was called to the Bar in his native town, Husum, in
1842, but had his licence to practise cancelled in 1853 for
'Germanophilism,' and had to remove to Germany. It was only in 1864
that he was able to return to Husum, where in 1874 he became a judge
of the Court of Appeals.
As early as 1843 he had made himself known as a lyrical poet of the
Romantic School, but it was as a short-story writer that he first took a
prominent place in literature, making a most happy début with
the story entitled Immensee.
There followed a long series of tales, rich in fancy and in humour,
although their inspiration is generally derived from the humble town
and country life which formed his immediate environment; but he
wrote nothing that excels, in depth and tenderness of feeling, the
charming story of Immensee; and taking his work all in all,
Storm still ranks to-day as a master of the short story in German
literature, rich though it is in this form of prose-fiction.

IMMENSEE

THE OLD MAN

0ne afternoon in the late autumn a well-dressed old man was walking
slowly down the street. He appeared to be returning home from a walk,
for his buckle-shoes, which followed a fashion long since out of date,
were covered with dust.
Under his arm he carried a long, gold-headed cane; his dark eyes, in
which the whole of his long-lost youth seemed to have centred, and
which contrasted strangely with his snow-white hair, gazed calmly on
the sights around him or peered into the town below as it lay before
him, bathed in the haze of sunset. He appeared to be almost a stranger,
for of the passers-by only a few greeted him, although many a one

involuntarily was compelled to gaze into those grave eyes.
At last he halted before a high, gabled house, cast one more glance out
toward the town, and then passed into the hall. At the sound of the
door-bell some one in the room within drew aside the green curtain
from a small window that looked out on to the hall, and the face of an
old woman was seen behind it. The man made a sign to her with his
cane.
"No light yet!" he said