Tales From Two Hemispheres | Page 3

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TALES FROM TWO HEMISPHERES.
BY
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYSEN.
1877

CONTENTS ---- THE MAN WHO LOST HIS NAME THE STORY
OF AN OUTCAST A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING A SCIENTIFIC
VAGABOND TRULS, THE NAMELESS ASATHOR'S
VENGEANCE

TALES FROM TWO HEMISPHERES.
THE MAN WHO LOST HIS NAME.
ON the second day of June, 186--, a young Norseman, Halfdan Bjerk
by name, landed on the pier at Castle Garden. He passed through the
straight and narrow gate where he was asked his name, birthplace, and
how much money he had,--at which he grew very much frightened.

"And your destination?"--demanded the gruff-looking functionary at
the desk.
"America," said the youth, and touched his hat politely.
"Do you think I have time for joking?" roared the official, with an oath.
The Norseman ran his hand through his hair, smiled his timidly
conciliatory smile, and tried his best to look brave; but his hand
trembled and his heart thumped away at an alarmingly quickened
tempo.
"Put him down for Nebraska!" cried a stout red-cheeked individual
(inwrapped in the mingled fumes of tobacco and whisky) whose
function it was to open and shut the gate.
"There aint many as go to Nebraska."
"All right, Nebraska."
The gate swung open and the pressure from behind urged the timid
traveler on, while an extra push from the gate-keeper sent him flying in
the direction of a board fence, where he sat down and tried to realize
that he was now in the land of liberty.
Halfdan Bjerk was a tall, slender-limbed youth of very delicate frame;
he had a pair of wonderfully candid, unreflecting blue eyes, a smooth,
clear, beardless face, and soft, wavy light hair, which was pushed back
from his forehead without parting. His mouth and chin were well cut,
but their lines were, perhaps, rather weak for a man. When in repose,
the ensemble of his features was exceedingly pleasing and somehow
reminded one of Correggio's St. John. He had left his native land
because he was an ardent republican and was abstractly convinced that
man, generically and individually, lives more happily in a republic than
in a monarchy. He had anticipated with keen pleasure the large, freely
breathing life he was to lead in a land where every man was his
neighbor's brother, where no senseless traditions kept a jealous watch
over obsolete systems and shrines, and no chilling prejudice blighted

the spontaneous blossoming of the soul.
Halfdan was an only child. His father, a poor government official, had
died during his infancy, and his mother had given music lessons, and
kept boarders, in order to gain the means to give her son what is called
a learned education. In the Latin school Halfdan had enjoyed the
reputation of being a bright youth, and at the age of eighteen, he had
entered the university under the most promising auspices. He could
make very fair verses, and play all imaginable instruments with equal
ease, which made him a favorite in society. Moreover, he possessed
that very old-fashioned accomplishment of cutting silhouettes; and
what was more, he could draw the most charmingly fantastic
arabesques for embroidery patterns, and he even dabbled in portrait and
landscape painting. Whatever he turned his hand to, he did well, in fact,
astonishingly well for a dilettante, and yet not well enough to claim the
title of an artist. Nor did it ever occur to him to make such a claim. As
one of his fellow-students remarked in a fit of jealousy, "Once when
Nature had made three geniuses, a poet, a musician, and a painter, she
took all the remaining odds and ends and shook them together at
random and the result was Halfdan Bjerk." This agreeable melange of
accomplishments, however, proved very attractive to the ladies, who
invited the possessor to innumerable afternoon tea-parties, where they
drew heavy drafts on his unflagging patience, and kept him steadily
engaged with patterns and designs for embroidery, leather flowers, and
other dainty knickknacks. And in return for all his exertions they called
him "sweet" and "beautiful," and applied to him many other
enthusiastic adjectives seldom heard in connection with masculine
names. In the university, talents of this order gained but slight
recognition, and when Halfdan had for three years been preparing
himself in vain for the examen philosophicum, he found himself slowly
and imperceptibly drifting into the ranks of the so-called studiosi
perpetui, who preserve a solemn silence