Tales From Two Hemispheres | Page 6

these reflections he fell asleep, and slept soundly for two or
three hours. Once, he seemed to hear footsteps and whispers among the
trees, and made an effort to rouse himself, but weariness again
overmastered him and he slept on. At last, he felt himself seized
violently by the shoulders, and a gruff voice shouted in his ear:
"Get up, you sleepy dog."
He rubbed his eyes, and, by the dim light of the moon, saw a Herculean
policeman lifting a stout stick over his head. His former terror came
upon him with increased violence, and his heart stood for a moment
still, then, again, hammered away as if it would burst his sides.
"Come along!" roared the policeman, shaking him vehemently by the
collar of his coat.
In his bewilderment he quite forgot where he was, and, in hurried
Norse sentences, assured his persecutor that he was a harmless, honest
traveler, and implored him to release him. But the official Hercules was
inexorable.
"My valise, my valise;" cried Halfdan. "Pray let me get my valise."
They returned to the place where he had slept, but the valise was
nowhere to be found. Then, with dumb despair he resigned himself to
his fate, and after a brief ride on a street-car, found himself standing in
a large, low-ceiled room; he covered his face with his hands and burst

into tears.
"The grand-the happy republic," he murmured, "spontaneous
blossoming of the soul. Alas! I have rooted up my life; I fear it will
never blossom."
All the high-flown adjectives he had employed in his parting speech in
the Students' Union, when he paid his enthusiastic tribute to the Grand
Republic, now kept recurring to him, and in this moment the paradox
seemed cruel. The Grand Republic, what did it care for such as he? A
pair of brawny arms fit to wield the pick-axe and to steer the plow it
received with an eager welcome; for a child-like, loving heart and a
generously fantastic brain, it had but the stern greeting of the law.

III.
The next morning, Halfdan was released from the Police Station,
having first been fined five dollars for vagrancy. All his money, with
the exception of a few pounds which he had exchanged in Liverpool, he
had lost with his valise, and he had to his knowledge not a single
acquaintance in the city or on the whole continent. In order to increase
his capital he bought some fifty "Tribunes," but, as it was already late
in the day, he hardly succeeded in selling a single copy. The next
morning, he once more stationed himself on the corner of Murray street
and Broadway, hoping in his innocence to dispose of the papers he had
still on hand from the previous day, and actually did find a few
customers among the people who were jumping in and out of the
omnibuses that passed up and down the great thoroughfare. To his
surprise, however, one of these gentlemen returned to him with a very
wrathful countenance, shook his fist at him, and vociferated with
excited gestures something which to Halfdan's ears had a very
unintelligible sound. He made a vain effort to defend himself; the
situation appeared so utterly incomprehensible to him, and in his dumb
helplessness he looked pitiful enough to move the heart of a stone. No
English phrase suggested itself to him, only a few Norse interjections
rose to his lips. The man's anger suddenly abated; he picked up the

paper which he had thrown on the sidewalk, and stood for a while
regarding Halfdan curiously.
"Are you a Norwegian?" he asked.
"Yes, I came from Norway yesterday."
"What's your name?"
"Halfdan Bjerk."
"Halfdan Bjerk! My stars! Who would have thought of meeting you
here! You do not recognize me, I suppose."
Halfdan declared with a timid tremor in his voice that he could not at
the moment recall his features.
"No, I imagine I must have changed a good deal since you saw me,"
said the man, suddenly dropping into Norwegian. "I am Gustav Olson, I
used to live in the same house with you once, but that is long ago now."
Gustav Olson--to be sure, he was the porter's son in the house, where
his mother had once during his childhood, taken a flat. He well
remembered having clandestinely traded jack- knives and buttons with
him, in spite of the frequent warnings he had received to have nothing
to do with him; for Gustav, with his broad freckled face and red hair,
was looked upon by the genteel inhabitants of the upper flats as rather a
disreputable character. He had once whipped the son of a colonel who
had been impudent to him, and thrown a snow-ball at the head of a
new-fledged lieutenant, which