The Making of an American | Page 5

am a believer in organized, systematic
charity upon the evidence of my senses; but--I am glad we have that
one season in which we can forget our principles and err on the side of
mercy, that little corner in the days of the dying year for sentiment and
no questions asked. No need to be afraid. It is safe. Christmas charity
never corrupts. Love keeps it sweet and good--the love He brought into
the world at Christmas to temper the hard reason of man. Let it loose
for that little spell. January comes soon enough with its long cold.
Always it seems to me the longest month in the year. It is so far to
another Christmas!
[Illustration: Mother.]
To say that Ribe was an old town hardly describes it to readers at this
day. A town might be old and yet have kept step with time. In my day
Ribe had not. It had never changed its step or its ways since whale-oil
lanterns first hung in iron chains across its cobblestone-paved streets to

light them at night. There they hung yet, every rusty link squeaking
dolefully in the wind that never ceased blowing from the sea. Coal-oil,
just come from America, was regarded as a dangerous innovation. I
remember buying a bottle of "Pennsylvania oil" at the grocer's for eight
skilling, as a doubtful domestic experiment. Steel pens had not crowded
out the old-fashioned goose-quill, and pen-knives meant just what their
name implies. Matches were yet of the future. We carried tinder-boxes
to strike fire with. People shook their heads at the telegraph. The day of
the stage-coach was not yet past. Steamboat and railroad had not come
within forty miles of the town, and only one steam factory--a cotton
mill that was owned by Elizabeth's father. At the time of the beginning
of my story, he, having made much money during the early years of the
American war through foresight in having supplied himself with cotton,
was building another and larger, and I helped to put it up. Of progress
and enterprise he held an absolute monopoly in Ribe, and though he
employed more than half of its working force, it is not far from the
truth that he was unpopular on that account. It could not be well
otherwise in a town whose militia company yet drilled with flint-lock
muskets. Those we had in the school for the use of the big
boys--dreadful old blunderbusses of the pre-Napoleonic era--were of
the same pattern. I remember the fright that seized our worthy rector
when the German army was approaching in the winter of 1863, and the
haste they made to pack them all up in a box and send them out to be
sunk in the deep, lest they fall into the hands of the enemy; and the
consternation that sat upon their faces when they saw the Prussian
needle-guns.
The watchmen still cried the hour at night They do, for that matter, yet.
The railroad came to town and the march of improvement struck it,
after I had gone away. Century-old institutions were ruthlessly upset.
The police force, which in my boyhood consisted of a man and a
half--that is, one with a wooden leg--was increased and uniformed, and
the night watchmen's chant was stopped. But there are limits to
everything. The town that had been waked every hour of the night since
the early Middle Ages to be told that it slept soundly, could not
possibly take a night's rest without it. It lay awake dreading all sorts of
unknown disasters. Universal insomnia threatened it; and within a

month, on petition of the entire community, the council restored the
songsters, and they squeak to this day. This may sound like
exaggeration; but it is not. It is a faithful record of what took place and
stands so upon the official minutes of the municipality.
[Illustration: The Deserted Quay.]
When I was in Denmark last year, I looked over some of those old
reports, and had more than one melancholy laugh at the account of
measures taken for the defence of Ribe at the first assault of the
Germans in 1849. That was the year I was born. Ribe, being a border
town on the line of the coveted territory, set about arming itself to resist
invasion. The citizens built barricades in the streets--one of them, with
wise forethought, in front of the drug store, "in case any one were to
faint" and stand in need of Hoffman's drops or smelling-salts. The
women filled kettles with hot water in the houses flanking an eventual
advance. "Two hundred pounds of powder" were ordered from the next
town by foot-post, and a cannon that had stood half buried a hundred
years, serving for a hitching-post, was dug up and put