The Making of an American | Page 6

into commission.
There being a scarcity of guns, the curate of the next village reported
arming his host with spears and battle-axes as the next best thing. A
rumor of a sudden advance of the enemy sent the mothers with babes in
arms scurrying north for safety. My mother was among them. I was a
month old at the time. Thirty years later I battled for the mastery in the
police office in Mulberry Street with a reporter for the Staats-Zeitung
whom I discovered to be one of those invaders, and I took it out of him
in revenge. Old Cohen carried a Danish bullet in his arm to remind him
of his early ill-doings. But it was not fired in defence of Ribe. That
collapsed when a staff officer of the government, who had been sent
out to report upon the zeal of the Ribe men, declared that the town
could be defended only by damming the river and flooding the
meadows, which would cost two hundred daler. The minutes of the
council represent that that was held to be too great a price to pay for the
privilege of being sacked, perhaps, as a captured town; and the citizen
army disbanded.
[Illustration: Downstream where Ships sailed once]

If the coming of the invading army could have been timed to suit, the
sea, which from old was the bulwark of the nation, might have
completed the defences of Ribe without other expense to it than that of
repairing damages. Two or three times a year, usually in the fall, when
it blew long and hard from the northwest, it broke in over the low
meadows and flooded the country as far as the eye could reach. Then
the high causeways were the refuge of everything that lived in the
fields; hares, mice, foxes, and partridges huddled there, shivering in the
shower of spray that shot over the road, and making such stand as they
could against the fierce blast. If the "storm flood" came early in the
season, before the cattle had been housed, there was a worse story to
tell. Then the town butcher went upon the causeway at daybreak with
the implements of his trade to save if possible, by letting the blood, at
least the meat of drowned cattle and sheep that were cast up by the sea.
When it rose higher and washed over the road, the mail-coach picked
its way warily between white posts set on both sides to guide it safe.
We boys caught fish in the streets of the town, while red tiles flew from
the roofs all about us, and we enjoyed ourselves hugely. It was part of
the duty of the watchmen who cried the hours to give warning if the sea
came in suddenly during the night. And when we heard it we shivered
in our beds with gruesome delight.
The people of Ribe were of three classes: the officials, the tradesmen,
and the working people. The bishop, the burgomaster, and the rector of
the Latin School headed the first class, to which my father belonged as
the senior master in the school. Elizabeth's father easily led the second
class. For the third, it had no leaders and nothing to say at that time. On
state occasions lines were quite sharply drawn between the classes, but
the general kindliness of the people caused them at ordinary times to be
so relaxed that the difference was hardly to be noticed. Theirs was a
real neighborliness that roamed unrestrained and without prejudice
until brought up with a round turn at the barrier of traditional orthodoxy.
I remember well one instance of that kind. There lived in our town a
single family of Jews, well-to-do tradespeople, gentle and good, and
socially popular. There lived also a Gentile woman of wealth, a mother
in the strictly Lutheran Israel, who fed and clothed the poor and did no
end of good. She was a very pious woman. It so happened that the

Jewess and the Christian were old friends. But one day they strayed
upon dangerous ground. The Jewess saw it and tried to turn the
conversation from the forbidden topic.
"Well, dear friend," she said, soothingly, "some day, when we meet in
heaven, we shall all know better."
The barrier was reached. Her friend fairly bristled as she made reply:
"What! Our heaven? No, indeed! We may be good friends here, Mrs----,
but there--really, you will have to excuse me."
[Illustration: A Cobblestone paved Alley]
Narrow streams are apt to run deep. An incident which I set down in
justice to the uncompromising orthodoxy of that day, made a strong
impression on me. The two concerned in it were my uncle, a generous,
bright, even a brilliant man, but with no great bump of reverence,