Little Tuck

"I bring you many greetings from Korsör, that's a growing town, a lively flourishing town with steamboats and mail coaches. In olden times people used to call it ugly, but that's not true any more.

" 'I lie by the seashore,' Korsör says to you. 'I have highroads and beautiful parks, and I once gave birth to a poet who was very witty. That's more than can be said for all of them. I wanted to send a ship around the world, but I didn't. But I could have done it. Anyway, I smell deliciously, because close by my gates, the most beautiful roses bloom!' "

Little Tuck saw them, and everything was green and red before his eyes, but when the confusion of colors was over, they changed to wooden heights, sloping down to the sparkling waters of a fiord. A stately old twin-spired church towered above the waters. From out of the cliffside springs of water rushed down in bubbling streams, and near by sat an old king with a golden crown on his long hair. It was King Hroar of the Springs, and the place is now the town of Roskilde (Hroar's Springs). Up the hill and into the old church the kings and queens of Denmark walked hand in hand, all with their golden crowns, and the organ was playing, and the springs rippled.

"Don't forget the towns of the kingdom!" said King Hroar.

Then all at once everything vanished-and where had it all gone? It was like turning a leaf in a book.

Now an old peasant woman stood before Little Tuck; she was a weeding woman from Sorö, where grass grows in the market place. She had thrown her gray linen apron over her head and down her back, and it was soaking wet-it must have been raining.

"Yes, it certainly has been," she said. She knew many of the comic parts from Holberg's comedies, and all about Valdemar and Absolon.

But all at once she squatted down and wagged her head, just as if she were about to leap. "Ko-ax," she said. "It's wet! It's wet! It's quiet as a grave in Sorö!" Suddenly she was a frog, "Ko-ax!" and then she became an old woman again. "You should always dress according to the weather!