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_Something_ was written by Hans Christian
Andersen (1805-1875), and was translated from the Danish
by M. R. James (1862-1936) as part of his _Hans Andersen
Forty-Two Stories_ (1930).

Title: Hans Andersen Forty-Two Stories -- Something
Author: Andersen, Hans Christian (1805-1875)
Translator: James, Montague Rhodes (1862-1936)
Date of first publication: 1930
Place and date of edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Faber and Faber, 1953
Date first posted: 15 December 2009
Date last updated: 15 December 2009
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #434

This ebook was produced by:
David T. Jones, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




Something

by

Hans Christian Andersen

(from _Hans Andersen Forty-Two Stories_ [1930],
translated by M. R. James)


"I will become something," said the eldest of five brothers. "I mean
to be of some use in the world; let it be ever so humble a position,
so long as what I produce is good, that's something. I'll make bricks:
they are things people can't do without. Then I shall have done
something."

"But something not nearly big enough," said the second brother. "What
you'll do is as good as nothing: it's mere manual work, it can be done
with a machine. No! Better be a bricklayer, that's something. That's
what I'll be, it's a craft: you enter into a corporation, you become a
citizen, you have your guild-banner, and your own special inn. Why, if
things go right, I can employ labourers and be called Master, and my
wife Mistress. That's something."

"It's nothing at all," said the third. "It's not within the classes,
and there are lots of classes in a town, above the masters. You may be
a respectable man, but even as a master you're only what is called
'Lower Class'. No, no. I know something better than that. I shall be
an architect, and go in for the artistic side, the thinking side, and
get up to the higher levels in the realm of the mind. Of course, I
shall have to begin at the bottom. Yes, I don't mind putting it into
plain language--I shall have to begin as a builder's boy, and wear a
cap--though I'm accustomed to a silk hat--and run about and fetch beer
and brandy for the ordinary journeymen, and they will say 'thou' to
me, which is annoying, but I shall pretend to myself that it is all a
masquerade, and these are the liberties that belong to it. To-morrow,
I mean, when I've got to being a journeyman, I shall go my own way,
and the rest of them won't concern me. I shall go to the college, and
learn to draw and be called an architect. That's something, nay,
that's a great deal. I may become 'Your Excellency' and
'well-born'--may have a tail to my name as well as a title in
front--and build and build like the rest of them before me: that's
always something to reckon on. The whole thing is something."

"Something I don't care a rap about," said the fourth. "I won't sail
in the wake, I won't be a copy of someone else; I shall be a genius,
and become better than all the lot of you. I shall create a new style,
and frame the conception of a building that shall be in accord with
the climate and materials of the country, with our nationality, with
the evolution of this age of ours; yes, and pile an extra story on by
my own genius.

"But suppose the climate and the materials are no good?" said the
fifth. "That'll be a bad job: it will affect the whole: besides,
nationality may easily become so diluted that it becomes an
affectation; and the evolution of the age may make you run off the
rails, as often happens in youth. No, I see none of you will really
attain to being something, whatever you may think. However, do as you
please, I won't be like you. I shall take up a detached position. I
shall criticize what you produce. There's always something wrong in
everything, and I shall pick it out and discuss it: that's something."

And so he did, and people said of that fifth brother: "There's
something to him, he's a good head of his own. But he doesn't do
anything!" Which of itself made him something.

Well now, that's only a bit of a story, and yet it never will come to
an end so long as the world stands.

But, did nothing more happen to these five brothers? That wouldn't
have been something. You must go on listening, for there is a whole
tale to come.

The eldest brother, who took to brick-making, found that out of every
brick when it was finished there rolled a little coin--only a copper,
to be sure, but a great many little copper coins when they are put
together turn into a bright dollar, and whenever you knock on the door
with that, at the baker's, the butcher's, the tailor's, or all of them
together, the door flies open and you get what you want. So you see
that was what the bricks gave him. Some of them, to be sure, fell to
bits or broke in the middle, but a use was found for them too.

Up on the dyke old mother Margaret, the poor woman, wanted very much
to build herself a little house, and she was given all the broken
bricks, and some whole ones into the bargain; for the eldest brother
had a good heart, even though in practice he only used it to make
bricks. The poor woman built her house herself. It was very little,
and the only window was put in crooked. The door was much too low, and
the thatched roof might have been much better. But there was shelter
and dwelling there, and a wide view from it over the sea, which when
it was high broke against the dyke. The salt spray spurted all over
the house. It was still standing when the man who had made the bricks
of it was dead and gone.

The second brother--ah, he could lay bricks after another fashion, and
he was trained up to it. When his labourer's time was up, he buckled
his knapsack and struck up the prentice's song

    _I travel can whilst I am young_

and the rest of it, and so he did. In the town, when he came back and
became a master, he built house after house, a whole street of them.
And when they were up, and looked well, and made an ornament for the
town, why, the houses built him a little house, for his very own. But
how could the houses build? Well, you may ask them and they won't say
anything, but the people will answer and tell you: "Why, certainly the
street built his house for him." It was small, and it had a clay
floor, but when he and his bride danced over it, the floor grew bright
and polished, and out of every brick in the wall there burst a
blossom, and that was every bit as good as an expensive paper. It was
a pretty little house, and they were a happy couple. The guild-flag
fluttered outside it, and the prentice boys and the men shouted
"Hurrah!" That was something. And then he died, and that too was
something.

Next came the architect, the third brother, who had begun as a
carpenter's prentice, worn a cap and run errands in the town, and now
from the college had risen to be Director of Buildings, "illustrious"
and well-born. Indeed, if the houses in the street had built a house
for the brother who was a master bricklayer, the street itself was
named after this brother, and the prettiest house in the street was
his. That was something, and he was something--yes, and with a long
title before his name and after it. His children were called gentry,
and when he died his widow was a widow of Position. That's something,
and his name stood permanently at the corner of the street, and was in
people's mouths, being the name of the street, and I say that is
something.

Then came the genius, the fourth brother, who meant to hit on
something new, something original, with an extra story on top. But it
broke down with him, and he tumbled down and broke his neck. Still, he
had a beautiful funeral with guild banners and a band and flowers on
the posters and in the street, right across the pavement: and there
were three funeral orations spoken over him, every one of them longer
than the one before it, and that would have pleased him, for he
enjoyed being talked about. There was a monument, too, put upon his
grave; only one story to it, but still that's always something.

So now he was dead like the three other brothers; but the last, the
one who criticized, outlived them all, which was very proper, for in
that way he got the last word, and it was of great importance to him
to have the last word. He was the one with the good head to him,
people said, and now his hour struck too, and he died and arrived at
the gate of heaven. People always come there in pairs, and here stood
he with another soul who also wanted to enter in: and who should it be
but old mother Margaret of the house on the dyke!

"No doubt it is for the sake of the contrast that I and this poor
creature are made to come here together," said the critic. "Well, and
who are you, my good woman? Are you by way of coming in here too?" he
asked.

The old woman curtsied as well as she knew how, for she thought it was
St. Peter himself who was speaking. "I'm a poor old body, without any
belongings, Old Margaret, from the house on the dyke."

"Well, and what did you do or produce down there?"

"Really, I didn't do nothing at all in the world, nothing as can open
the door for me here. It 'ud be a real mercy if I could get leave to
come inside of the door."

"And in what sort of way did you leave that world?" he asked--just in
order to be saying something, for it bored him to stand there waiting.

"How did I leave it? Well, I'm sure I don't know. Very sick and poorly
I was in the last few years, and really I hadn't the strength to creep
out of my bed and go into the frost and cold outside. It's a hard
winter--but I've won through it now. For a couple of days it was dead
still, but bitter cold, as your reverence knows well enough. The ice
was along the shore and as far out as eye could see. All the people in
the town were gone out on the ice, there was what they call skating
and dancing. I believe there was a big band and refreshments out
there. I could hear it indoors where I lay in my poor little room, and
it had got towards evening time: and the moon was risen though twasn't
yet full, and from my bed I could look from the window right out over
the shore: and there, right in the corner betwixt the sky and the sea,
there came a strange white cloud. I lay and looked at it, and I looked
at the black spot in the middle of it, and it grew bigger and bigger,
and then I knew what that meant. I'm old and weatherwise: though it's
not often one sees that sign, I knew it, and it gave me a turn. Twice
afore in my lifetime I've seen that same thing, and I knew there'd be
a terrible tempest with a spring tide, as would come right over those
poor people out there that was drinking and dancing and making merry.

"Young and old, the whole town was out there, and who was to warn 'em
if nobody that was there saw and knowed what I did? I was that
frightened that I got more strength than I'd had in a long time. Out
of my bed I got and over to the window, I couldn't manage no further.
However, I got the window open, and I could see the people running and
jumping out there on the ice, and all the gay flags, and hear the boys
shouting out 'Hurrah!' and the girls and the lads singing, all as
merry as could be, and still that white cloud with the black bag in it
climbed up higher and higher. I screamed out as loud as I could, but
nobody heard me, I was too far away. Very soon the tempest would break
loose and the ice go to pieces, and everybody that was on it go down
through it, and no one to save 'em! Hear me they could not, and get
out to them I could not: how could I manage to get 'em to shore? Just
then our good God put it in my mind to set fire to my bed and let the
house burn down, sooner than all them people should die in that
dreadful way. I got a light and I see the red flames--yes, and I
managed to get outside the door; but there I lay, I couldn't do no
more. The fire come after me out of the window, and up over the roof.
Then they saw it from out there, and all of 'em ran as hard as they
could to help me, the poor old body they thought was burning to death
inside. There wasn't one but what ran. I heard 'em coming, and I heard
besides how all at once there came a rushing in the air. I heard it
thundering like great guns fired off, and the spring tide heaved up
the ice and it broke in two. But they got to the dyke where the sparks
was flying all about me. I got 'em every one into safety. But I
couldn't get over the cold and the fright, and so I came up here to
the gate of heaven. They say that's opened for poor bodies like me,
and now I haven't got my house on the dyke no more, though to be sure
that don't give me the right to get in here."

At that moment the gate of heaven opened, and the angel led the old
woman in. She let fall a straw outside, one of the straws that had
been in her bed, the bed she had set on fire to save all those people,
and it had turned into pure gold, a sort of gold that grew and twined
itself into the loveliest tendrils.

"Look, that is what the poor woman has brought," said the angel. "What
are you bringing? Yes, I know. You have produced nothing, not even
made a brick: if you could only go back again and bring back at least
so much as that! It wouldn't have been much of a one if you had made
it. Still, if made with a good intent, it would always have been
something. But you cannot go back, and I can do nothing for you."

Then the poor soul, the woman from the house on the dyke, pleaded for
him: "It was his brother who made and gave me all the bricks and bits
I built my poor little house with. That was a great thing for a poor
body like me. Now can't all them bits and pieces count as one brick
for him? That 'ud be an act of mercy, and he wants one now, and this
is the place of mercy."

"Your brother, the one whom you called the least of you," said the
angel, "he whose calling with all its honesty seemed lowest of all to
you, he is now giving you his heavenly mite. You shall not be turned
away, you shall be permitted to stand out here and think over your
life on earth, and try somehow to raise it up. But in you shall not
come till by some act of good you have achieved something."

"I could have expressed that better," said the critic, but he did not
say it aloud, and that was something to begin with.




[End of _Something_ by Hans Christian Andersen, from
_Hans Andersen Forty-Two Stories_, translated by M. R. James]
