nd to Bloksberg. But we have also the wild host,
here at home and in our own time, which goes to Amager every New
Year's eve. All the bad poets and poetesses, newspaper writers,
musicians, and artists of all sorts, who come before the public, but
make no sensation--those, in short, who are very mediocre, ride--on
New Year's eve, out to Amager: they sit astride on their pencils or
quill pens. Steel pens don't answer, they are too stiff. I see this
troop, as I have said, every New Year's eve. I could name most of
them, but it is not worth while to get into a scrape with them; they
do not like people to know of their Amager flight upon quill pens. I
have a kind of a cousin, who is a fisherman's wife, and furnishes
abusive articles to three popular periodicals: she says she has been
out there as an invited guest. She has described the whole affair.
Half that she says, of course, are lies, but part might be true. When
she was there they commenced with a song; each of the visitors had
written his own song, and each sang his own composition: they all
performed together, so it was a kind of 'cats' chorus'. Small groups
marched about, consisting of those who labour at improving that gift
which is called 'the gift of the gab:' they had their own shrill
songs. Then came the little drummers, and those who write without
giving their names--that is to say, whose grease is imposed on people
for blacking; then there were the executioners, and the puffers of bad
wares. In the midst of all the merriment, as it must have been, that
was going on, shot up from a pit a stem, a tree, a monstrous flower, a
large toadstool, and a cupola. These were the Utopian productions of
the honoured assembly, the entire amount of their offerings to the
world during the past year. Sparks flew from these various objects;
they were the thoughts and ideas which had been borrowed or stolen,
which now took wings to themselves, and flew away as if by magic. My
cousin told me a good deal more, which, though laughable, was too
malicious for me to repeat.

"I always watch this wild host fly past every New Year's eve; but on
the last one, as I told you, I neglected to look at them, for I was
rolling away in thought upon the round pebbles--rolling through
thousands and thousands of years. I saw them detached from rocks far
away in the distant north; saw them driven along in masses of ice
before Noah's ark was put together; saw them sink to the bottom, and
rise again