t was but yesternight (said the moon) that I peeped into a small
court-yard, enclosed by houses: there was a hen with eleven
chickens. A pretty little girl was skipping about. The hen chicked,
and, affrighted, spread out her wings over her little ones. Then
came the maiden's father, and chid the child; and I passed on,
without thinking more of it at the moment.

"This evening--but a few minutes ago--I again peeped into the same
yard. All was silent; but soon the little maiden came. She crept
cautiously to the hen-house, lifted the latch, and stole gently up
to the hen and the chickens. The hen chicked aloud, and they all
ran fluttering about: the little girl ran after them. I saw it
plainly, for I peeped in through a chink in the wall. I was vexed
with the naughty child, and was glad that the father came and
scolded her still more than yesterday, and seized her by the arm.
She bent her head back; big tears stood in her blue eyes. She wept.
'I wanted to go in and kiss the hen, and beg her to forgive me for
yesterday. But I could not tell it you.' And the father kissed the
brow of the innocent child; and I kissed her eyes and her lips."

Our poet--we call him such, though we know nothing of his verses, for
whatever there is of merit in his writings is of the nature of
poetry--our poet of childhood and of poverty, was born at Odense, a town
of Funen, one of the green, beech-covered islands of Denmark. It bears
the name of the Scandinavian hero, or demigod, Odin; Tradition says he
lived there. The parents of Andersen were so poor that when they married
they had not wherewithal to purchase a bedstead, or at least thought it
advisable to make shift by constructing one out of the wooden tressels
which, a little time before, had supported the coffin of some
neighbouring count as he lay in state. It still retained a part of the
black cloth, and some of the funeral ornaments attached to it, when in
the year 1805 there lay upon it, not in any peculiar state, the solitary
fruit of their marriage--the little Hans Christian Andersen. He was a
crying infant, and when carried to the baptismal font, sorely vexed the
parson with his outcries. "Your young one screams like a cat!" said the
reverend official. The mother was hurt at this reflection upon her
offspring; but a prophetic god-papa, who stood by, consoled her by
saying, "that the louder he cried w