friends of your tales;
the children will be overjoyed--' 'But the opera,' said I. 'Only for
two minutes,' he replied, and drew me into the house, told my name,
and the circle of children collected round me. 'And now repeat a
story,' he said: 'only a single one.' I did so, and hurried to the
theatre. 'That was a strange visit,' I said. 'A capital one! a most
excellent one!' shouted he. 'Only think! the children are full of
Andersen and his fairy tales: all of a sudden he stands in the midst
of them, and relates one himself, and then he is gone--vanished. Why,
that very circumstance is a fairy tale for the children, and will
remain vividly in their memory.' It amused me too."

You will be getting impatient, I am afraid. However, before I finish I
must tell you something about the stories in this volume. The
translation of them I had begun in Andersen's room, and when he came
in we began talking about them, one of which, "The Little Girl with
the Matches," I had read in his absence. I told him how delighted I
was with it--that I found it most exquisitely narrated; but that how
such a thing came into his head, I could not conceive. He then said,
"That was written when I was on a visit at The Duke of Augustenburg's.
I received a letter from Copenhagen from the editor of a Danish
almanac for the people, in which he said he was very anxious to have
something of mine for it, but that the book was already nearly
printed. In the letter were two woodcuts, and these he wished to make
use of, if only I would write something to which they might serve as
illustrations. One was the picture of a little match-girl, exactly as
I have described her. It was from the picture that I wrote the
story--wrote it surrounded by splendor and rejoicing, at the castle of
Grauenstein, in Schleswig."

"And Little Tuk," said I.--"Oh! 'Little Tuk,'" answered he, laughing;
"I will tell you all about him. When in Oldenburg I lived for some
time at the house of a friend, the Counsellor von E***. The children's
names were Charles and Gustave (Augusta?) but the little boy always
called himself 'Tuk.' He meant to say 'Charles,' but he could not
pronounce it otherwise. Now once I promised the dear little things
that I would put them in a fairy tale, and so both of them appeared,
but as poor children in the story of 'Little Tuk.' So you see, as
reward for all the hospitality I received in Germany, I take the
German children and make Danes of them."

You see