HANS CHRISTAIN ANDERSEN

Hans Christain Andersen, whose fairy stories we so much enjoyed when children, has been called by some one the first child author.

Andersen was born at Odense, on the island of Funen, April 2, 1805. His father was a poor shoemaker. He had no way of giving Hans a college education, but he sent him

to the grammar school in the town.   Hans made very little progress, being timid and very sensitive, and not forced to attend school by his parents.   As a result he grew up among the old women of the town, especially those in the poorhouse, and here he got the material which he wrought by the power of his imagination into his stories.   Hans Andersen's mind was never developed; he was child-like in his simplicity; child-like in his vision, and remained so until his death.

When he was about nine years of age his father died, and he was compelled to earn a home for his mother and himself.   An opportunity for working in a factory was given him.   He worked in this factory for five years, but the life among these coarse, illiterate workmen was too hard for this tender-hearted child.   At last he complained to his mother and she removed him, intending to make a tailor of him, but the boy of intellectual tastes implored her even with tears, to allow him to choose his own career in life.   A short time after his mother consented, he put on his father's boots, and a suit made from his father's overcoat, and with a few dollars in his pocket, set off for Copenhagen to win his fortune.

The tall, awkward, bashful country boy with his yellow hair and clothes much too large for him was the Ugly Duckling of the story we all remember so well; the duckling which was really a swan, only nobody knew it, not even the duckling himself. When Hans went to Copenhagen his eyes were fixed on the stage as a career. He had often attended plays in his home town and would afterwards go home and act them over with the wooden dolls his father had carved for him.

He applied to the director of a theater and was told he was too thin for the stage. He soon had no money, but was always finding somebody to help him. Musicians tried to make a singer of him and literary people to teach him Latin. Although many friends helped him, Hans had a hard life for two years. During his need he was bold enough to write a tragedy and sent it to the Director of the Royal Theater. The tragedy was returned because of the spelling and bad grammar. Notwithstanding this, more and more people grew interested in the Ugly Duckling, and in this way Andersen met Sir Walter Scott, whom he very much admired, and other distinguished men.   Council Collin, a very wealthy man, sent the young author to the Latin School to prepare him for the University.

"I was put," writes Andersen, who continued playing with dolls even after he came to Copenhagen, begging the milliners for bits of ribbon to dress them in,   "I was put in the last class but one among little boys, for I knew nothing at all." Nevertheless, after a time Hans did learn and wrote many poems which met both praise and criticism. From that time on the Duckling began to be recognized as a bird of another feather.   Andersen traveled in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and later went to Spain, Greece and Constantinople.   While on these trips and after his return he wrote his most famous stories.   And there was nobody more beloved in all Denmark than Hans Christain Andersen.

He was never married.   He fell in love just once, and the lady of his affections was engaged to another.

Hjalmar Hjerth Boyesen saw Hans, an old man, two years before his death.   His hair was quite white then, for he was sixty-eight years old.   His face was pale, as it always was, but there was a beautiful, gentle affectionate expression in his gray eyes which made one forget that he was really a homely man.   Hans was fully six feet tall, but stooped heavily when he walked.   In those days when Hans Christain Andersen walked through the streets of Copenhagen, the children all took off their hats to him and followed him about.   He was welcomed to all houses from the King's palace to the poorest tenement. He loved to read to children and those who were shut in by some affliction, and usually preferred to read his own books.

He died at the age of seventy years.   The royal family, the officers of the army, the students, professors of the University of Copenhagen, literary men, actors and plain people followed the body to the "Church of Our Lady," and the peasant lad of Odense, the pauper's grandson, whose name was dear to children in scores of countries, and whose tales were told in dozens of languages, was laid to rest.

KATE DEPP