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Page 15
The watchman's spirit understood the language of the inhabitants of the moon
pretty well. The Selenites* disputed variously about our earth, and expressed
their doubts if it could be inhabited: the air, they said, must certainly be
too dense to allow any rational dweller in the moon the necessary free
respiration. They considered the moon alone to be inhabited: they imagined it
was the real heart of the universe or planetary system, on which the genuine
Cosmopolites, or citizens of the world, dwelt. What strange things men--no,
what strange things Selenites sometimes take into their heads!
* Dwellers in the moon.
About politics they had a good deal to say. But little Denmark must take care
what it is about, and not run counter to the moon; that great realm, that
might in an ill-humor bestir itself, and dash down a hail-storm in our faces,
or force the Baltic to overflow the sides of its gigantic basin.
We will, therefore, not listen to what was spoken, and on no condition run in
the possibility of telling tales out of school; but we will rather proceed,
like good quiet citizens, to East Street, and observe what happened meanwhile
to the body of the watchman.
He sat lifeless on the steps: the morning-star,* that is to say, the heavy
wooden staff, headed with iron spikes, and which had nothing else in common
with its sparkling brother in the sky, had glided from his hand; while his
eyes were fixed with glassy stare on the moon, looking for the good old fellow
of a spirit which still haunted it.
*The watchmen in Germany, had formerly, and in some places they still carry
with them, on their rounds at night, a sort of mace or club, known in ancient
times by the above denomination.
"What's the hour, watchman?" asked a passer-by. But when the watchman gave no
reply, the merry roysterer, who was now returning home from a noisy drinking
bout, took it into his head to try what a tweak of the nose would do, on which
the supposed sleeper lost his balance, the body lay motionless, stretched out
on the pavement: the man was dead. When the patrol came up, all his comrades,
who comprehended nothing of the whole affair, were seized with a dreadful
fright, for dead he was, and he remained so. The proper authorities were
informed of the circumstance, people talked a good deal about it, and in the
morning the body was carried to the hospital.
Now that would be a very pretty joke, if the spirit when it came back and
looked for the body in East Street, were not to find one. No doubt it would,
in its anxiety, run off to the police, and then to the "Hue and Cry" office,
to announce that "the finder will be handsomely rewarded," and at last away to
the hospital; yet we may boldly assert that the soul is shrewdest when it
shakes off every fetter, and every sort of leading-string--the body only makes
it stupid.
The seemingly dead body of the watchman wandered, as we have said, to the
hospital, where it was brought into the general viewing-room: and the first
thing that was done here was naturally to pull off the galoshes--when the
spirit, that was merely gone out on adventures, must have returned with the
quickness of lightning to its earthly tenement. It took its direction towards
the body in a straight line; and a few seconds after, life began to show
itself in the man. He asserted that the preceding night had been the worst
that ever the malice of fate had allotted him; he would not for two silver
marks again go through what he had endured while moon-stricken; but now,
however, it was over.
The same day he was discharged from the hospital as perfectly cured; but the
Shoes meanwhile remained behind.
IV. A Moment of Head Importance--An Evening's "Dramatic Readings"--A Most
Strange Journey
Every inhabitant of Copenhagen knows, from personal inspection, how the
entrance to Frederick's Hospital looks; but as it is possible that others, who
are not Copenhagen people, may also read this little work, we will beforehand
give a short description of it.
The extensive building is separated from the street by a pretty high railing,
the thick iron bars of which are so far apart, that in all seriousness, it is
said, some very thin fellow had of a night occasionally squeezed himself
through to go and pay his little visits in the town. The part of the body most
difficult to manage on such occasions was, no doubt, the head; here, as is so
often the case in the world, long-headed people get through best. So much,
then, for the introduction.
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