interest in their games, but remained sitting within doors. At home I
had playthings enough, which my father made for me. My greatest delight
was in making clothes for my dolls, or in stretching out one of my
mother's aprons between the wall and two sticks before a currant-bush
which I had planted in the yard, and thus to gaze in between the sun-
illumined leaves. I was a singularly dreamy child, and so constantly
went about with my eyes shut, as at last to give the impression of
having weak sight, although the sense of sight was especially
cultivated by me.

Sometimes, during the harvest, my mother went into the field to glean.
I accompanied her, and we went, like Ruth in the Bible, to glean in the
rich fields of Boaz. One day we went to a place, the bailiff of which
was well known for being a man of a rude and savage disposition. We saw
him coming with a huge whip in his hand, and my mother and all the
others ran away. I had wooden shoes on my bare feet, and in my haste I
lost these, and then the thorns pricked me so that I could not run, and
thus I was left behind and alone. The man came up and lifted his whip
to strike me, when I looked him in the face and involuntarily
exclaimed,--

"How dare you strike me, when God can see it?"

The strong, stern man looked at me, and at once became mild; he patted
me on my cheeks, asked me my name, and gave me money.

When I brought this to my mother and showed it her, she said to the
others, "He is a strange child, my Hans Christian; everybody is kind to
him: this bad fellow even has given him money."