spaces; when the little newspaper came the small tradesmen and
employers would run eagerly across the street, their spectacles on
their noses, and would speak, with gestures of amazement, of the
things that happened outside. "China," they would say; "America!"
and fancy that they themselves made part of the bustling world. But
Pelle used to wish most ardently that something great and wonderful
might wander thither and settle down among them just for once! He
would have been quite contented with a little volcano underfoot,
so that the houses would begin to sway and bob to one another; or
a trifling inundation, so that ships would ride over the town, and
have to moor themselves to the weather-cock on the church steeple.
He had an irrational longing that something of this kind should
happen, something to drive the blood from his heart and make his
hair stand on end. But now he had enough to contend against apart
from matters of this sort; the world must look after itself until
times were better.

It was more difficult to renounce the old fairy-tales, for poverty
itself had sung them into his heart, and they spoke to him with
Father Lasse's quivering voice. "A rich child often lies in a poor
mother's lap," his father used to say, when he prophesied concerning
his son's future, and the saying sank deep into the boy's mind, like
the refrain of a song. But he had learned this much, that there were
no elephants here, on whose necks a plucky youngster could ride
astraddle, in order to ride down the tiger which was on the point
of tearing the King of the Himalayas to pieces so that he would of
course receive the king's daughter and half his kingdom as a reward
for his heroic deed. Pelle often loitered about the harbor, but no
beautifully dressed little girl ever fell into the water, so that he
might rescue her, and then, when he was grown up, make her his wife.