"Good evening, Herr Professor!" That was his title. His kind face
would beam with delight, and our proffered fists would be buried
in the very biggest hand, it seemed to us, that mortal ever
owned,--Andersen had very large hands and feet,--and we would go
away gleefully chuckling and withal secretly ashamed of ourselves.
He was in such evident delight at our homage.

They used to tell a story of Andersen at the time that made the whole
town laugh in its sleeve, though there was not a bit of malice in
it. No one had anything but the sincerest affection for the poet
in my day; his storm and stress period was then long past. He was,
it was said, greatly afraid of being buried alive. So that it might
not happen, he carefully pinned a paper to his blanket every night
before he went to sleep, on which was written: "I guess I am only
in a trance." [Footnote: In Danish: "Jeg er vist skindod."] Needless
to say, he was in no danger. When he fell into his long sleep, the
whole country, for that matter the whole world, stood weeping at
his bier.

Four years I dreamt away in Copenhagen while I learned my trade.
The intervals when I was awake were when she came to the town on
a visit with her father, or, later, to finish her education at a
fashionable school. I mind the first time she came. I was at the
depot, and I rode with her on the back of their coach, unknown to
them. So I found out what hotel they were to stay at. I called the
next day, and purposely forgot my gloves. Heaven knows where I got
them from I probably borrowed them. Those were not days for gloves.
Her father sent them to my address the next day with a broad hint
that, having been neighborly, I needn't call again. He was getting
square for the ball. But my wife says that I was never good at taking