Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 September 1892 — An Interview with a Poet. [ARTICLE]

An Interview with a Poet.

Daring my call upon Hans Christian Andersen, the conversation then turned upon his writings, and I told him how his stories had been the dearest books of my childhood, and seemed associated with all that was delightful in the memory of it. I told him how happy and flattered I had felt at finding the name of the little boy in *olc ShutEye” the same as my own, and that half unconsciously I had appropriated his experiences, and half believed them to be my own. This little confession seemed to touch Andersen strangely. Tears filled his eyes. He seized both my hands and pressed them warmly. “Now you understand," he said, “what a happy lot it is to be the children’s poet. ” I rose to take my leave, but lingered talking, and, on my expressing a desire to hear him read, he half rose upon his sofa, adjusted his pillows, and began to recite from memory “The Ugly Duckling." His manner was easy and conversational, full of caressing inflections, such as one employs in telling a tale to a child. In the pathetic passages he was visibly affected, and he closed almost solemnly. “It is the story of my own life,” he said. "I was myself the despised swan in the poultry yard, the poet in the house of the Philistines. ” I felt suddenly as he finished his recital that I understood the man. I had caught the keynote of his character. All that was good and noble in him rose in vivid light before me. I never saw him again, —Century.