" But before leaving he published "A
Picture-Book without Pictures", (1840), which is attached to the
American edition of his "Stories and Tales," and deserves its place. The
moon's pathetic and humorous observations on the world she looks down
upon every evening of her thirty nights' circuit have already become
classic in half-a-dozen languages. The little girl who came to kiss the
hen and beg her pardon; the ragged street gamin who died upon the throne
of France; the Hindoo maiden who burned her lamp upon the banks of the
Ganges in order to see if her lover was alive; the little maid who was
penitent because she laughed at the lame duckling with a red rag around
its leg--who does not know the whole inimitable gallery from beginning
to end? The tenderest, the softest, the most virginal spirit breathes
through all these sketches. They are sentimental, no doubt, and a trifle
too sweet. But then they belong to a period of our lives when a little
excess in that direction does not trouble us.
[22] For verification of this statement I may refer to his indignant
letter _a propos_ of the statue that was to be raised to him in
Copenhagen, in which he was represented surrounded by listening
children: "None of the sculptors," he wrote, "have known me; none of
their sketches indicate that they have seen what is characteristic
in me.
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