Tales From Two Hemispheres

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TALES FROM TWO HEMISPHERES.

BY

HJALMAR HJORTH BOYSEN.

1877

CONTENTS
----
THE MAN WHO LOST HIS NAME
THE STORY OF AN OUTCAST
A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING
A SCIENTIFIC VAGABOND
TRULS, THE NAMELESS
ASATHOR'S VENGEANCE

TALES FROM TWO HEMISPHERES.

THE MAN WHO LOST HIS NAME.

ON the second day of June, 186--, a
young Norseman, Halfdan Bjerk by
name, landed on the pier at Castle
Garden. He passed through the straight
and narrow gate where he was asked his name,
birthplace, and how much money he had,--at
which he grew very much frightened.

"And your destination?"--demanded the
gruff-looking functionary at the desk.

"America," said the youth, and touched his
hat politely.

"Do you think I have time for joking?"
roared the official, with an oath.

The Norseman ran his hand through his hair,
smiled his timidly conciliatory smile, and tried
his best to look brave; but his hand trembled
and his heart thumped away at an alarmingly
quickened tempo.

"Put him down for Nebraska!" cried a stout
red-cheeked individual (inwrapped in the mingled
fumes of tobacco and whisky) whose function
it was to open and shut the gate.

"There aint many as go to Nebraska."

"All right, Nebraska."

The gate swung open and the pressure from
behind urged the timid traveler on, while an
extra push from the gate-keeper sent him flying
in the direction of a board fence, where he sat
down and tried to realize that he was now in
the land of liberty.

Halfdan Bjerk was a tall, slender-limbed youth
of very delicate frame; he had a pair of
wonderfully candid, unreflecting blue eyes, a smooth,
clear, beardless face, and soft, wavy light hair,
which was pushed back from his forehead without
parting. His mouth and chin were well
cut, but their lines were, perhaps, rather weak
for a man. When in repose, the ensemble of
his features was exceedingly pleasing and somehow
reminded one of Correggio's St. John. He
had left his native land because he was an
ardent republican and was abstractly convinced
that man, generically and individually, lives
more happily in a republic than in a monarchy.
He had anticipated with keen pleasure the large,
freely breathing life he was to lead in a land
where every man was his neighbor's brother,
where no senseless traditions kept a jealous
watch over obsolete systems and shrines, and
no chilling prejudice blighted the spontaneous
blossoming of the soul.

Halfdan was an only child. His father, a
poor government official, had died during his
infancy, and his mother had given music lessons,
and kept boarders, in order to gain the means
to give her son what is called a learned education.
In the Latin school Halfdan had enjoyed
the reputation of being a bright youth, and at
the age of eighteen, he had entered the
university under the most promising auspices. He
could make very fair verses, and play all
imaginable instruments with equal ease, which
made him a favorite in society. Moreover, he
possessed that very old-fashioned accomplishment
of cutting silhouettes; and what was more,
he could draw the most charmingly fantastic
arabesques for embroidery patterns, and he even
dabbled in portrait and landscape painting.
Whatever he turned his hand to, he did well,
in fact, astonishingly well for a dilettante, and
yet not well enough to claim the title of an
artist. Nor did it ever occur to him to make
such a claim. As one of his fellow-students
remarked in a fit of jealousy, "Once when Nature
had made three geniuses, a poet, a musician,
and a painter, she took all the remaining odds
and ends and shook them together at random
and the result was Halfdan Bjerk." This agreeable
melange of accomplishments, however,
proved very attractive to the ladies, who invited
the possessor to innumerable afternoon
tea-parties, where they drew heavy drafts on
his unflagging patience, and kept him steadily
engaged with patterns and designs for embroidery,
leather flowers, and other dainty knickknacks.
And in return for all his exertions
they called him "sweet" and "beautiful," and
applied to him many other enthusiastic adjectives
seldom heard in connection with masculine
names. In the university, talents of this order
gained but slight recognition, and when Halfdan
had for three years been preparing himself
in vain for the examen philosophicum, he found
himself slowly and imperceptibly drifting into
the ranks of the so-called studiosi perpetui, who
preserve a solemn silence at the examination
tables, fraternize with every new generation of
freshmen, and at last become part of the fixed
furniture of their Alma Mater. In the larger
American colleges, such men are mercilessly
dropped or sent to a Divinity School; but the
European universities, whose tempers the centuries
have mellowed, harbor in their spacious
Gothic bosoms a tenderer heart for their
unfortunate sons. There the professors greet them
at the green tables with a good-humored smile
of recognition; they are treated with gentle
forbearance, and are allowed to linger on, until
they die or become tutors in the families of
remote clergymen, where they invariably fall
in love with the handsomest daughter, and thus
lounge into a modest prosperity.

If this had been the fate of our friend Bjerk,
we should have dismissed him here with a confident
"vale" on his life's pilgrimage. But,
unfortunately, Bjerk was inclined to hold the
government in some way responsible for his own
poor success as a student, and this, in connection
with an aesthetic enthusiasm for ancient Greece,
gradually convinced him that the republic was
the only form of government under which men
of his tastes and temperament were apt to flourish.
It was, like everything that pertained to
him, a cheerful, genial conviction, without the
slightest tinge of bitterness. The old institutions
were obsolete, rotten to the core, he said,
and needed a radical renovation. He could sit
for hours of an evening in the Students' Union,
and discourse over a glass of mild toddy, on the
benefits of universal suffrage and trial by jury,
while the picturesqueness of his language, his
genial sarcasms, or occasional witty allusions
would call forth uproarious applause from
throngs of admiring freshmen. These were the
sunny days in Halfdan's career, days long to be
remembered. They came to an abrupt end
when old Mrs. Bjerk died, leaving nothing
behind her but her furniture and some trifling
debts. The son, who was not an eminently
practical man, underwent long hours of misery
in trying to settle up her affairs, and finally in
a moment of extreme dejection sold his entire
inheritance in a lump to a pawnbroker (reserving
for himself a few rings and trinkets) for the
modest sum of 250 dollars specie. He then
took formal leave of the Students' Union in a
brilliant speech, in which he traced the parallelisms
between the lives of Pericles and Washington,--
in his opinion the two greatest men
the world had ever seen,--expounded his theory
of democratic government, and explained the
causes of the rapid rise of the American Republic.
The next morning he exchanged half of
his worldly possessions for a ticket to New
York, and within a few days set sail for the
land of promise, in the far West.

II.

From Castle Garden, Halfdan made his way
up through Greenwich street, pursued by a
clamorous troop of confidence men and hotel
runners.

"Kommen Sie mit mir. Ich bin auch
Deutsch," cried one. "Voila, voila, je parle
Francais," shouted another, seizing hold of his
valise. "Jeg er Dansk. Tale Dansk,"[1] roared
a third, with an accent which seriously impeached
his truthfulness. In order to escape
from these importunate rascals, who were every
moment getting bolder, he threw himself into
the first street-car which happened to pass; he
sat down, gazed out of the windows and soon
became so thoroughly absorbed in the animated
scenes which moved as in a panorama before his
eyes, that he quite forgot where he was going.
The conductor called for fares, and received an
English shilling, which, after some ineffectual
expostulation, he pocketed, but gave no change.
At last after about an hour's journey, the car
stopped, the conductor called out "Central
Park," and Halfdan woke up with a start. He
dismounted with a timid, deliberate step, stared
in dim bewilderment at the long rows of palatial
residences, and a chill sense of loneliness
crept over him. The hopeless strangeness of
everything he saw, instead of filling him with
rapture as he had once anticipated, Sent a cold
shiver to his heart. It is a very large affair,
this world of ours--a good deal larger than it
appeared to him gazing out upon it from his
snug little corner up under the Pole; and it was
as unsympathetic as it was large; he suddenly
felt what he had never been aware of before--
that he was a very small part of it and of very
little account after all. He staggered over to a
bench at the entrance to the park, and sat long
watching the fine carriages as they dashed past
him; he saw the handsome women in brilliant
costumes laughing and chatting gayly; the
apathetic policemen promenading in stoic dignity
up and down upon the smooth pavements; the
jauntily attired nurses, whom in his Norse
innocence he took for mothers or aunts of the chil-
dren, wheeling baby-carriages which to Norse
eyes seemed miracles of dainty ingenuity, under
the shady crowns of the elm-trees. He did not
know how long he had been sitting there, when
a little bright-eyed girl with light kid gloves, a
small blue parasol and a blue polonaise, quite a
lady of fashion en miniature, stopped in front
of him and stared at him in shy wonder. He
had always been fond of children, and often rejoiced
in their affectionate ways and confidential
prattle, and now it suddenly touched him
with a warm sense of human fellowship to have
this little daintily befrilled and crisply starched
beauty single him out for notice among the
hundreds who reclined in the arbors, or sauntered
to and fro under the great trees.

[1] "I am a Dane. I speak Danish."

"What is your name, my little girl?" he
asked, in a tone of friendly interest.

"Clara," answered the child, hesitatingly;
then, having by another look assured herself of
his harmlessness, she added: "How very funny
you speak!"

"Yes," he said, stooping down to take he
tiny begloved hand. "I do not speak as well
as you do, yet; but I shall soon learn."

Clara looked puzzled.

"How old are you?" she asked, raising her
parasol, and throwing back her head with an
air of superiority.

"I am twenty-four years old."

She began to count half aloud on her fingers:
"One, two, three, four," but, before she reached
twenty, she lost her patience.

"Twenty-four," she exclaimed, "that is a
great deal. I am only seven, and papa gave me
a pony on my birthday. Have you got a pony?"

"No; I have nothing but what is in this valise,
and you know I could not very well get a pony into it."

Clara glanced curiously at the valise and
laughed; then suddenly she grew serious again,
put her hand into her pocket and seemed to be
searching eagerly for something. Presently
she hauled out a small porcelain doll's head,
then a red-painted block with letters on it,
and at last a penny.

"Do you want them?" she said, reaching him
her treasures in both hands. "You may have
them all."

Before he had time to answer, a shrill,
penetrating voice cried out:

"Why, gracious! child, what are you doing ? "

And the nurse, who had been deeply absorbed
in "The New York Ledger," came rushing up,
snatched the child away, and retreated as hastily
as she had come.

Halfdan rose and wandered for hours aimlessly
along the intertwining roads and footpaths.
He visited the menageries, admired the
statues, took a very light dinner, consisting of
coffee, sandwiches, and ice, at the Chinese
Pavilion, and, toward evening, discovered an inviting
leafy arbor, where he could withdraw into the
privacy of his own thoughts, and ponder upon
the still unsolved problem of his destiny. The
little incident with the child had taken the edge
off his unhappiness and turned him into a more
conciliatory mood toward himself and the great
pitiless world, which seemed to take so little
notice of him. And he, who had come here with
so warm a heart and so ardent a will to join in
the great work of human advancement--to find
himself thus harshly ignored and buffeted about,
as if he were a hostile intruder! Before him
lay the huge unknown city where human life
pulsated with large, full heart-throbs, where a
breathless, weird intensity, a cold, fierce
passion seemed to be hurrying everything onward
in a maddening whirl, where a gentle, warm-
blooded enthusiast like himself had no place and
could expect naught but a speedy destruction.
A strange, unconquerable dread took possession
of him, as if he had been caught in a swift,
strong whirlpool, from which he vainly struggled
to escape. He crouched down among the
foliage and shuddered. He could not return to
the city. No, no: he never would return. He
would remain here hidden and unseen until
morning, and then he would seek a vessel bound
for his dear native land, where the great
mountains loomed up in serene majesty toward the
blue sky, where the pine-forests whispered their
dreamily sympathetic legends, in the long summer
twilights, where human existence flowed
on in calm beauty with the modest aims, small
virtues, and small vices which were the
happiness of modest, idyllic souls. He even saw
himself in spirit recounting to his astonished
countrymen the wonderful things he had heard
and seen during his foreign pilgrimage, and
smiled to himself as he imagined their wonder
when he should tell them about the beautiful
little girl who had been the first and only one
to offer him a friendly greeting in the strange
land. During these reflections he fell asleep,
and slept soundly for two or three hours. Once,
he seemed to hear footsteps and whispers among
the trees, and made an effort to rouse himself,
but weariness again overmastered him and he
slept on. At last, he felt himself seized
violently by the shoulders, and a gruff voice
shouted in his ear:

"Get up, you sleepy dog."

He rubbed his eyes, and, by the dim light of
the moon, saw a Herculean policeman lifting a
stout stick over his head. His former terror
came upon him with increased violence, and his
heart stood for a moment still, then, again,
hammered away as if it would burst his sides.

"Come along!" roared the policeman, shaking
him vehemently by the collar of his coat.

In his bewilderment he quite forgot where he
was, and, in hurried Norse sentences, assured
his persecutor that he was a harmless, honest
traveler, and implored him to release him. But
the official Hercules was inexorable.

"My valise, my valise;" cried Halfdan.
"Pray let me get my valise."

They returned to the place where he had
slept, but the valise was nowhere to be found.
Then, with dumb despair he resigned himself to
his fate, and after a brief ride on a street-car,
found himself standing in a large, low-ceiled
room; he covered his face with his hands and
burst into tears.

"The grand-the happy republic," he
murmured, "spontaneous blossoming of the soul.
Alas! I have rooted up my life; I fear it will
never blossom."

All the high-flown adjectives he had employed
in his parting speech in the Students' Union,
when he paid his enthusiastic tribute to the
Grand Republic, now kept recurring to him, and
in this moment the paradox seemed cruel. The
Grand Republic, what did it care for such as
he? A pair of brawny arms fit to wield the
pick-axe and to steer the plow it received with
an eager welcome; for a child-like, loving heart
and a generously fantastic brain, it had but the
stern greeting of the law.

III.

The next morning, Halfdan was released
from the Police Station, having first been fined
five dollars for vagrancy. All his money, with
the exception of a few pounds which he had
exchanged in Liverpool, he had lost with his
valise, and he had to his knowledge not a single
acquaintance in the city or on the whole
continent. In order to increase his capital he
bought some fifty "Tribunes," but, as it was
already late in the day, he hardly succeeded in
selling a single copy. The next morning, he
once more stationed himself on the corner of
Murray street and Broadway, hoping in his
innocence to dispose of the papers he had still
on hand from the previous day, and actually
did find a few customers among the people who
were jumping in and out of the omnibuses that
passed up and down the great thoroughfare.
To his surprise, however, one of these gentlemen
returned to him with a very wrathful
countenance, shook his fist at him, and vociferated
with excited gestures something which to
Halfdan's ears had a very unintelligible sound.
He made a vain effort to defend himself; the
situation appeared so utterly incomprehensible
to him, and in his dumb helplessness he looked
pitiful enough to move the heart of a stone.
No English phrase suggested itself to him, only
a few Norse interjections rose to his lips. The
man's anger suddenly abated; he picked up the
paper which he had thrown on the sidewalk,
and stood for a while regarding Halfdan curiously.

"Are you a Norwegian?" he asked.

"Yes, I came from Norway yesterday."

"What's your name?"

"Halfdan Bjerk."

"Halfdan Bjerk! My stars! Who would
have thought of meeting you here! You do not
recognize me, I suppose."

Halfdan declared with a timid tremor in his
voice that he could not at the moment recall
his features.

"No, I imagine I must have changed a good
deal since you saw me," said the man, suddenly
dropping into Norwegian. "I am Gustav Olson,
I used to live in the same house with you once,
but that is long ago now."

Gustav Olson--to be sure, he was the porter's
son in the house, where his mother had once
during his childhood, taken a flat. He well
remembered having clandestinely traded jack-
knives and buttons with him, in spite of the
frequent warnings he had received to have nothing
to do with him; for Gustav, with his broad
freckled face and red hair, was looked upon by
the genteel inhabitants of the upper flats as
rather a disreputable character. He had once
whipped the son of a colonel who had been
impudent to him, and thrown a snow-ball at the
head of a new-fledged lieutenant, which offenses
he had duly expiated at a house of correction.
Since that time he had vanished from Halfdan's
horizon. He had still the same broad freckled
face, now covered with a lusty growth of coarse
red beard, the same rebellious head of hair,
which refused to yield to the subduing influences
of the comb, the same plebeian hands and feet,
and uncouth clumsiness of form. But his linen
was irreproachable, and a certain dash in his
manner, and the loud fashionableness of his
attire, gave unmistakable evidences of prosperity.

"Come, Bjerk," said he in a tone of good-
fellowship, which was not without its sting to the
idealistic republican, "you must take up a better
business than selling yesterday's `Tribune.'
That won't pay here, you know. Come along
to our office and I will see if something can't be
done for you."

"But I should be sorry to give you trouble,"
stammered Halfdan, whose native pride, even
in his present wretchedness, protested against
accepting a favor from one whom he had been
wont to regard as his inferior.

"Nonsense, my boy. Hurry up, I haven't
much time to spare. The office is only two
blocks from here. You don't look as if you
could afford to throw away a friendly offer."

The last words suddenly roused Halfdan from
his apathy; for he felt that they were true. A
drowning man cannot afford to make nice
distinctions--cannot afford to ask whether the
helping hand that is extended to him be that of
an equal or an inferior. So he swallowed his
humiliation and threaded his way through the
bewildering turmoil of Broadway, by the side
of his officious friend.

They entered a large, elegantly furnished
office, where clerks with sleek and severely
apathetic countenances stood scribbling at their desks.

"You will have to amuse yourself as best you
can," said Olson. "Mr. Van Kirk will be here
in twenty minutes. I haven't time to entertain you."

A dreary half hour passed. Then the door
opened and a tall, handsome man, with a full
grayish beard, and a commanding presence,
entered and took his seat at a desk in a smaller
adjoining office. He opened, with great dispatch,
a pile of letters which lay on the desk
before him, called out in a sharp, ringing tone
for a clerk, who promptly appeared, handed
him half-a-dozen letters, accompanying each
with a brief direction, took some clean paper
from a drawer and fell to writing. There was
something brisk, determined, and business-like
in his manner, which made it seem very hopeless
to Halfdan to appear before him as a petitioner.
Presently Olson entered the private office, closing
the door behind him, and a few minutes
later re-appeared and summoned Halfdan into
the chief's presence.

"You are a Norwegian, I hear," said the
merchant, looking around over his shoulder at
the supplicant, with a preoccupied air. "You
want work. What can you do?"

What can you do? A fatal question. But
here was clearly no opportunity for mental
debate. So, summoning all his courage, but
feeling nevertheless very faint, he answered:

"I have passed both examen artium and
philosophicum,[2] and got my laud clear in the former,
but in the latter haud on the first point."

[2] Examen artium is the entrance examination to the Norwegian
University, and philosophicum the first degree. The ranks given at
these are Laudabilis prae ceteris (in student's parlance, prae),
laudabilis or laud, haud illaudabilis, or haud, etc.

Mr. Van Kirk wheeled round on his chair and
faced the speaker:

"That is all Greek to me," he said, in a severe
tone. "Can you keep accounts?"

"No. I am afraid not."

Keeping accounts was not deemed a classical
accomplishment in Norway. It was only "trade-
rats" who troubled themselves about such gross
things, and if our Norseman had not been too
absorbed with the problem of his destiny, he
would have been justly indignant at having
such a question put to him.

"Then you don't know book-keeping?"

"I think not. I never tried it."

"Then you may be sure you don't know it.
But you must certainly have tried your hand at
something. Is there nothing you can think of
which might help you to get a living?"

"I can play the piano--and--and the violin."

"Very well, then. You may come this afternoon
to my house. Mr. Olson will tell you the
address. I will give you a note to Mrs. Van
Kirk. Perhaps she will engage you as a music
teacher for the children. Good morning."

IV.

At half-past four o'clock in the afternoon,
Halfdan found himself standing in a large, dimly
lighted drawing-room, whose brilliant
upholstery, luxurious carpets, and fantastically
twisted furniture dazzled and bewildered his
senses. All was so strange, so strange; nowhere
a familiar object to give rest to the
wearied eye. Wherever he looked he saw his
shabbily attired figure repeated in the long
crystal mirrors, and he became uncomfortably
conscious of his threadbare coat, his uncouth
boots, and the general incongruity of his
appearance. With every moment his uneasiness
grew; and he was vaguely considering the
propriety of a precipitate flight, when the rustle of
a dress at the farther end of the room startled
him, and a small, plump lady, of a daintily
exquisite form, swept up toward him, gave a
slight inclination of her head, and sank down
into an easy-chair:

"You are Mr. ----, the Norwegian, who
wishes to give music lessons?" she said, holding
a pair of gold-framed eyeglasses up to her eyes,
and running over the note which she held in her
hand. It read as follows:

DEAR MARTHA,--The bearer of this note is a young
Norwegian, I forgot to ascertain his name, a friend of
Olson's. He wishes to teach music. If you can help the
poor devil and give him something to do, you will oblige,
Yours, H. V. K.

Mrs. Van Kirk was evidently, by at least
twelve years, her husband's junior, and apparently
not very far advanced in the forties. Her
blonde hair, which was freshly crimped, fell
lightly over her smooth, narrow forehead; her
nose, mouth and chin had a neat distinctness of
outline; her complexion was either naturally or
artificially perfect, and her eyes, which were of
the purest blue, had, owing to their near-sightedness,
a certain pinched and scrutinizing look.
This look, which was without the slightest touch
of severity, indicating merely a lively degree of
interest, was further emphasized by three small
perpendicular wrinkles, which deepened and
again relaxed according to the varying intensity
of observation she bestowed upon the object
which for the time engaged her attention.

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