I
CONFIDENTIAL
Dear Readers:
It is certainly comical that I, Inger Johanne, wrote a book[1] a while ago and that it was printed, so I (I!) am an author. Really, it is too funny. I have to laugh whenever I think of it.
But what I wrote was only scribblings, not like a real author’s book; for persons who know how to write can picture everything so vividly that the readers see it clearly in their own minds; and I am very sure that you can’t see our delightful town at all, though my whole book is about how things are there.
You can’t see the little red and yellow houses among the gray rocks; the shining blue water and the big ships ready to start on long voyages, with the sailors hauling up the anchors, while on the hill the wives and children stand waving big handkerchiefs and crying. They even climb Big Rock and stand there until the ship is just a little speck far, far out on the water.
Oh, you can’t know, either, how the fresh wind feels on your cheeks, or how the heather brushes against the bottom of your dress, or how our old house on the hillside looks—or Peter or Karsten——No, I wrote about it all so poorly that you can’t have much idea of any of it.
Before the stories were printed I let Nils and Peter and Karsten and Massa and Mina read them, but I shouldn’t have done that, for I got paid for it well and quickly, I can tell you.
Karsten thwacked me on the head hard, four times, because I had written that he was troublesome. Nils thought I had said too little about him, so he squirted a lot of water right in my face.
Peter, the dean’s son, was mightily offended (and has been ever since) because I told about his father leading him home by the ear. As for Massa and Mina, they thought it was so tedious to read about the children here at home that they would not even finish the stories.
So, you see, you get something besides pleasure when you write a book.