The old town

by Jacob A. Riis

Peer Down’s Slip.

There was in the Old Town among the clergy attached to the Domkirke one with whom my father was on a war footing, so to speak. They were not enemies, for they were Christians. But Pastor Jacobi was a very bright and clever man with a caustic wit of which he was in no wise sparing. Father’s mental equipment was not unlike his in those younger days, and they clashed often, taking instinctively opposite sides in public discussion, until it had come to be understood, among us boys, at least, that they were not friends. Out of such a case we had an easy way; they, being men, could not fight and were forced to carry around their grievance unslaked. Hence my astonishment may be understood when, upon my father answering a knock at the door while we were together in the first burst of grief, I beheld Pastor Jacobi standing on the threshold. Without a word he opened his arms, and my father walked straight into them. So they stood and wept. As I looked at them standing there, I felt that somehow, wholly irregular and incomprehensible as it was, something good had entered that house of mourning, a sweetness that took the sting out of our grief. They were ever after friends.

Neighbor Quedens.

The trees that hang over the wall of the Slip grew in the garden of our neighbor, Quedens, and our house abutted on it. We were his tenants. Herr Quedens was one of the solid merchants of the town. He was an old man as far back as I can remember, little, dried-up; but in the kind face with its mock seriousness that was in a perpetual struggle with the shrewd twinkle in eyes which saw ever the good in man and sought the way of helping it, the soul of the Old Town seems mirrored to me. If any one was in trouble or need, his path led straight to the Quedens’ back door. Mr. Quedens himself would have barred the front door, that was in full sight of the town, with a severity which somehow without words managed to convey the message that at the other, in the narrow street around the corner where no one was looking, there was a pitying soul that had balm for all wounds. And so there was; for there Mrs. Quedens was in charge. Dear old friends! Sweet dreams be yours in your long sleep. The world seems poorer, the Old Town empty, without your gentle presence. It must be that even the Sunday service in the Domkirke is unreal without those good gray heads. His voice rose long and quavering from his seat on the men’s side, always a bar behind the congregation; but he sang on undisturbed, finishing the hymn in his own good time and in his own way, which was not the way of earthly harmony; but in the angels’ choir it rises clear and sweet, I know. It was ever heavy upon my conscience that once, and only once, Mrs. Quedens expressed a desire to box my ears soundly. That was when my love-making had disconcerted the Old Town and fatally broken its peace. But even then she refrained; and in his office Herr Quedens looked up a little later and pinched my arm with his quizzical look. “We must be patient, patient,” he said, and somehow I felt that there was one who understood.

It happened that Father and he had birthday together, and the eighteenth of March was the great feast-day of both our houses. I think that the fact that Grover Cleveland was also born on that day helped on the great liking I had for the ex-President in his later years. On that day we gathered, old and young, around the board in the Quedens home and had a great time. Father invariably had a song which he had written for the occasion with special reference to the events of the year; as invariably to the great surprise of Mr. Quedens, who knew all about it, but never ceased to wonder loudly at these poetic achievements. No one was forgotten; there was a verse for every member of the family—theirs; not ours, it was too large, we should never have gotten through the dinner. As it was, the night-watchman’s midnight verse usually came in and finished it, and we heard the tramp of his heavy boots at the gate as Mrs. Quedens disappeared from the table to see that he was not forgotten.

Sunday evenings always saw a friendly gathering at their home, there being no vesper service in the Domkirke, since it could not be lighted. We youngsters danced and played games. Our elders had a quiet rubber of whist, or gossiped over their knitting and the fine embroidery they did in those days. There was one article that went with the knitting pins which very recently I have seen come back, as a curiosity I suppose. It was an implement of polite use then—the scratching stick I mean. A slender rod with an ivory hand on its end, the fingers set “a-scratch.” I can think of no better way of describing it. It was handy if a lady’s back needed scratching, to reach down with, and no doubt it was the source of much solid comfort. When the watchman cried ten, Mr. Quedens would look up from his whist and remark innocently:

“Well, Anna, what do you say? I say when our company go home, we’ll go to bed.” The company took the hint.

On the Monday morning preceding Lent we children had a game that reversed the usual order of things and was fine fun. We went around then and “whipped up” our friends with festive rods trimmed with colored paper rosettes. For being caught in bed they were mulcted in many “boller,” a kind of sweetened bun, or else pennies. They made a point, of course, of staying in bed late, and cried piteously as we beat the feather beds with all our might. Mr. Quedens always cried loudest of all and begged for mercy in his droll half-German speech, while we gleefully laid it on all the harder.

Across the main street from the Quedens home one of the two Jewish families in Ribe kept shop. They were quiet good people, popular with their neighbors, who took little account of the fact that they were Jews. The Old Town was not given to religious discussions, for good cause: with this exception it was all one way. There was not a Roman Catholic in the country, I think. Baptists we had heard of as sad heretics quite beyond the pale; Methodism was but a name. We were all Lutherans, and that as such we had a monopoly of the way of salvation followed, of course.