I was thinking less of the unreasonable Postmaster than of the just anger of the district physician, who one day was called to deal with an emergency in a near-by farm-house, where all depended on letting in fresh air quickly. The patient lay in one of the horrible closet beds that always gave me a shiver, though they were often not so bad, if only there were not mice in the straw. Air there never was, could not be. The doctor ran to the window and tried to open it. It was nailed down; probably had not been opened since the house was built. Dr. P. was a hasty man, too, and here he had reason, for no time was to be lost. Looking around for something to smash the window with, his eye fell upon the farmer’s silver-mounted meerschaum pipe, with a bowl as big as a man’s fist and long elastic stem. The doctor seized it and, wielding it as a war club, smashed pane after pane and saved his patient. But the farmer sued him. The pipe was an heirloom and beyond price to him. It was the one thing that by the country folk was valued higher than lands and cattle. The doctor lost his case, but he took the occasion to inveigh effectually against the evil abuse of the cupboard beds that were closed tight with doors as often as with a curtain. When this last was so, it was rather to save the wood than the sleeper. And he lived to see them put under the ban, and to see windows made to open.
The pipe was, indeed, an indispensable part of the peasant’s equipment. The boy of twelve had his sticking out of his side pocket, just like his father. They never stopped smoking except when they were haying, and I have seen a man mowing grass with his long pipe hanging from his mouth. They even counted distances by pipes instead of miles. A peasant would tell you, if you asked how far it was to the next town, that it was two pipes, or three pipes, as the case might be. How far that was, I have forgotten, but it was a safe enough way of reckoning. For they went always at the same jog-trot, and the pipe bowls were always of the same size. They were of porcelain and gayly decorated. Among the young men there was a kind of rivalry as to who should have the handsomest pipe bowl; the meerschaum was the holiday pipe, for home and festive occasions. And it was not only the country folk who smoked thus. Everybody did—the men, that is to say. It is only lately the women have taken to smoking cigars, and in public. When last I crossed the “Great Belt” on the steam-ferry, I was greatly annoyed at the sight of two handsome and otherwise nice young girls smoking cigarettes on the deck, and I took occasion to say so to a motherly woman who occupied the chair next to mine. She listened with polite interest to my diatribe about how things were when I was a boy, and when I had finished took out a cigar, a regular man’s cigar.
“Yes!” she said, “things do change. Now, I like a smoke myself. These girls take after me, I suppose. They are my daughters.” And she struck a match and lit her weed.
We boys in the Old Town were strictly prohibited from smoking under the school rules, which prescribed the rod for every such offence. In consequence, we did it on the sly, thinking it manly and fine. At his desk, at home, Father smoked all the time, and so did everybody else. Many a pound of Kanaster have I carried home from the tobacconist’s shop, the one in Grönnegade with the naked brown Indian smoking a very long pipe. From the moment the “Last of the Mohicans” fell into my hands I looked upon him as friend and brother. There was something between us which the grown-ups knew nothing about. He must be acquainted with Uncas and Chingachgook and Deerslayer, of course, for clearly he was of the good Delawares and not of the wicked Hurons. He swings from his hook yet, and I confess to a nodding acquaintance when I pass him in the street. His pipe is still the biggest part of him.
It was a part of everything. I mind many a time seeing our family doctor on the way to a country case, wrapped in his great fur coat and with the pipe between his teeth as he sat in his wagon chair. That was a still bigger part of the doctor’s outfit: the great easy-chair that stood in the hall and was lifted into the farmer’s wagon where it hung suspended from the sideboards. Farm wagons in those days were not made with springs. With his collar up about his ears, his cap pulled down and “fire up,” the doctor could sleep comfortably on the longest and coldest ride, and he had need. For there were few nights when he was not called out for one. It was hard work for very poor pay. Father, with a family of fifteen and errand for the doctor every day, and sometimes all day, paid our family physician, I think, not over fifty daler a year, which is half that in American dollars. But it was not a matter of dollars. Money could not pay what our doctor gave us. He was the family friend before he was the physician. He smoothed the pillow of suffering, and the last agony was made easier because he sat by. Grown old and slow of gait, he goes his rounds yet in the Old Town that will be my Old Town no longer when I look for him in vain on his morning route. And where he goes, to the rich man’s house or the poor man’s hut, sunshine and hope come with him.
The Old Family Doctor.
I have said that in Ribe one seemed to be always bordering upon the way past because of the track it had made everywhere, the many landmarks it had set. There was another reason; namely, that so many old people lived there who in themselves made a link connecting the town with days long gone. Their lives seemed to reach straight back and lay hold of it visibly. People grew older in the Old Town than anywhere I know of, as if they were loath to let go of it. There seemed to be no good reason why they should die, and so they lived and lived, and some of them are living yet. The old Bishop, whom we all loved and revered, was 92 when I saw him vault with the agility of a young man over a beam some carpenters had left in his way. He was the father-in-law of Dr. Niels Finsen, whom all the world knows. Dr. Finsen’s father was Amtmand in Ribe in his day, and his picture in uniform hangs in the Town Hall. Bishop Balslev and King Christian had grown old together, and were friends. When the Bishop thought his charge required a younger man, he asked the King to appoint his successor. “Not while I live,” said the King, and he kept his word. He outlived his friend, who was in sight of the century post when his relief came.
There was scarce a street in the Old Town where some kindly old face did not look out upon you with patient eyes that spoke of things unseen by the crowd, of friends long waiting in the beyond. In the Cloister[5] there were always one or two old women that were nearing the hundred. The keeper himself was in the nineties. They crept about, the old men with their staffs in the sunshiny garden patches; the women sat at their curtained windows, busy with sewing or knitting. For there were ever small trousers to be patched and small feet to be shod with warm socks for the winter, if not in their own home then in many a one about them. And the Old Town loved them. Some day we heard that they slept, and we bound wreaths for our friends and strewed the street with wintergreen and spruce, and walked, singing, their last journey with them, while all the church bells rang and friends carried the tired body.
