The old town

by Jacob A. Riis

King Harald’s Stone.

The Old Town was set in a meadow, grass to the right of it, grass to the left of it, stretching away toward the horizon until in the south and east it came up against the black moor, and toward the sunset a little way met the sands of the western sea. What sport was there for boys in such a country? My own boys asked me that question with something of impatience on a walk through the fields, for they had been sizing up the lads of their own age on baseball and found them no good. They threw the ball “just like girls.” Not many days after one of them came home with a bruised nose and an increased respect for Danish muscle. It was good for fighting, anyhow. But, in truth, we did not run to baseball when I was a boy; and as for fighting, we had no more than was good for us; when any Uitlander bragged, for instance. As I look back now it seems to me we didn’t have time for either, so busy were we with our sports.

There was the brook that led to the old manse, hidden quite behind a wind-tossed thicket of scrub-oak that had run over the sunken walls since the days when bishops were fighting men who went clad in iron to the wars. Then the manse was one of the strongholds of the Ribe prelates who led the armies of the King against the German counts, notably the “Strong Master Jacob,” whose fists and sword saved many a soul where preaching failed. The brook was now barely a step wide, and we boys could easily jump over it in places; but the wild birds built their nests in its banks in spring, and up where we had our early bonfires it widened into a dark still pool, hedged in with mint and forget-me-nots, where wary trout were always darting from the deep shadows. I go to seek that pool first thing when I return to the Old Town now, and it is not changed. But the boys of to-day seem to have forgotten it.

“In my dreams I sit by the creek.”

And then the creek that meandered through the meadows miles and miles from the great peat bog where our winter fuel came from, making one turn more tortuous than another, with hole after hole in the deep pockets that were fairly alive with yellow perch and their silver-scaled neighbors, whatever you would call them. We called them “skaller.” I could go to a dozen of them blindfolded, I think, even now, and bait my hook and throw it in the exact spot where a perch is waiting to pull the cork under with one quick, determined jerk. No nibbling about him; his mind is always made up and ready. Sometimes in my dreams I sit by the creek in one particular spot I have never forgotten, with feet hanging over the edge, the slanting sunlight on the dark waters, red-finned perch and silver fish darting hither and thither, and the soft west wind in the grass; and then I am perfectly happy. Our ambition did not rise to five-pound pickerel in those days. Maybe there weren’t any. My little boy and I found plenty in after years, and little else. My pretty fish seemed to be gone. Perhaps the pickerel had eaten them up, like some mean trust on dry land. If he had, we got square with him. We ate him in turn. They had reduced the catching of him to an exact science. Drop your bait there, right in the edge of the rushes, so—a swirl and a sudden tightening of the line! Let him run, and take out your watch. Eight minutes to a dot, and he is off again. That is when he turns the bait around in his mouth and swallows it, having lain by waiting for signs of treachery. Now, pull him in. Here he is! Hi, what a big fellow!

Where I shot my First Duck.

It was up here by this turn that I shot my first duck. It was in the winter vacation, and I had found out that here, where there was a stretch of open water, a flock of black-headed ducks were at home. I burrowed through six feet of snow to the water’s edge and shot one of them as they flew. It fell and dived, and I threw my clothes in the snow and jumped after. Ugh! it was cold. I dodged the floating ice as well as I could and kept turning the cakes over and over, looking for my duck, but it was not there. It was not till I climbed ashore again and dressed myself with chattering teeth that, happening to look under the bank where the current had cut the earth away, I saw it sitting composedly on the little shelving beach below. I can feel now the throbbing of my heart as I leaned over, and reaching down with infinite stealth, caught it by the neck and yanked it up. The pride of that homeward procession with the head of the duck flapping from my game-bag! And then, after all, the cook had to wring its neck. In my joy I had forgotten to kill it. The shot had only stunned it.

If fish ran low in our own river because of the swans taking more than their share, we could go to Konge-aaen (the King’s River), four or five miles away, where there were jumping fish which an Englishman came across the North Sea every year to catch with flies. This to us was a very amazing thing, and quite like an Englishman: to angle with a bit of hen feather, or even a grasshopper, when there were fine fat worms to be had for the digging. Really, if the truth be told, it was a rank imposition on the fish. I confess that it seems to me so even yet—not exactly a square deal. The Englishman did not discourage this attitude on our part. He went right on, and for years had a monopoly of the salmon in the stream. For we did them little damage. Once in a while very large salmon were speared by those living along the stream. More frequently a farmer haying in his field spitted a sturgeon on his pitchfork. Then there was a fight, the accounts of which we boys listened to with breathless interest when the fish was brought to town. Always it seemed to me to hark back to the days we so loved to dream of; for the sturgeon was all clad in mail, as it were, just like the knights of old, and it was often a question whether the fish would come ashore or the man go into the brook. At least that was the way he told it. If the fish said nothing, it looked grim enough to make you believe almost anything.