Heroes of To-Day

by Mary Rosetta Parkman

WOULD you like to hear about a viking of our own time? Listen to the story of this Northman, and see if you will not say that the North Sea country can still send forth as staunch and fearless men as those who sailed in their dragon ships the “whale roads” of the uncharted seas, found a new world and forgot about it long before Columbus dreamed his dream.

Near the Danish coast where the sea and the low-lying fields grapple hand to hand in every storm, and where the waves at flood tide thunder against the barrows beneath which the old vikings were buried, is the quaint little town of Ribe. This is the sea’s own country. It seems as if the people here, who never fear to go down to the sea in ships, have scorned to pile up dikes between them and their greatest friend, who can, in a moment of anger, prove their greatest enemy. It is as if they said, “We are of the sea; if it chooses to rise up against us, who are we to say, ‘Thus far and no farther!’ ”

There was a boy born in this town whose name was Jacob Riis. The call of the sea-birds was the first sound he knew; the breath of the sea was like the breath of life to him. On bright, blue-and-gold days when the waves danced in rainbow hues and scattered in snowy foam, his heart “outdid the sparkling waves in glee.” At evening, when the sea-fogs settled down over the shore and land and water seemed one, something of the thoughtful strength and patience of that brave little country came into his face.

Many changes had come to the coast since the sea-rovers of old pulled their pirate galleys on the beach, took down their square, gaily striped sails, and gave themselves over to feasting in the great mead-hall, where the smoking boar’s-flesh was taken from the leaping flames and seized by the flushed, triumphant warriors, while skalds chanted loud the joys of battle and plunder. The quaint little town where Jacob Riis lived sixty-odd years ago had nothing but the broom-covered barrows and the changeless ocean that belonged to those wild times, and yet it was quite as far removed from the customs and interests of to-day.

I wish that I could make you see the narrow cobblestone streets over which whale-oil lanterns swung on creaking iron chains, and the quaint houses with their tiled roofs where the red-legged storks came in April to build their nests. The stillness was unbroken by the snort of the locomotive and the shrill clamor of steam-boat and steam factory whistles. The people still journeyed by stagecoach, carried tinder-boxes in place of matches, and penknives to mend their quill pens. The telegraph was regarded with suspicion, as was the strange oil from Pennsylvania that was taken out of the earth. Such things could not be safe, and prudent people would do well to have none of them.

In this town, where mill-wheels clattered comfortably in the little stream along which roses nodded over old garden walls and where night-watchmen went about the streets chanting the hours, all the people were neighbors. There were no very rich and few very poor. How Jacob hated the one ramshackle old house by the dry moat which had surrounded the great castle of the mighty Valdemar barons in feudal days! This place seemed given over to dirt, rats, disease, and dirty, rat-like children. Jacob’s friends called it Rag Hall, and said it was a shame that such an ugly, ill-smelling pile should spoil the neighborhood of Castle Hill, where they loved to play among the tall grass and swaying reeds of the moat.

Rag Hall came to fill a large place in Jacob’s thoughts. It was the grim shadow of his bright young world. Surely the world as God had made it was a place of open sky, fresh life-giving breezes, and rolling meadows of dewy, fragrant greenness. How did it happen that people could get so far away from all that made life sweet and wholesome? How had they lost their birthright?

As Jacob looked at the gray, dirty children of Rag Hall it seemed to him that they had never had a chance to be anything better. “What should I have been if I had always lived in such a place?” he said to himself.

One Christmas, Jacob’s father gave him a mark,—a silver coin like our quarter,—which was more money than the boy had ever had