Hans wished his mother could but see it!
"Do mother, I pray thee, come up the hill as far as the great beech tree," said he one evening as he thought of his nice piece of writing; "I want to show thee how strangely the elves have marked the bark." This he said in jest, hoping to entice his mother to see the wonder.
"Nay, child," said she, "my old bones are too stiff for climbing now-a-days, and nought that the elves can do can make me wonder, seeing, as I do, all the strange new things that are coming every day into the world." And it was In vain that Hans tried to persuade her.
Some days after this, however, Hans on paying a visit to the tree and finding that the white wood of the beech, from which he had peeled away the bark, was becoming brown, so that the letters no longer looked out plain and distinct, the thought came into his head of cutting each of these raised letters away from the tree and taking them home. He did so—slicing them carefully off, so that they were not split or broken, and he was thus able to carry home to his mother, as she would not come to see them, this first specimen of his own writing.
We shall see how the carrying home of those letters was afterwards to influence the fate of Hans Gensfleisch—and of the whole world!
Proud was Hans that evening, when after his frugal supper was over, he swept away the crumbs from off their little table, and arranged side by side the letters of his name before his astonished mother—so that when she compared them with his name upon the slip of parchment which was the register of his birth, she could see that it was really and truly her son's name that the curious signs signified. She thought her Hans very clever, and she was pleased. We are not sure that Hans did not think himself very clever too!
Hans put his letters carefully away in an old leather pouch which had once belonged to his father, and often after his day's work was done would he pull them out and arrange them on the table or on the hearth before the fire. He soon found out that besides making his own name, he could put together several other words which he had learned to spell. Out of the letters which formed Hans Gensfleisch, for instance, he could make the word fisch which is the German for fish—lang, long—schein, shine; and it was a great delight to his mother as well as to himself, when he found too that he could put together the letters of her name, Lischen, just as they were also written on the parchment register of his birth.
But he had other discoveries still to make with regard to his letters; for one evening it so happened that as his mother was busy over a boiling of ink that he was to take the next day to Mainz, and had put some of it out in a sort of saucer or bowl upon the table to cool, Hans in playing with his letters let one of them fall into the black color, and pulling it hastily out again he popped it on to the first thing that lay near, which happened to be a piece of chamois leather which was stretched out after being cleaned ready for dyeing.
Scarcely had the letter laid an instant on the white leather than Frau Gensfleisch, turning round, saw with dismay the mischief that was done;—a large h was marked upon the chamois skin!