The other evening I sat in my room and felt an urge to read, but I had no book, no paper. Just then a leaf, fresh and green, fell from the lime tree, and the breeze carried it in through the window to me. I examined the many veins in it; a little insect was crawling across them, as if it were making a thorough study of the leaf. This made me think of man's wisdom: we also crawl about on a leaf; our knowledge is limited to that only, and yet we unhesitatingly deliver a lecture on the whole big tree - the root, the trunk, and the crown - the great tree comprised of God, the world, and immortality - and of all this we know only a little leaf!
As I was sitting there, I received a visit from Aunty Mille. I showed her the leaf with the insect and told her of my thoughts in connection with these. And her eyes lit up.
"You are a poet!" she said. "Perhaps the greatest we have. If I should live to see this, I would go to my grave gladly. Ever since the brewer Rasmussen's funeral you have amazed me with your powerful imagination."
So said Aunty Mille, and she then kissed me.
Who was Aunty Mille, and who was Rasmussen the brewer?
II
We children always called our mother's aunt "Aunty"; we had no other name for her.
She gave us jam and sweets, although they were very injurious to our teeth; but the dear children were her weakness, she said. It was cruel to deny them a few sweets, when they were so fond of them. And that's why we loved Aunty so much.
She was an old maid; as far back as I can remember, she was always old. Her age never seemed to change.
In earlier years she had suffered a great deal from toothache, and she always spoke about it; and so it happened that her friend, the brewer Rasmussen, who was a great wit, called her Aunty Toothache.
He had retired from the brewing business some years before and was then living on the interest of his money. He frequently visited Aunty; he was older than she. He had no teeth at all - only a few black stumps. When a child, he had eaten too much sugar, he told us children, and that's how he came to look as he did.
Aunty could surely never have eaten sugar in her childhood, for she had the most beautiful white teeth. She took great care of them, and she did not sleep with them at night! - said Rasmussen the brewer. We children knew that this was said in malice, but Aunty said he did not mean anything by it.
One morning, at the breakfast table, she told us of a terrible dream she had had during the night, in which one of her teeth had fallen out.
"That means," she said, "that I shall lose a true friend!"
"Was it a false tooth?" asked the brewer with a chuckle. "If so, it can only mean that you will lose a false friend!"
"You are an insolent old man!" said Aunty, angrier than I had seen her before or ever have since.
She later told us that her old friend had only been teasing her; he was the finest man on earth, and when he died he would become one of God's little angels in heaven.
I thought a good deal of this transformation, and wondered if I would be able to recognize him in this new character.