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Updated: May 2, 2025


Although we were in shadow on the water, the last red glow of the sun blazed on the high gable-windows, just as it did the first time I crossed over, only a child then, with my life before me. I asked the ferry-man some questions, but he could tell me nothing: he was a new-comer to that part of the country.

The same curtains at the low gable-windows, whose depth, so to speak, made a light anteroom to the real gloomy one in the background. In this little anteroom the young girl had placed all that was necessary for her pleasure and use. There were the most beautiful, sweet-scented flowers upon the window-stool; in a pretty metal cage was a light-colored canary.

A plain, whitewashed, stone structure, built two hundred years ago; two stories, the upper chambers low, with gable-windows; a little garden at the side bright with flowers, where sweet marjoram vied with onions and beets; all spoke of humble thrift and homely cares. In front was a great chestnut-tree, and in the roadway near were two ancient elms where saucy crows were building a nest.

There was a swishing of wind in the gable-windows, in the poplars of the manor-house; the wind whistled through tattered bushes on the green hill of Bredbjerg. Mogens lay up there, and gazed out over the dark earth. The moon was beginning to acquire radiance, and mists were drifting down on the meadow. Everything was very sad, all of life, all of life, empty behind him, dark before him.

Clean-swept garden paths, trim hedges of gooseberry bushes just bursting into leaf, and hens scratching the freshly turned furrows, brought back a childlike delight in the spring-time; while the antiquarian tastes of later years were fed by glimpses of delicious old houses which raised their drooping eyelids in quaint gable-windows looking forth over ivy-mantled walls, as if in sleepy surprise at all the bustle and stir of this work-a-day world.

This attic was the most curious room I ever saw. It was large running clear across the house. It had four gable-windows, and the ceiling sloped down on the sides, so there was danger of bumping your head if you played pussy-wants-a-corner.

Some of these ancient habitations, with high garret gable-windows perking into the roofs, have a kind of French shrug about them; and being lop-sided with age, appear to hold their heads askew, besides, as if they were grimacing in astonishment at the American Improvements.

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