# The Fisher Maiden/Chapter I

Chapter I.
Where herring have for a long time been caught in abundance, there gradually grows up a town, provided that other circumstances are favorable. Not only may it be said of such towns that they are cast up out of the sea, but at a great distance they actually resemble washed-up timber and fragments of wreck, or a mass of keeled boats, overturned by the fishermen for shelter some stormy night. A nearer view shows how entirely by chance the whole has been built, for here a rock lies in the midst of a thoroughfare, there water divides the borough into three or four parts, while the streets wind and curve in every direction. But there is one quality common to them all: there is refuge in the harbor for the largest ships; it is as snug in there as in a box; and therefore these havens are very grateful to vessels that with tattered sails and battered ​bulwarks are driven in from the open sea in search of a breathing-place.
In a small town of this kind all is still; everything noisy is banished to the wharves, where are moored the peasants’ boats, and where ships load and unload. Along the wharves runs the one street of our little town; the white and red one and two-story houses are on the opposite side; but they are not built wall to wall, they have neat gardens around them; and so there is a long, broad street which, when the wind blows landward, is filled with the odor of whatever may be on the wharves. It is quiet here—not from fear of the police, for as a rule there is none,—but from dread of gossip, since all the inhabitants know one another. When you walk down the street you must bow at each window, where usually sits an old lady who is ready to return your greeting. Moreover, you must salute every one you meet; for all these people, as they move so noiselessly about, are continually reflecting on what is proper in general and for themselves in particular. He who oversteps the standard prescribed for his rank or social position, forfeits his good name; for not only is he known to his neighbors, but so are his father and his grandfather, and inquiries are ​at once made as to whether there has ever before been seen a tendency in the family to unseemly behavior.
To this peaceful town fared, many years ago, that worthy man, Per Olsen. He came from the country, where he had earned a livelihood by peddling and fiddling. He opened a shop in the town for his old customers, where, in addition to his other wares, he sold brandy and bread; and be might often be heard pacing up and down in the chamber behind the shop, playing spring-dances and wedding-marches. Each time he passed the glass loop-hole in the door, he would peep through, and if a customer was entering the shop he would wind up his playing with a trill and go in, Business flourished; he married and had a son whom he named after himself, calling him not Per, though, but Peter.
Little Peter was to become what Per knew he was not—an educated man; and so the boy was entered at the Latin school. When those who should have been his comrades thrashed him home from their games because he was a son of Per Olsen, his father thrashed him back again,—there was no other way of educating the boy. Consequently little Peter felt forsaken at school, grew indolent, and gradually ​became so totally indifferent to everything that his father could neither beat a smile nor a tear out of him. Then Per did away with the floggings and placed the boy in the shop. Greatly was he astonished when he saw his son dealing out to each customer exactly what was asked for, neither giving a grain too much, nor eating a prune himself, but weighing, reckoning, and entering the sales, with unmoved countenance, usually without speaking, and though slowly yet with scrupulous accuracy.
Again the father became hopeful, and sent his son by a herring boat to Hamburg, in order to place him at a commercial college, and give him an opportunity to acquire polished manners. Peter was absent eight months; that was long enough, no doubt. Before starting for home he had provided himself with six new suits of clothes, and when he landed he wore them all, one over the other, “for all articles in actual wear are exempt from duty.” He made precisely the same appearance in the street the next day as when he came ashore, minus his circumference. He walked stiff and straight, without a curve in his arms or hands; he bowed with a sudden jerk, bending as if he had no joints, only to grow the next moment as rigid as ever; he had become the embodi​ment of politeness, but not a word did he have to say for himself; his manners were abrupt and tinged with a certain shyness. He no longer wrote his name Olsen, but Ohlsen, which gave the wags of the town opportunity for the following conundrum:—
“How far did Peter Olsen get in Hamburg?”
Answer: “To the first letter.”
He had furthermore meditated calling himself “Pedro;” but having had so much annoyance to endure for the safe of the h, he gave up this idea and subscribed himself P. Ohlsen. He enlarged his father’s business, and at the age of twenty-two married a shop-girl with red hands in order to have some one to keep house; for his father had just become a widower and Peter thought it was safer to take a wife than a housekeeper. On the anniversary of their wedding-day, she presented him with a son, who a week later was christened Pedro.
Now that worthy Per Olsen had become a grandfather, he felt, as it were, an inner call to grow old, so he gave up his business to his son, took a seat on a bench outside the door and smoked plug tobacco in a short pipe. Discovering one day that life was growing tedious out there he began to wish for a speedy death, and as all his wishes had been quietly fulfilled, so it was with this one.
​Page:The Fisher Maiden.pdf/18 ​Page:The Fisher Maiden.pdf/19 ​Page:The Fisher Maiden.pdf/20 ​Page:The Fisher Maiden.pdf/21 ​Page:The Fisher Maiden.pdf/22 ​Page:The Fisher Maiden.pdf/23 ​Page:The Fisher Maiden.pdf/24 ​Page:The Fisher Maiden.pdf/25 ​Page:The Fisher Maiden.pdf/26