The Sun.
London, England, 1867-09-13 00:00:00

cut. One of the carters came to tell him, and
he went to see what was taking place. There
were three brickmakers, and they beat him, and
one, while he was down, struck a knife at his
shoulder, but it went into the ground and the
blade broke off. It was about 3in the afternoon.
He ran off as soon as he could, and went into
a wheelwright's shop, where he got hold of a ham-
mer. By that time there was only one brickmaker
following him, and heturned on seeing the hammer.
Ile went back to the place where the knife had been
struck at his shoulder, and found a piece of the
blade of the knife in the ground two to three inches
long. That was in 1861. He left the company's
service in consequence of that attack, his friends
persuading him to do so for fear he would come to
some serious injury. Ultimately the company gave
up making bricks by machine, having so many
breaks down of machinery in the place that they
thought hand brickmakers got into their employ
under false pretences, and caused these breaksdown.
Machine-made bricks were much superior to hand-
made.

Thos. Cole said—ls about 14 years old. About
the latter end of 1864, about 7 o'clock, he was going
home from the works, when two men dressed in
brickmakers' clothes threw him into a pit. He could
not swim. A stranger coming by got him out. It
is a pit in an open field with a road passing it. The
men came across the railway. He was near the pit.
One man took hold of his hands and another his
legs and threw him four or five yards. Was going to
the post-office. He said nothing to the men.
John Cole, brickmaker, said he remembered in
July, 1864, there was a machine brickmaking com-
pany in Ardwick. Was taken into custody in 1864
on a charge of drawing the kecker bars from some
brick carts, but he had done nothing of the kind.
James Broom said he was a carter in the employ
of Mr. Mars and Bennett, and remembered three or
four years ago one of the horses in the stable had its
throat cut. There were seven cuts and one laid the
windpipe bare. It was in the night. The horse re-
covered. They carted timber to the machine brick-
making concern at the time, and it was supposed to
be done by brickmakers. This was a white-faced
horse among four in the stables, and was the one
employed always to take timber to the machine
makers.

The Court adjourned to Friday (this day).

- -
.11ANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN.

Mr. J. Ross Browne, in "The Land of Thor,"
gives the following account of Hans Christian
Andersen at home :

The city of Copenhagen, it should be borne in
mind, is intersected by canals which, during the
summer month, are crowded with small trading
vessels from Sweden and Jutland, and fishing-smacks
from the neighbouring islands and coast of Norway.
The wharves bordering on these canals present an
exceedingly animated appearance. Peasants, sailors,
traders, and fishermen, in every variety of costume,
are gathered in groups, enjoying a social gossip, are
interchanging their various products and wares, and
strawberries from Amak and fish from the Skager-
Rack mingle their odours. In the second story of
a dingy and dilapidated house, fronting one of these
unsavoury canals, a confused pile of dirty,
shambling old tenements in the rear, and a
curious medley of fish and fishermen, sloops and
schooners, mud-scows, and skiffs in front, lives
the world-renowned author, Hans Christian
Andersen. I say he lives there, but properly speak-
ing he only lodges. It seems to be a peculiarity of
his nature to move about from time to time into all
the queer and uninviting places possible to be dis-
covered within the limits of Copenhagen—not
w here

The mantling vine
Lays forth her grape and gently creeps
Luxuriant,'
but where the roughest, nosiest, busiest, and fishiest
of an amphibious population is to be found. Here
it is, apparently, amid the most incongruous ele-
ments, that it draws from all around him the most
delicate traits of human nature, and matures for the
great outer world the most exquisite creations of his
fancy. It is purely a labour of love in which he
spends his life. The products of his pen have fur-
nished him with ample means to live in elegant
style, surrounded by all the allurements of rank and
fashion, but he prefers the obscurity of a plain
lodging amid the haunts of those classes whose lives
and pursuits he so well portrays. Here he cordially
receives all who call upon him, and they are not few.
Pilgrims of every condition in life and from all na-
tions do homage to his genius, yet,valuable as his time
is, he finds enough to spare for the kindly reception
of visitors. His only household companions appear
to be two old peasant women, whom he employs as
domestics, weather-beaten and decrepit old
creatures, with faces and forms very much like a
pair of antiquated nut-crackers. He occupies only
two or three rooms plainly furnished, and apparently
lives in the simplest and most abstemious style.
When I called according to directions, one of the
ancient nut-crackers merely pointed to the door,
and said she thought Herr Andersen was in, but
didn't know. I could knock there and try ; so I
knocked. Presently I heard a rapid step, and the
door was thrown open. Before me stood the tall,
thin, shambling, raw-boned figure of a man a little
beyond the prime of life, but not yet old, with a
pair of dancing grey eyes and a hatchet-face, all
alive with twists, and wrinkles, and muscles ; a long,
lean face, upon which stood out prominently a great
nose, diverted by a freak of nature a little to one
side, and flanked by a tremendous pair of cheek-
bones, with great hollows underneath. Innumer-
able ridges and furrows swept semi-circularly down-
ward around the corners of a great mouth—a
broad, deep, rugged fissure across the face, that
might have been mistaken for the dreadful child-
trap of an ogre, but for the sunny beams of bene-
volence that lurked around the lips, and the genial
humanity that glimmered from every nook and
turn. Neither moustache nor beard obscured the
strong inviduality of this remarkable face, which
for the most part was of a dull granite colour, a
little mixed with limestone and spotted with
patches of porphyry, A dented gutta penha fore-
head, very prominent about the brows, and some-
what resembling in its general topography a raised
map of Switzerland, sloped upward and backward
to the top of the head ; not a very large head, but
wonderfully bumped and battered by the operations
of the brain, and partially covered by a mop of wavy
hair, a little thin in front and somewhat grizzled
behind ; a long, bony pair of arms, with long hands
on them ; a long, lank body with a long black coat
on it ; a long, loose pair of legs, with long boots on
the feet, all in motion at the same time—all shining,
and wriggling, and working with an indescribable
vitality ; a voice bubbling up from the vast depths
below with cheery, spasmodic, and unintelligible
words of welcome—this was the wonderful man
that stood before me, the great Danish improvisator,
the lover of little children, the gentle Caliban who
dwells among fairies and holds sweet converse with
fishes, and frogs, and beetles ! I would have picked
him out from among a thousand men at the first
glance as a candidate for Congress, or the pro-
prietor of a tavern, if I had met him anywhere
in the United States. But the resemblance was
only momentary. In the quaint awkwardness
of his gestures and the simplicity of his speech
there was a certain refinement not usually found
among men of that class. Something in the spon-
taneous and almost child-like cordiality of his
greeting; the unworldly impulsiveness of his na-
ture, as he grasped both my hands in his, patted me
affectionately on the shoulder and bade me wel-
come, convinced me in a moment that this was no
other, and could be no other, than Hans Christian
Andersen.

" Come in ! come in!" he said, in a gush of
broken English ; " come in andsit down. You are
welcome. Thank you—thank you very much. I
am very glad to see you. It is a rare thing to meet
a traveller all the way from California—quite a
surprise. Sit down ! Thank you !" After record-
ing conversation, and how there arose a question of
Andersen's portraits, which caused him to fetch out
a dozen from a drawer, Mr. Browne continues :
While looking over the collection, I said the like-
ness of one who had done so much to promote
the happiness o somefriends I