734 
THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN REVIEW 
society he was hopeless; they shivered unconsciously when he ap¬ 
proached in youthful ardor. Young men whom he sought as com¬ 
panions were repelled by his over-sensitiveness and the uncontrolla¬ 
bility of his moods. The period of sensibility was passed. The ideals 
of the time required the cold, reserved elegance of a man of the world. 
Andersen expressed himself with the suddenness of an April shower, 
and his childishness was boundless. 
This very innocence of temperament gave him an understand¬ 
ing of childhood whose amusements, joys, and sorrows were of a kind 
that corresponded to his own spiritual emotions. Here he found the 
same abrupt, uncontrolled personalities, the same boundlessness in 
affection and ability to exhaust the moment at hand to the full. 
When the grown-up world shunned him and turned its back, 
Andersen sought the youngsters. They understood the joy, sorrow, 
gaiety, and pain which their elders scoffed at him for showing. At 
the Christmas season of 1834 he suddenly found the road to his king¬ 
dom. In a letter now owned by the “Hans Christian Andersen 
House” at Odense, written January 1 , 1835, we may read: “I am 
beginning some fairy-tales for children. I’ll win the'coming genera¬ 
tions, mark my words!” In April, 1835, about the time of the poet’s 
thirtieth birthday, a thin, modest little volume appeared containing 
four fairy-tales told for children, The Tinderhooc, Little Claus and 
Big Claus , The Princess on the Pea, and Little Idas Flowers, In 
these simple tales Andersen gave a sample of what his story-telling 
ability could accomplish in one of the two manners—the naive, 
sprightly—which he employed in his writings. 
As a matter of course he elects to place at the beginning a couple 
of folk-tales similar to those told by the Grimm brothers. In this way 
the point of departure for his arrangement of the fairy-tales is marked. 
In the German stories the form is mild, genial, tranquil—classical. 
Andersen’s narrative is far more stirring, his jest more poignant, all 
the small words and shades of meaning of his discourse fitting and 
exuberant. 
Then too, in every picture, in the valuation of each detail, his 
appeal to the child is direct. The objects of comparison used are tea¬ 
cups, mill-wheels, the Round Tower, so beloved of all Copenhageners. 
The criteria for riches are tin-soldiers, whips, rocking-horses. While 
a general landscape out in nature forms the 
background, the fairyland forming the background of Andersen’s 
first tales is the variegated life of the capital. At the same time that 
Dickens is portraying the great city, and through his novels making it 
known all over the world, Andersen is daring to use a small city as 
a setting for folk-tales. In contrast to these, the scene of Little Claus 
and Big Claus is laid in the rural districts among the peasants. How¬ 
ever, here, just as in The Tinderbox, daily events in parish and home 
