Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/101

THORWALDSEN 259 pendulum with its shining brass plate went to and fro with a ' tiek! tick!' But it was not that he looked at; no, it was his mother's spinning-wheel, which stoc; 1 directly under the clock; this was the dearest piece of furniture in the whole house for the boy; but he dared not touch it, for if he did, he got a rap over the fingers. While his mother spun, he would sit for hours together looking at the buzzing spindle and the revolving wheel, and then he had his own thoughts. Oh! if he only durst spin that wheel! His father and mother slept; he looked at them, he looked at the wheel, and then by degrees a little naked foot was stuck out of bed, and then another naked foot, then there came two small legs, and, with a jump, he stood on the floor. He turned round once more, to see if his parents slept; yes, they did, and so he went softly, quite softly, only in his little shirt, up to the wheel, and began to spin. The cord flew off, and the wheel then ran much quicker. His mother awoke at the same moment; the curtains moved; she looked out and thought of the brownie, or another little spectral being. ' Have mercy on us! ' said she, and in her fear she struck her husband in the side; he opened his eyes, rubbed them with his hands, and looked at the busy little fellow. ' It is Bertel, woman,' said he." What the moon relates we see here as the first picture in Thorwaldsen's life's gallery; for it is a reflection of the reality. Thorwaldsen has himself, when in fa- miliar conversation at Nysoe, told the author almost word for word what he, in his " Picture-book," lets the moon say. It was one of his earliest remembrances, how he, in his little short shirt, sat in the moonlight and spun his mother's wheel, while she, dear soul, took him for a little spectre. A few years ago there still lived an old ship-carpenter, who remembered the little, light-haired, blue-eyed boy, that came to his father in the carving-house at the dock-yard; he was to learn his father's trade; and as the latter felt how bad it was not to be able to draw, the boy, then eleven years of age, was sent to the drawing-school at the Academy of Arts, where he made rapid progress. Two years afterward, Bertel, or Albert, as we shall in future call him, was of great assistance to his father; nay, he even improved his work. See the hovering ships on the wharves! The Dannebrog waves, the workmen sit in circle under the shade at their frugal breakfasts; but foremost stands the principal, figure in this picture : it is a boy who cuts with a bold hand the life- like features in the wooden image for the beak-head of the vessel. It is the ship's guardian spirit, and, as the first image from the hand of Albert Thorwald- sen, it shall wander out into the wide world. The eternally swelling sea should baptize it with its waters, and hang its wreaths of wet plants around it. Our next picture advances a step forward. Unobserved among the other