the best that the world can give. He was friends with princes, and kings were as fathers to him. On his travels, which were like fairy tale travels, he found himself welcomed in every drawing-room of every capital in Europe. He met Dumas and Victor Hugo in France; in Germany, Heine, the brothers Grimm, and Mendelssohn and Schumann; and Dickens, as we know, in England. And he didn't meet these people in a stiff, formal way, but in their dressing-gowns, so to speak. His childlike nature drew people to him, and he was friendly and intimate with them at once. All these things appeared to him more marvelous even than the most fantastic incidents of his own fairy tales. He would often, when enjoying some quite ordinary luxury, which most people take as a matter of course, such as lying on a sofa in a new dressing-gown surrounded by books, think of his childhood and wonder.
That Andersen should have been impressed by grandeur, by kings and princes in their castles, and the trappings of wealth, is quite natural. He was pleased and amazed, as a child and as a peasant are pleased and amazed. It appealed to his romantic imagination, and the marvel of the contrast with his own childhood and early manhood never ceased to delight him, and to make him thankful. He was not a snob, for a snob is one who despises the less fortunate, but he had a real democratic feeling and never forgot that he was a peasant to start with. He knew that poor people
