Our Aunt Page #2

"Our Aunt" is a short story by Hans Christian Andersen that explores the mysterious identity of a friendly woman, known as the Aunt. Filled with elements of kindness, Andersen's tale revolves around the premise of the Aunt, who everyone perceives as an immaterial spirit and believes she would reward people for their good deeds and punish them for their wrongdoings. As the story progresses, it reveals the broader concept of fraternity and humanity where the characters realize that everybody has the 'Aunt' spirit within themselves, urging them to act kindly to others.

• Children

								

there was malice and satire in it.

"It looked dark enough up there," said the agent; "but then the
magic business began--a great performance, 'The Judgment in the
Theatre.' The box-keepers were at their posts, and every spectator had
to show his ghostly pass-book, that it might be decided if he was to
be admitted with hands loose or bound, and with or without a muzzle.
Grand people who came too late, when the performance had begun, and
young people, who could not always watch the time, were tied up
outside, and had list slippers put on their feet, with which they were
allowed to go in before the beginning of the next act, and they had
muzzles too. And then the 'Judgment on the Stage' began."

"All malice, and not a bit of truth in it," said our aunt.

The painter, who wanted to get to Paradise, had to go up a
staircase which he had himself painted, but which no man could
mount. That was to expiate his sins against perspective. All the
plants and buildings, which the property-man had placed, with infinite
pains, in countries to which they did not belong, the poor fellow
was obliged to put in their right places before cockcrow, if he wanted
to get into Paradise. Let Herr Fabs see how he would get in himself;
but what he said of the performers, tragedians and comedians,
singers and dancers, that was the most rascally of all. Mr. Fabs,
indeed!--Flabs! He did not deserve to be admitted at all, and our aunt
would not soil her lips with what he said. And he said, did Flabs,
that the whole was written down, and it should be printed when he
was dead and buried, but not before, for he would not risk having
his arms and legs broken.

Once our aunt had been in fear and trembling in her temple of
happiness, the theatre. It was on a winter day, one of those days in
which one has a couple of hours of daylight, with a gray sky. It was
terribly cold and snowy, but aunt must go to the theatre. A little
opera and a great ballet were performed, and a prologue and an
epilogue into the bargain; and that would last till late at night. Our
aunt must needs go; so she borrowed a pair of fur boots of her
lodger--boots with fur inside and out, and which reached far up
her legs.

She got to the theatre, and to her box; the boots were warm, and
she kept them on. Suddenly there was a cry of "Fire!" Smoke was coming
from one of the side scenes, and streamed down from the flies, and
there was a terrible panic. The people came rushing out, and our
aunt was the last in the box, "on the second tier, left-hand side, for
from there the scenery looks best," she used to say. "The scenes are
always arranged that they look best from the King's side." Aunt wanted
to come out, but the people before her, in their fright and
heedlessness, slammed the door of the box; and there sat our aunt, and
couldn't get out, and couldn't get in; that is to say, she couldn't
get into the next box, for the partition was too high for her. She
called out, and no one heard her; she looked down into the tier of
boxes below her, and it was empty, and low, and looked quite near, and
aunt in her terror felt quite young and light. She thought of
jumping down, and had got one leg over the partition, the other
resting on the bench. There she sat astride, as if on horseback,
well wrapped up in her flowered cloak with one leg hanging out--a
leg in a tremendous fur boot. That was a sight to behold; and when
it was beheld, our aunt was heard too, and was saved from burning, for
the theatre was not burned down.

That was the most memorable evening of her life, and she was
glad that she could not see herself, for she would have died with
confusion.

Her benefactor in the machinery department, Herr Sivertsen,
visited her every Sunday, but it was a long time from Sunday to
Sunday. In the latter time, therefore, she used to have in a little
child "for the scraps;" that is to say, to eat up the remains of the
dinner. It was a child employed in the ballet, one that certainly
wanted feeding. The little one used to appear, sometimes as an elf,
sometimes as a page; the most difficult part she had to play was the
lion's hind leg in the "Magic Flute;" but as she grew larger she could
represent the fore-feet of the lion. She certainly only got half a
guilder for that, whereas the hind legs were paid for with a whole
guilder; but then she had to walk bent, and to do without fresh air.
"That was all very interesting to hear," said our aunt.

She deserved to live as long as the theatre stood, but she could
not last so long; and she did not die in the theatre, but
respectably in her bed. Her last words were, moreover, not without
meaning. She asked,

"What will the play be to-morrow?"

At her death she left about five hundred dollars. We presume
this from the interest, which came to twenty dollars. This our aunt
had destined as a legacy for a worthy old spinster who had no friends;
it was to be devoted to a yearly subscription for a place in the
second tier, on the left side, for the Saturday evening, "for on
that evening two pieces were always given," it said in the will; and
the only condition laid upon the person who enjoyed the legacy was,
that she should think, every Saturday evening, of our aunt, who was
lying in her grave.

This was our aunt's religion.
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