near the grass-covered rampart which encircles copenhagen lies a great red house. balsams and other flowers greet us from the long rows of windows in the house, whose interior is sufficiently poverty-stricken; and poor and old are the people who inhabit it. the building is the warton almshouse.
look! at the window there leans an old maid. she plucks the withered leaf from the balsam, and looks at the grass-covered rampart, on which many children are playing. what is the old maid thinking of? a whole life drama is unfolding itself before her inward gaze.
"the poor little children, how happy they are- how merrily they play and romp together! what red cheeks and what angels` eyes! but they have no shoes nor stockings. they dance on the green rampart, just on the place where, according to the old story, the ground always sank in, and where a sportive, frolicsome child had been lured by means of flowers, toys and sweetmeats into an open grave ready dug for it, and which was afterwards closed over the child; and from that moment, the old story says, the ground gave way no longer, the mound remained firm and fast, and was quickly covered with the green turf. the little people who now play on that spot know nothing of the old tale, else would they fancy they heard a child crying deep below the earth, and the dewdrops on each blade of grass would be to them tears of woe. nor do they know anything of the danish king who here, in the face of the coming foe, took an oath before all his trembling courtiers that he would hold out with the citizens of his capital, and die here in his nest; they know nothing of the men who have fought here, or of the women who from here have drenched with boiling water the enemy, clad in white, and `biding in the snow to surprise the city.
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