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THE STORM SHIFTS THE SIGNS 897
swept over the town, carrying plenty of chimneys with it, and more than one proud old church spire had to bend, and has never got over it from that time.
There was a kind of sentry-box, where dwelt the venerable old superintendent of the fire brigade, who always arrived with the last engine. The storm would not leave this little sentry-box alone, but must needs tear it from its fastenings, and roll it down the street; and, wonderfully enough, it rose up and stopped opposite to the door of the humble carpenter, who had saved three lives at the last fire, but the sentry-box thought nothing of that.
The barber's sign, the great brazen dish, was carried away, and hurled straight into the embrasure of the councillor of justice ; and the whole neighbourhood said this looked almost like malice, inasmuch as even her most intimate friends used to call the councillor's lady ' the Razor '; for she was so sharp that she knew more about other people's business than they knew about it themselves.
A sign with a dried salt fish painted on it flew exactly in front of the door of a house where dwelt a man who wrote a newspaper. That was a very poor joke of the gale, which did not remember that a man who writes in a paper is not to be joked with ; for he is a king in his own newspaper, and likewise in his own opinion.
The weathercock flew to the opposite house, where he perched, looking the picture of malice—so the neighbours said.
The cooper's tub stuck itself up under the head of 1 ladies' costumes '.
The eating-house keeper's bill of fare, which had hung at his door in a heavy frame, was posted by the storm over the entrance to the theatre, where nobody went: it was a ridiculous list—' Horse-radish soup, and stuffed cabbage '. And now people came in plenty.
The fox's skin, the honourable sign of the furrier, was found fastened to the bell-pull of a young man who always went to early lecture, and looked like a furled umbrella, and said he was striving after truth, and was considered by his aunt ' a model and an example '.
The inscription ' Institute for Higher Education ' was
ANDERSEN Q 2 |
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