Read "The True Story of my Life" by Hans Christian Andersen online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
When, late in the evening, I arrived at the inn in Slagelse, I asked the hostess if there were anything remarkable in the city.
"Yes," said she, "a new English fire-engine and Pastor Bastholm's library," and those probably were all the lions in the city. A few officers of the Lancers composed the fine-gentleman world. Everybody knew what was done in everybody's house, whether a scholar was elevated or degraded in his class, and the like. A private theatre, to which, at general rehearsal, the scholars of the grammar school and the maid-servants of the town had free entrance, furnished rich material for conversation. The place was remote from woods, and still farther from the coast; but the great post-road went through the city, and the post-horn resounded from the rolling carriage.