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THE TAILoºs sº ARs
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Tºm Kroeger
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THE TAILOR'S
By
TIMM. KROEGER
office of publication :
- Rooms arº-29-30-31, Park Row Buildin:





THE TAILOR'S SHEARS."
He was a tailor, and the inhabitants of the village were de-
pendent on him for their clothing. When he went from house
to house, he carried his leather measure and his mysterious
paper patterns in his coat-pocket, while in his hand he carried
a yardstick, and on his back a cutting-board. This cutting-
board was longish and rectangular, just as if it had started
out to be a true triangle, so as to prove once more well and "
ably the truth of the Pythagorean theorem. But the hypothe-
nuse grew flighty; it was seized with a poetic inspiration;
and, while it started in the beginning as a parabola of indefi-
nite length, with inclinations toward hyperbolic oscillations,
it finally developed at the base of the triangle the beautiful
regular lines of a wonderful elliptic sector. If any of my
readers, and especially those who “ didn’t have that '' in
school, should think that I might better have kept my little bit
of geometry to myself, I ask them how could I otherwise suit-
ably express the thoughts which filled me when Hans Schneider
(Hans was his name, and also Schneider, after his profession)
passed me with all the mathematical diagrams of the cutting-
board. These hyperbolic and parabolic lines called my
attention to the seams of my coat, which were filled with the
same aspiring idealism, and this elliptical sector reminded
me that my sleeves were formed after the shape of the
cutting-board.
Hans Schneider carried his shears stuck through the seam
of his hip-pocket, like side-arms. Once in a while I begged
and received permission to carry them. And that was a
great pleasure to me. For, if my feelings toward the cutting-
board could best be described as sheer wonder, I loved and re-
spected the shears. It is true that, when they were closed,
they looked very solemn, as if to say: “Take care of my
* Originally printed in “Die Gesellschaft,” February 15, 1900.
3.

4. THE TAILOR'S SHEARS
teeth; they bite through anything.” When you put your fin-
gers through the handle and made them go snip, snap, they
twinkled with pleasure, but, when the master’s hand guided
them as he cut out a little coat for me, they fairly shone with
inspiration.—We will make little Fritz a little jacket which
will be a little wonder—this I could understand from the dili-
gent creaking of the shears, which had mercy on no fibre.
And, when the master cut off a little corner of the material
with their shining sharpness and threw it on the window-seat,
I explained that easy toss as due to the secret exaltation of the
artist over the progress of his great work.
The climax of the whole proceeding always took place in
the neighborhood of the ellipse; there the shears worked with
hushed, solemn tones, which seemed to command the respect-
ful silence of all those who had the happiness to be present.
And then—or so it seemed to me, -every noise really died
away in silence, just as is seemly where great creations are
being planned.
My father had a large family. The house was full of chil-
dren, and Master Hans was kept busy with his yardstick,
scissors, and cutting-board, even to prepare only the most
necessary garments; so they came often—those days of tailor-
ing, days of the smell of scorching irons—those joyous days.
I repeat it—those joyous days. For Master Hans was not
only an artist as a tailor, but also as a story-teller. What he
told was not remarkable in itself; it was the comical illustra-
tion of principles derived from experience set forth in new ex-
amples; nothing astonishing, nothing sad, and no noisy jokes,
but only a quiet, satisfied, yet bold merriment, well versed in
all the contrariness of life. -
As a rule, he told sharp anecdotes and uttered harmless wit-
ticisms, which exploded like a little powder with light crack-
ling. When he first came in the morning and was taking the
last few pulls at his beloved pipe, he told of events that had
occurred on his way. If he had but chatted a little with Neigh-
bor Voss, the description of even such a meeting was lighted up
by some one word which gave it a distinct impress. And, if
only a cow got on the sidewalk, he would look at it differently

THE TAILOR'S SHEARS 5
from the rest of mankind. The act immediately left the ter-
ritory of chance, and became the deed of a cunning animal.
But real true stories were best told, when the narrator
stretched out his hand toward the sheath of his shears, and
with these shears lopped off the edge of a seam or snapped off
a thread. But they were best of all when he cut out of stiff
material the pieces for a new coat, and meditatively con-
sidered the beginnings of his work. Even if they appeared
to be only rags lacking all connection, the master had already
united them in an ideal which developed more and more
clearly from the misty vapor of his imagination. Those se-
cret emotions of the soul which are known only to the creator
of the new permitted the streams of his hidden strength to run
with force and vigor, and, no matter how much was devoured
by tailoring, there always remained enough for the artistic
imagery of story-telling. And when, once in a while, in the
course of his narrative, he straightened his bent back and threw
the little odds and ends on the window-seat, then indeed it was
a pleasure to look into his merry brown eyes and to watch the
play of the wrinkles and erows' feet around the puckered lines
of his clear-cut lips. If he gave an epic foundation to his
little fables, he waxed his thread with a swing of his arm.
The foreground, the background, and the perspective were
all as they should be. The point was never hurried, never de-
layed, and the weight or tenderness of the situation was al-
ways struck in tune. How delightful it all was!
I was in love with Hans Schneider. Or was I, perhaps,
more in love with his shears? For the sparkling things
shouted for joy at the most delightful points in the story, as
they ploughed through the material and over the surface of
the table. “What a story this is!” they said quite dis-
tinctly, carefully cutting along on the cutting-board. “No
one but the master can tell one like that.” When the nar-
rator laughed, you could really hear them revolt against the
hard, stiff cloth. Ah! how those old scissors would have
liked to laugh, too, at the stories of their owner.
One day . . . .
Oh, I remember very well all that happened on that day.

6 THE TAILoR's shears
My possessions were packed up. I was going to school in the
city, and my father was going to take me in his carriage.
He had, however, first driven over to the house of Neighbor
Voss, in order to get the doctor’s verdict about the illness of
his wife. On his return, I was to get in at the gate, and then
we were to start! “When I get back, I will snap my whip,”
he said.
In our room tailoring was in full swing. A wide extension-
table was covered with all sorts of material. Hans Schneider
stood before it, his leather measure around his neck, his
shears in his hand.
“Tell me another story,” I begged; “it will be the last
one.”
Hans Schneider looked at me tenderly, and I felt a glow at
my heart as the gaze of his soft brown eyes fell on my face,
and his kindly hand stroked my chin.
“It is true,” he said, “it gives you a peculiar feeling to
leave your village for the first time. It feels so good, and yet
hurts so.” -
“Is it not so?” -
“You want me to tell you a story? Well, I will try. It
is a new one, and the best of all I know. But you must not
forget it.”
“I will promise not to.”
“You recollect the gnarled oak-tree?”
“That great oak-tree in Joern Butenop's yard and close to
the hedge belonging to Peter Jensen. It is a huge oak-tree,
but the trunk is quite crooked and bent.”
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“They say it is haunted.”
“You must not believe all that people say; people say a
great many things.” -
Hans had already begun to cut, and the shears made a joy-
ous clatter. “This will be something interesting,” they
said; “only pay attention.”
Hans Schneider threw another scrap on to the pile of waste,
and took up his shears again.
“Most ghost stories,” he said, “grow out of a fright, and

THE TAILOR'S SHEARS 7
the ghost is an old cow or the stump of a tree. But marvellous
things exist, and especially in relation to the gnarled oak-
tree.”
“And especially in relation to the gnarled oak-tree,” the
shears repeated, and bit with all their strength into the thick
linsey-woolsey.
They hurried over the table.
“What a story this will be!” they said.
I shivered with delight.
“There are still old people in the village, who knew
him,” continued the narrator.
“He is talking about the hero of his story,” the shears in-
structed me.
But what was that? The crack of a whip? I wonder
who is snapping his whip outside. Father has gone to hear
what the doctor said, and what the doctor said is important
and must be told in detail, -as, for instance, how one feels
when one first wakes up, how when he goes to bed, and how
during the night. How breakfast agrees with one, and how
dinner, and how the stomach behaves in general, and, above
all things, how the tongue looks. The tongue must certainly
be seen. And all that takes considerable time—it is nonsense
to think that that is the crack of a whip.
The tailor had heard nothing, and he continued: “There
are still many people who saw him, - this man whom my story
concerns. He was an old man, and lived close to the hedge,
which now belongs to Thoms Knies.”
Clip! clap! it is now unmistakable. How aggravating!
Who can it be? My father? Never! The story is not fin-
ished—has scarcely begun. It is undoubtedly the butter-
man. Yes, yes, it is the butter-man. I saw his white wagon
in the curve of the road, early this morning.
“I will tell you something, Fritz’’—the tailor interrupted
himself—“women-folks see in each and everything either
Providence or evil spirits. And then there are wise people—”
Clip! clap! snapped the butter-man.
“There are wise people, who believe only in realities. I
think, however, that they are both wrong, and my story will
prove it.”

8 - THE TAILOR'S SHEARS
“Will prove it—will prove it,” echoed the shears, and
snipped off a corner exactly at the point where the ellipse
joins the straight side of the triangle.
The tailor threw the scraps on to the window-seat with a
sweep of his arm.
“Now let us get back to our old man. He was crooked
and deformed, and begged a great deal; when he went to beg,
he carried a brown jug with a handle.”
Hans Schneider got no farther in his story, for the impa-
tient butter-man suddenly appeared in the room, all ready for
the journey, with the whip in his hand. And, when we came
to examine the intruder more closely, it was not the butter-
man at all, but my father himself, angry at having been kept
waiting so long, and ready to scold his careless son.
My father came so soon and so unexpectedly, because
Gesche Voss had suddenly recovered,—yes, had already under-
taken the personal supervision of the flax-threshing, and there-
fore had sent her servant to meet my father in order to spare
him unnecessary steps. She said she wouldn’t spend any more
on the doctor. And that is how it came about that my father
learned nothing about the stomach of Gesche Voss, and did.
not see her tongue. And a change in my temperament fraught
with consequences was due to the fact that on the first Tues-
day after St. Bartholomew's Day, in the fifth year after the
great potato rot, Frau Voss did not give my father any in-
formation about her stomach or show him her tongue. If
she had shown my father her tongue, I should have heard the
end of the story about the gnarled oak and its mysterious rela-
tion to the man with the jug, and it would not have been nec-
essary for me to do, what for the rest of my life I continued
to do, and will do, -rack my brains about the end of this story.
How did—it was always in my mind—how did the gnarled
oak and its ghost concern the crooked fellow with the jug?
From the grumbling and clicking of the shears, I was certain
that it would be a most interesting story; and now, how could
this hungry curiosity of mine be appeased? My own imagi-
nation took possession of the material, and worked and wove.

THE TAILOR'S SHEARS 9
A certain solemnity, the magnificent foundation of helpless-
ness and also of mercy, was constantly in my mind, but I
could not imagine the end. As I did not succeed in knotting
it together, I was not able to unravel it. -
It was a wild medley of pictures and visions. Did the
man with the jug cut down the oak-tree some dark night,
thinking to steal it, and did the wrathful spirit of the tree
curse him?
Sometimes I imagined common, every-day stories. But then
again, without my being aware of it, quite a different kind
took root in my heart. And finally the jug with the handle
and the crooked back were only disguises for a powerful
spirit. The man who lived near the hedge became a magi-
cian, who was able to look deep into the heart of mankind
and understand the secret language of nature. He loved all
the trees of the forest, but best of all the gnarled oak, be-
cause it was older, more experienced, and wiser than all the
others.
When the moon reigned in the sky, so full and bright and
large that a sheaf of its rays fell through the oak’s leafy
crown into the dark wood, then I had the old man sit by its
trunk and listen to the respected wisdom of the oak, which
slid down to him on the moonbeams. That is the way the
old man—who lived on the same spot where Thoms Knies
now lives—spent his nights. In the daytime he went about
with a jug which had a handle, but during the night he was
half divine and saw the golden shuttle fly back and forth busy
with the quiet weaving of the creation. The oak-tree was
many hundreds of years old, but my magician felt no younger
than the tree. His gaze wandered up and down the countless
centuries; countless times, again and again in the flight of
time, he saw himself emerge out of the infinite and become a
man.
The story which Hans Schneider did not tell me became.
constantly more deep-rooted and more fantastic in my mind.
In order to give it some sort of shape, I had to put it in
words, and then I had a most remarkable experience; my
hand and my pen always wrote something quite different from

10 THE TAILOR'S SHEARS
what I had thought, from what I had planned. With my
mind full of fantasies I would sit down, expecting to write a
weird, mystical story, and—see there—the stream of my
fantasy led into the barest deserts of life and disappeared
without leaving a trace. At other times I turned from bright
daylight to the darkening forest-roads. But no matter what
shape they took, dark or light, merry or melancholy, I threw
out all my little notes and left it to chance whether the wind
would blow them away or whether some one would pick them
up and read them. It was always the one story—the story of
the gnarled oak-tree, which Hans Schneider could not tell me
because Frau Voss went to see the threshing and did not show
my father her tongue on the second Tuesday after St. Bartholo-
mew’s day in the fifth year after the great potato rot.
And why all this? Ask the brook why it runs, and ask the
wind whither it blows. But one object was in my mind. I
would make a story which I would not be ashamed to show
Hans Schneider, and which he should recognize as told in his
own manner and with his own spirit. How his eyes would
light up, and how he would clap me on the shoulder and say:
“Oh, oh, that is just one of my stories! That is just the
way I would have told it!”
I have had the happiness in my life to go back once in a
while to the place where I was born; and each time Hans
Schneider was still living and active. He works now with an
apprentice in his own home, and the sun shines over a little
fruit garden and through the tiny window-panes into the
tailor’s work-room, and never omits, if possible, to make the
shears flash up bright. I might, therefore, have asked old
Hans Schneider—oh, yes, he has grown old, his hair is gray,
but his eyes—his eyes are still soft and brown and beautiful.
I might, therefore, I was going to say, have reminded old
Hans Schneider of the story of the gnarled oak-but oh, he
must undoubtedly have forgotten that he once just began to tell
me the story, and then—in a word, I might have asked him
to tell me the story again; but I took good care not to. It
seemed to me that there would be a void which could not be
filled up if this material for speculation should be taken away

THE TAILOR's SHEARs 11
from me. And I feared nothing so much as the turning-up of
some good friend to tell me, word for word, the true history of
the gnarled oak.
At last I found it; I had a story, not so insipid as to bore
the hearers, or so mysterious as to puzzle them—a story which
would undoubtedly please Hans Schneider.
Uncle Hans—I was talking to him in his little work-shop,
and in the course of time I had acquired the right to call him
uncle.
“ Uncle Hans,” I said, “ you have told me so many
stories that now I will tell you one—that is—read you one,
because I have written, it down.”
“A story of yours?” he questioned.
“Yes, Uncle.”
** And written down?”
“That’s it, Uncle. It is a story about our village, recol-
lections of my youthful days, which I have collected and
written down as well as I could, in memory of you. I will
read it to you, for I have tried to tell it just as you would
have told it. Do you see, Uncle?”
“I do not quite see, but I will listen.”
“What do you not see?”
“I don’t see how a story can be told in two ways. But
that will probably be explained; go ahead.”
Uncle Hans had taken off his spectacles, and had looked at
me half amused and half expectantly.
It is true, I felt myself somewhat embarrassed under the
gaze of those truthful brown eyes, but I cleared my throat and
began.
‘‘ Once upon a time, in my native village—” I will not re-
late what I read, but even now I consider my narrative a real
true story, even though no single word of it is true. I read,
lost in my story. Only once or twice I looked up in the hope
of seeing those dear little wrinkles around the lips of my old
friend, but there were no crows’ feet and no puckers to be
seen. The folds around the corners of his mouth that I did
perceive did not please me at all, and I could not stand the
unwearied twirling of his thumbs.

12 THE TAILOR'S SHEARS
Noticing this, I would surely have been dismayed, had I not
found comfort in the boy sitting opposite me. He was the ap-
prentice, and sat with crossed legs on the tailor’s table and
cut. He had a pale, delicate, beautiful face, with dreamy
blue eyes. And, when he handled the big shears, -they were
the same old talkative ones, -it was at the most beautiful
situations, and a victorious smile played about his delicate
mouth. Then he glanced over toward the old man with a
half-kindly, half-mocking look, and back to me, as if to say:
“You, the shears, and I, we understand each other, and what
does it matter about this dear old man?”
When I reached the end, I waited—waited for praise.
But Uncle Hans was silent, and began to wield his needle
again. “How do you-like it, Uncle?”
“Fine–Fine!” And his lips were more serious than I
could have wished. “Finely lied.”
“Is that all, Uncle Hans?”
Uncle Hans laid his spectacles on the table.
“Well, Fritz, what shall I say? I am an uneducated
man, and have a stupid mind. It is probably too high for
me, but I don’t like your story. Don’t be offended with me
—I don’t like it. And that is supposed to be a story, such
as I tell–Heaven forbid!”
“But, Uncle—”
“I am very sorry, Fritz, to be obliged to say so, but I
don’t tell any untruthful stories, and your story is untruthful,
and the worst of it is, you know very well that it is untruthful.
For instance, the gnarled oak is still standing in Joern Bute-
nop's yard, and you write as if it at one time stood near the
hedge, but was now chopped down. And the railroad which is
supposed to be there, we have not, and—please God!—we will
not have it for a long time. The nursery is near the Barloher
gate, and you put it on the road to Hutten; and a court called
Holm and a woman by the name of Kuehl, who had two daugh-
ters, never existed in our village. And so it is all topsy-
turvy, and is —I can’t call it anything else—it’s all a lie!
“Give me just a minute more,” he continued, as I was

THE TAILOR'S SHEARS 13
about to interrupt him; “I will be through directly, and then
you may contradict, even if you do not convert, me. I want
to say that I must protest against calling that a story told in
my fashion. Have I ever lied and told untruthful stories?”
Then he added, more gently: “Fritz, I have always been
fond of you, and I assure you that I have never noticed that
you were addicted to untruthfulness. I am really very sorry,
but it would not be right to keep my mouth shut. Fritz,
Fritz, you are in a bad way. It is not enough that you your-
self lie, but you try to make a liar of an old man like me.
Don’t be offended, Fritz, but those are bad pranks to play.
Your father and mother are both dead; so take the truth from
an old friend, who cannot express it in the choicest language.
Look in your heart; you are straying on the wide way which
leadeth to destruction. Become again what you once were, a
good, truthful man. And then I will listen to your stories,
and then they will be real and true.”
Shall I tell you all I said to the old man, the superhuman
powers of persuasion I employed to convince this tailor-poet,
who probably had never read a poetical work, that it is the
right and duty of the poet to control facts and realities, in
order to make them really true. I think it is not necessary.
That I would not be successful I felt sure before I began. And
the old man did give way just a trifle. “I do not know, I
do not know,” he said, parrying my words, and waxing his
thread vigorously. “I cannot permit myself to believe in the
two worlds—in the world of cold realities and in the world–
of what did you call it—of true and beautiful illusions. I
have always lived in one world—in the world which God cre-
ated, which I see with my eyes, hear with my ears, and feel
with my hands. And that is all I have to say.”
But we parted good friends, and he acknowledged my sub-
jective truthfulness.
I left the little work-room and Uncle Hans with the hand-
clasp of friendship, and, at the same time, with the feeling of
victory. Because in the face of the delicate apprentice I read
blank admiration for the opus of the gnaried oak-tree, and the

14 THE TAILOR'S SHEARS
shining shears, which were just engaged in the creation of a
new Sunday suit, shone with the reflection of sincere rapture.
As I shut the door behind me, my old friends of steel shouted
prolonged applause from the tuneful sounding-board of the
tailor’s table. -