Your letter of the 4th1 I received this morning. The number of Harper's2 magazine and of the New York Tribune3 did not follow, but most probably they will reach me; printed matter is very often going an other way. If your "Prayer of Columbus"4 be not too long, I shall try to get a translation of it published in one of our papers.
Immediately after my return from Germany (28th February) I did write to you5 and
sent you a long article of your book in the paper "Fædrelandet"6 (fatherland);
the last monday I for mailed for you another article in the weekly paper "Nær og Fjern" (Near and
Far).7 All these things have been sent to New Jersey. To the Treasury in Washington have been sent in all three
copies of "Demokratiske Fremblik,"8 one in loose sheets (franked), one complete paper
bound copy franked and an other unpaid (for greater safety, as unpaid letters and papers never fail their man).
Some copies of "Illustreret Fædrelandet" (peoples illustrated magazine) with
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your portrait and some short biographical notices have also been sent to Washington.
With Clausen9 I sent you in the autumn 1872 a large portrait of mine, the only resembling one, that ever has been taken. Write to Mrs Clausen, if they have not forwarded it to you.
If you could, without troubling yourself too much, send me all the pieces of Clemens Petersen,10 that come to your eye-sight, I should be very glad. This singular man has a great charm to me, though I never liked him.
If my thoughts did not weaken and wither, when I try to give them expression in the English language, I should on some sheets give you a due description of our political and literary doings. Although the word of Hamlet: there is something rotten in the state of Denmark, still are true, I have the greatest belief of the vitality of my people and the other Scandinavian peoples. We have been living here in the outskirts of civilization; we have been endowed with its gifts, but we have have not been poisoned with its venom. Ours is the future in Europe, small as we are.
In no European country, and most probably also not in America, your personality, your mode of
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viewing the things shall be more sure to touch the chord of the native mind as here and in Norway. We are made
of the true democratic stuff, we have not the venomous passions, but we have the high ideal aspiration. A peasant
on Fijen (one of our fertile isles) wrote to me in the spring for two years ago to thank me for my article on you.
Peasants are on the sundays holding the numbers of "for Ide og Virkelighed"11
in their hard fists
and read every word, though the matters often are very difficult.
But on the political arena our democratic leaders are dull and narrowminded persons,
to say nothing worse. None of them has named your book yet, most probably they won't name it at all. It is your
(political) adversaries, who write criticisms on you. But your adversaries are mostly your friends, they have
themselves a democratic mind and grant you much more than the editors of the American magazines. But your best
friends are the women. A young Baroness Fraupe12
has read your books with true enthusiasm. The women have understood, that the ordinary criticisms can as easily
be applied on a nature like yours as the process of hair cutting and shaving on a mountain forest.
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"It is nearly comical", writes a young married lady to me, "to see the critics cut and crisp the broad
American till they have given him their own small figure."
Your early female friend Mrs Rorle13 lies deathly over in Roma—poor thing.
Professor Rasmus Nielsen14 has read your book with the greatest satisfaction. He is the only man, who could give a true criticism on it, but he is an old man and not very willing to write in the papers.
Hoping a speedy amelioration of your health15 I remain
Yours Rudolf Schmidt Rud. Schmidt March 20 '74Correspondent:
The Danish writer Peter Carl
Rudolf Schmidt (1836–1899) was the editor of the idealist journal For Idé og Virkelighed ("For Idea and Reality") and
had translated Whitman's Democratic Vistas into Danish in
1874.