The Sand-Man

The Sand-Man
By Ernst T.A. Hoffmann
Translated by J.Y. Bealby, B.A.
Formerly Scholar of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1885

Nathanael to Lothair
I KNOW you are all very uneasy because I have not written for such a
long, long time. Mother, to be sure, is angry, and Clara, I dare say,
believes I am living here in riot and revelry, and quite forgetting my
sweet angel, whose image is so deeply engraved upon my heart and
mind. But that is not so; daily and hourly do I think of you all, and my
lovely Clara's form comes to gladden me in my dreams, and smiles
upon me with her bright eyes, as graciously as she used to do in the
days when I went in and out amongst you. Oh! how could I write to
you in the distracted state of mind in which I have been, and which,
until now, has quite bewildered me! A terrible thing has happened to
me. Dark forebodings of some awful fate threatening me are spreading
themselves out over my head like black clouds, impenetrable to every
friendly ray of sunlight. I must now tell you what has taken place; I
must, that I see well enough, but only to think upon it makes the wild
laughter burst from my lips. Oh! my dear, dear Lothair, what shall I say
to make you feel, if only in an inadequate way, that that which
happened to me a few days ago could thus really exercise such a hostile
and disturbing influence upon my life? Oh that you were here to see for
yourself! but now you will, I suppose, take me for a superstitious
ghost-seer. In a word, the terrible thing which I have experienced, the
fatal effect of which I in vain exert every effort to shake off, is simply
that some days ago, namely, on the 30th October, at twelve o'clock at
noon, a dealer in weather-glasses came into my room and wanted to sell

me one of his wares. I bought nothing, and threatened to kick him
downstairs, whereupon he went away of his own accord.
You will conclude that it can only be very peculiar relations--relations
intimately intertwined with my life--that can give significance to this
event, and that it must be the person of this unfortunate hawker which
has had such a very inimical effect upon me. And so it really is. I will
summon up all my faculties in order to narrate to you calmly and
patiently as much of the early days of my youth as will suffice to put
matters before you in such a way that your keen sharp intellect may
grasp everything clearly and distinctly, in bright and living pictures.
Just as I am beginning, I hear you laugh and Clara say, "What's all this
childish nonsense about!" Well, laugh at me, laugh heartily at me, pray
do. But, good God! my hair is standing on end, and I seem to be
entreating you to laugh at me in the same sort of frantic despair in
which Franz Moor entreated Daniel to laugh him to scorn.(2) But to my
story.
Except at dinner we, i.e., I and my brothers and sisters, saw but little of
our father all day long. His business no doubt took up most of his time.
After our evening meal, which, in accordance with an old custom, was
served at seven o'clock, we all went, mother with us, into father's room,
and took our places around a round table. My father smoked his pipe,
drinking a large glass of beer to it. Often he told us many wonderful
stories, and got so excited over them that his pipe always went out; I
used then to light it for him with a spill, and this formed my chief
amusement. Often, again, he would give us picture-books to look at,
whilst he sat silent and motionless in his easy-chair, puffing out such
dense clouds of smoke that we were all as it were enveloped in mist.
On such evenings mother was very sad; and directly it struck nine she
said, "Come, children! off to bed! Come! The 'Sand-man' is come I
see." And I always did seem to hear something trampling upstairs with
slow heavy steps; that must be the Sand-man. Once in particular I was
very much frightened at this dull trampling and knocking; as mother
was leading us out of the room I asked her, "O mamma! but who is this
nasty Sand-man who always sends us away from papa? What does he
look like?" Except at dinner we, i.c., I and my brothers and "There is no

Sand-man, my dear child," mother answered; "when I say the
Sand-man is come, I only mean that you are sleepy