AUGUST STRINDBERG (continued 2)

One Sunday they were in the parsonage, where there were young girls. He liked them, but he feared them. All the children went out to pluck strawberries. Someone suggested that they should collect the berries without eating them, in order to eat them at home with sugar. John plucked diligently and kept the agreement; he did not eat one, but honestly delivered up his share, though he saw others cheating. On their return home the berries were divided by the pastor's daughter, and the children pressed round her in order that each might get a full spoonful. John kept as far away as possible; he was forgotten and berryless.

He had been passed over! Full of the bitter consciousness of this, he went into the garden and concealed himself in an arbour. He felt himself to be the last and meanest. He did not weep, however, but was conscious of something hard and cold rising within, like a skeleton of steel. After he had passed the whole company under critical review, he found that he was the most honest, because he had not eaten a single strawberry outside; and then came the false inference—he had been passed over because he was better than the rest. The result was that he really regarded himself as such, and felt a deep satisfaction at having been overlooked.

He had also a special skill in making himself invisible, or keeping concealed so as to be passed over. One evening his father brought home a peach. Each child received a slice of the rare fruit, with the exception of John, and his otherwise just father did not notice it. He felt so proud at this new reminder of his gloomy destiny that later in the evening he boasted of it to his brothers. They did not believe him, regarding his story as improbable. The more improbable the better, he thought. He was also plagued by antipathies. One Sunday in the country a cart full of boys came to the parish clerk's. A brown-complexioned boy with a mischievous and impudent face alighted from it. John ran away at the first sight of him, and hid himself in the attic. They found him out: the parish clerk cajoled him, but he remained sitting in his corner and listened to the children playing till the brown-complexioned boy had gone away.

Neither cold baths, wild games, nor hard physical labour could harden his sensitive nerves, which at certain moments became strung up to the highest possible pitch. He had a good memory, and learned his lessons well, especially practical subjects such as geography and natural science. He liked arithmetic, but hated geometry; a science which seemed to deal with unrealities disquieted him. It was not till later, when a book of land mensuration came into his hands and he had obtained an insight into the practical value of geometry, that the subject interested him. He then measured trees and houses, the garden and its avenues, and constructed cardboard models.

He was now entering his tenth year. He was broad-shouldered, with a sunburnt complexion; his hair was fair, and hung over a sickly looking high and prominent forehead, which often formed a subject of conversation and caused his relatives to give him the nickname of "the professor." He was no more an automaton, but began to make his own observations and to draw inferences. He was approaching the time when he would be severed from his surroundings and go alone. Solitude had to take for him the place of desert-wandering, for he had not a strong enough individuality to go his own way. His sympathies for men were doomed not to be reciprocated, because their thoughts did not keep pace with his. He was destined to go about and offer his heart to the first comer; but no one would take it, because it was strange to them, and so he would retire into himself, wounded, humbled, overlooked, and passed by.

The summer came to an end, and when the school-term began he returned to Stockholm. The gloomy house by the Clara churchyard seemed doubly depressing to him now, and when he saw the long row of class-rooms through which he must work his way in a fixed number of years in order to do laboriously the same through another row of class-rooms in the High School, life did not seem to him particularly inviting. At the same time his self-opinionatedness began to revolt against the lessons, and consequently he got bad reports. A term later, when he had been placed lower in his class, his father took him from the Clara School and placed him in the Jacob School. At the same time they left the Norrtullsgata and took a suburban house in the Stora Grabergsgata near the Sabbatsberg.

IV

INTERCOURSE WITH THE LOWER CLASSES

Christinenberg, so we will call the house, had a still more lonely situation than that in the Norrtullsgata.[1] The Grabergsgata had no pavement. Often for hours at a time one never saw more than a single pedestrian in it, and the noise of a passing cart was an event which brought people to their windows. The house stood in a courtyard with many trees, and resembled a country parsonage. It was surrounded by gardens and tobacco plantations; extensive fields with ponds stretched away to Sabbatsberg. But their father rented no land here, so that the boys spent their time in loafing about. Their playfellows now consisted of the children of poorer people, such as the miller's and the milkman's. Their chief playground was the hill on which the mill stood, and the wings of the windmill were their playthings.

The Jacob School was attended by the poorer class of children. Here John came in contact with the lower orders. The boys were ill dressed; they had sores on their noses, ugly features, and smelt bad. His own leather breeches and greased boots produced no bad effect here. In these surroundings, which pleased him, he felt more at his ease. He could be on more confidential terms with these boys than with the proud ones in the Clara School. But many of these children were very good at their lessons, and the genius of the school was a peasant boy. At the same time there were so-called "louts" in the lower classes, and these generally did not get beyond the second class. He was now in the third, and did not come into contact with them, nor did they with those in the higher classes. These boys worked out of school, had black hands, and were as old as fourteen or fifteen. Many of them were employed during the summer on the brig Carl Johann, and then appeared in autumn with tarry trousers, belts, and knives. They fought with chimney-sweeps and tobacco-binders, took drams, and visited restaurants and coffee-houses. These boys were liable to ceaseless examinations and expulsions and were generally regarded, but with great injustice, as a bad lot. Many of them grew up to be respectable citizens, and one who had served on the "louts' brig" finally became an officer of the Guard. He never ventured to talk of his sea voyages, but said that he used to shudder when he led the watch to relieve guard at Nybrohanm, and saw the notorious brig lying there.

One day John met a former school-fellow from the Clara School, and tried to avoid him. But the latter came directly towards him, and asked him what school he was attending. "Ah, yes," he said, on being told, "you are going to the louts' school."

John felt that he had come down, but he had himself wished it. He did not stand above his companions, but felt himself at home with them, on friendly terms, and more comfortable than in the Clara School, for here there was no pressure on him from above. He himself did not wish to climb up and press down others, but he suffered himself from being pressed down. He himself did not wish to ascend, but he felt a need that there should be none above him. But it annoyed him to feel that his old school-fellows thought that he had gone down. When at gymnastic displays he appeared among the grimy-looking troop of the Jacobites, and met the bright files of the Clara School in their handsome uniforms and clean faces, then he was conscious of a class difference, and when from the opposite camp the word "louts" was heard, then there was war in the air. The two schools fought sometimes, but John took no part in these encounters. He did not wish to see his old friends, and to show how he had come down.

The examination day in the Jacob School made a very different impression from that in the Clara School. Artisans, poorly clad old women, restaurant-keepers dressed up for the occasion, coach-men, and publicans formed the audience. And the speech of the school inspector was quite other than the flowery one of the Archbishop. He read out the names of the idle and the stupid, scolded the parents because their children came too late or did not turn up at all, and the hall reechoed the sobs of poor mothers who were probably not at all to blame for the easily explained non-attendances, and who in their simplicity believed that they had bad sons. It was always the well-to-do citizens' sons who had had the leisure to devote themselves exclusively to their tasks, who were now greeted as patterns of virtue.

In the moral teaching which the boy received he heard nothing of his rights, only of his duties. Everything he was taught to regard as a favour; he lived by favour, ate by favour, and went as a favour to school. And in this poor children's school more and more was demanded of them. It was demanded from them, for instance, that they should have untorn clothes—but from whence were they to get them?

Remarks were made upon their hands because they had been blackened by contact with tar and pitch. There was demanded of them attention, good morals, politeness, i.e., mere impossibilities. The æsthetic susceptibilities of the teachers often led them to commit acts of injustice. Near John sat a boy whose hair was never combed, who had a sore under his nose, and an evil-smelling flux from his ears. His hands were dirty, his clothes spotted and torn. He rarely knew his lessons, and was scolded and caned on the palms of his hands. One day a school-fellow accused him of bringing vermin into the class. He was then made to sit apart in a special place. He wept bitterly, ah! so bitterly, and then kept away from school.

John was sent to look him up at his house. He lived in the Undertakers' street. The painter's family lived with the grandmother and many small children in one room. When John went there he found George, the boy in question, holding on his knee, a little sister, who screamed violently. The grandmother carried a little one on her arm. The father and mother were away at work. In this room, which no one had time to clean, and which could not be cleaned, there was a smell of sulphur fumes from the coals and from the uncleanliness of the children. Here the clothes were dried, food was cooked, oil-colours were rubbed, putty was kneaded. Here were laid bare the grounds of George's immorality. "But," perhaps a moralist may object, "one is never so poor that one cannot keep oneself clean and tidy." Sancta simplicitas! As if to pay for sewing (when there was anything whole to sew), soap, clothes-washing, and time cost nothing. Complete cleanliness and tidiness is the highest point to which the poor can attain; George could not, and was therefore cast out.

Some younger moralists believe they have made the discovery that the lower classes are more immoral than the higher. By "immoral" they mean that they do not keep social contracts so well as the upper classes. That is a mistake, if not something worse. In all cases, in which the lower classes are not compelled by necessity, they are more conscientious than the upper ones. They are more merciful towards their fellows, gentler to children, and especially more patient. How long have they allowed their toil to be exploited by the upper classes, till at last they begin to be impatient!

Moreover, the social laws have been kept as long as possible in a state of instability and uncertainty. Why are they not clearly defined and printed like civil and divine laws? Perhaps because an honestly written moral law would have to take some cognizance of rights as well as duties.

John's revolt against the school-teaching increased. At home he learned all he could, but he neglected the school-lessons. The principal subjects taught in the school were now Latin and Greek, but the method of teaching was absurd. Half a year was spent in explaining a campaign in Cornelius. The teacher had a special method of confusing the subject by making the scholar analyse the "grammatical construction" of the sentence. But he never explained what this meant. It consisted in reading the words of the text in a certain order, but he did not say in which. It did not agree with the Swedish translation, and when John had tried to grasp the connection, but failed, he preferred to be silent. He was obstinate, and when he was called upon to explain something he was silent, even when he knew his lesson. For as soon as he began to read, he was assailed with a storm of reproaches for the accent he put on the words, the pace at which he read, his voice, everything.

"Cannot you, do not you understand?" the teacher shouted, beside himself.

The boy was silent, and looked at the pedant contemptuously.

"Are you dumb?"

He remained silent. He was too old to be beaten; besides, this form of punishment was gradually being disused. He was therefore told to sit down.

He could translate the text into Swedish, but not in the way the teacher wished. That the teacher only permitted one way of translating seemed to him silly. He had already rushed through Cornelius in a few weeks, and this deliberate, unreasonable crawling when one could run, depressed him. He saw no sense in it.

The same kind of thing happened in the history lessons. "Now, John," the teacher would say, "tell me what you know about Gustav I."

The boy stands up, and his vagrant thoughts express themselves as follows: "What I know about Gustav I. Oh! a good deal. But I knew that when I was in the lowest class (he is now in the fourth), and the master knows it too. What is the good of repeating it all again?"

"Well! is that all you know?"

He had not said a word about Gustav I., and his school-fellows laughed. Now he felt angry, and tried to speak, but the words stuck in his throat. How should he begin? Gustav was born at Lindholm, in the province of Roslagen. Yes, but he and the teacher knew that long ago. How stupid to oblige him to repeat it.

"Ah, well!" continues the teacher, "you don't know your lesson, you know nothing of Gustav I." Now he opens his mouth, and says curtly and decidedly: "Yes, I know his history well."

"If you do, why don't you answer?"

The master's question seems to him a very stupid one, and now he will not answer. He drives away all thoughts about Gustav I. and forces himself to think of other things, the maps on the wall, the lamp hanging from the ceiling. He pretends to be deaf.

"Sit down, you don't know your lesson," says the master. He sits down, and lets his thoughts wander where they will, after he has settled in his own mind that the master has told a falsehood.

In this there was a kind of aphasia, an incapability or unwillingness to speak, which followed him for a long time through life till the reaction set in in the form of garrulousness, of incapacity to shut one's mouth, of an impulse to speak whatever came into his mind. He felt attracted to the natural sciences, and during the hour when the teacher showed coloured pictures of plants and trees the gloomy class-room seemed to be lighted up; and when the teacher read out of Nilsson's Lectures on Animal Life, he listened and impressed all on his memory. But his father observed that he was backward in his other subjects, especially in Latin. Still, John had to learn Latin and Greek. Why? He was destined for a scholar's career. His father made inquiries into the matter. After hearing from the teacher of Latin that the latter regarded his son as an idiot, his amour propre must have been hurt, for he determined to send his son to a private school, where more practical methods of instruction were employed. Indeed, he was so annoyed that he went so far in private as to praise John's intelligence and to say some severe things regarding his teacher.

Meanwhile, contact with the lower classes had aroused in the boy a decided dislike to the higher ones. In the Jacob School a democratic spirit prevailed, at any rate among those of the same age. None of them avoided each other's society except from feelings of personal dislike. In the Clara School, on the other hand, there were marked distinctions of class and birth. Though in the Jacob School the possession of money might have formed an aristocratic class, as a matter of fact none of them were rich. Those who were obviously poor were treated by their companions sympathetically without condescension, although the beribboned school inspector and the academically educated teacher showed their aversion to them.

John felt himself identified and friendly with his school-fellows; he sympathised with them, but was reserved towards those of the higher class. He avoided the main thoroughfares, and always went through the empty Hollandergata or the poverty stricken Badstugata. But his school-fellows' influence made him despise the peasants who lived here. That was the aristocratism of town-people, with which even the meanest and poorest city children are imbued.

These angular figures in grey coats which swayed about on milk-carts or hay-waggons were regarded as fair butts for jests, as inferior beings whom to snowball was no injustice. To mount behind on their sledges was regarded as the boys' inherent privilege. A standing joke was to shout to them that their waggon-wheels were going round, and to make them get down to contemplate the wonder.

But how should children, who see only the motley confusion of society, where the heaviest sinks and the lightest lies on the top, avoid regarding that which sinks as the worse of the two? Some say we are all aristocrats by instinct. That is partly true, but it is none the less an evil tendency, and we should avoid giving way to it. The lower classes are really more democratic than the higher ones, for they do not want to mount up to them, but only to attain to a certain level; whence the assertion is commonly made that they wish to elevate themselves.

Since there was now no longer physical work to do at home, John lived exclusively an inner, unpractical life of imagination. He read everything which fell into his hands.

On Wednesday or Saturday afternoon the eleven-year-old boy could be seen in a dressing-gown and cap which his father had given him, with a long tobacco-pipe in his mouth, his fingers stuck in his ears, and buried in a book, preferably one about Indians. He had already read five different versions of Robinson Crusoe, and derived an incredible amount of delight from them. But in reading Campe's edition he had, like all children, skipped the moralisings. Why do all children hate moral applications? Are they immoral by nature? "Yes," answer modern moralists, "for they are still animals, and do not recognise social conventions." That is true, but the social law as taught to children informs them only of their duties, not of their rights; it is therefore unjust towards the child, and children hate injustice. Besides this, he had arranged an herbarium, and made collections of insects and minerals. He had also read Liljenblad's Flora, which he had found in his father's bookcase. He liked this book better than the school botany, because it contained a quantity of information regarding the use of various plants, while the other spoke only of stamens and pistils.

When his brothers deliberately disturbed him in reading, he would run at them and threaten to strike them. They said his nerves were overstrained. He dissolved the ties which bound him to the realities of life, he lived a dream-life in foreign lands and in his own thoughts, and was discontented with the grey monotony of everyday life and of his surroundings, which ever became more uncongenial to him. His father, however, would not leave him entirely to his own fancies, but gave him little commissions to perform, such as fetching the paper and carrying letters. These he looked upon as encroachments on his private life, and always performed them unwillingly.

In the present day much is said about truth and truth-speaking as though it were a difficult matter, which deserved praise. But, apart from the question of praise, it is undoubtedly difficult to find out the real facts about anything.

A person is not always what rumour reports him or her to be; a whole mass of public opinion may be false; behind each thought there lurks a passion; each judgment is coloured by prejudice. But the art of separating fact from fancy is extremely difficult, e.g., six newspaper reporters will describe a king's coronation robe as being of six different colours. New ideas do not find ready entrance into brains which work in a groove; elderly people believe only themselves, and the uneducated believe that they can trust their own eyes. This, however, owing to the frequency of optical illusions, is not the case.

In John's home truth was revered. His father was in the habit of saying, "Tell the truth, happen what may," and used at the same time to tell a story about himself. He had once promised a customer to send home a certain piece of goods by a given day. He forgot it, but must have had means of exculpating himself, for when the furious customer came into the office and overwhelmed him with reproaches, John's father humbly acknowledged his forgetfulness, asked for forgiveness, and declared himself ready to make good the loss. The result was that the customer was astonished, reached him his hand, and expressed his regard for him. People engaged in trade, he said, must not expect too much of each other.

Well! his father had a sound intelligence, and as an elderly man felt sure of his conclusions.

John, who could never be without some occupation, had discovered that one could profitably spend some time in loitering on the high-road which led to and from school. He had once upon the Hollandergata, which had no pavement, found an iron screw-nut. That pleased him, for it made an excellent sling-stone when tied to a string. After that he always walked in the middle of the street and picked up all the pieces of iron which he saw. Since the streets were ill-paved and rapid driving was forbidden, the vehicles which passed through them had a great deal of rough usage. Accordingly an observant passer-by could be sure of finding every day a couple of horse-shoe nails, a waggon-pin, or at any rate a screw-nut, and sometimes a horse-shoe. John's favourite find was screw-nuts which he had made his specialty. In the course of two months he had collected a considerable quantity of them.

One evening he was playing with them when his father entered the room.

"What have you there?" he asked in astonishment.

"Screw-nuts," John answered confidently.

"Where did you get them from?"

"I found them."

"Found them? Where?"

"On the street."

"In one place?"

"No, in several—by walking down the middle of the street and looking about."

"Look here! I don't believe that. You are lying. Come in here. I have something to say to you." The something was a caning.

"Will you confess now?"

"I have found them on the street."

The cane was again plied in order to make him "confess." What should he confess? Pain, and fear that the scene would continue indefinitely, forced the following lie from him:

"I have stolen them."

"Where?"

Now he did not know to which part of a carriage the screw-nuts belonged, but he guessed it was the under part.

"Under the carriages."

"Where?"

His fancy suggested a place, where many carriages used to stand together. "By the timber-yard opposite the lane by the smith's."

This specification of the place lent an air of probability to his story. His father was now certain that he had elicited the truth from him. He continued:

"And how could you get them off merely with your fingers?"

He had not expected this question, but his eye fell on his father's tool-box.

"With a screw-driver."

Now one cannot take hold of nuts with a screw-driver, but his father was excited, and let himself be deceived.

"But that is abominable! You are really a thief. Suppose a policeman had come by."

John thought for a moment of quieting him by telling him that the whole affair was made up, but the prospect of getting another caning and no supper held him mute. When he had gone to bed in the evening, and his mother had come and told him to say his evening prayer, he said in a pathetic tone and raising his hand:

"May the deuce take me, if I have stolen the screw-nuts."

His mother looked long at him, and then she said, "You should not swear so."

The corporal punishment had sickened and humbled him; he was angry with God, his parents, and especially his brothers, who had not spoken up for him, though they knew the real state of the case. That evening he did not say his prayers, but he wished that the house would take fire without his having to light it. And then to be called a thief!

From that time he was suspected, or rather his bad reputation was confirmed, and he felt long the sting of the memory of a charge of theft which he had not committed. Another time he caught himself in a lie, but through an inadvertency which for a long time he could not explain. This incident is related for the consideration of parents. A school-fellow with his sister came one Sunday morning in the early part of the year to him and asked him whether he would accompany them to the Haga Park. He said, "Yes," but he must first ask his mother's permission. His father had gone out.

"Well, hurry up!" said his friend.

He wanted to show his herbarium, but the other said, "Let us go now."

"Very well, but I must first ask mother."

His little brother then came in and wanted to play with his herbarium. He stopped the interruption and showed his friend his minerals. In the meantime he changed his blouse. Then he took a piece of bread out of the cupboard. His mother came and greeted his friends, and talked of this and that domestic matter. John was in a hurry, begged his mother's permission, and took his friends into the garden to see the frog-pond.

At last they went to the Haga Park. He felt quite sure that he had asked his mother's leave to do so.

When his father came home, he asked John on his return, "Where have you been?"

"With friends to the Haga Park."

"Did you have leave from mother?"

"Yes."

His mother denied it. John was dumb with astonishment.

"Ah, you are beginning to lie again."

He was speechless. He was quite sure he had asked his mother's leave, especially as there was no reason to fear a refusal. He had fully meant to do it, but other matters had intervened; he had forgotten, but was willing to die, if he had told a lie. Children as a rule are afraid to lie, but their memory is short, their impressions change quickly, and they confuse wishes and resolves with completed acts. Meanwhile the boy long continued to believe that his mother had told a falsehood. But later, after frequent reflections on the incident, he came to think she had forgotten or not heard his request. Later on still he began to suspect that his memory might have played him a trick. But he had been so often praised for his good memory, and there was only an interval of two or three hours between his going to the Haga Park and his return.

His suspicions regarding his mother's truthfulness (and why should she not tell an untruth, since women so easily confuse fancies and facts?) were shortly afterwards confirmed. The family had bought a set of furniture—a great event. The boys just then happened to be going to their aunt's. Their mother still wished to keep the novelty a secret and to surprise her sister on her next visit. Therefore she asked the children not to speak of the matter. On their arrival at their aunt's, the latter asked at once:

"Has your mother bought the yellow furniture?"

His brothers were silent, but John answered cheerfully, "No."

On their return, as they sat at table, their mother asked, "Well, did aunt ask about the furniture?"

"Yes."

"What did you say?"

"I said 'No,'" answered John.

"So, then, you dared to lie," interrupted his father.

"Yes, mother said so," the boy answered.

His mother turned pale, and his father was silent. This in itself was harmless enough, but, taken in connection with other things, not without significance. Slight suspicions regarding the truthfulness of "others" woke in the boy's mind and made him begin to carry on a silent siege of adverse criticism. His coldness towards his father increased, he began to have a keen eye for instances of oppression, and to make small attempts at revolt.

The children were marched to church every Sunday; and the family had a key to their pew. The absurdly long services and incomprehensible sermons soon ceased to make any impression. Before a system of heating was introduced, it was a perfect torture to sit in the pew in winter for two hours at a stretch with one's feet freezing; but still they were obliged to go, whether for their souls' good, or for the sake of discipline, or in order to have quiet in the house—who knows? His father personally was a theist, and preferred to read Wallin's sermons to going to church. His mother began to incline towards pietism.

One Sunday the idea occurred to John, possibly in consequence of an imprudent Bible exposition at school, which had touched upon freedom of the spirit, or something of the sort, not to go to church. He simply remained at home. At dinner, before his father came home, he declared to his brothers and sisters and aunts that no one could compel the conscience of another, and that therefore he did not go to church. This seemed original, and therefore for this once he escaped a caning, but was sent to church as before.

The social intercourse of the family, except with relatives, could not be large, because of the defective form of his father's marriage. But companions in misfortune draw together, and so intercourse was kept up with an old friend of their father's who also had contracted a mésalliance, and had therefore been repudiated by his family. He was a legal official. With him they met another family in the same circumstances owing to an irregular marriage. The children naturally knew nothing of the tragedy below the surface. There were children in both the other families, but John did not feel attracted to them. After the sufferings he had undergone at home and school, his shyness and unsociability had increased, and his residence on the outside of the town and in the country had given him a distaste for domestic life. He did not wish to learn dancing, and thought the boys silly who showed off before the girls. When his mother on one occasion told him to be polite to the latter, he asked, "Why?" He had become critical, and asked this question about everything. During a country excursion he tried to rouse to rebellion the boys who carried the girls' shawls and parasols. "Why should we be these girls' servants?" he said; but they did not listen to him. Finally, he took such a dislike to going out that he pretended to be ill, or dirtied his clothes in order to be obliged to stay at home as a punishment. He was no longer a child, and therefore did not feel comfortable among the other children, but his elders still saw in him only a child. He remained solitary.

When he was twelve years old, he was sent in the summer to another school kept by a parish clerk at Mariefred. Here there were many boarders, all of so-called illegitimate birth. Since the parish clerk himself did not know much, he was not able to hear John his lessons. At the first examination in geometry, he found that John was sufficiently advanced to study best by himself. Now he felt himself a grandee, and did his lessons alone. The parish clerk's garden adjoined the park of the lord of the manor, and here he took his walks free from imposed tasks and free from oversight. His wings grew, and he began to feel himself a man.

In the course of the summer he fell in love with the twenty-year-old daughter of the inspector who often came to the parish clerk's. He never spoke to her, but used to spy out her walks, and often went near her house. The whole affair was only a silent worship of her beauty from a distance, without desire, and without hope. His feeling resembled a kind of secret trouble, and might as well have been directed towards anyone else, if girls had been numerous there. It was a Madonna-worship which demanded nothing except to bring the object of his worship some great sacrifice, such as drowning himself in the water under her eyes. It was an obscure consciousness of his own inadequacy as a half man, who did not wish to live without being completed by his "better half."

He continued to attend church-services, but they made no impression on him; he found them merely tedious.

This summer formed an important stage in his development, for it broke the links with his home. None of his brothers were with him. He had accordingly no intermediary bond of flesh and blood with his mother. This made him more complete in himself, and hardened his nerves; but not all at once, for sometimes he had severe attacks of homesickness. His mother's image rose up in his mind in its usual ideal shape of protectiveness and mildness, as the source of warmth and the preserver.

In summer, at the beginning of August, his eldest brother Gustav was going to a school in Paris, in order to complete his business studies and to learn the language. But previous to that, he was to spend a month in the country and say good-bye to his brother. The thought of the approaching parting, the reflected glory of the great town to which his brother was going, the memory of his brother's many heroic feats, the longing for home and the joy to see again someone of his own flesh and blood,—all combined to set John's emotion and imagination at work. During the week in which he expected his brother, he described him to a friend as a sort of superman to whom he looked up. And Gustav certainly was, as a man, superior to him. He was a plucky, lively youth, two years older than John, with strong, dark features; he did not brood, and had an active temperament; he was sagacious, could keep silence when necessary, and strike when occasion demanded it. He understood economy, and was sparing of his money. "He was very wise," thought the dreaming John. He learned his lessons imperfectly, for he despised them, but he understood the art of life.

John needed a hero to worship, and wished to form an ideal out of some other material than his own weak clay, round which his own aspirations might gather, and now he exercised his art for eight days. He prepared for his brother's arrival by painting him in glowing colours before his friends, praised him to the teacher, sought out playing-places with little surprises, contrived a spring-board at the bathing-place, and so on.

On the day before his brother's arrival he went into the wood and plucked cloud-berries and blue-berries for him. He covered a table with white paper, on which he spread out the berries, yellow and blue alternately, and in the centre he arranged them in the shape of a large G, and surrounded the whole with flowers.

His brother arrived, cast a hasty look at the design and ate the berries, but either did not notice the dexterously-contrived initial, or thought it a piece of childishness. As a matter of fact, in their family every ebullition of feeling was regarded as childish.

Then they went to bathe. The minute after Gustav had taken off his shirt, he was in the water, and swam immediately out to the buoy. John admired him and would have gladly followed him, but this time it gave him more pleasure to think that his brother obtained the reputation of being a good swimmer, and that he was only second-best. At dinner Gustav left a fat piece of bacon on his plate—a thing which no one before had ever dared to do. But he dared everything. In the evening, when the time came to ring the bells for church, John gave up his turn of ringing to Gustav, who rang violently. John was frightened, as though the parish had been exposed to danger thereby, and half in alarm and half laughing, begged him to stop.

"What the deuce does it matter?" said Gustav.

Then he introduced him to his friend the big son of the carpenter, who was about fifteen. An intimacy at once sprang up between the two of equal age, and John's friend abandoned him as being too small. But John felt no bitterness, although the two elder ones jested at him, and went out alone together with their guns in their hands. He only wished to give, and he would have given his betrothed away, had he possessed one. He did actually inform his brother about the inspector's daughter, and the latter was pleased with her. But, instead of sighing behind the trees like John, Gustav went straight up to her and spoke to her in an innocent boyish way. This was the most daring thing which John had ever seen done in his life, and he felt as if it had added a foot to his own stature. He became visibly greater, his weak soul caught a contagion of strength from his brother's strong nerves, and he identified himself with him. He felt as happy as if he had spoken with the girl himself. He made suggestions for excursions and boating expeditions and his brother carried them out. He discovered birds' nests and his brother climbed the trees and plundered them.

But this lasted only for a week. On the last day before they were to leave, John said to Gustav: "Let us buy a fine bouquet for mother."

"Very well," replied his brother.

They went to the nursery-man, and Gustav gave the order that the bouquet should be a fine one. While it was being made up, he went into the garden and plucked fruit quite openly. John did not venture to touch anything.

"Eat," said his brother. No, he could not. When the bouquet was ready, John paid twenty-four shillings for it. Not a sign came from Gustav. Then they parted.

When John came home, he gave his mother the bouquet as from Gustav, and she was touched. At supper-time the flowers attracted his father's attention. "Gustav sent me those," said his mother. "He is always a kind boy," and John received a sad look because he was so cold-hearted. His father's eyes gleamed behind his glasses.

John felt no bitterness. His youthful, enthusiastic love of sacrifice had found vent, the struggle against injustice had made him a self-tormentor, and he kept silent. He also said nothing when his father sent Gustav a present of money, and with unusual warmth of expression said how deeply he had been touched by this graceful expression of affection.

In fact, he kept silence regarding this incident during his whole life, even when he had occasion to feel bitterness. Not till he had been over-powered and fallen in the dirty sand of life's arena, with a brutal foot placed upon his chest and not a hand raised to plead in his behalf, did he say anything about it. Even then, it was not mentioned from a feeling of revenge, but as the self-defence of a dying man.

V.

CONTACT WITH THE UPPER CLASSES

The private schools had been started in opposition to the terrorising sway of the public schools. Since their existence depended on the goodwill of the pupils, the latter enjoyed great freedom, and were treated humanely. Corporal punishment was forbidden, and the pupils were accustomed to express their thoughts, to ask questions, to defend themselves against charges, and, in a word, were treated as reasonable beings. Here for the first time John felt that he had rights. If a teacher made a mistake in a matter of fact, the pupils were not obliged to echo him, and swear by his authority; he was corrected and spiritually lynched by the class who convinced him of his error. Rational methods of teaching were also employed. Few lessons were set to be done at home. Cursory explanations in the languages themselves gave the pupils an idea of the object aimed at, i.e., to be able to translate. Moreover, foreign teachers were appointed for modern languages, so that the ear became accustomed to the correct accent, and the pupils acquired some notion of the right pronunciation.

A number of boys had come from the state schools into this one, and John also met here many of his old comrades from the Clara School. He also found some of the teachers from both the Clara and Jacob Schools. These cut quite a different figure here, and played quite another part. He understood now that they had been in the same hole as their victims, for they had had the headmaster and the School Board over them. At last the pressure from above was relaxed, his will and his thoughts obtained a measure of freedom, and he had a feeling of happiness and well-being.

At home he praised the school, thanked his parents for his liberation, and said that he preferred it to any former one. He forgot former acts of injustice, and became more gentle and unreserved in his behaviour. His mother began to admire his erudition. He learned five languages besides his own. His eldest brother was already in a place of business, and the second in Paris. John received a kind of promotion at home and became a companion to his mother. He gave her information from books on history and natural history, and she, having had no education, listened with docility. But after she had listened awhile, whether it was that she wished to raise herself to his level, or that she really feared worldly knowledge, she would speak of the only knowledge which, she said, could make man happy. She spoke of Christ; John knew all this very well, but she understood how to make a personal application. He was to beware of intellectual pride, and always to remain simple. The boy did not understand what she meant by "simple," and what she said about Christ did not agree with the Bible. There was something morbid in her point of view, and he thought he detected the dislike of the uncultured to culture. "Why all this long school course," he asked himself, "if it was to be regarded as nothing in comparison with the mysterious doctrine of Christ's Atonement?" He knew also that his mother had caught up this talk from conversations with nurses, seamstresses, and old women, who went to the dissenting chapels. "Strange," he thought, "that people like that should grasp the highest wisdom of which neither the priest in the church nor the teacher in the school had the least notion!" He began to think that these humble pietists had a good deal of spiritual pride, and that their way to wisdom was an imaginary short-cut. Moreover, among his school-fellows there were sons of barons and counts, and, when in his stories out of school he mentioned noble titles, he was warned against pride.

Was he proud? Very likely; but in school he did not seek the company of aristocrats, though he preferred looking at them rather than at the others, because their fine clothes, their handsome faces, and their polished finger-nails appealed to his æsthetic sense. He felt that they were of a different race and held a position which he would never reach, nor try to reach, for he did not venture to demand anything of life. But when, one day, a baron's son asked for his help in a lesson, he felt himself in this matter, at any rate, his equal or even his superior. He had thereby discovered that there was something which could set him by the side of the highest in society, and which he could obtain for himself, i.e., knowledge.

In this school, because of the liberal spirit which was present, there prevailed a democratic tone, of which there had been no trace in the Clara School. The sons of counts and barons, who were for the most part idle, had no advantage above the rest. The headmaster, who himself was a peasant's son from Smaland, had no fear of the nobility, nor, on the other hand, had he any prejudice against them or wish to humiliate them. He addressed them all, small and big ones, familiarily, studied them individually, called them by their Christian names, and took a personal interest in them. The daily intercourse of the townspeople's sons with those of the nobility led to their being on familiar terms with one another. There were no flatterers, except in the upper division, where the adolescent aristocrats came into class with their riding-whips and spurs, while a soldier held their horses outside. The precociously prudent boys, who had already an insight into the art of life, courted these youths, but their intercourse was for the most part superficial. In the autumn term some of the young grandees returned from their expeditions as supernumerary naval cadets. They then appeared in class with uniform and dirk. Their fellows admired them, many envied them, but John, with the slave blood in his veins, was never presumptuous enough to think of rivalling them; he recognised their privileges, never dreamed of sharing them, guessed that he would meet with humiliations among them, and therefore never intruded into their circle. But he did dream of reaching equal heights with theirs through merit and hard work. And when in the spring those who were leaving came into the classes to bid farewell to their teachers, when he saw their white students' caps, their free and easy manners and ways, then he noticed that they were also an object of admiration to the naval cadets.

In his family life there was now a certain degree of prosperity. They had gone back to the Norrtullsgata, where it was more homely than the Sabbatsberg, and the landlord's sons were his school-fellows. His father no longer rented a garden, and John busied himself for the most part with his books. He led the life of a well-to-do-youth. Things were more cheerful at home; grown-up cousins and the clerks from his father's office came on Sundays for visits, and John, in spite of his youth, made one of the company. He now wore a coat, took care of his personal appearance, and, as a promising scholar, was thought more highly of than one of his years would otherwise have been. He went for walks in the garden, but the berries and the apple-trees no longer tempted him.

From time to time there came letters from his brother in Paris. They were read aloud, and listened to with great attention. They were also read to friends and acquaintances, and that was a triumph for the family. At Christmas his brother sent a photograph of himself in a French school uniform. That was the climax. John had now a brother who wore a uniform and spoke French! He exhibited the photograph in the school, and rose in the social scale thereby. The naval cadets were envious, and said it was not a proper uniform, for he had no dirk. But he had a "kepi," and shining buttons, and some gold lace on his collar.

At home they had also stereoscopic pictures from Paris to show, and they now seemed to live in Paris. They were as familiar with the Tuileries and the Arc de Triomphe as with the castle and statue of Gustavus Adolphus. The proverb that a father "lives in his children" really seemed to be justified. Life now lay open before the youth; the pressure he had formerly been subjected to had diminished, and perhaps he would have traversed a smooth and easy path through life if a change of circumstances had not thrown him back.

His mother had passed through twelve confinements, and consequently had become weak. Now she was obliged to keep her bed, and only rose occasionally. She was more given to moods than before, and contradictions would set her cheek aflame. The previous Christmas she had fallen into a violent altercation with her brother regarding the pietist preachers. While sitting at the dinner-table, the latter had expressed his preference for Fredman's Epistles as exhibiting deeper powers of thought than the sermons of the pietists. John's mother took fire at this, and had an attack of hysteria. That was only a symptom.

Now, during the intervals when she got up, she began to mend the children's linen and clothes, and to clear out all the drawers. She often talked to John about religion and other high matters. One day she showed him some gold rings. "You boys will get these, when Mamma is dead," she said. "Which is mine?" asked John, without stopping to think about death. She showed him a plaited girl's ring with a heart. It made a deep impression on the boy, who had never possessed anything of gold, and he often thought of the ring.

About that time a nurse was hired for the children. She was young and good-looking, taciturn, and smiled in a critical sort of way. She had served in a count's mansion in the Tradgardsgatan, and probably thought that she had come into a poverty-stricken house. She was supposed to look after the children and the servant-maids, but was on almost intimate terms with the latter. There were now three servants—a housekeeper, a man-servant, and a girl from Dalecarlia. The girls had their lovers, and a cheerful life went on in the great kitchen, where polished copper and tin vessels shone brightly. There was eating and drinking, and the boys were invited in. They were called "sir," and their health was drunk. Only the man-servant was not there; he thought it was "vulgar" to live like that, while the mistress of the house was ill. The home seemed to be undergoing a process of dissolution, and John's father had had many difficulties with the servants since his mother had been obliged to keep her bed. But she remained the servants' friend till death, and took their side by instinct, but they abused her partiality. It was strictly forbidden to excite the patient, but the servants intrigued against each other, and against their master. One day John had melted lead in a silver spoon. The cook blabbed of it to his mother, who was excited and told his father. But his father was only-annoyed with the tell-tale. He went to John and said in a friendly way, as though he were compelled to make a complaint: "You should not melt lead in silver spoons. I don't care about the spoon; that can be repaired; but this devil of a cook has excited mother. Don't tell the girls when you have done something stupid, but tell me, and we will put it right."

He and his father were now friends for the first time, and he loved him for his condescension.

One night his father's voice awoke him from sleep. He started up, and found it dark in the room. Through the darkness he heard a deep trembling voice, "Come to mother's death-bed!" It went through him like a flash of lightning. He froze and shivered while he dressed, the skin of his head felt ice-cold, his eyes were wide-open and streaming with tears, so that the flame of the lamp looked like a red bladder.

Then they stood round the sick-bed and wept for one, two, three hours. The night crept slowly onward. His mother was unconscious and knew no one. The death-struggle, with rattling in the throat, and cries for help, had commenced. The little ones were not aroused. John thought of all the sins which he had committed, and found no good deeds to counterbalance them. After three hours his tears ceased, and his thoughts began to take various directions. The process of dying was over. "How will it be," he asked himself, "when mother is no longer there?" Nothing but emptiness and desolation, without comfort or compensation—a deep gloom of wretchedness in which he searched for some point of light. His eye fell on his mother's chest of drawers, on which stood a plaster statuette of Linnæus with a flower in his hand. There was the only advantage which this boundless misfortune brought with it—he would get the ring. He saw it in imagination on his hand. "That is in memory of my mother," he would be able to say, and he would weep at the recollection of her, but he could not suppress the thought, "A gold ring looks fine after all." Shame! Who could entertain such thoughts at his mother's death-bed? A brain that was drunk with sleep? A child which had wept itself out? Oh, no, an heir. Was he more avaricious than others? Had he a natural tendency to greed? No, for then he would never have related the matter, but he bore it in memory his whole life long; it kept on turning up, and when he thought of it in sleepless nights, and hours of weariness, he felt the flush mount into his cheeks. Then he instituted an examination of himself and his conduct, and blamed himself as the meanest of all men. It was not till he was older and had come to know a great number of men, and studied the processes of thought, that he came to the conclusion that the brain is a strange thing which goes its own way, and there is a great similarity among men in the double life which they lead, the outward and the inward, the life of speech and that of thought.

John was a compound of romanticism, pietism, realism, and naturalism. Therefore he was never anything but a patchwork. He certainly did not exclusively think about the wretched ornament. The whole matter was only a momentary distraction of two minutes' duration after months of sorrow, and when at last there was stillness in the room, and his father said, "Mother is dead," he was not to be comforted. He shrieked like one drowning. How can death bring such profound despair to those who hope to meet again? It must needs press hard on faith when the annihilation of personality takes place with such inflexible consistency before our eyes. John's father, who generally had the outward imperturbability of the Icelander, was now softened. He took his sons by the hands and said: "God has visited us; we will now hold together like friends. Men go about in their self-sufficiency, and believe they are enough for themselves; then comes a blow, and we see how we all need one another. We will be sincere and considerate with each other."

The boy's sorrow was for a moment relieved. He had found a friend, a strong, wise, manly friend whom he admired.

White sheets were now hung up at the windows of the house in sign of mourning. "You need not go to school, if you don't want to," said his father. "If you don't want"—that was acknowledgment that he had a will of his own. Then came aunts, cousins, relations, nurses, old servants, and all called down blessings on the dead. All offered their help in making the mourning clothes—there were four small and three elder children. Young girls sat by the sickly light that fell through the sheeted windows and sewed, while they conversed in undertones. That was melancholy, and the period of mourning brought a whole chain of peculiar experiences with it. Never had the boy been the object of so much sympathy, never had he felt so many warm hands stretched out, nor heard so many friendly words.

On the next Sunday his father read a sermon of Wallin's on the text "Our friend is not dead, but she sleeps." With what extraordinary faith he took these words literally, and how well he understood how to open the wounds and heal them again! "She is not dead, but she sleeps," he repeated cheerfully. The mother really slept there in the cold anteroom, and no one expected to see her awake.

The time of burial approached; the place for the grave was bought. His father's sister-in-law helped to sew the suits of mourning; she sewed and sewed, the old mother of seven penniless children, the once rich burgher's wife, sewed for the children of the marriage which her husband had cursed.

One day she stood up and asked her brother-in-law to speak with her privately. She whispered with him in a corner of the room. The two old people embraced each other and wept. Then John's father told them that their mother would be laid in their uncle's family grave. This was a much-admired monument in the new churchyard, which consisted of an iron pillar surmounted by an urn. The boys knew that this was an honour for their mother, but they did not understand that by her burial there a family quarrel had been extinguished, and justice done after her death to a good and conscientious woman who had been despised because she became a mother before her marriage.

Now all was peace and reconciliation in the house, and they vied with one another in acts of friendliness. They looked frankly at each other, avoided anything that might cause disturbance, and anticipated each other's wishes.

Then came the day of the funeral. When the coffin had been screwed down and was carried through the hall, which was filled with mourners dressed in black, one of John's little sisters began to cry and flung herself in his arms. He took her up and pressed her to himself, as though he were her mother and wished to protect her. When he felt how her trembling little body clung close to him, he grew conscious of a strength which he had not felt for a long time. Comfortless himself he could bestow comfort, and as he quieted the child he himself grew calm. The black coffin and the crowd of people had frightened her—that was all; for the smaller children hardly missed their mother; they did not weep for her, and had soon forgotten her. The tie between mother and child is not formed so quickly, but only through long personal acquaintance. John's real sense of loss hardly lasted for a quarter of a year. He mourned for her indeed a long time, but that was more because he wished to continue in that mood, though it was only an expression of his natural melancholy, which had taken the special form of mourning for his mother.

After the funeral there followed a long summer of leisure and freedom. John occupied two rooms with his eldest brother, who did not return from business till the evening. His father was out the whole day, and when they met they were silent. They had laid aside enmity, but intimacy was impossible. John was now his own master; he came and went, and did what he liked. His father's housekeeper was sympathetic with him, and they never quarrelled. He avoided intercourse with his school-fellows, shut himself in his room, smoked, read, and meditated. He had always heard that knowledge was the best thing, a capital fund which could not be lost, and which afforded a footing, however low one might sink in the social scale. He had a mania for explaining and knowing everything. He had seen his eldest brother's drawings and heard them praised. In school he had drawn only geometrical figures. Accordingly, he wished to draw, and in the Christmas holidays he copied with furious diligence all his brother's drawings. The last in the collection was a horse. When he had finished it, and saw that it was unsatisfactory, he had done with drawing.

All the children except John could play some instrument. He heard scales and practising on the piano, violin, and violoncello, so that music was spoiled for him and became a nuisance, like the church-bells had formerly been. He would have gladly played, but he did not wish to practise scales. He took pieces of music when no one was looking and played them—as might be supposed—very badly, but it pleased him. As a compensation for his vanity, he determined to learn technically the pieces which his sisters played, so that he surpassed them in the knowledge of musical technique. Once they wanted someone to copy the music of the Zauberflöte arranged for a quartette. John offered to do so.

"Can you copy notes?" he was asked.

"I'll try," he said.

He practised copying for a couple of days, and then copied out the four parts. It was a long, tedious piece of work, and he nearly gave it up, but finally completed it. His copy was certainly inaccurate in places, but it was usable. He had no rest till he had learned to know all the varieties of plants included in the Stockholm Flora. When he had done so he dropped the subject. A botanical excursion afforded him no more interest; roamings through the country showed him nothing new. He could not find any plant which he did not know. He also knew the few minerals which were to be found, and had an entomological collection. He could distinguish birds by their notes, their feathers, and their eggs. But all these were only outward phenomena, mere names for things, which soon lost their interest. He wanted to reach what lay behind them. He used to be blamed for his destructiveness, for he broke toys, watches, and everything that fell into his hands. Accidently he heard in the Academy of Sciences a lecture on Chemistry and Physics, accompanied by experiments. The unusual instruments and apparatus fascinated him. The Professor was a magician, but one who explained how the miracles took place. This was a novelty for him, and he wished himself to penetrate these secrets.

He talked with his father about his new hobby, and the latter, who had himself studied electricity in his youth, lent him books from his bookcase—Fock's Physics, Girardin's Chemistry, Figuier's Discoveries and Inventions, and the Chemical Technology of Nyblæus. In the attic was also a galvanic battery constructed on the old Daniellian copper and zinc system. This he got hold of when he was twelve years old, and made so many experiments with sulphuric acid as to ruin handkerchiefs, napkins, and clothes. After he had galvanised everything which seemed a suitable object, he laid this hobby also aside. During the summer he took up privately the study of chemistry with enthusiasm. But he did not wish to carry out the experiments described in the text-book; he wished to make discoveries. He had neither money nor any chemical apparatus, but that did not hinder him. He had a temperament which must carry out its projects in spite of every difficulty, and on the spot. This was still more the case, since he had become his own master, after his mother's death. When he played chess, he directed his plan of campaign against his opponent's king. He went on recklessly, without thinking of defending himself, sometimes gained the victory by sheer recklessness, but frequently also lost the game.

"If I had had one move more, you would have been checkmated," he said on such occasions.

"Yes, but you hadn't, and therefore you are checkmated," was the answer.

When he wished to open a locked drawer, and the key was not at hand, he took the tongs and broke the lock, so that, together with its screws, it came loose from the wood.

"Why did you break the lock?" they asked.

"Because I wished to get at the drawer."

This impetuosity revealed a certain pertinacity, but the latter only lasted while the fit was on him. For example: On one occasion he wished to make an electric machine. In the attic he found a spinning-wheel. From it he broke off whatever he did not need, and wanted to replace the wheel with a round pane of glass. He found a double window, and with a splinter of quartz cut a pane out. But it had to be round and have a whole in the middle. With a key he knocked off one splinter of glass after another, each not larger than a grain of sand, this took him several days, but at last he had made the pane round. But how was he to make a hole in it? He contrived a bow-drill. In order to get the bow, he broke an umbrella, took a piece of whale-bone out, and with that and a violin-string made his bow. Then he rubbed the glass with the splinter of quartz, wetted it with turpentine, and bored. But he saw no result. Then he lost patience and reflection, and tried to finish the job with a piece of cracking-coal. The pane of glass split in two. Then he threw himself, weak, exhausted, hopeless, on the bed. His vexation was intensified by a consciousness of poverty. If he had only had money. He walked up and down before Spolander's shop in the Vesterlanggata and looked at the various sets of chemical apparatus there displayed. He would have gladly ascertained their price, but dared not go in. What would have been the good? His father gave him no money.

When he had recovered from this failure, he wanted to make what no one has made hitherto, and no one can make—a machine to exhibit "perpetual motion." His father had told him that for a long time past a reward had been offered to anyone who should invent this impossibility. This tempted him. He constructed a waterfall with a "Hero's fountain,"[1] which worked a pump; the waterfall was to set the pump in motion, and the pump was to draw up the water again out of the "Hero's fountain." He had again to make a raid on the attic. After he had broken everything possible in order to collect material, he began his work. A coffee-making machine had to serve as a pipe; a soda-water machine as a reservoir; a chest of drawers furnished planks and wood; a bird-cage, iron wire; and so on. The day of testing it came. Then the housekeeper asked him if he would go with his brothers and sisters to their mother's grave. "No," he said, "he had no time." Whether his conscience now smote him, and spoiled his work, or whether he was nervous—anyhow, it was a failure. Then he took the whole apparatus, without trying to put right what was wrong in it, and hurled it against the tiled stove. There lay the work, on which so many useful things had been wasted, and a good while later on the ruin was discovered in the attic. He received a reproof, but that had no longer an effect on him.

In order to have his revenge at home, where he was despised on account of his unfortunate experiments, he made some explosions with detonating gas, and contrived a Leyden jar. For this he took the skin of a dead black cat which he had found on the Observatory Hill and brought home in his pocket-handkerchief. One night, when his eldest brother and he came home from a concert, they could find no matches, and did not wish to wake anyone. John hunted up some sulphuric acid and zinc, produced hydrogen, procured a flame by means of the electricity conductor, and lighted the lamp. This established his reputation as a scientific chemist. He also manufactured matches like those made at Jönkoping. Then he laid chemistry aside for a time.

His father's bookshelves contained a small collection of books which were now at his disposal. Here, besides the above-mentioned works on chemistry and physics, he found books on gardening, an illustrated natural history, Meyer's Universum, a German anatomical treatise with plates, an illustrated German history of Napoleon, Wallin's, Franzen's, and Tegner's poems, Don Quixote, Frederika Bremer's romances, etc.

Besides books about Indians and the Thousand and One Nights, John had hitherto no acquaintance with pure literature. He had looked into some romances and found them tedious, especially as they had no illustrations. But after he had floundered about chemistry and natural science, he one day paid a visit to the bookcase. He looked into the poets; here he felt as though he were floating in the air and did not know where he was. He did not understand it. Then he took Frederika Bremer's Pictures from Daily Life. Here he found domesticity and didacticism, and put them back. Then he seized hold of a collection of tales and fairy stories called Der Jungfrauenturm. These dealt with unhappy love, and moved him. But most important of all was the circumstance that he felt himself an adult with these adult characters. He understood what they said, and observed that he was no longer a child. He, too, had been unhappy in love, had suffered and fought, but he was kept back in the prison of childhood. And now he first became aware that his soul was in prison. It had long been fledged, but they had clipped its wings and put it in a cage. Now he sought his father and wished to talk with him as a comrade, but his father was reserved and brooded over his sorrow.

In the autumn there came a new throw-back and check for him. He was ripe for the highest class, but was kept back in the school because he was too young. He was infuriated. For the second time he was held fast by the coat when he wished to jump. He felt like an omnibus-horse continually pressing forward and being as constantly held back. This lacerated his nerves, weakened his will-power, and laid the foundation for lack of courage in the future. He never dared to wish anything very keenly, for he had seen how often his wishes were checked. He wanted to be industrious and press on, but industry did not help him; he was too young. No, the school course was too long. It showed the goal in the distance, but set obstacles in the way of the runners. He had reckoned on being a student when he was fifteen, but had to wait till he was eighteen. In his last year, when he saw escape from his prison so near, another year of punishment was imposed upon him by a rule being passed that they were to remain in the highest class for two years.

His childhood and youth had been extremely painful; the whole of life was spoiled for him, and he sought comfort in heaven.

VI.

THE SCHOOL OF THE CROSS

Sorrow has the fortunate peculiarity that it preys upon itself. It dies of starvation. Since it is essentially an interruption of habits, it can be replaced by new habits. Constituting, as it does, a void, it is soon filled up by a real "horror vacui."

A twenty-years' marriage had come to an end. A comrade in the battle against the difficulties of life was lost; a wife, at whose side her husband had lived, had gone and left behind an old celibate; the manager of the house had quitted her post. Everything was in confusion. The small, black-dressed creatures, who moved everywhere like dark blots in the rooms and in the garden, kept the feeling of loss fresh. Their father thought they felt forlorn and believed them defenceless. He often came home from his work in the afternoon and sat alone in a lime-tree arbour, which looked towards the street. He had his eldest daughter, a child of seven, on his knee, and the others played at his feet. John often watched the grey-haired man, with his melancholy, handsome features, sitting in the green twilight of the arbour. He could not comfort him, and did not seek his company any more. He saw the softening of the old man's nature, which he would not have thought possible before. He watched how his fixed gaze lingered on his little daughter as though in the childish lines of her face he would reconstruct in imagination the features of the dead. From his window John often watched this picture between the stems of the trees down the long vista of the avenue; it touched him deeply, but he began to fear for his father, who no longer seemed to be himself.

Six months had passed, when his father one autumn evening came home with a stranger. He was an elderly man of unusually cheerful aspect. He joked good-naturedly, was friendly and kindly towards children and servants, and had an irresistible way of making people laugh. He was an accountant, had been a school friend of John's father, and was now discovered to be living in a house close by. The two old men talked of their youthful recollections, which afforded material to fill the painful void John's father felt. His stern, set features relaxed, as he was obliged to laugh at his friend's witty and humorous remarks. After a week he and the whole family were laughing as only those can who have wept for a long time. Their friend was a wit of the first water, and more, could play the violin and guitar, and sing Bellman's[1] songs. A new atmosphere seemed to pervade the house, new views of things sprang up, and the melancholy phantoms of the mourning period were dissipated. The accountant had also known trouble; he had lost his betrothed, and since then remained a bachelor. Life had not been child's play for him, but he had taken things as they came.

Soon after John's brother Gustav returned from Paris in uniform, mixing French words with Swedish in his talk, brisk and cheerful. His father received him with a kiss on the forehead, and was somewhat depressed again by the recollection that this son had not been at his mother's death-bed. But he soon cheered up again and the house grew lively. Gustav entered his father's business, and the latter had someone now with whom he could talk on matters which interested him.

One evening, late in autumn, after supper, when the accountant was present and the company sat together, John's father stood up and signified his wish to say a few words: "My boys and my friend," he began, and then announced his intention of giving his little children a new mother, adding that the time of youthful passion was past for him, and that only thoughts for the children had led to the resolve to make Fräulein—his wife.

She was the housekeeper. He made the announcement in a somewhat authoritative tone, as though he would say, "You have really nothing to do with it; however, I let you know." Then the housekeeper was fetched to receive their congratulations, which were hearty on the part of the accountant, but of a somewhat mixed nature on the part of the three boys. Two of them had rather an uncomfortable conscience on the matter, for they had strongly but innocently admired her; but the third, John, had latterly been on bad terms with her. Which of them was most embarrassed would be difficult to decide.

There ensued a long pause, during which the youths examined themselves, mentally settled their accounts, and thought of the possible consequences of this unexpected event. John must have been the first to realise what the situation demanded, for he went the same evening into the nursery straight to the housekeeper. It seemed dark before his eyes as he repeated the following speech, which he had hastily composed and learned by heart in his father's fashion:

"Since our relations with each other will hence-forward be on a different footing," he said, "allow me to ask you to forget the past and to be friends." This was a prudent utterance, sincerely meant, and had no arrière pensée behind it. It was also a balancing of accounts with his father, and the expression of a wish to live harmoniously together for the future. At noon the next day John's father came up to his room, thanked him for his kindness towards the housekeeper, and, as a token of his pleasure at it, gave him a small present, but one which he had long desired. It was a chemical apparatus. John felt ashamed to take the present, and made little of his kindness. It was a natural result of his father's announcement, and a prudent thing to do, but his father and the housekeeper must have seen in it a good augury for their wedded happiness. They soon discovered their mistake, which was naturally laid at the boy's door.

There is no doubt that the old man married again for his children's sake, but it is also certain that he loved the young woman. And why should he not? It is nobody's affair except that of the persons concerned, but it is a fact of constant occurrence, both that widowers marry again, however galling the bonds of matrimony may have been, and that they also feel they are committing a breach of trust against the dead. Dying wives are generally tormented with the thought that the survivor will marry again.

The two elder brothers took the affair lightly, and accommodated themselves to it. They regarded their father with veneration, and never doubted the rightness of what he did. They had never considered that fatherhood is an accident which may happen to anyone.

But John doubted. He fell into endless disputes with his brothers, and criticised his father for becoming engaged before the expiration of the year of mourning. He conjured up his mother's shade, prophesied misery and ruin, and let himself go to unreasonable lengths.

The brothers' argument was: "We have nothing to do with father's acts." "It was true," retorted John, "that it was not their business to judge; still, it concerned them deeply." "Word-catcher!" they replied, not seeing the distinction.

One evening, when John had come home from school, he saw the house lit up and heard music and talking. He went to his room in order to study. The servant came up and said that his father wished him to come down as there were guests present.

"Who?" asked John.

"The new relations."

John replied that he had no time. Then one of his brothers appeared. He first abused John, then he begged him to come, saying that he ought to for his father's sake, even if it were only for a moment; he could soon go up again.

John said he would consider the matter.

At last he went down; he saw the room full of ladies and gentlemen: three aunts, a new grandmother, an uncle, a grandfather. The aunts were young girls. He made a bow in the centre of the room politely but stiffly.

His father was vexed, but did not wish to show it. He asked John whether he would have a glass of punch. John took it. Then the old man asked ironically whether he had really so much work for the school. John said "Yes," and returned to his room. Here it was cold and dark, and he could not work when the noise of music and dancing ascended to him. Then the cook came up to fetch him to supper. He would not have any. Hungry and angry he paced up and down the room. At intervals he wanted to go down where it was warm, light, and cheerful, and several times took hold of the door-handle. But he turned back again, for he was shy. Timid as he was by nature, this last solitary summer had made him still more uncivilised. So he went hungry to bed, and considered himself the most unfortunate creature in the world.

The next day his father came to his room and told him he had not been honest when he had asked the housekeeper's pardon.

"Pardon!" exclaimed John, "he had nothing to ask pardon for." But now his father wanted to humble him. "Let him try," thought John to himself. For a time no obvious attempts were made in that direction, but John stiffened himself to meet them, when they should come.

One evening his brother was reading by the lamp in the room upstairs. John asked, "What are you reading?" His brother showed him the title on the cover; there stood in old black-letter type on a yellow cover the famous title: Warning of a Friend of Youth against the most Dangerous Enemy of Youth.

"Have you read it?" asked Gustav.

John answered "Yes," and drew back. After Gustav had done reading, he put the book in his drawer and went downstairs. John opened the drawer and took out the mysterious work. His eyes glanced over the pages without venturing to fix on any particular spot. His knees trembled, his face became bloodless, his pulses froze. He was, then, condemned to death or lunacy at the age of twenty-five! His spinal marrow and his brain would disappear, his hair would fall out, his hands would tremble—it was horrible! And the cure was—Christ! But Christ could not heal the body, only the soul. The body was condemned to death at five-and-twenty; the only thing left was to save the soul from everlasting damnation.

This was Dr. Kapff's famous pamphlet, which has driven so many youths into a lunatic asylum in order to increase the adherents of the Protestant Jesuits. Such a dangerous work should have been prosecuted, confiscated, and burnt, or, at any rate, counteracted by more intelligent ones. One of the latter sort fell into John's hands later, and he did his best to circulate it, as it was excellent. The title was Uncle Palle's Advice to Young Sinners, and its authorship was attributed to the medical councillor, Dr. Westrand. It was a cheerfully written book, which took the matter lightly, and declared that the dangers of the evil habit had been exaggerated; it also gave practical advice and hygienic directions. But even to the present time Kapff's absurd pamphlet is in vogue, and doctors are frequently visited by sinners, who with beating hearts make their confessions.[2]

For half a year John could find no word of comfort in his great trouble. He was, he thought, condemned to death; the only thing left was to lead a virtuous and religious life, till the fatal hour should strike. He hunted up his mother's pietistic books and read them. He considered himself merely as a criminal and humbled himself. When on the next day he passed through the street, he stepped off the pavement in order to make room for everyone he met. He wished to mortify himself, to suffer for the allotted period, and then to enter into the joy of his Lord.

One night he awoke and saw his brothers sitting by the lamplight. They were discussing the subject. He crept under the counterpane and put his fingers in his ears in order not to hear. But he heard all the same. He wished to spring up to confess, to beg for mercy and help, but dared not, to hear the confirmation of his death sentence. Had he spoken, perhaps he would have obtained help and comfort, but he kept silence. He lay still, with perspiration breaking out, and prayed. Wherever he went he saw the terrible word written in old black letters on a yellow ground, on the walls of the houses, on the carpets of the room. The chest of drawers in which the book lay contained the guillotine. Every time his brother approached the drawer he trembled and ran away. For hours at a time he stood before the looking-glass in order to see if his eyes had sunk in, his hair had fallen out, and his skull was projecting. But he looked ruddy and healthy.

He shut himself up in himself, was quiet and avoided all society. His father imagined that by this behaviour he wished to express his disapproval of the marriage; that he was proud, and wanted to humble him. But he was humbled already, and as he silently yielded to the pressure his father congratulated himself on the success of his strategy.

This irritated the boy, and sometimes he revolted. Now and then there arose a faint hope in him that his body might be saved. He went to the gymnasium, took cold baths, and ate little in the evening.

Through home-life, intercourse with school-fellows, and learning, he had developed a fairly complicated ego, and when he compared himself with the simpler egos of others, he felt superior. But now religion came and wanted to kill this ego. That was not so easy and the battle was fierce. He saw also that no one else denied himself. Why, then, in heaven's name, should he do so?

When his father's wedding-day came, he revolted. He did not go to kiss the bride like his brothers and sisters, but withdrew from the dancing to the toddy-drinkers, and got a little intoxicated. But a punishment was soon to follow on this, and his ego was to be broken.

He became a collegian, but this gave him no joy. It came too late, like a debt that had been long due. He had had the pleasure of it beforehand. No one congratulated him, and he got no collegian's cap. Why? Did they want to humble him or did his father not wish to sec an outward sign of his learning? At last it was suggested that one of his aunts should embroider the college wreath on velvet, which could then be sewn on to an ordinary black cap. She embroidered an oak and laurel branch, but so badly that his fellow-students laughed at him. He was the only collegian for a long time who had not worn the proper cap. The only one—pointed at, and passed over!

Then his breakfast-money, which hitherto had been five öre, was reduced to four. This was an unnecessary cruelty, for they were not poor at home, and a boy ought to have more food. The consequence was that John had no breakfast at all, for he spent his weekly money in tobacco. He had a keen appetite and was always hungry. When there was salt cod-fish for dinner, he ate till his jaws were weary, but left the table hungry. Did he then really get too little to eat? No; there are millions of working-men who have much less, but the stomachs of the upper classes must have become accustomed to stronger and more concentrated nourishment. His whole youth seemed to him in recollection a long fasting period.

Moreover, under the step-mother's rule the scale of diet was reduced, the food was inferior, and he could change his linen only once instead of twice a week. This was a sign that one of the lower classes was guiding the household. The youth was not proud in the sense that he despised the housekeeper's low birth, but the fact that she who had formerly been beneath him tried to oppress him, made him revolt—but now Christianity came in and bade him turn the other cheek.

He kept growing, and had to go about in clothes which he had outgrown. His comrades jeered at his short trousers. His school-books were old editions out of date, and this caused him much annoyance in the school.

"So it is in my book," he would say to the teacher.

"Show me your book."

Then the teacher was scandalised, and told him to get the newest edition, which he never did.

His shirt-sleeves reached only half-way down his arm and could not be buttoned. In the gymnasium, therefore, he always kept his jacket on. One day in his capacity as leader of the troop he was having a special lesson from the teacher of gymnastics.

"Take off your jackets, boys, we want to put our backs into it," said the instructor.

All besides John did so.

"Well, are you ready?"

"No, I am freezing," answered John.

"You will soon be warm," said the instructor; "off with your jacket."

He refused. The instructor came up to him in a friendly way and pulled at his sleeves. He resisted. The instructor looked at him. "What is this?" he said. "I ask you kindly and you won't oblige me. Then go!"

John wished to say something in his defence; he looked at the friendly man, with whom he had always been on good terms, with troubled eyes—but he kept silence and went. What depressed him was poverty imposed as a cruelty, not as a necessity. He complained to his brothers, but they said he should not be proud. Difference of education had opened a gulf between him and them. They belonged to a different class of society, and ranged themselves with the father who was of their class and the one in power.

Another time he was given a jacket which had been altered from a blue frock-coat with bright buttons. His school-fellows laughed at him as though he were pretending to be a cadet, but this was the last idea in his mind, for he always plumed himself on being rather than seeming. This jacket cost him untold suffering.

After this a systematic plan of humbling him was pursued. John was waked up early in the mornings to do domestic tasks before he went to school. He pleaded his school-work as an excuse, but it did not help him at all. "You learn so easily," he was told. This was quite unnecessary, as there was a man-servant, besides several other servants, in the house. He saw that it was merely meant as a chastisement. He hated his oppressors and they hated him.

Then there began a second course of discipline. He had to get up in the morning and drive his father to the town before he went to school, then return with the horse and trap, take out the horse, feed it, and sweep the stable. The same manoeuvre was repeated at noon. So, besides his school-work, he had domestic work and must drive twice daily to and from Riddarholm. In later years he asked himself whether this had been done with forethought; whether his wise father saw that too much activity of brain was bad for him, and that physical work was necessary. Or perhaps it was an economical regulation in order to save some of the man-servant's work time. Physical exertion is certainly useful for boys, and should be commended to the consideration of all parents, but John could not perceive any beneficent intention in the matter, even though it may have existed. The whole affair seemed so dictated by malice and an intention to cause pain, that it was impossible for him to discover any good purpose in it, though it may have existed along with the bad one.

In the summer holidays the driving out degenerated into stable-work. The horse had to be fed at stated hours, and John was obliged to stay at home in order not to miss them. His freedom was at an end. He felt the great change which had taken place in his circumstances, and attributed them to his stepmother. Instead of being a free person who could dispose of his own time and thoughts, he had become a slave, to do service in return for his food. When he saw that his brothers were spared all such work, he became convinced that it was imposed on him out of malice. Straw-cutting, room-sweeping, water-carrying, etc., are excellent exercises, but the motive spoiled everything. If his father had told him it was good for his health, he would have done it gladly, but now he hated it. He feared the dark, for he had been brought up like all children by the maid-servants, and he had to do violence to himself when he went up to the hay-loft every evening. He cursed it every time, but the horse was a good-natured beast with whom he sometimes talked. He was, moreover, fond of animals, and possessed canaries of which he took great care.

He hated his domestic tasks because they were imposed upon him by the former housekeeper, who wished to revenge herself on him and to show him her superiority. He hated her, for the tasks were exacted from him as payment for his studies. He had seen through the reason why he was being prepared for a learned career. They boasted of him and his learning; he was not then being educated out of kindness.

Then he became obstinate, and on one occasion damaged the springs of the trap in driving. When they alighted at Riddarhustorg, his father examined it. He observed that a spring was broken.

"Go to the smith's," he said.

John was silent.

"Did you hear?"

"Yes, I heard."

He had to go to the Malargata, where the smith lived. The latter said it would take three hours to repair the damage. What was to be done? He must take the horse out, lead it home and return. But to lead a horse in harness, while wearing his collegian's cap, through the Drottningsgata, perhaps to meet the boys by the observatory who envied him for his cap, or still worse, the pretty girls on the Norrtullsgata who smiled at him—No! he would do anything rather than that. He then thought of leading the horse through the Rorstrandsgata, but then he would have to pass Karlberg, and here he knew the cadets. He remained in the courtyard, sitting on a log in the sunshine and cursed his lot. He thought of the summer holidays which he had spent in the country, of his friends who were now there, and measured his misfortune by that standard. But had he thought of his brothers who were now shut up for ten hours a day in the hot and gloomy office without hope of a single holiday, his meditations on his lot would have taken a different turn; but he did not do that. Just now he would have willingly changed places with them. They, at any rate, earned their bread, and did not have to stay at home. They had a definite position, but he had not. Why did his parents let him smell at the apple and then drag him away? He longed to get away—no matter where. He was in a false position, and he wished to get out of it, to be either above or below and not to be crushed between the wheels.