GROWTH OF A SOUL

BY

AUGUST STRINDBERG

AUTHOR OF "THE INFERNO," "THE SON OF A SERVANT," ETC.

TRANSLATED BY CLAUD FIELD

NEW YORK

McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY

1914

CONTENTS

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

[CHAPTER I]

IN THE FORECOURT

(1867)

The steamer had passed Flottsund and Domstyrken and the university buildings of Upsala began to appear. "Now begins the real stone-throwing!" exclaimed one of his companions,—an expression borrowed from the street-riots of 1864. The hilarity induced by punch and breakfast abated; one felt that things were now serious and that the battle of life was beginning. No vows of perpetual friendship were made, no promises of helping each other. The young men had awakened from their romantic dreams; they knew that they would part at the gang-way, new interests would scatter the company which the school-room had united; competition would break the bonds which had united them and all else would be forgotten. The "real stone-throwing" was about to begin.

John and his friend Fritz hired a room in the Klostergränden. It contained two beds, two tables, two chairs and a cupboard. The rent was 30 kronas[1] a term,—15 kronas each. Their midday meal was brought by the servant for 12 kronas a month,—6 kronas each. For breakfast and supper they had a glass of milk and some bread and butter. That was all. They bought wood in the market,—a small bundle for 4 kronas. John had also received a bottle of petroleum from home as a present, and he could send his washing to Stockholm. He had 80 kronas in his table-drawer with which to meet all the expenses of the term.

It was a new and peculiar society into which he now entered, quite unlike any other. It had privileges like the old house of peers and a jurisdiction of its own; but it was a "little Pedlington" and reeked of rusticity. All the professors were country-born; not a single one hailed from Stockholm. The houses and streets were like those of Nyköping. And it was here that the head-quarters of culture had been placed, owing to an inconsistency of the government which certainly regarded Stockholm as answering to that description.

The students were regarded as the upper class in the town and the citizens were stigmatised by the contemptuous epithet of "Philistines." The students were outside and above the civic law. To smash windows, break down fences, tussle with the police, disturb the peace of the streets,—all was allowed to them and went unpunished; at most they received a reprimand, for the old lock-up in the castle was no more used. For their militia-service they had a special uniform of their own which carried privileges with it. Thus they were systematically educated as aristocrats, a new order of nobility after the fall of the house of peers.

What would have been a crime in a citizen was a "practical joke" in a student. Just at this time the students' spirits were at a high pitch, as a band of student-singers had gone to Paris, had been successful there, and were acclaimed as conquerors on their return.

John now wished to work for his degree but did not possess a single book. "During the first term one must take one's bearings" was the saying. John went to the student's club. The constitution of the club was antiquated,—so much so that the annexed provinces Skåne, Halland and Blekinge were not represented in it. It was well arranged and divided into classes, not according to merit, but according to age and certain dubious qualities. In the list the title "nobilis" still stood after the names of those of high birth. There were several ways of gaining influence in the club, through an aristocratic name, family influence, money, talent, pluck and adaptability, but the last quality by itself was not enough among these intelligent and sceptical youths. On the first evening in the club John made his observations. There were several of his old companions from the Clara School present, but he avoided them as much as possible and they him. He had deserted them and gone by a short cut through the private school, while they had tramped along the regular course through the state school. They all seemed to him somewhat conventional and stunted. Fritz plunged among the aristocrats and obtained introductions, made acquaintances easily and got on well.

As they went home in the evening John asked him who was the "snob" in the velvet jacket with stirrups painted on his collar. Fritz answered that he was not a snob, and that it was as stupid to judge people by fine clothes as by poor ones. John with his democratic ideas did not understand this and stuck to his opinion. Fritz asserted that the youth referred to was a very fine fellow and the senior in the club, and in order to rouse John further, added that he had expressed himself satisfied with the newcomers' appearance and manners; he was reported to have said "they had an air about them; formerly the fellows from Stockholm when they came there, looked like workmen."

John was ruffled at this information and felt that something had come in between him and his friend. Fritz's father had been a miller's servant, but his mother had been of noble birth. He had inherited from his mother what John had from his.

The days passed on. Fritz put on his frock coat every morning and went to pay his respects to the professors. He intended to be a jurist; that was a proper career, for lawyers were the only ones who obtained real knowledge which was of use in public life, who tried to obtain deeper insight into social organisation and to keep in touch with the practical business of everyday life. They were realists.

John had no frock coat, no books, no acquaintances.

"Borrow my coat," said Fritz.

"No, I will not go and pay court to the professors," said John.

"You are stupid," answered Fritz, and in that he was right, for the professors gave real though somewhat hazy information regarding the courses of study. It was a piece of pride in John that he did not wish to owe his progress to anything but his own work, and what was worse, he thought it ignominious to be regarded as a flunkey. Would not an old professor at once perceive that he was flattering him for his own purposes? To submit himself to his superiors was, in his mind, synonymous with grovelling.

Moreover everything was too indefinite. The university which he had imagined to be an institution for free investigation, was only one for tasks and examinations. The professors gave lectures for the sake of appearances or to maintain their income, but it was useless to go up for an examination without taking private lessons. John resolved to attend those lectures for which no fee was necessary. He went to the Gustavianum to hear a lecture on the history of philosophy. For the three-quarters of an hour during which the lecture lasted the professor went through the introduction to Aristotle's Ethics. John calculated that with three lectures a week he would require forty years to go through the history of philosophy. "Forty years," he thought, "that is too long for me." And did not go again. It was the same everywhere. An assistant-professor expounded Shakespeare's Henry VIII with the commentary, in English, to an audience of five. John went there a few times, but reckoned that it would be ten years before Henry VIII was finished.

It began to dawn upon him what the requirements of the degree examination were. The first was to write a Latin essay; therefore he must learn more Latin, which he did not like. He had chosen æsthetics and modern languages as his chief subject. Æsthetics comprised the study of Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Literary History and the various systems of æsthetics. That was work enough for a lifetime. The modern languages were French, German, English, Italian and Spanish, with comparative grammar. How was he to obtain the requisite books? And he had not the means of paying for private lessons.

Meanwhile he set to work at Æsthetics. He found that one could borrow books from the club and so he took out the volumes of Atterbom's Prophets and Poets which happened to be there. These unfortunately only dealt with Swedenborg and contained Thorild's epistles. Swedenborg seemed to him crazy, and Thorild's epistles did not interest him. Swedenborg and Thorild were two arrogant Swedes who had lived in retirement and fallen a prey to megalomania, the special disease of solitary people. It is remarkable how often outbreaks of this hallucination occur in Sweden, owing probably to the isolated position of the country and to the fact that a sparse population is scattered over enormous distances. Megalomania is apparent in the imperial projects of Gustavus Adolphus, in Charles X's ambition of becoming a great European power, in Charles XII's Attila-like schemes, in Rudbeck's Atlantic-mania, and in Swedenborg's and Thorild's dreams of storming heaven and of world-conflagrations. John thought them mad and threw them aside. Was that the sort of stuff he was expected to read?

He began to reflect over his situation. What did he expect to do in Upsala? To support himself for six years on 80 kronas till he took his degree. And then? his thoughts did not stretch further; he had no higher plan or ambition than to take his degree—the laurel crown, the graduate's coat, and then to teach the catechism in the Jakob school till his death. No, he did not wish to do that.

Time went on, and Christmas approached. The little stock of money in his table-drawer diminished slowly but surely. And then? It was not so easy for students to obtain employment as private teachers since the railways had made communication easier between remote country places and the towns where schools were. He felt that he had embarked upon a foolish undertaking. When he found he could get no more books, he began to make visits among his fellow-students and discovered companions in misfortune. Among them were two who had spent the whole term playing chess and possessed nothing between them but a hymn-book which the mother of one had placed in his box. They were also asking themselves the question "What have we to do here?" The way to the degree examination was not easy; one was compelled to seek out secret ways, bribe door-keepers, creep through holes, run into debt for books, be seen at lectures and much more besides.

In order to fill up the time, he learnt to play the B-cornet in the band of the students' club by the advice of Fritz who played the trombone. But the practices were very irregular and began to cause disputes. John also played backgammon, which Fritz hated, and so he wandered about to acquaintances with his backgammon board and played with them. He found it as dull as reading Swedenborg.

"Why do you not study?" Fritz often asked him.

"I have no books," answered John. That was a good reason. He could not visit the restaurants, for he had no money, and lived very quietly. At the midday meal he drank only water, and when on Sundays he and Fritz drank half a bottle of beer, they remained sitting at table half-fuddled and telling each other, perhaps for the hundredth time, old school adventures. The term crept along intolerably slow, uneventful and torpid. John perceived that, as one of the lower class, he could plod on thus far but no further. The economic question brought his plans to a standstill. Or was it that he was tired of living a one-sided mental life without muscular exercise? Trifling experiences for which he ought to have been prepared contributed to embitter him. One day Fritz entered their room with a young count. He introduced John to him, and the count tried to remember whether they had not been comrades at the Clara School. John seemed to remember something of the kind. The old friends and intimate companions addressed each other as "count" and "sir." Then John remembered how he and the young count had once played as boys in a tobacco store on the Sabbatsberg, and how something had made him prophesy, "In a few years, old fellow, we shall not know each other any more." The young count had protested strongly against this and felt hurt. Why did John remember this just then particularly, since it is quite natural that comrades should become strangers to each other when intercourse has been so long broken off? Because at the sight of the noble, he felt the slave blood seethe in his veins. This kind of feeling has been ascribed to the difference of races. But that is not so, for then the stronger plebeian race would feel superior to the weaker aristocratic. It is simply class-hatred.

The count in question was a pale, tall, slender youth of no striking appearance. He was very poor and looked half-starved. He was intelligent, industrious, and not at all proud. Later on in life John came across him again and found him to be a sociable, pleasant man, leading an inconspicuous life as an official, amid difficulties resembling John's own. Why should he hate him? And then they both laughed at their youthful stupidity. That was possible then, for John seemed to have "got ahead" as the saying is; otherwise he would not have laughed at all. "Stand up that I may sit down," this was the more malicious than luminous way of expressing the aspiration of the lower orders in those days. But it was a misunderstanding. Formerly one strove to elbow one's way up to the other; now one would rather pull the other down to save oneself the trouble of clambering up where nothing is to be found. "Move a little so that we can both sit" would now be the proper formula.

It has been said that those who are "above" are there by a law of necessity and would be there under all circumstances; competition is free and each can ascend if he likes, and if the conditions were changed, the same race would begin again. "Good!" say the lower classes, "let us race again, but come down here and stand where I do. You have got a start with privileges and capital, but now let us be weighed with carriage harness and racing saddle after the modern fashion. You have got ahead by cheating. The race is therefore declared null and void and we will run it again, unless we come to an agreement to do away with all racing, as an antiquated sport of ancient times."

Fritz saw things from another point of view. He did not wish to pull those above down, but to become an aristocrat himself, climb up to them and be like them. He began to lisp and made elegant gestures with his hands, greeted people as though he were a cabinet minister, and threw his head back as though he had a private income. But he respected himself too much to become ridiculous and satirised himself and his ambition. The fact was that the aristocrats whom he wished to resemble had simple, easy, unaffected manners,—some of them indeed quite like the middle class, while Fritz was fashioning himself after an ancient theatrical pattern which no longer existed. He did not therefore become what he expected in life though he had dozed away many a summer in the castles of his friends, and ended in a very modest official post. He was received as a student in their guest-rooms but came no further; as a district judge he was not introduced in the salons which as a student he had entered without introduction.

The effects of the different circles in which John and Fritz moved began now to be apparent, first in mutual coldness, then in hostility. One evening it broke out at the card-table.

Fritz one day towards the end of the term said to John, "You should not go about with such bounders as you do."

"What is the matter with them?"

"Nothing, but it would be better if you went with me to my friends."

"They don't suit me."

"Well, they suit me, but they think you are proud."

"I?"

"Yes; and to show you are not, come with me this evening and drink punch."

John went though unwillingly. They were a solid-looking set of law-students who played cards. They discussed the stakes for which they should play, and John succeeded in reducing them to a minimum, though they made sour faces. Then a game of "knack" was proposed. John said that he never played it.

"On principle?" he was asked.

"Yes," he answered.

"How long ago did you make that resolve," asked Fritz sarcastically.

"Just this minute."

"Just now, here?"

"Yes, just now, here!" answered John.

They exchanged hostile looks and that was the end. They went home silent; went to bed silent; and got up silent. For five weeks they ate their dinner at the same table and never spoke to each other. A gulf had opened between them and their friendship was ended; they had no more intercourse with each other and there was nothing to bring them together again. How had that come about?

These two characters so opposed to each other had held together for five years through habit, through comradeship in the class-room, and common interests; they had felt drawn to each other by common recollections, defeats and victories. It was a compromise between fire and water which must cease sooner or later and might cease at any moment. Now they flew asunder as if by an explosion; the masks fell; they did not become enemies, but simply discovered that they were born enemies, i.e. two oppositely-disposed natures which must go, each its own way. They did not close accounts with a quarrel or useless accusations, but simply made an end without more ado. An unnatural silence prevailed at their midday meal; sometimes in lifting dishes their hands crossed but their looks avoided each other; now and then Fritz's lips moved, as though he wished to say something, but his larynx remained closed. What should he say after all. There was nothing to say but what the silence expressed: "We have nothing more in common."

And yet there was something left after all. Sometimes Fritz came home in the evening, cheerful, and obviously prepared to say, "Come! cheer up old fellow!" But then he stood still in the middle of the room, petrified by John's icy manner, and went out again. Sometimes also it occurred to John, who suffered under the breach of friendship to say to his friend, "How stupid we are!" But then he felt frozen again by Fritz's indifferent manner. They had worn out their friendship by living together. They knew each other by heart, all one another's secrets and weaknesses, and precisely what answer either would give. That was the end. Nothing more remained.

A miserable torpid time followed. Tom away from the common life of school where he had worked like part of a machine in unison with others, and abandoned to himself, he ceased to live in the proper sense of the word. Without books, papers or social intercourse, he remained empty; for the brain produces of itself very little, perhaps nothing; in order to make combinations it must be supplied with material from without. Now nothing came; the channels were stopped, the ways blocked, and his soul pined away. Sometimes he took Fritz's books and looked into them; among them he came across Geijer's History for the first time. Geijer was a great name and known through his "Kolargossen," "Sista Kampen," "Vikingen" and other poems. John now read his history of Gustav Vasa. He was astonished to find no illuminating point of view nor any fresh information. The style, which he had heard praised, was pedestrian. It was like a mere memorial sketch, this history of a long-lived king's reign, and cursory also like a text-book. Printed in small type, and without notes, the history of this important king would not have been longer than a small pamphlet. One day John asked some of his friends what they thought of Geijer.

"He is devilish dull," they answered.

That was the common opinion before jubilee-commemorations and the erection of statues prevented people saying plainly what they thought.

John then looked for a little into law-books, but was alarmed at the idea of having to study that sort of thing. His home life and religious education had given him a distaste for everything that concerned the common interests of people. Through the ceaseless repetition of the maxim that young men should not interfere with politics, that is to say, with the common weal, and through Christian individualism and introspection, John had become a consistent egoist.

"Let every one mind his own business" was the first command of this egotistic morality. Therefore he read no papers and troubled little how things were going on about him, what was happening in the world, how the destinies of men were being shaped, or what were the thoughts of the leading minds of the time. Therefore it never occurred to him to go to the meetings of the club where questions of common interest were dealt with. "There were enough to look after those things," he thought.

He was not alone in that opinion, so that the meetings of the club were managed by a few energetic fellows, who were regarded perhaps wrongly, as egoists and managed public business in their own interests. John who let the affairs of the little society go as they liked, was perhaps a greater egoist, occupied as he was with the affairs of his own soul. But in his own defence and on behalf of many of his countrymen it must be said that he and they were shy. This shyness, however, should have been got rid of at school by practice in public speaking. In this shyness there was also a degree of cowardice, the fear of opposition or ridicule, and especially the fear of being thought presumptuous or wishing to push oneself forward. Every youth who did so, was at once suppressed, for here the aristocracy of seniority prevailed in a very high degree.

When he found the room too stuffy, he went out of the town. But the depressing landscape with its endless expanse of clay made him sad. He was no plain-dweller, but had his roots in the undulating scenery of Stockholm, diversified by water channels. The flat country depressed him and he suffered from homesickness to such a degree that when he returned to Stockholm at Christmas and saw again the smiling contours of the coast of Brunsvik, he was moved to the point of sentimentality. When he saw once more the gentle curves of the woods of Haga Park he felt his soul, as it were, attuned again, after having been so long out of tune. To such a degree were his nerves affected by his natural surroundings.

Under other circumstances, the society of a smaller town like Upsala would have been more congenial to him than that of the great town which he hated. Had the small town been but a developed form of the village, preserving the simple rustic appliances for health and comfort, with fragments of landscape between the houses, it would have been far preferable to the great town. But now the small town was merely a shabby pretentious copy of the great town with its mistakes, and therefore the more offensive. It also reeked with provinciality. Every one mentioned their birthplace, "My name is Pettersson, from Ostgothland," "Mine is Andersson, from Småland." There was a keen rivalry between the members of different provinces. Those from Stockholm regarded themselves as the first and were therefore envied and despised by the "peasants." There was much dispute as to whom the first place really belonged. The Wormlanders boasted of having produced Geijer whose portrait hung in their hall, while the Smålanders had Tegner, Berzelius and Linnæus. The Stockholm students who had only Bergfalk and Bellmann were called "gutter-snipes." This was not a very brilliant piece of wit especially as it emanated from a Kalmar student who was thereupon asked "whether there were no gutters in Kalmar?"

There was something pettifogging also in the way in which the professors fought for advancement by means of pamphlets and newspaper articles. The election to any particular professorial chair rested in the last resource with the Chancellor of the University who lived at Stockholm.

In 1867 the University had no especially distinguished teachers. Some of them were merely old decayed tipplers. Others were young immature dilettantes who had obtained advancement through their wives and the modicum of talent which they possessed. The only one who enjoyed a certain reputation was Swedelius. This, however, was rather due to his bonhomie and the anecdotes which gathered round him, then to his own talent. His learned activity was confined to the composition in an austere style of textbooks and memorial addresses. These were not strictly scientific, but showed traces of original research.

On the whole all the subjects of study were introduced from abroad, for the most part from Germany. The textbooks in most departments were in German or French. Very few were in English which was little known. Even the Professor of Literary History could not pronounce English and began his lectures with an apology for not being able to do so. There was no doubt that he knew the language for he had published translations of Swedish poems. "But why did he not learn the pronunciation?" the students asked. Most of the dissertations for degrees were mere compilations from the German; occasionally they were direct translations which caused a scandal.

The fact was that the period had no special feature to characterise it. There is no such thing as Swedish culture any more than there is Belgian, Swiss, or Hungarian. Sweden had indeed produced a Linnæus and a Berzelius, but they had had no successors.

John had no spirit of enterprise. At school his work had been settled for him; at the university it was all left to him. He was overcome by lethargy and listlessness and worried by not knowing what to do at the end of the term. He saw that he must seek for a position in which he could support himself. A friend had told him that one might become an elementary teacher in the country without passing any more examinations and could very well support oneself in such a post. Now it was John's dream to live in the country. He had a natural dislike to towns though he had been born in the metropolis. He could not accustom himself to live without light and air, nor flourish in these streets and market-places, where the outward signs of a higher or lower position in the absurd social scale counted for so much, e.g. such subordinate things as dress and manner. He had hostility to culture in his blood and could never conceive of himself as anything else than a natural product, which did not wish to be severed from its organic connection with the earth. He was like a plant vainly feeling with its roots between the pavement-stones for some soil; like an animal pining for the forest.

There is a fish which climbs up trees, and an eel can go on land to look for a pease-field, but both of them return to the water. Fowls have been domesticated so long that their ancestral characteristics have died out, but they preserve the habit of sleeping on a perch which represents the branch on which the black-cock and the wood-grouse roost. Geese become restless in autumn, for an instinct in their blood tells them that it is migrating time. So in spite of accommodation to new circumstances there is always a tendency to go back.

Thus is it also with men. The dweller in the north, so long as he preserves civilised habits, has not been able to acclimatise himself thoroughly, and is still liable to consumption. His stomach, nerves, heart and skin were able to accommodate themselves, but not his lungs. The Eskimo on the other hand, originally a southerner, succeeded in acclimatising himself but had to give up civilised habits.

And what is the meaning of the northerner's longing for the south unless it be the wish to return to his first home, the land of the sun, the bank of the Ganges where he was cradled? And the dislike of children to meat, their longing for fruit and love of climbing, what is it all but "reversion to type?" Therefore civilisation means a continual strain and struggle to combat this backward tendency. Education winds up the clock, but when the mainspring is not strong enough it snaps and the works run down, till quiet ensues. As civilisation advances the strain is ever greater and the statistics of insanity show a perpetual increase. One cannot swim against the stream of civilisation, but one may escape to land. Modern Socialism which wishes to bring down the upper classes with their worthless and dangerous motto "Higher!" is a backward movement in a healthy direction. The strain will decrease as the pressure from above decreases, and thereby a great deal of superfluous luxury will be got rid of. In certain parts of German Switzerland there is already a certain relative quiet. There we find no restless hunting after honours and distinctions because there are none to be had. A millionaire lives in a large cottage and laughs at the bedizened townsfolk,—a good-natured laugh without any envy in it, for he knows that he could buy up their finery for ready cash, if he chose. But he will not, for luxury has no value in his neighbours' eyes.

Men could therefore be happier if competition were not so keen and they will yet be so, for the chief constituent of happiness is peace along with less toil and less luxury. It is not the railways which are to be blamed, but the superabundance of them. In Arcadian Switzerland railways have ruined whole districts where no freightage is required and people usually go on foot. To this day distances are reckoned by pedestrian measures.

"It is eight hours to Zurich," says some one.

"Eight! is it possible?"

"Yes, certainly."

"By the railway?"

"Oh! by the railway,—that is only an hour and a half."

In Sweden there is a railway which carries regularly three passengers in its three classes, a factory-owner, a bailiff and a clerk. We may live to see them shut up the railway stations for want of coal when the coal strikes have sent up the price, for want of guards when wages rise, and for want of freight when wood and oats can no longer be procured; iron is already too dear to be used for railways, and the old water-ways ought to be tried.

It is no use to preach against civilisation,—that one knows well, but if we observe the currents of the time we shall see that a return to nature is in process of going on. Turgenieff has already described this by the word "simplification." That is the mistake of the evolutionists that in everything which is in motion or course of development they see a progress towards human happiness, forgetting that a sickness may develop to death or recovery.

After all, what a superficial appendage civilisation is! Make a nobleman drunk and he can become like a savage; let a child loose in a wood without any one to look after it (provided that it can feed itself) and it will not learn to speak of itself. Out of a peasant's son who is generally considered so low in the social scale, one can make in a single generation a man of science, a minister, an arch-bishop, or an artist. Here there can be no talk of heredity, for the peasant-father who stood apparently at such a low level, could not have inherited anything from cultivated brains. On the other hand, the children of a genius inherit usually nothing but used-up brains, except occasionally a skill in their father's line of work, which they have acquired by daily intercourse with their father.

The town is the fire-place whither the living fuel from the country is brought and devoured; it is to keep the present social machinery at work, it is true, but in the long run the fuel will prove too dear, and the machine come to a standstill. The society of the future will not need this machine in order to work or they will be more sparing of the fuel. But it is a mistake to conjecture the needs of a future state of society from the present one.

Our present society is perhaps a natural product, but inorganic; the future society will be an organic product and a higher one, for it will not deprive men of the first conditions for an organic existence. There will be the same difference between these two forms of society as between paved streets and grass meadows.

The youth's dream often left artificial society to wander at large in nature. Society had been formed by men doing violence to natural laws, just as one may bleach a plant under a flower-pot and produce an edible salad, but the plant's capacity to live healthily and propagate itself as a plant is destroyed. Such a plant is the civilised man made by artificial bleaching useful for an anæmic society, but, as an individual, wretched and unhealthy. Must the process of bleaching continue in order to insure the existence of this decayed society? Must the individual remain wretched in order to maintain an unhealthy society? For how can society be healthy when its individual members are ailing? A single individual cannot demand that society should be sacrificed for his sake, but a majority of individuals have a right to bring about such changes in the society, which they themselves compose, as may be beneficial to themselves.

Under the simpler conditions of country life John believed he could be happy in an obscure post, without feeling that he had sunk in the social scale. But he could not be so in the town where he would be continually reminded of the height from which he had fallen. To come down voluntarily is not painful if the onlookers can be persuaded that it is voluntarily, but to fall is bitter, especially as a fall always arouses satisfaction in those standing below. To mount, strive upwards and better one's position has become a social instinct, and the youth felt the force of it, though in his view the "upper" was not always higher.

John wished now to realise some result,—an active life which should bring him an income. He looked through many advertisements for teachers in elementary schools. Positions were advertised to which were attached salaries of 300 or 600 kronas, a house, a meadow and a garden. He tried for one of these places after another but obtained no answer.

When the term was over and his 80 kronas spent, he returned home, not knowing whither to turn, what he should become, or how he should live. He had glanced in the forecourt and seen that there was no room in it for him.

[1] A krona = 1s. 2d.

[CHAPTER II]

BELOW AND ABOVE

"Are you a complete scholar now?" With this and similar questions John was greeted ironically on his return home. His father took the matter seriously and strove to frame plans without coming to any result. John was a student; that was a fact; but what was to follow?

It was winter, and so the white student cap could not bestow on him a mild halo of glory or bring any honour to the family. Some one has asserted that war would cease if uniforms were done away with; and it is certain there would not be so many students if they had no outward sign to parade. In Paris where they have none, they disappear in the crowd, and no one makes a fuss about them; in Berlin on the other hand, they have a privileged place by the side of officers. Therefore also Germany is a land of professors and France of the bourgeois.

John's father now saw that he had educated a good-for-nothing for society who could not dig, but perhaps was not ashamed to beg. The world stood open for the youth to starve or to perish in. His father did not like his idea of becoming an elementary school-teacher. Was that to be the only result of so much work? His ambitious dreams received a shock from the idea of such a come-down. An elementary school-teacher was on a level with a sergeant, oil a plane from which there was no hope of mounting. Climb one must as long as others did; one must climb till one broke one's neck, so long as society was divided into ranks and classes. John had not passed the student's examination for the sake of knowledge, but of belonging to the upper class, and now he seemed to be meditating a descent to the lower.

It became painful for him at home for he felt as though he were eating the bread of charity when Christmas was over, and he could no longer be regarded as a Christmas guest.

One day he accidentally met in the street a school-teacher whom he knew, and whom he had not seen for a long time. They talked about the future and John's friend suggested to him a post in the Stockholm elementary school as suitable for him while reading for his degree. He would get a thousand kronas salary and have an hour to himself daily. John objected "Anywhere except in Stockholm." His friend replied that several students had been teachers in the elementary school, "Really! then he would have companions in misfortune." Yes, and one had come from the New Elementary School where he was a teacher. John went, made an application, and was appointed with a salary of 900 kronas. His father approved his decision when he heard that it would help him to read for his degree, and John undertook to live as a boarder at home. One winter morning at half-past eight, John went down the Nordtullsgata to the Clara School, exactly as he had done when he was eight years old. There were the same streets and the same Clara bells, and he was to teach the lowest class! It was like being put back to learn a lesson of eleven years ago. Just as afraid as then,—yes, more afraid of coming too late he entered the large class-room, where together with two female teachers he was to have the oversight of a hundred children. There they sat,—children like those in the Jakob School, but younger. Ugly, stunted, pale, swollen, sickly, with cast-down looks, in coarse clothes and heavy shoes. Suffering, most probably, suffering from the consciousness that others were more fortunate, and would always be so, as one then believed, had impressed on their faces the stamp of pain, which neither religious resignation nor the hope of heaven could obliterate. The upper classes avoided them with a bad conscience, built themselves houses outside the town, and left it to the professional over-seers of the poor to come in contact with these outcasts.

A hymn was sung, the Lord's Prayer was read; everything was as before; no progress had been made except that the forms had been exchanged for seats and desks, and the room was light and airy. John had to fold his hands and join in the hymn, thus already being obliged to do violence to his conscience. Prayers over, the head-master entered. He spoke to John in a fatherly way and as his superintendent gave him instruction and advice. This class, he said, was the worst, and the teacher must be strict.

So John took his class into a special room to begin the lesson. The room was exactly like that in the Clara School, and there stood the dreadful desk with steps, which resembled a scaffold and was painted red as though stained with blood. A stick was put into his hand with which he might rap or strike as he chose. He mounted the scaffold. He felt shy before the thirsty faces of girls and boys opposite who looked curiously at him, to see if he were going to worry them.

"What is your lesson?" he asked.

"The first commandment," the whole class exclaimed.

"Only one must answer at a time. You, top boy what is your name?"

"Hallberg," cried the whole class.

"No, only one at a time,—the one I ask."

The children giggled. "He is not dangerous," they thought.

"Well, then, what is the first commandment?" John asked the top boy.

"Thou shalt have no other gods but Me." He knew that then.

"What is that?" John asked again, trying to lay as little emphasis as possible on the "that." Then he asked fifteen children the same question and a quarter of an hour had passed. John thought this idiotic. What should he do now? Say what he knew about God? But the common point of view then was, that nothing was known about Him. John was a theist, and still believed in a personal God, but could say nothing more. He would have liked to have attacked the divinity of Christ, but would have been dismissed had he done so.

A pause followed. There was an unnatural stillness while he reflected on his false position and the foolish method of teaching. If he had now said that nothing was known of God, the whole catechism and Bible instruction would have been superfluous. They knew that they must not steal or lie. Why then make such a fuss? He felt a mad wish to make friends and fellow-sinners of the children.

"What shall we do now?" he said.

The whole class looked at each other and giggled.

"This is a jolly sort of teacher," they thought.

"What must the teacher do when he has heard the lesson?" he asked the top boy.

"Hm! he generally explains it," he and one or two others answered.

John could certainly explain the origin and growth of the conception of God, but that would not do.

"You need not do any more," he said, "but don't make a noise."

The children looked at him, and he at them mutually smiling.

"Don't you think this is absurd," he felt inclined to say, but checked himself and only smiled. But he collected himself when he saw that they were laughing at him. "This method would not do," he thought. So he commanded attention and went through the first commandment again till each child had had a question. After extraordinary exertions on his part, the clock at last struck nine, and the lesson was over.

Then the three divisions of the class were assembled in the great hall to prepare for going into the play-ground to get fresh air. "Prepare" is the right word for such a simple affair as going into the play-ground demanded a long preparation. An exact description would fill a whole printed page, and perhaps be regarded as a caricature; we will be content with giving a hint.

In the first place, all the hundred children had to sit motionless, absolutely motionless, and silent, absolutely silent, in their seats as though they were to be photographed. From the master's desk the whole assembly looked like a grey carpet with bright patterns, but the next moment one of them moved the head; the offender had to rise from his seat and stand by the wall. The total effect was now disturbed, and there had to be a good many raps with the cane before two hundred arms lay parallel on the desks and a hundred heads were at right angles with their collar-bones. When quiet was in some degree restored a new rapping began which demanded absolute quiet. But at the very moment when the absolute was all but attained, some muscle grew tired, some nerve slackened, some sinew relaxed. Again there was confusion, cries, blows, and a new attempt to reach the absolute. It generally ended by the female teacher (the males did not drive it so far) closing one eye and pretending that the absolute had been reached.

Then came the important moment, when, at a given signal the whole hundred must spring from their seats and stand in order, but nothing more. It was a ticklish moment when slates fell down and rulers clattered. Then they had to sit down and begin all over again by keeping perfectly still.

When they had really got on their legs, they were marched off in divisions but on tip-toe without exception. Otherwise they had to turn round and sit down again, get up again and so on. They had to go on tip-toe in wooden sabots and water-boots. It was a great mistake; it accustomed the children to stealthiness and gave their whole appearance something cat-like and deceitful. In the play-ground a teacher had to arrange those who wanted to drink in a straight line before the water-tap by the entrance; at the same time the lavatories at the other end of the play-ground had to be inspected, and games had to be organised and watched over. Then the children were again drawn up and marched into school. If it was not done quietly, they had to go out again.

Then another lesson began. The children read out of a patriotic reading-book the principal object of which seemed to be to instil respect for the upper classes and to represent Sweden as the best country in Europe, although as regards climate and social economy, it is one of the worst, its culture is borrowed from abroad, and all its kings were of foreign origin. They did not venture to give such teaching to the children of the upper classes in the Clara School and the Lyceum, but in the Jakob School they had sufficient courage to make poor children sing a patriotic song about the Duke of Ostgothland. In this occurred a verse addressed to the crew of the fleet, saying victory was sure in the battle they wished for "because Prince Oscar leads us on," or something of the sort.

Meanwhile the reading-lesson began. But just at that moment the head-master came in. John wished to stop but the head-master beckoned to him to go on. The children who had lost their respect for him after the catechism-lesson were inattentive. John scolded them, but without result. Then the head-master came forward with a cane; took the book from John and made a little speech, to the effect that this division was the worst, but now their teacher should see how to deal with them. The exercise which followed seemed to have as its object the attainment of perfect attention. The absolute again seemed to be the standard by which these children were to be trained in this incomplete world of relativity.

The boy who was reading was interrupted, and another name called at random out of the class. To follow attentively was assumed to be the easiest thing in the world by this old man who certainly must have experienced how thoughts wander their own way while the eyes pass over the printed page. The inattentive one was dragged by his hair or clothes and caned till he fell howling on the ground.

Then the head-master departed after recommending John to use the cane diligently. There remained nothing but to follow this method or to go; the latter did not suit John's plans, therefore he remained. He made a speech to the children and referred to the head-master. "Now," he said, "you know how you must behave if you want to escape a thrashing. He who gets one, has himself to thank. Don't blame me. Here is the stick, and there is your lesson. Learn your lesson or you will get the stick,—and it isn't my fault."

That was cunningly put, but it was unmerciful, for one ought to have first ascertained how far the children could do their work. They could not, for they were the most lively and therefore the most inattentive. So the cane was kept going all day, accompanied by cries of pain, and fear on the faces of the innocent. It was terrible! To pay attention is not in the power of the will, and therefore all this punishment was mere torture. John felt the absurdity of the part he had to play, but he had to do his duty. Sometimes he was tired and let things go as they liked, but then his colleagues, male and female, came and made friendly representations. Sometimes he found the whole thing so ridiculous that he could not help smiling with the children while he caned them. Both sides saw that they were working at something impossible and unnecessary.

Ibsen, who does not believe in the aristocracy of birth or of wealth, has lately (1886) expressed his belief that the industrial class are the true nobility. But why should they necessarily be so? If to do no manual labour tends to degeneration, perhaps degeneration is brought about even more quickly by excessive labour and want. All these children born of manual labourers looked more sickly, weak and stupid than the upper-class children which he had seen. One or the other muscle might be more strongly developed,—a shoulder-blade, a hand, or a foot,—but they looked anæmic under their pale skins. Many had extraordinarily large heads which seemed to be swollen with water, their ears and noses ran, their hands were frost-bitten. The various professional diseases of town-labourers seemed to have been inherited; one saw in miniature the gas-worker's lungs and blood spoilt by sulphur-fumes, the smith's shoulders and feet bent out-wards, the painter's brain atrophied by varnishes and poisonous colours, the scrofulous eruption of the chimney sweeper, the contracted chest of the book-binder; here one heard the cough of the workers in metal and asphalt, smelt the poisons of the paper-stainer, observed the watch-maker's short-sightedness, in second editions, so to speak. In truth this was no race to which the future belonged, or on which the future could build; nor was it a race which could permanently increase, for the ranks of the workers are continually recruited from the country.

It was not till about two o'clock that the great school-room was emptied, for it took them about an hour with blows and raps to get out of it into the street. The most unpractical part of it was that the children had to march into the hall in troops to get their overcoats and cloaks, and then march into the school-room again, instead of going straight home. When John got into the street, he asked himself "Is that the celebrated education which they have given to the lower classes with so much sacrifice?" He could ask, and he was answered, "Can it be done in any other way?" "No," he was obliged to answer. "If it is your intention to educate a slavish lower class, always ready to obey, train them with the stick,—if you mean to bring up a proletariat to demand nothing of life, tell them lies about heaven. Tell them that your method of teaching is ridiculous, let them begin to criticise or get their way in one point and you have taken a step towards the dissolution of society. But society is built up upon an obedient conscientious lower class; therefore keep them down from the first; deprive them of will and reason, and teach them to hope for nothing but to be content." There was method in this madness.

As regards the instruction in the elementary school, there was both a good and bad side to it; the good was that they had introduced object-teaching after the example of Pestalozzi, Rousseau's disciple; the bad, that the students who taught in the elementary schools had introduced "scientific" teaching. The simple learning by heart of the multiplication table was not enough; it, together with fractions, had to be understood. Understood? And yet an engineer who has been through the technical high school cannot explain "why" a fraction can be diminished by three if the sum of the figures is divisible by three. On this principle seamen would not be allowed to use logarithm tables, because they cannot calculate logarithms. To be always relaying the foundation instead of building on what is already laid is an educational luxury and leads to the over-multiplication of lessons in schools.

Some one may object that John should first have reformed himself as teacher, before he set about reforming the system of education; but he could not; he was a passive instrument in the hands of the superintendent and the school authorities. The best teachers, that is to say, those who forced the worst (in this case the best) results out of the pupils were the uneducated ones who came from the Seminary. They were not sceptical about the methods in use and had no squeamishness about caning, but the children respected them the most. A great coarse fellow who had formerly been a carriage-maker had the bigger boys completely under his thumb. The lower class seem to have really more fear and respect for those of their own rank than the upper class. Bailiffs and foremen are more awe-imposing than superintendents and teachers. Do the lower classes see that the superior who has come out of their ranks understands their affairs better, and therefore pay him more respect? The female teachers also enjoyed more respect than the male. They were pedantic, demanded absolute perfection, and were not at all soft-hearted, but rather cruel. They were fond of practising the refined cruelty of blows on the palm of the hand and showed in so doing a want of intelligence which the most superficial study of physiology would have remedied. When a child by involuntary reflex action, drew his fingers back, he was punished all the more for not keeping his fingers still. As if one could prevent blinking, when something blew into one's eye! The female teachers had the advantage of knowing very little about teaching and were plagued with no doubts. It was not true that they had less pay than the men teachers. They had relatively more; and if after passing a paltry teacher's examination they had received more than the students, that would have been unjust. They were treated with partiality, regarded as miracles, when they were competent, and received allowances for travelling abroad.

As comrades, they were friendly and helpful if one was polite and submissive and let them hold the reins. There was not the slightest trace of flirtation; the men saw them in anything but becoming situations, and under an aspect which women do not usually show to the other sex, viz. that of jailers. They made notes of everything, prepared themselves for their lessons, were narrow-minded and content, and saw through nothing. It was a very suitable occupation for them under existing circumstances.

When John was thoroughly sick of caning, or could not manage a boy, or was in despair generally, he sent the black sheep to a female teacher, who willingly undertook the unpleasant rôle of executioner.

What it is that makes the competent teacher is not clear. Some produced an effect by their quiet manner, others by their nervousness; some seemed to magnetise the children, others beat them; some imposed on them by their age or their manly appearance, etc. The women worked as women, i.e. through a half-forgotten tradition of a past matriarchate.

John was not competent. He looked too young and was only just nineteen; he was sceptical about the methods employed and everything else; with all his seriousness he was playful and boyish. The whole matter to him was only an employment by the way, for he was ambitious and wished to advance, but did not know in which direction.

Moreover he was an aristocrat like his contemporaries. Through education his habits and senses had been refined, or spoilt, as one may choose to call it; he found it hard to tolerate unpleasant smells, ugly objects, distorted bodies, coarse expressions, torn clothes. Life had given him much, and these daily reminders of poverty plagued him like an evil conscience. He himself might have been one of the lower class if his mother had married one of her own position.

"He was proud" a shop-boy would have said, who had mounted to the position of editor of a paper and boasted that he was content with his lot, forgetting that he might well be content since he had risen from a low position. "He was proud" a master shoemaker would have said, who would have rather thrown himself into the sea than become an apprentice again. John was proud, of that there was no doubt, as proud as the master shoemaker, but not in such a high degree, as he had descended from the level of the student to the elementary school-teacher. That, however, was no virtue, but a necessity, and he did not therefore boast of his step downward, nor give himself the air of being a friend of the people. One cannot command sympathies and antipathies, and for the lower class to demand love and self-sacrifice from the upper class is mere idealism. The lower class is sacrificed for the upper class, but they have offered themselves willingly. They have the right to take back their rights, but they should do it themselves. No one gives up his position willingly, therefore the lower class should not wait for kings and the upper class to go. "Pull us down! but all together."

If an intelligent man of the upper class help in such an operation, those below should be thankful to him especially since such an act is liable to the imputation of being inspired by impure motives. Therefore the lower class should not too narrowly inspect the motives of those who help them; the result is in all eases the same. The aristocrats seem to have seen this and therefore regard one of themselves who sides with the proletariat as a traitor. He is a traitor to his class, that is true; and the lower class should put it to his credit.

John was not an aristocrat in the sense that he used the word "mob" or despised the poor. Through his mother he was closely allied to them, but circumstances had estranged him from them. That was the fault of class-education. This fault might be done away with for the future, if elementary schools were reformed by the inclusion of the knowledge of civil duties in their programme, and by their being made obligatory for all, without exception, as the militia-schools are. Then it would be no longer a disgrace to become an elementary school-teacher as it now is, and made a matter of reproach to a man that he has been one.

John, in order to keep himself above, applied himself to his future work. To this end he studied Italian grammar in his spare time at the school. He could now buy books and did so. He was honest enough not to construe these efforts at climbing up as an ideal thirst for knowledge or a striving for the good of humanity. He simply read for his degree.

But the meagre diet he had lived on in Upsala, his midday meals at 6 kronas, the milk and the bread had undermined his strength, and he was now in the pleasure-seeking period of youth. It was tedious at home, and in the afternoons he went to the café or the restaurant, where he met friends. Strong drinks invigorated him and he slept well after them. The desire for alcohol seems to appear regularly in each adolescent. All northerners are born of generations of drinkers from the early heathen times, when beer and mead was drunk, and it is quite natural that this desire should be felt as a necessity. With John it was an imperious need the suppression of which resulted in a diminution of strength. It may be questioned whether abstinence for us may not involve the same risk, as the giving up of poison for an arsenic-eater. Probably the otherwise praiseworthy temperance movement will merely end in demanding moderation; that is a virtue and not a mere exhibition of will power which results in boasting and self-righteousness.

John who had hitherto only worn east-off suits, began to wear fine clothes. His salary seemed to him extraordinarily great and in the magnifying-glass of his fancy assumed huge proportions, with the result that he soon ran into debt. Debt which grew and grew and could never be paid, became the vulture gnawing at his life, the object of his dreams, the wormwood which poisoned his content. What foolish hopefulness, what colossal self-deceit it was to incur debts! What did he expect? To gain an academic dignity. And then? To become a teacher with a salary of 750 kronas! Less than he had now! Not the least trying part of his work was to accommodate his brain to the capacity of the children. That meant to come down to the level of the younger and less intelligent, and to screw down the hammer so that it might hit the anvil,—an operation which injured the machine.

On the other hand he derived real profit from his observations in the families of the children, whom his duty required him to visit on Sundays. There was one boy in his class who was the most difficult of all. He was dirty and ill-dressed, grinned continually, smelt badly, never knew his lessons and was always being caned. He had a very large head and staring eyes which rolled and turned about continually. John had to visit his parents in order to find out the reason of his irregular attendance at school and bad behaviour. He therefore went to the Apelbergsgata where they kept a public-house. He found that the father had gone to work, but the mother was at the counter. The public-house was dark and evil-smelling, filled with men who looked threateningly at John as he entered probably taking him for a plain clothes policeman. He gave his message to the mother and was asked into a room behind the counter. One glance at it sufficed to explain everything. The mother blamed her son and excused him alternately and she had some reason for the latter. The boy was accustomed to "lick the glasses,"—that was the explanation and that was enough. What could be done in such a case? A change of dwelling, better food, a nurse to look after him and so on. All these were questions of money!

Afterwards he came to the Clara poor-house, which was empty of its usual occupants and provisionally opened to families because of the want of houses. In a great hall lay and stood quite a dozen families, who had divided the floor with strokes of chalk. There stood a carpenter with his planing-bench, here sat a shoemaker with his board; round about on both sides of the chalk-line women sat and children crawled. What could John do there? Send in a report on a matter which was perfectly well known, distribute wood-tickets and orders for meat and clothing.

In Kungsholmsbergen he came across specimens of proud poverty. There he was shown the door, "God be thanked, we have no need of charity. We are all right."

"Indeed! Then you should not let your boy go in torn boots in winter."

"That is not your business, sir," and the door was slammed.

Sometimes he saw sad scenes,—a child sick, the room full of sulphur fumes of coke, and all coughing from the grandmother down to the youngest. What could he do except feel dispirited and make his escape? At that period there was no other means of help except charity; writers who described the state of things, contented themselves with lamenting it; no one saw any hope. Therefore there was nothing to do except to be sorry, help temporarily, and fly in order not to despair.

All this lay like a heavy cloud upon him, and he lost pleasure in study. He felt there was something wrong here, but nothing could be done said all the newspapers and books and people. It must be so but every one is free to climb. You climb too!

Time went on and spring approached. John's closest acquaintance was a teacher from the Slöjd School. He was a poet, well-versed in literature, and also musical. They generally walked to the Stallmastergarden restaurant, discussed literature, and ate their supper there. While John was paying his attentions to the waitress, his friend played the piano. Sometimes the latter amused himself by writing comic verses to girls. John was seized with a craze for writing verse but could not. The gift must be born with one, he thought, and inspiration descend all of a sudden, as in the case of conversion. He was evidently not one of the elect, and felt himself neglected by nature and maimed.

One evening when John was sitting and chatting with the girl, she said quite suddenly to him, "Friday is my birthday; you must write some verses for me."

"Yes," answered John, "I will."

Later on when he met his friend, he told him of his hasty promise.

"I will write them for you," he said. The next day he brought a poem, copied out in a fine hand-writing and composed in John's name. It was piquant and amusing. John dispatched it on the morning of the birthday.

In the evening of the same day both the friends came to eat their supper and to congratulate the girl. She did not appear for an hour for she had to serve guests. The teachers' meal was brought and they began to eat.

Then the girl appeared in the doorway and beckoned John. She looked almost severe. John went to her and they ascended a flight of stairs. "Have you written the verses?" she asked.

"No," said John.

"Ah, I thought so. The lady behind the buffet said she had read them two years ago when the teacher sent them to Majke who was an ugly girl. For shame, John!"

He took his cap and wanted to rush out, but the girl caught hold of him and tried to keep him back for she saw that he looked deathly pale and beside himself. But he wrenched himself free and hastened into the Bellevue Park. He ran into the wood leaving the beaten tracks. The branches of the bushes flew into his face, stones rolled over his feet, and frightened birds rose up. He was quite wild with shame, and instinctively sought the wood in order to hide himself. It is a curious phenomenon that at the utmost pitch of despair a man runs into the wood before he plunges into the water. The wood is the penultimate and the water the ultimate resource. It is related of a famous author, who had enjoyed a twenty years' popularity quietly and proudly, that he was suddenly cast down from his position. He was as though struck by a thunderbolt, went half-mad and sought the shelter of the woods where he recovered himself. The wood is the original home of the savage and the enemy of the plough and therefore of culture. When a civilised man suddenly strips off the garb of civilisation, the artistically woven fabric of his repute, he becomes in a moment a savage or a wild beast. When a man becomes mad, he begins to throw off his clothes. What is madness? A relapse? Yes, many think animals mad.

It was evening when John entered the wood. In the midst of some bushes he laid down on a great block of stone. He was ashamed of himself,—that was the chief impression on his mind. An emotional man is more severe with himself than others think. He scourged himself unmercifully. He had wished to shine in borrowed plumage, and so lied; and in the second place he had insulted an innocent girl. The first part of the accusation affected him in a very sensitive point,—his want of poetic capacity. He wished to do more than he could. He was discontent with the position which nature and society had assigned him. Yes, but (and now his self-defence began after the evening air had cooled his blood), in the school one had been always exhorted to strive upwards; those who did so were praised, and discontent with the position one might happen to be in, was justified. Yes but (here the scourge descended!) he had tried to deceive. To deceive! That was unpardonable. He was ashamed, stripped and unmasked without any means of retreat. Deception, falsity, cheating! So it was!

As a quondam Christian, John was most afraid of having a fault, and as a member of society he feared lest it should be visible. Everybody knew that one had faults, but to acknowledge them was regarded as a piece of cynicism, for society always wishes to appear better than it is. Sometimes, however, society demanded that one should confess one's fault if one wished for forgiveness, but that was a trick. Society wished for confession in order to enjoy the punishment, and was very deceitful. John had confessed his fault, been punished, and still his conscience was uneasy.

The second point regarding the girl was also difficult. She had loved him purely and he had insulted her. How coarse and vulgar! Why should he think that a waitress could not love innocently? His own mother had been in the same position as that girl. He had insulted her. Shame upon him!

Now he heard shouts in the park, and his name being called. The girl's voice and his friend's echoed among the trees, but he did not answer them. For a moment the scourge fell out of his hands; he became sobered and thought, "I will go back, we will have supper, call Riken and drink a glass with her, and it will be all over." But no! He was too high up and one cannot descend all at once.

The voices became silent. He lay back in a state of semi-stupefaction and ground his double crime between the mill-stones of rumination. He had lied and hurt her feelings.

It began to grow dark. There was a rustling in the bushes; he started and a sweat broke out upon him. Then he went out and sat upon a seat till the dew fell. He shivered and felt poorly. Then he got up and went home.

Now his head was clear and he could think. What a stupid business it all was! He did not really mean that she should take him for a poet, and had been quite ready to explain the whole trick. It was all a joke. His friend had made a fool of him, but it did not matter.

When he got home he found his friend sleeping in his bed. He wanted to rise but John would not let him. He wished to scourge himself once more. He lay on the floor, put a cigar-box under his head and drew a volunteer's cloak over him. In the morning when he awoke, John asked in trembling tones, "How did she take it?"

"Ah, she laughed; then we drank a glass, and it was over. She liked the verses."

"She laughed! Was she not angry?"

"Not at all."

"Then she only humbugged me."

John wished to hear no more. This trifle had kept him on the rack for a whole dreadful night. He felt ashamed of having asked whether she was disquieted about him. But since she had laughed and drunk punch she could not have been. Not even anxious about his life!

He dressed himself and went down to the school.

The habit of self-criticism derived from his religious training had accustomed him to occupy himself with his ego, to fondle and cherish it, as though it were a separate and beloved personality. So cherished the ego expanded and kept continually looking within instead of without upon the world. It was an interesting personal acquaintance, a friend who must be flattered, but who must also hear the truth and be corrected.

It was the mental malady of the time reduced to a system by Fichte, who taught that everything took place in the ego and through the ego, without which there was no reality. It was the formula for romanticism and for subjective idealism.

"I stood on the shore under the king's castle," "I dwell in the cave of the mountain," "I, small boy, watch the door," "I think of the beautiful times,"—all these phrases struck the same note. Was this "I" really so proud. Was not the poet's "I" more modest than the editor's royal "we"?

This absorption in self, or the new malady of culture, of which much is written nowadays, has been common with all men who have not worked with their bodies. The brain is only an organ for imparting movement to the muscles. Now when in a civilised man the brain cannot act upon the muscles, nor bring its power into play, there results a disturbance of equilibrium. The brain begins to dream; too full of juices which cannot be absorbed by muscular activity, it converts them involuntarily into systems, into thought-combinations, into the hallucinations which haunt painters, sculptors and poets. If no outlet can be found, there follows stagnation, violent outbreaks, depression, and at last madness. Schools which are often vestibules for asylums, have recourse to gymnastics, but with what result? There is no connection between the pupil's cerebral activity and the muscular activity called into play by gymnastics; the latter is only directed by another's will through the word of command.

All studious youths are aware of this tendency to congestion of the brain. It is a good thing that they often go out to improve or to beautify society, but it would be better if the equilibrium were restored, and a sound mind dwelt in a sound body. It has been sought to introduce physical work into schools as a remedy. It would be better to let elementary knowledge be acquired at home, to make the school a day-school, and to let every one look after himself. For the rest the emancipation of the lower classes will compel the higher classes to undertake some of the physical labour now carried on by domestics and so the equilibrium will be restored. That such labour does not blunt the intelligence can be easily seen by observing that some of the strongest minds of the time have had such daily contact with reality, e.g. Mill the civil service official, Spencer, the civil engineer, Edison the telegraphist. The student period of life, the most unwholesome because not under discipline, is also the most dangerous. The brain continually takes in, without producing anything, not even anything intellectual, while the whole muscular system is unoccupied.

John at this time was suffering from an over-production of thought and imagination. The mechanical school-work continually revolving in the same circle with the same questions and answers afforded no relief. It increased on the other hand his stock of observations of children and teachers. There lay and fermented in his mind a quantity of experiences, perceptions, criticisms and thoughts without any order. He therefore sought for society in order to speak his mind out. But it was not sufficient, and as he did not find any one who was willing to act as a sounding-board, he took to declaiming poetry.

In the early sixties declamation was much the fashion. In families they used to read aloud "The Kings of Salamis." In the numerous volunteer concerts the same pieces were declaimed over and over again. These declamations were what the quartette singing had been, an outlet for all the hope and enthusiasm called forth by the awakening of 1865. Since Swedes are neither born nor trained orators, they became singers and reciters, perhaps because their want of originality sought a ready-made means of expression. They could execute but not create. The same want of originality showed itself in the bachelor's gatherings where reciters of anecdotes were much in request. This feeble and tedious form of amusement was superseded when the new questions of the day provided food for conversation and discussion.

One day John came to his friend the elementary school-teacher whom he found together with another young colleague. When the conversation began to slacken, his friend produced a volume of Schiller, whose poems had just then appeared in a cheap edition and were bought mostly for that reason. They opened "The Robbers" and read round in turn, John taking the part of Karl Moor. The first scene of the first act took place between old Moor and Franz. Then came the second scene: John read, "I am sick of this quill-driving age when I read of great men in Plutarch." He did not know the play and had never seen bandits. At first he read absent-mindedly, but his interest was soon aroused. The play struck a new note. He found his obscure dreams expressed in words; his rebellious criticisms printed. Here then was another, a great and famous author who felt the same disgust at the whole course of education in school and university as he did, who would rather be Robinson Crusoe or a bandit than be enrolled in this army which is called society. He read on; his voice shook, his cheeks glowed, his breast heaved: "They bar out healthy nature with tasteless conventionalities."... There it stood all in black and white. "And that is Schiller!" he exclaimed, "the same Schiller who wrote the tedious history of the Thirty Years' War, and the tame drama "Wallenstein" which is read in schools!" Yes, it was the same man. Here (in "The Robbers") he preached revolt, revolt against law, society, morals and religion. That was in the revolt of 1781 eight years before the great revolution. That was the anarchists' programme a hundred years before its time, and Karl Moor was a nihilist. The drama came out with a lion on the title-page and with the inscription "In Tyrannos." The author then (1781) aged two-and-twenty had to fly. There was no doubt therefore about the intention of the piece. There was also another motto from Hippocrates which showed this intention as plainly; "What is not cured by medicine must be cured by iron; what is not cured by iron must be cured by fire."

That was clear enough! But in the preface the author apologised and recanted. He disclaimed all sympathy with Franz Moor's sophisms and said that he wished to exhibit the punishment of wickedness in Karl Moor. Regarding religion he said, "Just now it is the fashion to make religion a subject for one's wit to play upon as Voltaire and Frederick the Great did, and a man is scarcely reckoned a genius unless he can make the holiest truths the object of his godless satire...." I hope I have exacted no ordinary revenge for religion and sound morality in handing over these obstinate despisers of Scripture in the person of this scoundrelly bandit, to public contumely. Was then Schiller true when he wrote the drama, and false when he wrote the preface? True in both cases, for man is a complex creature, and sometimes appears in his natural sometimes in his artificial character. At his writing-table in loneliness, when the silent letters were being written down on paper, Schiller seems like other young authors to have worked under the influence of a blind natural impulse without regard to mens' opinion, without thinking of the public, or laws, or constitutions. The veil was lifted for a moment and the falsity of society seen through in its whole extent. The silence of the night when literary work—especially in youth,—is carried on, causes one to forget the noisy artificial life outside, and darkness hides the heaps of stones over which animals which are ill-adapted to their environment stumble. Then comes the morning, the light of day, the street noises, men, friends, police, clocks striking, and the seer is afraid of his own thoughts. Public opinion raises its cry, newspapers sound the alarm, friends drop off, it becomes lonely round one, and an irresistible terror seizes the attacker of society. "If you will not be with us," society says, "then go into the woods. If you are an animal ill-adapted to its environment, or a savage, we will deport you to a lower state of society which you will suit." And from its own point of view society is right and always will be right. But the society of the future will celebrate the revolter, the individual, who has brought about social improvement, and the revolter is justified long after his death.

In every intelligent youth's life there comes a moment when he is in the transition stage between family life and that of society, when he feels disgusted at artificial civilisation and breaks out. If he remains in society, he is soon suppressed by the united wet-blankets of sentiment and anxiety about living; he becomes tired, dazzled, drops off and leaves other young men to continue the fight. This unsophisticated glance into things, this outbreak of a healthy nature which must of necessity take place in an unspoilt youth, has been stigmatised by a name which is intended to depreciate the idealistic impulses of youth. It is called "spring fever" by which is meant that it is only a temporary illness of childhood, a rising of the vernal sap, which produces stoppage of the circulation and giddiness. But who knows whether the youth did not see right before society put out his eyes? And why do they despise him afterwards?

Schiller had to creep into a public post for the sake of a living and even eat the bread of charity from a duke's hand. Therefore his writing degenerated, though perhaps not from an æsthetic or subordinate point of view. But his hatred of tyrants is everywhere manifest. It declares itself against Philip II of Spain, Dorea of Genoa, Gessler of Austria, but therefore ceases to be effective. Schiller's rebellion which was in the first instance directed against society, was afterwards directed against the monarchy alone. He closes his career with the following advice to a world reformer (not, however, till he had seen the reaction which followed the French Revolution). "For rain and dew and for the welfare of mankind, let heaven care to-day, my friend, as it has always done." Heaven, the unfortunate old heaven will care for it, just as well as it has done before.

Just as a man once does his militia duty at the age of twenty-one, so Schiller did his. How many have shirked it!

John did not take the preface to "The Robbers" very seriously or rather ignored it; but he took Karl Moor literally for he was congenial. He did not imitate him, for he was so like him that he had no need to do so. He was just as mutinous, just as wavering, and just as ready at an alarm to go and deliver himself into the hands of justice.

His disgust at everything continually increased and he began to make plans for flight from organised society. Once it occurred to him to journey to Algiers and enlist in the Foreign Legion. That would be fine he thought to live in the desert in a tent, to shoot at half-wild men or perhaps be shot by them. But circumstances occurred at the right moment, to reconcile him again with his environment. Through the recommendation of a friend he was offered the post of tutor to two girls in a rich and cultured family. The children were to be educated in a new and liberal-minded method and neither to go to a girls' school nor have a governess. That was an important task to which he was called and John did not feel himself adequate to it; besides which he objected that he was only an elementary school-teacher. He was answered that his future employers knew that, but were liberal-minded. How liberal-minded people were at that time!

Now there commenced a new double life for him. From the penal institution of the elementary school with its compulsory catechism and Bible, its poverty, wretchedness, and cruelty, he went to dinner at one o'clock, which he swallowed in a quarter of an hour, and then by two o'clock was at his post as private tutor. The house was one of the finest at that time in Stockholm with a porter, Pompeian stair-cases and painted windows in the hall. In a handsome, large, well-lighted corner room with flowers, bird-cages and an aquarium he was to give lessons to two well-dressed, washed and combed little girls, who looked cheerful and satisfied after their dinner. Here he could give expression to his own thoughts. The catechism was banished, and only select Bible stories were to be read together with broad-minded explanations of the life and teachings of the Ideal Man, for the children were not to be confirmed, but brought up after a new model. They read Schiller and were enthusiastic for William Tell and the fortunate little land of freedom. John taught them all that he knew and spent more time in talking than in asking questions; he roused in them the hopes of a better future which he shared himself.

Here he obtained an insight into a social circle hitherto unknown to him, that of the rich and cultured. Here he found liberal-mindedness, courage and the desire for truth. Down below in the elementary school they were cowardly, conservative and untruthful. Would the parents of the children be willing to have religious teaching done away with, even if the school authorities recommended it? Probably not. Must then illumination come from the upper classes? Certainly, though not from the highest class of all, but from the republic of truth-seeking scientists. John saw that one must get an upper place in order to be heard; therefore he must strive upwards or pull culture down and cast the sparks of it among all. One needed to be economically independent in order to be liberally minded; a position was necessary in order to give one's words weight; thus aristocracy ruled in this sphere also.

There was at that time a group of young doctors, men of science and letters, and members of parliament who formed a liberal league without constituting themselves a formal society. They gave popular lectures, engaged not to receive any honorary decorations, cherished liberal views on the subject of the State Church and wrote in the papers. Among them were Axel Key, Nordenskiöld, Christian Loven, Harald Wieselgren, Hedlund, Victor Rydberg, Meijerberg, Jolin, and many less-known names. These, with one or two exceptions, worked quietly without creating excitement. After the reaction of 1872 they fell off and became tired; they could not join any political party which was rather an advantage than otherwise for the country party had already begun to be corrupted by yearly visiting Stockholm and attendance at the court. They now all belong to the moderate or respectable liberal party, except those of them who have joined the indifferents, a fact not to be wondered at, after they had for so many years fought uselessly for nothing.

Through the family of his pupils John came into external touch with this group, obtained a closer view of them, and heard their speeches at dinners and suppers. To John they sometimes seemed the very men whom the time needed, who would first spread enlightenment and then work for reform. Here he met the superintendent of the elementary school and was surprised at finding him among the liberals. But he had the school authorities over him and was as good as powerless. At a cheerful dinner, when John had plucked up heart, he wished to have an intimate talk with him and to come to an understanding. "Here," he thought, "we can play the part of augurs and laugh with each other over our champagne." But the superintendent did not want to laugh and asked him to postpone the conversation till they met in the school. No, John did not want to do that, for in the school both would have other views, and speak of something else.

John's debts increased and so did his work. He was in the school from eight till one; then he ate his dinner and went to give his private lessons within half-an-hour, arriving out of breath, with food half digested, and sleepy; then he taught till four o'clock going out afterwards to give more lessons in the Nordtullsgata; he returned to his girl pupils in the evening, and then read far into the night for his examination after ten hours' teaching. That was over-work. The pupil thinks his work hard, but he is only the carriage while the teacher is the horse. Teaching is decidedly harder than standing by a screw or the crane of a machine, and equally monotonous.

His brain, dulled by work and disturbed digestion, needed to be roused, and his strength needed replenishing. He chose the shortest and best method by going into a café, drinking a glass of wine, and sitting for a while. It was good that there were such places of recreation, where young men could meet and fathers of families recruit themselves over a newspaper and talk of something else than business.

The following summer he went out to a summer settlement outside the city. There he read daily for a couple of hours with his girl pupils and a whole number of children besides them. The summer settlement afforded rich and varied opportunities of social intercourse. It was divided into three camps,—the learned, the æsthetic and the civic. John belonged to all three. It has been asserted that loneliness injures the development of character (into an automaton), and if has been also asserted that much social intercourse is bad for the development of character. Everything can be said and can be true; it all depends upon the point of view. But no doubt for the development of the soul into a rich and free life much social intercourse is necessary. The more men one sees and talks with, the more points of view and experiences one gains. Every one conceals a grain of originality in himself, every individual has his own history. John got on equally well with all; he spoke on learned matters with the learned, discussed art and literature with the æsthetes, sang quartettes and danced with the young people, taught the children and botanised, sailed, rode and swam with them. But after he had spent some time in the rush, he withdrew into solitude for a day or two to digest his impressions. Those who were really happy were the townsmen. They came from their work in the town, shook off their cares and played in the evening. Old wholesale merchants played in the ring and sang and danced like children. The learned and the æsthetic on the other hand sat on chairs, spoke of their work, were worried by their thoughts as by nightmares and never seemed to be really happy. They could not free themselves from the tyranny of thought. The tradesmen, however, had preserved a little green spot in their hearts which neither the thirst for gain nor speculation nor competition had been able to parch up. There was something emotional and hearty about them which John was inclined to call "nature." They could laugh like lunatics, scream like savages, and be swayed by the emotions of the moment. They wept over a friend's misfortune or death, embraced each other when delighted and could be carried out of themselves by a beautiful sunset. The professors sat in chairs and could not see the landscape because of their eye-glasses, their looks were directed inwards, and they never showed their feelings. They talked in syllogisms and formulas; their laughter was bitter, and all their learning seemed like a puppet play. Is that then the highest point of view? It is not a defect to have let a whole region of the soul's life lie fallow?

It was the third camp with which John was on the most intimate terms. This was a little clique consisting of a doctor's family and their friends. There sang the renowned tenor W. while Professor M. accompanied him; there played and sang the composer J.; there the old Professor P. talked about his journeys to Rome in the company of painters of high birth. Here the emotions had full play, but were under the control of good taste. They enjoyed the sunsets, but analysed the lights and shades and talked of lines and "values." The more noisy enjoyments of the tradesmen were regarded as disturbing and unæsthetic. They were enthusiasts for art. John spent some hours pleasantly with these amiable people, but when he heard the sound of quartette singing and dance-music from the villa close by, he longed to be there. That was certainly more lively.

In hours of solitude he read, and now for the first time, became really acquainted with Byron. "Don Juan," which he already knew, he had found merely frivolous. It really dealt with nothing and the descriptions of scenery were intolerably long. The work seemed merely a string of adventures and anecdotes. In "Manfred" he renewed acquaintance with Karl Moor in another dress. Manfred was no hater of men; he hated himself more, and went to the Alps in order to fly himself, but always found his guilty self beside him, for John guessed at once that he had been guilty of incest. Nowadays it is generally believed that Byron hinted at this crime, which was purely imaginary, in order to make himself appear interesting. To become interesting as a romanticist at whatever price would at the present time be called "differentiating oneself, going beyond and above the others." Crime was regarded as a sign of strength, therefore it was considered desirable to have a crime to boast about, but not such a one as could be punished. They did not want to have anything to do with the police and penal servitude. There was certainly a spirit of opposition to law and morality in this boasting of crime.

Manfred's discontent with heaven and the government of Providence pleased John. Manfred's denunciations of men were really levelled at society, though society as we now understand it, had not then been discovered. Rousseau, Byron and the rest were by no means discontented misogynists. It was only primitive Christianity which demanded that men should love men. To say that one was interested in them would be more modest and truthful. One who has been overreached and thrust aside in the battle of life may well fear men, but one cannot hate them when one realises one's solidarity with humanity and that human intercourse is the greatest pleasure in life. Byron was a spirit who awoke before the others and might have been expected to hate his contemporaries, but none the less strove and suffered for the good of all.

When John saw that the poem was written in blank verse he tried to translate it, but had not got far, before he discovered that he could not write verse. He was not "called." Sometimes melancholy, sometimes frisky, John felt at times an uncontrollable desire to quench the burning fire of thought in intoxication and bring the working of his brain to a standstill. Though he was shy, he felt occasionally impelled to step forward, to make himself impressive, to collect hearers and appear on a stage. When he had drunk a good deal, he wanted to declaim poetry in the grand style. But in the middle of the piece, when his ecstasy was at its highest, he heard his own voice, became nervous and embarrassed, found himself ridiculous, suddenly dropped into a prosaic and comic tone and ended with a grimace; he could be pathetic, but only for a while; then came self-criticism and he laughed at his own overwrought feelings. The romantic was in his blood, but the realistic side of him was about to wake up.

He was also liable to attacks of caprice and self-punishment. Thus he remained away from a dinner to which he had been invited and lay in his room hungry till the evening. He excused himself by saying that he had overslept.

The summer approached its end and he looked forward to the beginning of the autumn term in the elementary school with dread. He had now been in circles where poverty never showed its emaciated face; he had tasted the enticing wine of culture and did not wish to become sober again.

His depression increased; he retired into himself and withdrew from the circle of his friends. But one evening, there was a knock at his door; the old doctor who had been his most intimate friend and lived in the same villa, stepped in.

"How are the moods?" he asked, and sat down with the air of an old fatherly friend.

John did not wish to confess. How was he to say that he was discontented with his position, and acknowledge that he was ambitious and wished to advance in life? But the doctor had seen and understood all. "You must be a doctor," he said. "That is a practical vocation which will suit you, and bring you into touch with real life. You have a lively imagination which you must hold in check, or it will do harm. Now are you inclined to this? Have I guessed right?"

He had. Through his intercourse from afar with these new prophets who succeeded the priests and confessors, John had come to see in their practical knowledge of men's lives, the highest pitch of human wisdom. To become a wise man who could solve the riddles of life,—that was for a while his dream. For a while, for he did not really wish to enter any career in which he could be enrolled as a regular member of society. It was not from dislike of work, for he worked strenuously and was unhappy when unoccupied, but he had a strong objection to be enrolled. He did not wish to be a cypher, a cog-wheel, or a screw in the social machine. He wished to stand outside and contemplate, learn and preach. A doctor was in a certain sense free; he was not an official, had no superiors, set in no public office, was not tied by the clock. That was a fairly enticing prospect, and John was enticed. But how was he to take a medical degree, which required eight years' study? His friend, however, had seen a way out of this difficulty. "Live with us and teach my boys," he said.

This was certainly a business-like offer which carried with it no sense of accepting a humiliating favour. But what about his place in the school? Should he give it up?

"That is not your place!" the doctor cut him short. "Every one should work where his talents can have free scope, and yours cannot in the elementary school, where you have to teach, as prescribed by the school authorities."

John found this reasonable, but he had been so imbued with ascetic teaching that he felt a pang of conscience. He wanted to leave the school, but a strange feeling of duty and obligation held him back. He felt quite ashamed of being suspected of such a natural weakness as ambition. And his place, as the son of a servant, had been assigned to him below. But his father had literally pulled him up, why should he sink and strike his roots down there again?

He fought a short bloody conflict, then accepted the offer thankfully, and sent in his resignation as a school-teacher.

[CHAPTER III]

THE DOCTOR

(1868)

John now found his new home with the homeless, the Israelites. He was immediately surrounded by a new atmosphere. Here there was no recollection of Christianity; one neither plagued oneself or others; there was no grace at meals, no going to church, no catechism.

"It is good to be here," thought John. "These are liberal-minded men who have brought the best of foreign culture home, without being obliged to take what is bad." Here for the first time, he encountered foreign influences. The family had journeyed much, had relatives abroad, spoke all languages, and received foreign guests. Both the small and great affairs of the country were spoken about, and light thrown on them by comparison with their originals abroad. By this means John's mental horizon was widened and he was enabled to estimate his native country better.

The patriarchal constitution of the family had not assumed the form of domestic tyranny. On the contrary the children treated their parents more as their equals, and the parents were gentle with them without losing their dignity. Placed in an unfriendly part of the world, surrounded by half-enemies, the members of the family helped each other and held together. To be without a native country, which is regarded as such a hard-ship, has this advantage that it keeps the intelligence alive and vigorous. Men who are wanderers have to watch unceasingly, observe continually, and gain new and rich experiences, while those who sit at home become lazy and lean upon others.

The children of Israel occupy a peculiar and exceptional position from a social point of view. They have forgotten the Messianic promise and do not believe in it. In most European countries they have remained among the middle classes; to join the lower classes was for the most part denied them, though not so widely as is generally believed. Nor could they join the upper classes; therefore they feel related to neither of the latter. They are aristocrats from habit and inclination, but have the same interests as the lower classes, i.e. they wish to roll away the stone which lies upon and presses them. But they fear the proletariat who have no religious sense and who do not love the rich. Therefore the children of Abraham rather aspire to those above them, than seek sympathy from those below.

About this time (1868) the question of Jewish emancipation began to be raised. All liberals supported it and it was practically a discarding of Christianity. Baptism, ecclesiastical marriage, confirmation, church attendance were all declared to be unnecessary conditions for membership in a Christian community. Such apparently small reforms make an impression on the state, like the dropping of water on a rock.

At that time a cheerful tone prevailed in the family, the sons having a brighter future in prospect than their fathers, whose academic course had been hindered by State regulations.

A liberal table was kept in the house; everything was of the best quality, and there was plenty of it. The servants managed the house and were allowed a free hand in everything; they were not regarded as servants. The housemaid was a pietist and allowed to be so, as much as she pleased. She was good-natured and humorous, and, illogically enough, adopted the jesting tone of the cheerful paganism which reigned in the house. On the other hand, no one laughed at her belief. John himself was treated as an intimate friend and a child alternately and lived with the boys. His work was easy and he was rather required to keep the boys company than to give them lessons. Meanwhile he became somewhat "spoiled" as people, who have the usual idea of keeping youth in the background, call it. Though only nineteen, he was received on an equal footing among well-known and mature artists, doctors, littérateurs and officials. He became accustomed to regard himself as grown up, and therefore the set-backs he encountered afterwards, were the harder to bear.

His medical career began with chemical experiments in the technological institute. There he obtained a closer view of some of the glories he had dreamed of in his childhood. But how dry and tedious were the rudiments of science! To stand and pour acids on salts and to watch the solution change colour, was not pleasant; to produce salts from two or more solutions was not very interesting. But later on, when the time came for analysis, the mysterious part began. To fill a glass about the size of a punch-bowl with a liquid as clear as water and then to exhibit in the filter the possibly twenty elements it contained,—this really seemed like penetrating into nature's secrets. When he was alone in the laboratory he made small experiments on his own account, and it was not long before with some danger he had prepared a little phial of prussic acid. To have death enclosed in a few drops under a glass stopper was a curiously pleasant feeling.

At the same time he studied zoology, anatomy, botany, physic and Latin,—still more Latin! To read and master a subject was congenial to him, but to learn by heart he hated. His head was already filled with so many subjects, that it was hard for anything more to enter, but it was obliged to.

A worse drawback was that so many other interests began to vie in his mind with his medical studies. The theatre was only a stone's throw from the doctor's house and he went there twice a week. He had a standing place at the end of the third row. From thence he saw elegant and cheerful French comedies played on a Brussels carpet. The light Gallic humour, admired by the melancholy Swedes as their missing complement, completely captivated him. What a mental equilibrium, what a power of resistance to the blows of fate were possessed by this race of a southern sunnier land! His thoughts became still more gloomy as he grew conscious of his Germanic "Weltschmerz" lying like a veil over everything, which a hundred years of French education could not have lifted. But he did not know that Parisian theatrical life differs widely from that of the industrious and thrifty Parisian at the desk and the counter. French comedies were written for the parvenus of the Second Empire; politics and religion were subject to the censor, but not morals. French comedy was aristocratic in tone, but had a liberating effect on the mind as it was in touch with reality, though it did not interfere in social questions. It accustomed the public to sympathise with and feel at home in this superfine world; one came to forget the lower everyday world, and when one left the theatre it felt as though one had been at supper with a friendly duke.

As chance fell out, the doctor's wife possessed a good library in which all the best literature of the world was represented. It was indeed a treasure to have all these at one's elbow! Moreover the doctor possessed a number of pictures by Swedish masters and a valuable collection of engravings. There was an efflorescence of æstheticism on all sides, even in the schools, where lectures on literature were delivered. The conversation in the family circle mostly turned on pictures, dramas, actors, books, authors, and the doctor felt from time to time impelled to flavour it with details of his practice.

Now and then John began to read the papers. Political and social life with their various questions opened up before him, but at first with a repelling effect, as he was an æsthete and domestic egoist. Politics did not seem to touch him at all; he considered it a special branch of knowledge like any other.

He continued his lessons to the girls and his intercourse with their family. Outside the house he met grown up relatives, who were tradesmen, and their acquaintances. His circle was therefore widened, and he saw life from more than one point of view. But this constant occupation with children had a hampering effect on his development. He never felt himself older, and he could not treat the young with an air of superiority. He already noticed that they were in advance of him, that they were born with new thoughts, and that they built on, where he had ceased. When later on in life, he met grown-up pupils, he looked up to them as though they were the older.

The autumn of 1865 had commenced. There had been so much miscalculation as to the effects of the new State constitution that there was widespread discontent. Society was turned topsy-turvy. The peasant threatened the civilised town-dwellers and there was a general feeling of bitterness.

Has the last word regarding the agrarian party yet been said? Probably not. It began with a democratic and reforming programme and its attack on the Civil List was the boldest stroke which had yet been seen. It was a legal attempt to overthrow the monarchy. If the vote of supply was screwed down to the lowest possible, the king would go. It was a simple and at the same time a clever stroke.

At a period which proclaims the right of the majority, one would not have expected the peasants' cause would encounter resistance. Sweden was a kingdom of peasants, for the country population numbered four millions, which in a population of four and a half millions, is certainly the majority. Should then the half million rule the four or vice versa? The latter course seemed the fairer. Now naturally the townsmen talk of the egotism and tyranny of the peasants, but have the labour party in the town a single item in their programme to improve the condition of the peasants and cottagers? It is so stupid to talk of egotism when every one now sees that he profits the whole, in proportion as he profits himself.

Meanwhile, in 1868, the malcontents discovered a party which could be opposed to the constitutional majority and whose programme contained all kinds of thorough-going reforms. That was the new liberal party, consisting for the most part of authors, some artisans, a professor, etc. By means of this handful of people who had none of the weighty interests which landed property involves, and whose social position was so insecure that a single unfavourable harvest could turn them into members of the proletariat, it was proposed to remodel society. What did the artisans know about society? How did they wish it to be constituted? Did they wish it to be remodelled in their interest, although the peasantry should be ruined? But that meant cutting off their own legs, for Sweden is not a land of exporting industries. Therefore the four million consumers in the land, as soon as their purchasing power was diminished, would involuntarily ruin the industries and leave the artisans stranded. That the artisans should advance is a necessity, but to wish to make all men industrial workers as the industrial socialists do, is much more unreasonable than to make them all peasants as the agrarian socialists purpose doing. Capital, which the labour party now attack, is the foundation of industry and if that is touched, industry is overthrown, and then the workmen must go back whence they came and still daily come,—to the country.

Meanwhile, the agrarian party was not yet corrupted by intercourse with aristocrats; it was neither conservative nor did it make compromises. The war seemed to be between the country and the town. The atmosphere was electric and the smallest cause might produce a thunderstorm.

In the capital there prevailed a general desire to erect a statue to Charles XII. Why? Was this last knight of the Middle Ages the ideal of the age? Bid the character of the idol of Gustav IV, Adolf, and Charles XV suitably express the spirit of the new peaceful period which now commenced? Or did the idea originate, as so often is the case in the sculptor's studio? Who knows? The statue was ready and the unveiling was to take place. Stands were erected for the spectators, but so unskilfully that the ceremony could not be witnessed by the general public, and the space railed off could only contain the invited guests, the singers and those who paid for their seats. But the subscription had been national and all believed they had a right to see. The arrangements were obnoxious to the people. Petitions were made to have the stands removed, but without success. The crowd began to make attempts to tear them down, but the military intervened. The doctor that day was giving a dinner to the Italian Opera Company. They had just risen from dessert when a noise was heard from the street; it was at first like rain falling on an iron roof, but then cries were distinctly audible. John listened, but for the moment nothing more was to be heard. The wine-glasses clinked amid Italian and French phrases which flew hither and thither over the table; there was such a noise of jests and laughter that those at the table could hardly hear themselves speak. But now there came a roar from the street, followed immediately by the tramp of horses, the rattle of weapons and harness. There was silence in the room for a moment, and one and another turned pale.

"What is it?" asked the prima donna.

"The mob making a noise," answered a professor.

John stood up from the table, went into his room, took his hat and stick and hurried out. "The mob!"—the words rang in his ear while he went down the street. "The mob!" They were his mother's former associates, his own school-mates and afterwards his pupils; they formed the dark background against which the society he had just quitted, stood out like a brilliant picture. He felt again as though he were a deserter, and had done wrong in working his way up. But he must get above if he was to do anything for those below. Yes many had said that, but when once they did get above, they found it so pleasant, that they forgot those below. These cavalrymen, for instance, whose origin was of the humblest, what airs they gave themselves! With what unmixed pleasure they cut down their former comrades, though it must be confessed they would have even more enjoyed cutting down the "black hats."

He went on and came to the market-place. The stands for the spectators stood out against the November sky like gigantic market booths, and the space below swarmed with men. From the opening of the Arsenal street the tramp of horses was heard only a short way off. Then they came riding forth, the blue guardsmen, the support of society, on whom the upper class relied. John was seized with a wild desire to dash against this mass of horses, men and sabres, as though he saw in them oppression incarnate. That was the enemy! very well—at them! The troop rode on and John stationed himself in the middle of the street. Whence had he derived this hatred against the supporters of law and order, who some day would protect him and his rights after he had clambered up, and was in a position to oppress others? If the mob with whom he now felt his solidarity had had their hands free, they would probably have thrown the first stone through the window, behind which he had sat with four wine-glasses in front of him. Certainly, but that did not prevent his taking their side just as the upper class often, inconsistently enough, takes sides against the police. This mania for freedom in the abstract is probably the natural man's small revolt against society.

He was going against the cavalry with a vague idea of striking them all to the ground or something of the sort, when fortunately some one seized him by the arm firmly but in a friendly way. He was brought back to the doctor's who had sent out to seek for him. After he had given his word of honour not to go out again he sank on a sofa, and lay all the evening in fever.

On the day of the unveiling of Charles XII's statue, he was one of the student singers, therefore among the elect, the "upper ten thousand," and had no reason to be discontented with his lot. When the ceremony was over, the people rushed forward. The police forced them back, and then they began to throw stones. The mounted police drew their sabres and struck, arresting some and assaulting others.

John had entered the market in front of the Jakob's church when he saw a policeman lay hold of a man, under a shower of stones which knocked off the constables' helmets. Without hesitation he sprang on the policeman, seized him by the collar, shook him and shouted, "Let the fellow go!"

The policeman looked at his assailant in astonishment.

"Who are you?" he asked irresolutely.

"I am Satan, and I will take you, if you don't let him go."

He actually did let him go and tried to seize John. At the same instant a stone knocked off his three-cornered hat. John tore himself loose; the crowd were now driven back by bayonets towards the guard-house in the Gustaf Adolf market. After them followed a swarm of well-dressed men, obviously members of the upper classes, shouting wildly, and as it seemed, resolved to free the prisoners. John ran with them; it was as though they were all impelled by a storm-wind. Men who had not been molested or oppressed at all, who had high positions in society, rushed blindly forward, risking their position, their domestic happiness, their living, everything. John felt a hand grasp his. He returned the pressure, and saw close beside him a middle-aged man, well-dressed, with distorted features. They did not know each other, nor did they speak together, but ran hand in hand, as if seized by one impulse. They came across a third in whom John recognised an old school-fellow, subsequently a civil service official, son of the head of a department. This young man had never sided with the opposition party in school, but on the contrary, was looked upon as a re-actionary with a future in front of him. He was now as white as a corpse, his cheeks were bloodless, the muscles of his forehead swollen, and his face resembled a skull in which two eyes were burning. They could not speak, but took each other's hands and ran on against the guards whom they were attacking. The human waves advanced till they were met by the bayonets, and then as always, dispersed in foam. Half-an-hour later John was discussing a beefsteak with some students in the Opera restaurant. He spoke of his adventure as though it were something which had happened independently of him and his will. Nay, he even jested at it. That may have been fear of public opinion, but also it may have been the case that he regarded his outbreak objectively and now quietly judged it as a member of society. The trap-door had opened for a moment, the prisoner had put his head out, and then it had closed again.

His unknown fellow-criminal, as he discovered later, was a pronounced conservative, a wholesale tradesman. He always avoided meeting John's eye, when they met after this. One time they met on a narrow pavement, and had to look at each other, but did not smile.

While they were sitting in the restaurant, came the news of the death of Blanche. The students took it fairly coolly, the artists and middle class citizens more warmly, but the lower classes talked of murder. They knew that he had personally besought Charles XV to have the spectators' stands taken down; they knew also, that though he was very prosperous himself, he had always thought of them and they were thankful. Stupid people objected, as is usual in such cases, that it required no great skill on his part to speak on behalf of the poor, when he was rich and celebrated. Did it not? It required the greatest.

It is remarkable that the chief outbreak of discontent was directed, not as elsewhere against the King, but against the governor and the police. Charles XV was a persona grata; he could do as he liked without becoming unpopular. He was neither condescending nor democratic in his tastes, but rather proud. Stories were told of some of his favourites having fallen into disgrace for want of respect on some mirthful occasion. He could put tobacco into his soldiers' mouths, but he scolded officers who did not at once fall in with his moods. He could box people's ears at a fire, and did not laugh when he was caricatured in a comic paper, as was supposed. He was a ruler and believed he was also a warrior and a statesman; he interfered in the government and could snub specialists with a "You don't understand that!" But he was popular and remained so. Swedes, who do not like to see a man's will slackening, admired this will and bowed before it. It was also strange, that they forgave his irregular life; perhaps it was because he made no secret of it. He had laid down a standard of morality for himself and lived according to it. Therefore he lived at harmony with himself, and harmony is always pleasant to contemplate.

People might be revolters by instinct, but they did not believe in the transition form to a better social constitution, i.e. a republic. They had seen how two French republics had been followed by new monarchies. There were secret anarchists, but no republicans, and they had persuaded themselves that the monarchy offered no barrier to the progress of liberty.

These were the ideas of the younger men. The elder men with Blanche thought a republic the only means of social salvation and therefore in our days the old liberal school has become conservative-republican.

When the doctor saw that his wife's literary books threatened to encroach upon John's medical studies, he resolved to give him a glimpse into the secrets of his profession, and to allow him such a foretaste of real work as should entice him to overcome the tedious preliminary studies which he himself thought too extensive. John now knew more chemistry and physics than the doctor, and the latter thought it was merely malicious to hinder a rival's course by imposing too hard preliminary studies. Why should he not, as in America, commence dissection, which was a special branch of study? Now after the theoretical study of anatomy, he could begin practice as an assistant. That was a new life full of variety and reality. One went for instance into a dark alley and came into a porter's room, where a woman lay, sick of fever, surrounded by poor children, the grandmother and other relations, who stole about on tip-toe, awaiting the doctor's verdict. The malodorous ragged bed-cover would be lifted, a sunken heaving chest exposed to view, and a prescription written. Then one went to the Tvädgårdsgatan and was conducted over soft carpets through splendid rooms into a bed-chamber which looked liked a temple; one lifted a blue silk coverlet and put in splints the leg of an angelic-looking child, dressed in lace. On the way out one looked at a collection of paintings, and talked about artists. This was something novel and interesting, but what connection had it with Titus Livius and the history of philosophy?

But then came the details of surgery. One was roused at seven o'clock in the morning, came into the doctor's dark room, and manually assisted at the cauterising of a syphilitic sore. The room reeked of human flesh, and was repugnant to an empty stomach. Or he had to hold a patient's head and felt it twitch with pain while the doctor with a fork extracted glands from his throat.

"One soon gets accustomed to that," said the doctor, and that was true, but John's thoughts were busy with Goethe's Faust, Wieland's Epicurean romances, George Sand's social phantasies, Chateaubriand's soliloquies with nature, and Lessing's common-sense theories. His imagination was set in motion and his memory refused to work; the reality of cauterisations and flowing blood was ugly; æstheticism had laid hold of him, and actual life seemed to him tedious and repulsive. His intercourse with artists had opened his eyes to a new world, a free society within Society. They would come to a well-spread table where cultivated people were sitting with badly-fitting clothes, black nails, and dirty linen, as if they were not merely equal, but superior to the rest,—in what?

They could scarcely write their names, they borrowed money without repaying it, and their talk was coarse. Everything was permitted to them, which was not permitted to others. Why? They could paint. They studied at the Academy, and the Academy did not ask whether all who enrolled themselves as students were geniuses. How was it known that they were geniuses? Was painting greater than knowledge and science?

They also had, as was well recognised, a peculiar morality of their own. They opened studios, hired models, and boasted of their paramours, while other men were ashamed of theirs and incurred disapproval on account of them. They laughed at what were very serious matters for other men, nay, it seemed to be part of an artist's equipment to be a "scoundrel," as any one else would be called for similar conduct.

"That was a glad free world," thought John, and one in which he could thrive, without conventional fetters or social obligations, and above all, without contact with banal realities. But he was not a genius? How should he get the entrée to it? Should he learn to paint and so be initiated? No! that would not do; he had never thought of painting; that demanded a special vocation, he thought, and painting would not express all he had to say, when once he began to speak. If he had to find a medium for self-expression it would be the theatre. An actor could step forward, and say all kinds of truths, however bitter they might be, without being brought to book for them. That was certainly a tempting career.

[CHAPTER IV]

IN FRONT OF THE CURTAIN

(1869)

John's proposal to transfer the university from Upsala to Stockholm was destined to have consequences, and his comrades had warned him of them. When he went up early in spring in order to write the obligatory Latin essay he had sent the professor by post the three test-essays and the 15 krona fee. So he could carry out his purpose unhindered and enrolled himself.

But now in May he wished to go and pass the preliminary examination in chemistry. In order to be well prepared, he had himself tested by the assistant-professor at the technological institute. The latter did so and declared that he already knew more than was needed for the medical examination. Thus prepared, he went up to Upsala. His first visit was to a comrade, who had already passed the preliminary examination in chemistry, and knew the "tips" for it.

John began: "I can do synthesis and analysis, and have studied organic chemistry."

"That is very well, for we only need synthesis; however, it is no use for you have not studied in the professor's laboratory."

"That is true; but the course at the Institute is much better."

"No matter,—it is not his."

"We shall see," said John, "whether knowledge does not tell in any ease."

"If you are so sure, then try, but consider first what I say. You must first go to the assistant-professor and get a 'tip'."

"What do you mean?"

"For a krona he will give you an hour's polishing, and ask you all the important questions which the professor has put during the past year. Just now he is in the habit of asking whether matches can be made out of his carcase and ammonia from your old boots. But that you will learn from the assistant. Secondly, you must not go to be examined in a frock coat and white tie; least of all, dressed as well as you are now. Therefore you must borrow my riding-coat, which is green in the shoulders and red in the seams, and my top-boots, for he does not like elastic boots."

John followed his friend's instructions and went first to the assistant-professor who gave him the questions which had been last asked. In return John promised that under all circumstances he would return and tell him the questions which he himself had been asked, as a means of enlarging his catechism.

The next day John went to his friend to array himself. His trousers were drawn up so that the tops of the boots should be seen and his loose collar turned on one side, so that the skin should show between the tie and the collar. Thus equipped, he went up for his first trial.

The professor of chemistry had formerly been a fortification officer, and had received in his time a not very cordial welcome from the learned staff in Upsala. He was a soldier, not academically cultivated, and thus a kind of "Philistine." This had galled him and made him bilious. In order to efface the effect of his laymen-like exterior, he affected the airs of an over-read and blunt professor. He went about ill-dressed and behaved eccentrically. Though many hundreds besides himself had been pupils of Berzelius, he was fond of mentioning the fact; it was his trump card. Berzelius, among other things, went about in shabby trousers, therefore a hole in one's clothes was the sign of a learned chemist, and so on. Hence all these peculiarities.

John presented himself, was regarded with suspicion and bidden to come again in a week. He replied that he had come from Stockholm and was too poor to support himself for a week in the town. He managed to get permission to present himself the next day. "It would be soon over," said the old man.

The next day he sat on a seat opposite the professor. It was a sunny afternoon in May, and the old man seemed to have digested his dinner badly. He looked grim as he threw out his first question from his rocking-chair. The answers were correct at the beginning. Then the questions became more tortuous like snakes.

"If I have an estate, where I suspect the presence of saltpetre, how shall I begin to construct a saltpetre factory?"

John suggested a saltpetre analysis.

"No."

"Well, then, I don't know anything else."

There was silence and the flies buzzed,—a long and terrible silence. "Now will come the question about the boots or the matches," thought John, "and there I shall shine." He coughed by way of rousing the professor, but the silence continued. John wondered whether he had been seen through and whether the old man recognised the "examination coat."

Then came a new question which was unanswered, and then another.

"You have come too soon," said the old man, and rose up.

"Yes, but I have worked a whole year in the laboratory, and can do chemical analysis."

"Yes, you know how to make up prescriptions, but you have not digested your knowledge. In the Institute only manual dexterity is necessary, but here scientific knowledge is required."

As a matter of fact the case was exactly the reverse for the medical students in Upsala complained that they had to stand like cooks and make up mixtures and salts, without having time to look at an analysis, which last was just what a doctor ought to do while synthesis was the apothecary's work. But now the proposal made some years before whether the university had not better be transferred to Stockholm had roused a feeling in Upsala against the capital. Moreover the laboratory of the newly-built technological institute was as famous for its excellent equipment, as that of Upsala was notorious for its poor one. Here, therefore, petty prejudices were at work and John felt the unfairness of it. "I do not then get a certificate?" he asked.

"No, sir, not this year; but come again next year."

The professor was ashamed to say, "Go to my only soul-saving laboratory."

John went out furious. Here then again neither diligence nor knowledge prevailed, but only cash and cringing! Had he tried short cuts? No, on the contrary, he had been obliged to travel by painful circuitous paths, while others had gone the direct road, and the directest is the shortest.

He went to the Carolina Park, as angry as an irritated bee. He did not wish to return at once to the town, but sat down on a seat. If he could only set this devil's hole on fire! Another year? No, never! Why read so much unnecessary stuff, which would only be forgotten, and be of no practical use? And slave in order to enter this dirty profession where one had to analyse urine, pick about in vomit, poke about in all the recesses of the body? Faugh! Just as he was sitting there, a group of cheerful-looking people came by, and stood laughing outside the Carolina library. They looked up to the window's, through which long rows of books were visible, shelf after shelf. They laughed,—the men and women laughed at the books. He thought he recognised them. Yes, they were Levasseur's French actors, whom he had seen in Stockholm and who were now visiting Upsala. They laughed at the books! Lucky people who could be importers of genius and culture without books. Perhaps every soul had something to give which was not in books, but would be there some day. Yes, certainly it was so. He himself possessed stories of experience and thoughts, which could enrich anthropology, and were ready to be throw out.

Again there stole upon him the thought of entering this privileged profession, which stood outside and above petty social conventions which ignored distinctions of rank, and in which one need never be conscious of belonging to the lower classes. There one could appeal to the universal judgment, and work in full publicity instead of being hung up here in a remote dark hole, without a verdict, examination, or witnesses.

Strengthened by this new idea, he stood up, east a glance at the books above, and went down to the town resolved to go home and seek for an engagement in the Theatre Royal.

Every townsman has probably felt once in his life the wish to appear as an actor. This is probably due to the impulse of the cultivated man to magnify and make himself something, to identify himself with great and celebrated personalities. John, who was a romanticist, had also the desire to step forward and harangue the public. He believed that he could choose his proper rôle, and he knew beforehand which it would be. The fact that he, like all others, believed that he had the capacity to become an actor, sprang from the superfluity of unused force, produced by a want of sufficient physical exercise, and from the tendency to megalomania connected with mental over-exertion. He saw no difficulties in the profession itself, but expected opposition from another quarter.

To attribute his being stage-struck to hereditary tendencies would perhaps be hasty, since we have just remarked that it is an almost universal impulse. But his paternal grandfather, a Stockholm citizen, had written dramatic pieces for an amateur theatre, and a young distant relative still lived as a warning example. The latter had been an engineer, had been through a course of instruction in the Motala iron-works, and had a post on the Köping-Hult railway. He therefore had fine prospects in front of him, but suddenly threw them up, and became an actor. This step of his was an incessant trouble to his family. Up to this time the young man had become nothing but was still travelling about with an obscure theatrical company. The danger of becoming like him was the difficult point. "Yes," said John to himself, "but I shall have luck." Why? Because he believed it; and he believed it because he wished it.

Some might be inclined to derive this strong impulse on John's part from the fact that he loved to play, as a child, with a toy theatre, but that is not sufficient, as all children do the same and he had got the taste from seeing them do it. The theatre was an unreal better world which enticed one out of the tedious real one. The latter would not have seemed so tedious if his education had been more harmonious and realistic and not given him such a strong tendency to romance. Enough; his resolution was taken; and without saying anything to any one, he went to the director of the Theatrical Academy the dramaturgist of the Theatre Royal.

When he heard the sound of his own words "I want to be an actor," he shuddered. He felt as though he tore down the veil of his inborn modesty, and did violence to his own nature.

The director asked what he was doing at present.