ving the church and parsonage unharmed. The rumor of this
new wonder spreads like fire in withered grass, and among thousands of
others a number of clergymen, with their bishop, on their way to some
convention, stop to convince themselves of the authenticity of the
miracle, and to determine the attitude which they are to assume toward
it. Then follows a long discussion between the bishop and the clergy
regarding the value of miracles, some maintaining that the church has
outgrown the need of them, others that they are indispensable--that
Christianity cannot survive without them. For has not Christ promised
that "even greater things than these shall ye do?" Is not this a case of
the faith which verily can say to the mountain, "Rise up and cast
thyself into the sea?"

The other miracle, scarcely less marvellous than the deflection of the
avalanche, is that Clara, who has slept for the first time in a month,
now rises from her bed and goes forth to meet her husband, and falls
upon his neck amid the ringing of the church-bells and the hallelujahs
of the assembled multitudes. But when he tries to raise her she is dead,
and he himself, overwhelmed by his emotion, falls dead at her side.

This is so obviously a closet-drama that it is difficult to imagine how
it would look under the illumination of the foot-lights. For all that, I
see a recent announcement that the trial is soon to be made at the
_Theatre Libre_ in Paris.[10] No Scandinavian theatre, as far as I know,
has as yet had the courage to risk the experiment. In his next play,
however, "Love and Geography" (1885), Bjoernson reconquered the stage and
repeated his early triumphs. From the scientific seriousness of "Beyond
their Strength" his pendulum swung to the opposite extreme of light
comedy, almost bordering on farce. Not that "Love and Geography" is
without a Bjoernsonian moral, but it is amusingly, jocosely enforced in
scenes of great vivacity and theatrical effect. This time it is himself
the author has chosen to satirize. The unconscious tyranny of a man who
has a mission, a life-work, is delightfully illustrated in the person of
the geographer, Professor Tygesen, to whom Bjoern Bjoernson, the actor,
when he played the part at the Christiania Theatre, had the boldness to
give his father's mask. Professor Tygesen is engaged upon a great
geographical opus, and gradually takes possession of the whole house
with his maps, globes, and books, driving his wife from th