dmirable
conscientiousness and artistic perception. Few men of letters would
object to being the father of so creditable a failure. Lie, being
convinced that his book was a good one, no matter what the wielders of
critical tomahawks might say to the contrary, resolved to persevere in
the line he had chosen and to pluck victory from the heels of defeat.
And the victory came even the same year (1883), when he published what,
to my mind, is the most charming of all his novels, "The Family at
Gilje." That is a book which is taken, warm and quivering, out of the
very heart of Norway. The humor which had been cropping out tentatively
in Lie's earlier tales comes here to its full right, and his shy,
beautiful pathos gleams like hidden tears behind his genial smile. It is
close wrought cloth of gold. No loosely woven spots--no shoddy woof of
cheaper material. Captain Jaeger and his wife, Inger-Johanna, Joergen,
Grip, nay, the whole company of sober, everyday mortals that come
trooping through its chapters are so delightfully human that you feel
the blood pulse under their skin at the first touch. It is a triumph
indeed, to have written a book like "The Family at Gilje."

From this time forth Jonas Lie's career presents an unbroken series of
successes. "A Maelstrom" (1884), "Eight Stories," "Married Life" (_Et
Samliv_), (1887), "Maisa Jons" (1888), "The Commodore's Daughters" and
"Evil Powers" (1890), which deal with interesting phases of contemporary
life, are all extremely modern in feeling and show the same effort to
discard all tinsel and sham and get at the very heart of reality.

He had by this series of novels established his reputation as a
relentless realist, when, in 1892, he surprised his admirers by the
publication of two volumes of the most wildly fantastic tales, entitled
"Trold." It was as if a volcano, with writhing torrents of flame and
smoke, had burst forth from under a sidewalk in Broadway. It was the
suppressed Finn who, for once, was going to have his fling, even though
he were doomed henceforth to silence. It was the "queer thoughts" (which
had accumulated in the author and which he had scrupulously imprisoned)
returning to take vengeance upon him unless he released them. The most
grotesque, weird, and uncanny imaginings (such as Stevenson would
delight in) are crowded together in these tales, some of which are
derived from folk-lore and legends, while others are free fantasies.

Before taking leave of J