a spurious impression of prosperity. Though by
nature an affectionate man, he neglects his family because business
demands all his time. He defrauds himself of the happiness which knocks
at his door, because business fills his head by night and by day, and
absorbs all his energy. A number of parasites (such as the
fortune-hunting lieutenant) attach themselves to him, as long as he is
reputed to be rich, and make haste to vanish when his riches take wings.
On the other hand, the true friends whom in his prosperity he hectored
and contemned are revealed by adversity. There would be nothing
remarkable in so common an experience, if the friends themselves, as
well as the parasites, were not so delightfully delineated. The
lieutenant, with his almost farcical interest in the bay trotter, is
amusingly but lightly drawn; but the awkward young clerk, Sannaes, who
refuses to abandon his master in the hour of trial, is a deeply typical
Norwegian figure. All the little coast towns have specimens to show of
these aspiring, faithful, sensitively organized souls, who, having had
no social advantages are painfully conscious of their deficiencies, but
whose patient industry and sterling worth in the end will triumph. No
less keenly observed and effectively sketched is the whole gallery of
dastardly little village figures--Holm, Falbe, Knutson with an s,
Knutzon, with a z, etc. Signe and Valborg, the two daughters of Tjaelde,
have, in spite of their diversity, a common tinge of Norwegian
nationality which gives a gentle distinctness and relief to the
world-old types.

Bjoernson's next play,[7] "The Editor," grapples with an equally modern
and timely subject, viz., the license of the press. With terrible
vividness he shows the misery, ruin, and degradation which result from
the present journalistic practice of misrepresentation, sophistry, and
defamation. It is a very dark picture he draws, with scarcely a gleam of
light. The satire is savage; and the quiver of wrath is perceptible in
many a sledge-hammer phrase. You feel that Bjoernson himself has suffered
from the terrorism which he here describes, and you would surmise too,
even if you did not know it, that the editor whom he has here pilloried
is no mere general editorial type, but a well-known person who, until
recently, conducted one of the most influential journals in Norway. The
play is an act of retribution, and a deserved one. But its weaknesses,
which it is vain to disguise, a