ht of the whole restaurant, and
especially of the door into the street. Every one who entered, every
couple that conversed, every movement of the scene, gave something to
those untiring eyes. The newspaper and the cafe mirror--these were the
books which, for the future, Ibsen was almost exclusively to study; and
out of the gestures of a pair of friends at a table, out of a paragraph
in a newspaper, even out of the terms of an advertisement, he could
build up a drama. Incessant observation of real life, incessant capture
of unaffected, unconsidered phrases, actual living experience leaping
in his hands like a captive wild animal, this was now the substance
from which all Ibsen's dreams and dramas were woven. Concentration of
attention on the vital play of character, this was his one interest.

Out of this he was roused by a sudden determination to go at last and
see for himself what life in Norway was really like. A New England wit
once denied that a certain brilliant and Europe-loving American author
was a cosmopolitan. "No," he said, "a cosmopolitan is at home even in
his own country." Ibsen began to doubt whether he was not too far off
to follow events in Norway--and these were now beginning to be very
exciting--well enough to form an independent judgment about them; and
after twenty years of exile there is no doubt that the question was
fairly put. _The Wild Duck_ had been published in November, 1884, and
had been acted everywhere in Scandinavia with great success. The critics
and the public were agreed for the first time that Ibsen was a very
great national genius, and that if Norway was not proud of him it would
make a fool of itself in the eyes of Europe.

Ibsen had said that Norway was a barbarous country, inhabited by two
millions of cats and dogs, but so many agreeable and highly-civilized
compliments found their way to him in Rome that he began to fancy that
the human element was beginning to be introduced. At all events,
he would see for himself, and in June, 1885, instead of stopping at
Gossensass, he pushed bravely on and landed in Christiania.

At first all went well, but from the very beginning of the visit he
observed, or thought he observed, awkward phenomena. The country was
thrilled with political excitement, and it vibrated with rhetorical
resolutions which seemed to Ibsen very empty. He had a constitutional
horror of purely theoretical questions, and these were occupying Norway
from one end to the