pply to him Malloch's epigrammatic damnation of the man of whom
it was said at twenty that he would do great things, at thirty that
he might do great things, and at forty that he might have done great
things.

This was the frame of mind of those who remembered Alexander Kielland
(and he was an extremely difficult man to forget), when in the year 1879
a modest volume of "novelettes" appeared, bearing his name. It was, to
all appearances, a light performance, but it revealed a sense of style
which made it, nevertheless, notable. No man had ever written the
Norwegian language as this man wrote it. There was a lightness of touch,
a perspicacity, an epigrammatic sparkle and occasional flashes of wit,
which seemed altogether un-Norwegian. It was obvious that this author
was familiar with the best French writers, and had acquired through
them that clear and crisp incisiveness of utterance which was supposed,
hitherto, to be untransferable to any other tongue.

As regards the themes of these "novelettes" (from which the present
collection is chiefly made up), it was remarked at the time of their
first appearance that they hinted at a more serious purpose than their
style seemed to imply. Who can read, for instance, "Pharaoh" (which
in the original is entitled "A Hall Mood") without detecting the
revolutionary note which trembles quite audibly through the calm
and unimpassioned language? There is, by-the-way, a little touch of
melodrama in this tale which is very unusual with Kielland. "Romance
and Reality," too, is glaringly at variance with the conventional
romanticism in its satirical contributing of the pre-matrimonial and the
post-matrimonial view of love and marriage. The same persistent tendency
to present the wrong side as well as the right side--and not, as
literary good-manners are supposed to prescribe, ignore the former--is
obvious in the charming tale "At the Fair," where a little spice of
wholesome truth spoils the thoughtlessly festive mood; and the squalor,
the want, the envy, hate, and greed which prudence and a regard for
business compel the performers to disguise to the public, become the
more cruelly visible to the visitors of the little alley-way at the rear
of the tents. In "A Good Conscience" the satirical note has a still more
serious ring; but the same admirable self-restraint which, next to the
power of thought and expression, is the happiest gift an author's fairy
godmother can bestow upon him, saves