Kielland from saying too much--from
enforcing his lesson by marginal comments, _a la_ George Eliot. But he
must be obtuse, indeed, to whom this reticence is not more eloquent and
effective than a page of philosophical moralizing.

"Hope's Clad in April Green" and "The Battle of Waterloo" (the first and
the last tale in the Norwegian edition), are more untinged with a moral
tendency than any of the foregoing. The former is a mere _jeu d'esprit_,
full of good-natured satire on the calf-love of very young people, and
the amusing over-estimate of our importance to which we are all, at that
age, peculiarly liable.

As an organist with vaguely-melodious hints foreshadows in his prelude
the musical _motifs_ which he means to vary and elaborate in his fugue,
so Kielland lightly touched in these "novelettes" the themes which in
his later works he has struck with a fuller volume and power. What he
gave in this little book was it light sketch of his mental physiognomy,
from which, perhaps, his horoscope might be cast and his literary future
predicted.

Though an aristocrat by birth and training, he revealed a strong
sympathy with the toiling masses. But it was a democracy of the brain, I
should fancy, rather than of the heart. As I read the book, twelve years
ago, its tendency puzzled me considerably, remembering, as I did, with
the greatest vividness, the fastidious and elegant personality of the
author. I found it difficult to believe that he was in earnest. The
book seemed to me to betray the whimsical _sans-culottism_ of a man of
pleasure who, when the ball is at an end, sits down with his gloves
on and philosophizes on the artificiality of civilization and the
wholesomeness of honest toil. An indigestion makes him a temporary
communist; but a bottle of seltzer presently reconciles him to his lot,
and restores the equilibrium of the universe. He loves the people at a
distance, can talk prettily about the sturdy son of the soil, who is
the core and marrow of the nation, etc.; but he avoids contact with
him, and, if chance brings them into contact, he loves him with his
handkerchief to his nose.

I may be pardoned for having identified Alexander Kielland with this
type with which I am very familiar; and he convinced me, presently, that
I had done him injustice. In his next book, the admirable novel _Garman
and Worse_, he showed that his democratic proclivities were something
more than a mood. He showed that he took himself s