beyond its original condition. From its
windows on one side the eye stretched over nearly five miles of meadows,
fields, and villages belonging to the estate.

[Illustration: FREDRIKA BREMER]

In spite of its surroundings, however, Fredrika's childhood was not a
happy one. Her mother was severe and impatient of petty faults, and the
child's mind became embittered. Her father was reserved and melancholy.
Fredrika herself was restless and passionate, although of an
affectionate nature. Among the other children she was the ugly duckling,
who was misunderstood, and whose natural development was continually
checked and frustrated. Her talents were early exhibited in a variety of
directions. Her first verses, in French, to the morn, were written at
the age of eight. Subsequently she wrote comedies for home production,
prose and verse of all sorts, and kept a journal, which has been
preserved. In 1821 the whole family went on a tour abroad, from which
they did not return until the following year, having visited in the
meantime Germany, Switzerland, and France, and spent the winter in
Paris. This year among new scenes and surroundings seems to have brought
home to Fredrika, upon the resumption of her old life in the country,
its narrowness and its isolation. She was entirely shut off from all
desired activity; her illusions vanished one by one. "I was conscious,"
she says in her short autobiography, "of being born with powerful wings,
but I was conscious of their being clipped;" and she fancied that they
would remain so.

Her attention, however, was fortunately attracted from herself to the
poor and sick in the country round about; and she presently became to
the whole region a nurse and a helper, denying herself all sorts of
comforts that she might give them to others, and braving storm and
hunger on her errands of mercy. In order to earn money for her charities
she painted miniature portraits of the Crown Princess and the King, and
secretly sold them. Her desire to increase the small sums she thus
gained induced her to seek a publisher for a number of sketches she had
written. Her brother readily disposed of the manuscript for a hundred
rix-dollars; and her first book, 'Teckningar ur Hvardagslifvet'
(Sketches of Every-day Life), appeared in 1828, but without the name of
the author, of whose identity the publisher himself was left in
ignorance. The book was received with such favor that the young author
was induced to try