Krag, whose names we
Americans have hardly yet learned to know. I mean this, however, less
in regard to his matter than to his manner. Although several of his
short stories are French in their setting and others are Danish, the
greater part of his work and all of the important novels and plays
act and have their being in Norway. Kielland's attitude towards his
material, on the other hand, is new to Norwegian literature. For the
first time in his pages, among both his forbears and his
contemporaries, we meet with the point of view of a man of the world.
Bjornson and Jonas Lie have always a sort of homely provincialism,
inherent and characteristic, that is part and parcel of their
literary personality, whose absence would be felt under the
circumstances as a lack of necessary vigour. Kielland, on the
contrary, as inherently, has throughout unmistakably an air of
_savoir vivre_, in the long run much surer in its appeal to us
outside of Norway because of its more general intelligibility.
Bjornson and Jonas Lie in this way have secured places in literature
in no small part because of their characteristic Norwegianism;
Kielland to some little extent has secured his place because of the
want of it. Ibsen is here left out of the discussion. He is quite
_sui generis_, and apart from the mere choice of environment, for his
work could belong anywhere....

Kielland's novels are one and all novels of tendency. With his first
short stories as a criterion, and a knowledge of his own personal
antecedents and the almost necessary predilections that he might be
supposed to possess, his career as a novelist could not have been
foreseen. His early stories betray no great seriousness of purpose,
and his personal environment removed him as far as possible from
liberalism in ethics and religion, from socialistic proclivities even
remotely democratic, and a ready susceptibility to the whole spirit
of the age. Yet these are just the characteristics of his later
books. They are strong, liberal, and modern; so much so that many of
them have evoked a loud spirit of protest in Norway, where leaven of
this sort is still striven against in many quarters.--From "Alexander
Kielland," in "The Bookman" (1896).

SKIPPER WORSE

CHAPTER I

"Here, Lauritz, you young scamp, go aloft and clear the dogvane."

Skipper Worse was standing on his quarter-deck, a fresh north wind
was blowing in the fjord, and the old brig was gliding along quie