barbaric violence which to civilized people is
well-nigh incomprehensible. Thus, when, after an absence of six years,
he calls upon his brother-in-law, the pastor, he proceeds to turn
handsprings about the latter's study. When, after his marriage, his
sister meets him in the street for the purpose of informing him of the
scandalous rumors concerning his wife, he gives her a box on the ear.

In Bjoernson's last book, "New Tales" (_Nye Fortaellinger_) (1894), this
tendency to vehemence is even more marked. In the masterly story,
"Absalom's Hair" (than which the author has never written anything more
boldly original) old Harold Kaas literally spanks his young wife in the
presence of his servants. And the matter is in nowise minced, but
described with an unblushing zest which makes the impression of
_naivete_. It is obvious that in his delight in the exhibition of a
healthy, primitive wrath, Bjoernson half forgets how such barbarism must
affect his readers. We hear, to be sure, that the servants were filled
with indignation and horror, and that Harold Kaas, having expected
laughter and applause, "went away a defeated and irremediably crushed
man." But for all that the incident is crude, harsh, and needlessly
revolting. In Russia it might have happened; but I am inclined to doubt
if a Norwegian gentleman, even though he were descended from the
untamable Kurts, would have been capable of so outrageous a breach of
decency.

Apart from this incident, "Absalom's Hair" is so interpenetrated with a
sense of reality that we seem to live the story rather than read it. I
verily believe it to be a type of what the fiction of the future will
be, when scientific education shall have been largely substituted for
the classical; and even the novelists will be expected to know something
about the world in which they live and the sublime and inexorable laws
which govern it. At present the majority of them spin irresponsible
yarns, and play Providence _ad libitum_ to their characters. Man's vital
coherence with his environment is but loosely indicated. Chance reigns
supreme. They have observed carefully enough the external phenomena of
life--and chiefly for their picturesque or dramatic interest--but of the
causes which underlie them they rarely give us a glimpse.

It is in this respect that Bjoernson's last tales offer so grateful a
contrast to conventional fiction. Here is a man who has resolutely
aroused himself from the old romantic do