work of one evening, but of many days,--then the
old woman had laid herself down to die.

And in that life, with its faithful solicitude for her son, there
was some meaning, thought Boerje Nilsson's wife.

But in her own life she saw no meaning. Her husband was drowned
after a few years of married life, and her one child died young.
She had not been able to make any change in her husband. She had
not been able to teach him earnestness and truth. It was rather in
her the change showed, after she had been more and more with the
fishing people. She would never see any of her own family, for she
was ashamed that she now resembled in everything a fisherman's
wife. If it had only been of any use! If she, who lived by mending
the fishermen's nets, knew why she clung so to life! If she had
made any one happy or had improved anybody!

It never occurred to her to think that she who considers her life a
failure because she has done no good to others, perhaps by that
thought of humility has saved her own soul.

HIS MOTHER'S PORTRAIT

None of the hundred houses of the fishing-village, where each is
exactly like the other in size and shape, where all have just as
many windows and as high chimneys, lived old Mattsson, the pilot.

In all the rooms of the fishing-village there is the same sort of
furniture, on all the window-sills stand the same kinds of flowers,
in all the corner-cupboards are the same collections of sea-shells
and coral, on all the walls hang the same pictures. And it is a
fixed old custom that all the inhabitants of the fishing-village
live the same life. Since Mattsson, the pilot, had grown old, he
had conformed carefully to the conditions and customs; his house,
his rooms and his mode of living were like everybody else's.

On the wall over the bed old Mattsson had a picture of his mother.
One night he dreamed that the portrait stepped down from its frame,
placed itself in front of him and said with a loud voice: "You must
marry, Mattson."

Old Mattsson then began to make clear to his mother that it was
impossible. He was seventy years old.--But his mother's portrait
merely repeated with even greater emphasis: "You must marry, Mattsson."

Old Mattsson had great respect for his mother's portrait. It had
been his adviser on many debatable occasions, and he had always
done well by obeying it. But this time he did not quite understand
its behavior. It seemed to him as if the picture was acting in
opposit