ion to its already acknowledged opinions. Although he was
lying there and dreaming, he remembered distinctly and clearly what
had happened the first time he wished to be married. Just as he was
dressing as a bridegroom, the nail gave way on which the picture
hung and it fell to the floor. He understood then that the portrait
wished to warn him against the marriage, but he did not obey it. He
soon found that the portrait had been right. His short married life
was very unhappy.

The second time he dressed as a bridegroom the same thing happened.
The portrait fell to the ground as before, and he did not dare
again to disobey it. He ran away from bride and wedding and
travelled round the world several times before he dared come home
again.--And now the picture stepped down from the wall and
commanded him to marry! However good and obedient he was, he
allowed himself to think that it was making a fool of him.

But his mother's portrait, which looked out with the grimmest face
that sharp winds and salt sea-foam could carve, stood solemnly as
before. And with a voice which had been exercised and strengthened
for many years by offering fish in the town marketplace, it
repeated: "You must marry, Mattsson."

Old Mattsson then asked his mother's portrait to consider what kind
of a community it was they lived in.

All the hundred houses of the fishing-village had pointed roofs and
whitewashed walls; all the boats of the fishing-village were of the
same build and rig. No one there ever did anything unusual. His
mother would have been the first to oppose such a marriage if she
had been alive. His mother had held by habits and customs. And it
was not the habit and custom of the fishing-village for old men of
seventy years to marry.

His mother's picture stretched out her beringed hand and positively
commanded him to obey. There had always been something excessively
awe-inspiring in his mother when she came in her black silk dress
with many flounces. The big, shining gold brooch, the heavy,
rattling gold chain had always frightened him. If she had worn her
market-clothes, in a striped head-cloth and with an oil-cloth
apron, covered with fish-scales and fish eyes, he would not have
been quite so overawed by her. The end of it was that he promised
to get married. And then his mother's portrait crept up into the
frame again.

The next morning old Mattsson woke in great trouble. It never
occurred to him to disobey his mother's por