then antiquity, who, like a veritable Valhalla god, dared to oppose
the terrible Danish king Harald Blaatand. When Olsen's parents gave
him this name they unwittingly described their son, "forever drawn by
two poles: one the plain Olsen, the other the hot-headed fiery
Viking." With this in mind, and considering Drachmann's literary works
as a whole, one is irresistibly reminded of his friend and
contemporary in Norway, Bjoernsterne Bjoernson. There is this difference
between them, however, that if the irony of Palnatoke Olsen may be
applied to both, one might for Drachmann use the abbreviation P. Olsen
and for Bjoernson undoubtedly Palnatoke O.

It might be said of Drachmann, as Sauer said of the Italian poet
Monti:--"Like a master in the art of appreciation, he knew how to give
himself up to great time-stirring ideas; somewhat as a gifted actor
throws himself into his part, with the full strength of his art, with
an enthusiasm carrying all before it, and in the most expressive way;
then when the part is played, lays it quietly aside and takes hold of
something else."

When a young man, Drachmann studied at the Academy of Arts in
Copenhagen, and met with considerable success as a marine painter. His
love for the Northern seas shows itself in his poetry and prose, and
his descriptions of the sea and the life of the sailor and fisherman
are of the truest and best yielded by his pen. He is the author of no
less than forty-six volumes of poems, dramas, novels, short stories,
and sketches, and of two unpublished dramas. His most important work
is 'Forskrevet' (Condemned), which is largely autobiographical; his
most attractive though not his strongest production is the opera 'Der
Var Engang' (Once Upon a Time), founded on Andersen's 'The Swineherd,'
with music by Sange Mueller; his best poems and tales are those dealing
with the sea.

At present he lives in Hamburg, where on October 10th, 1896,
he celebrated his fiftieth birthday and his twenty-fifth
"Author-Jubilee," as the Danes call it. Among the features of the
celebration were the sending of an enormous number of telegrams from
Drachmann's admirers in Europe and America, and the performance of two
of his plays,--one at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, the other at
the Stadt Theatre in Altona.

THE SKIPPER AND HIS SHIP

From 'Paul and Virginia of a Northern Zone': copyright 1895, by Way
and Williams, Chicago

The Anna Dorothea, in the North Sea, was pounding