crudity of a provincial dither in his manners or his appearance. He
spoke with a quiet self-possession and a pithy incisiveness which
were altogether phenomenal.

"That young man will be heard from one of these days," was the
unanimous verdict of those who listened to his clear-cut and
finished sentences, and noted the maturity of his opinions.

But ten years passed, and outside of Stavanger no one ever heard of
Alexander Kielland. His friends were aware that he had studied law,
spent some winters in France, married, and settled himself as a
dignitary in his native town. It was understood that he had bought
a large brick and tile factory, and that, as a manufacturer of
these useful articles, he bid fair to become a provincial magnate,
as his fathers had been before him. People had almost forgotten
that great things had been expected of him; and some fancied,
perhaps, that he had been spoiled by prosperity. Remembering him,
as I did, as the most brilliant and notable personality among my
university friends, I began to apply to him Malloch's epigrammatic
damnation of the man of whom it was said at twenty that he would do
great things, at thirty that he might do great things, and at forty
that he might have done great things.

This was the frame of mind of those who remembered Alexander
Kielland (and he was an extremely difficult man to forget), when in
the year 1879 a modest volume of "novelettes" appeared, bearing his
name. It was, to all appearances, a light performance, but it
revealed a sense of style which made it, nevertheless, notable.
No man had ever written the Norwegian language as this man wrote
it. There was a lightness of touch, a perspicacity, an epigrammatic