poor government official, had died during his
infancy, and his mother had given music lessons,
and kept boarders, in order to gain the means
to give her son what is called a learned education.
In the Latin school Halfdan had enjoyed
the reputation of being a bright youth, and at
the age of eighteen, he had entered the
university under the most promising auspices. He
could make very fair verses, and play all
imaginable instruments with equal ease, which
made him a favorite in society. Moreover, he
possessed that very old-fashioned accomplishment
of cutting silhouettes; and what was more,
he could draw the most charmingly fantastic
arabesques for embroidery patterns, and he even
dabbled in portrait and landscape painting.
Whatever he turned his hand to, he did well,
in fact, astonishingly well for a dilettante, and
yet not well enough to claim the title of an
artist. Nor did it ever occur to him to make
such a claim. As one of his fellow-students
remarked in a fit of jealousy, "Once when Nature
had made three geniuses, a poet, a musician,
and a painter, she took all the remaining odds
and ends and shook them together at random
and the result was Halfdan Bjerk." This agreeable
melange of accomplishments, however,
proved very attractive to the ladies, who invited
the possessor to innumerable afternoon
tea-parties, where they drew heavy drafts on