dissyllabic word.) A day or two later Grieg met Bjornson, who was
in the full throes of composition, and exclaimed to him that the
song was going splendidly, and that he believed all the youth of
Norway would adopt it enthusiastically; but that he was still
puzzled over the very necessary word to fit the strongly marked
refrain. However, he was not going to give it up. Next morning,
when Grieg was in his room peacefully giving a piano lesson to a
young lady, a furious ringing was heard at his front-door bell,
as if the ringer would tear the bell from its wires, followed by
a wild shout of "'Fremad! Fremad!' Hurrah, I have got it!
'Fremad!'" Bjornson, for of course the intruder was he, rushed
into the house the moment the maid's trembling fingers could open
the door, and triumphantly chanted the completed song to them,
over and over again, amidst a din of laughter and congratulations.

His first experiments in the "social drama," plays dealing with
the tragedies and comedies of every-day life in his own country,
were made at about the same time as Ibsen's; that is to say, in
the seventies. Bjornson's first successes in that field, which
made him at once a popular dramatist, were Redaktoren (The
Editor) in 1874 and En Fallit (A Bankruptcy) in 1875. The latter
especially was hailed as the earliest raising of the veil upon
Norwegian domestic life, and as a remarkable effort in the
detection of drama in the commonplace. Before he wrote these,
Bjornson had again been for some years out of Norway; and, as in
the case of Ibsen, who began the writing of his "social dramas"
when in voluntary exile, absence seemed to enable him to observe
the familiar from a new standpoint and in the proper perspective.

After his first successes in this line, when his plays (and his