inactivity followed, during which he passed through a mental crisis
akin to insanity. When he returned to the writing of novels and dramas
he was no longer a naturalist, but a symbolist and mystic. Among the
plays he composed in this style are _To Damascus_, _The Dream Play_,
and _The Great Highway_.

Strindberg married three times, divorced his first two wives, but
separated amicably from the third. He died in 1913. The vast
demonstration at his funeral, attended by the laboring classes as well
as by the "upper" classes, proved that, in spite of the antagonisms he
had aroused, Sweden unanimously awarded him the highest place in her
literature.

THOMAS SELTZER.





ASRA


He had just completed his thirteenth year when his mother died. He
felt that he had lost a real friend, for during the twelve months of
her illness he had come to know her personally, as it were, and
established a relationship between them which is rare between parents
and children. He was a clever boy and had developed early; he had read
a great many books besides his schoolbooks, for his father, a
professor of botany at the Academy of Science, possessed a very good
library. His mother, on the other hand, was not a well-educated woman;