now wider, the picture broader. There is still a central figure, and
still he possesses many of the old Hamsun traits, but he has crossed the
meridian at last and become an observer rather than a fighter and doer.
Nor is he the central figure to the same extent as Lieutenant Glahn in
"Pan" or Kareno in the trilogy. The life pictured is the life of a
certain spot of ground--Segelfoss manor, and later the town of
Segelfoss--rather than that of one or two isolated individuals. One
might almost say that Hamsun's vision has become social at last, were it
not for his continued accentuation of the irreconcilable conflict
between the individual and the group.

"Segelfoss Town" in 1915 and "The Growth of the Soil"--the title ought
to be "The Earth's Increase"--in 1918 continue along the path Hamsun
entered by "Children of the Time." The scene is laid in his beloved
Northland, but the old primitive life is going--going even in the
outlying districts, where the pioneers are already breaking ground for
new permanent settlements. Business of a modern type has arrived, and
much of the quiet humor displayed in these the latest and maturest of
Hamsun's works springs from the spectacle of its influence on the
natives, whose hands used always to be in their pockets, and whose
credulity in face of the improbable was only surpassed by their
unwillingness to believe anything reasonable. Still the life he
pictures is largely primitive, with nature as man's chief antagonist,
and to us of the crowded cities it brings a charm of novelty rarely
found in books today. With it goes an understanding of human nature
which is no less deep-reaching because it is apt to find expression in
whimsical or flagrantly paradoxical forms.

Hamsun has just celebrated his sixtieth birthday anniversary. He is as
strong and active as ever, burying himself most of the time on his