Jerusalem | Page 3

brother's
wife may have a home if she should ever return from the Holy Land.
As for the closing pages that describe the departure of the
Jerusalem-farers, they are difficult to read aloud without a sob and a
lump in the throat.
The underlying spiritual action of "Jerusalem" is the conflict of
idealism with that impulse which is deep rooted in the rural
communities of the old world, the love of home and the home soil. It is
a virtue unfortunately too dimly appreciated in restless America,
though felt in some measure in the old communities of Massachusetts
and Virginia, and Quaker homesteads near Philadelphia. Among the
peasant aristocracy of Dalecarlia attachment to the homestead is life
itself. In "Jerusalem" this emotion is pitted on the one hand against
religion, on the other against love. Hearts are broken in the struggle
which permits Karin to sacrifice the Ingmar Farm to obey the inner

voice that summons her on her religious pilgrimage, and which leads
her brother, on the other hand, to abandon the girl of his heart and his
life's personal happiness in order to win back the farm.
The tragic intensity of "Jerusalem" is happily relieved by the
undercurrent of Miss Lagerlöf's sympathetic humour. When she has
almost succeeded in transporting us into a state of religious fervour, we
suddenly catch her smile through the lines and realize that no one more
than she feels the futility of fanaticism. The stupid blunders of
humankind do not escape her; neither do they arouse her contempt. She
accepts human nature as it is with a warm fondness for all its types. We
laugh and weep simultaneously at the children of the departing pilgrims,
who cry out in vain: "We don't want to go to Jerusalem; we want to go
home."
To the translator of "Jerusalem," Mrs. Velma Swanston Howard, author
and reader alike must feel indebted. Mrs. Howard has already received
generous praise for her translation of "Nils" and other works of Selma
Lagerlöf. Although born in Sweden she has achieved remarkable
mastery of English diction. As a friend of Miss Lagerlöf and an artist
she is enabled herself to pass through the temperament of creation and
to reproduce the original in essence as well as sufficient verisimilitude.
Mrs. Howard is no mere artisan translator. She goes over her page not
but a dozen times, and the result is not a labored performance, but a
work of real art in strong and confident prose.
HENRY GODDARD LEACH. Villa Nova, Pennsylvania. June 28,
1915.

BOOK ONE

THE INGMARSSONS
I
A young farmer was plowing his field one summer morning. The sun
shone, the grass sparkled with dew, and the air was so light and bracing
that no words can describe it. The horses were frisky from the morning
air, and pulled the plow along as if in play. They were going at a pace
quite different from their usual gait; the man had fairly to run to keep
up with them.
The earth, as it was turned by the plow, lay black, and shone with

moisture and fatness, and the man at the plow was happy in the thought
of soon being able to sow his rye. "Why is it that I feel so discouraged
at times and think life so hard?" he wondered. "What more does one
want than sunshine and fair weather to be as happy as a child of
Heaven?"
A long and rather broad valley, with stretches of green and yellow grain
fields, with mowed clover meadows, potato patches in flower, and little
fields of flax with their tiny blue flowers, above which fluttered great
swarms of white butterflies--this was the setting. At the very heart of
the valley, as if to complete the picture, lay a big old-fashioned
farmstead, with many gray outhouses and a large red dwelling-house.
At the gables stood two tall, spreading pear trees; at the gate were a
couple of young birches; in the grass-covered yard were great piles of
firewood; and behind the barn were several huge haystacks. The
farmhouse rising above the low fields was as pretty a sight as a ship,
with masts and sails, towering above the broad surface of the sea.
The man at the plow was thinking: "What a farm you've got! Many
well-timbered houses, fine cattle and horses, and servants who are as
good as gold. At least you are as well-to-do as any one in these parts,
so you'll never have to face poverty.
"But it's not poverty that I fear," he said, as if in answer to his own
thought. "I should be satisfied were I only as good a man as my father
or my father's father. What could have put such silly nonsense into your
head?" he wondered. "And a moment ago