The Visionary | Page 3

but its effects were never eradicated. Like Hamlet he found the times out of joint; but, instead of contending with them, he patiently submitted to Fate and won for himself, if not absolute peace, at least a certain amount of tranquillity. Throughout his life he was subject to visions. In his earliest days the appearance of a lady carrying a white rose marked the near approach of calamity. In later life a vision of his beloved Susanna was sometimes vouchsafed to him, and as he lay on his death-bed she came, after a long interval, as if beckoning him to join her.
The other characters of the story are naturally drawn. David's stern, yet not unkind father; the minister and his wife; the old clerk, and Susanna herself, will soon make themselves known to the reader. The refusal of Susanna to give up David when she learns that his doctor fears he may become insane, and her victory over her father's objections to her engagement, are proofs of Lie's insight into the depth and steadfastness of the love of a good woman. The story of her death, of the bringing home her body in the boat, and of the scene in the death-chamber, are full of pathos, and are told with the simplicity of a great artist.
"The Visionary" is written in the spirit of a true Nordlander, who is ever contrasting life and nature in the south of Norway with life "up there" at home, and with the more varied aspects of nature in Nordland. The vivid description of the great storm are evidently impressions and recollections of actual experience. Before he became an author Lie had often mused
"On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life,"
and the first results of these musings were given to the world in "The Visionary."
J.A.J.H.
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CONTENTS

PART
I.--INTRODUCTION
II. NORDLAND AND NORDLANDERS
III. CHAP. I.--HOME II.--ON THE SHORE III.--THE SERVANTS' HALL IV.--AMONG THE V?TTE ROCKS V.--CONFIRMATION VI.--AT THE CLERK'S VII.--TRONDEN?S VIII.--AT HOME IX.--THE CHRISTMAS VISIT X.--THE STORM XI.--CONCLUSION

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PART I
INTRODUCTION
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INTRODUCTION
I know many people who have felt the same inclination that sometimes comes over me, to choose bad weather to go out in. They are generally men who have passed from a childhood lived in the open air of the country, to an occupation which entails much sitting still, and for whom the room sometimes seems to become too narrow and confined--or else they are poets. Their recollection and imagination live, more or less unknown to themselves, in a continual longing to get away from the confined air of a room, and the barrack-life of a town.
So one day when the country comes into the town in the shape of a downright storm of wind and rain, which shakes the tiles on the roofs, and now and then flings one after you, while the streets become rivers, and every corner an ambush from which the whirlwind makes a sudden attack upon your umbrella, and, after a more or less prolonged and adroit struggle, tears it, and turns it inside out, until at last you stand with only the stick and the ribs left in your hand--at such a time, it now and then happens that a quiet, dignified civil servant, or business man, instead of sitting at home, as usual, in the afternoon in his comfortable room after the day's toil in the office, says to his wife that he "is sorry he must go out into the town for a little while." And what he unfortunately must go out for is, of course, "business." For little would it become a sedate, grave man, perhaps an alderman, and one of the fathers of the town, to acknowledge, even to himself, that he is childish enough to go and wander about in bad weather, that he only wants to walk down to the quay to see the spray dash over the bitts, and to watch the ships in the harbour playing at shipwreck. He must, of course, have something to do there; if nothing else, at any rate to see "ne quid detrimenti capiat respublica"; that is to say, that the town, whose welfare, in one way or another, it is his business to look after, is not blown down.
The fact is, there is a revolution in the streets--not a political revolution, Heaven preserve him from that--but one which has an attraction for him, because it awakens all his old recollections, and in which, much to his disgrace, he contrives surreptitiously to join, although, in its own way, it too defies all police arrangements, breaks windows, puts out street-lamps, tears the tiles from the house-roofs, damages piers and moorings, and chases police and watchmen into their holes. It is Nature's loud war-cry, in the very midst of the civilised town, to all