“And from that time I have been the happiest man alive.  I am a fortunate manager; my company does not argue with me, neither does the public; they are amused to their heart’s content, and I can myself put all my pieces nicely together.  I take the best parts out of all sorts of comedies that I choose, and no one troubles himself about it.  Pieces that are now despised at the large theatres, but which thirty years ago the public ran to see, and cried over—­those pieces I now make use of.  I now present them before the young folks; and the young folks—­they cry just as their fathers and mothers used to do.  I give ‘Johanna Montfakon’ and ‘Dyveke,’ but abbreviated; for the little folks do not like long, twaddling love-stories.  They must have it unfortunate—­but it must be brief.  Now that I have travelled through Denmark, both to the right and left, I know everybody and am known again.  Now I have come to Sweden, and if I am successful and gain much money, I will be a Scandinavian, if the humour hold; and this I tell you, as you are my countryman.”

And I, as his countryman, naturally tell it again—­only for the sake of telling it.

THE “SKJAeRGAARDS.”

* * * * *

The canal voyage through Sweden goes at first constantly upwards, through elvs and lakes, forests and rocky land.  From the heights we look down on vast extents of forest-land and large waters, and by degrees the vessel sinks again down through mountain torrents.  At Mem we are again down by the salt fiord:  a solitary tower raises its head between the remains of low, thick walls—­it is the ruins of Stegeberg.  The coast is covered to a great extent with dark, melancholy forests, which enclose small grass-grown valleys.  The screaming sea-gulls fly around our vessel; we are by the Baltic; we feel the fresh sea-breeze:  it blows as in the times of the ancient heroes, when the sea-kings, sons of high-born fathers, exercised their deeds here.  The same sea’s surface then appeared to them as now to us, with its numberless isles, which lie strewed about here in the water by thousands along the whole coast.  The depth of water between the rocky isles and the solid land is that we call “The Skjaergaards:”  their waters flow into each other with varying splendour.  We see it in the sunshine, and it is like a large English landscape garden; but the greensward plain is here the deep sea, the flower-beds in it are rocks and reefs, rich in firs and pines, oaks and bushes.  Mark how, when the wind blows from the east, and the sea breaks over sunken rocks and is dashed back again in spray from the cliffs, your limbs feel—­even through the ship on which you stand—­the power of the sea:  you are lifted as if by supernatural hands.

We rush on against wind and sea, as if it were the sea-god’s snorting horse that bore us; from Skjaergaard to Skjaergaard.  The signal-gun is fired, and the pilot comes from that solitary wooden house.  Sometimes we look upon the open sea, sometimes we glide again in between dark, stony islands; they lie like gigantic monsters in the water:  one has the form of the tortoise’s arched shell, another has the elephant’s back and rough grey colour.  Mouldering, light grey rocks indicate that the wind and weather past centuries has lashed over them.