Accordingly, he made an early acquaintance with the rod, and was
regarded as well-nigh incorrigible. He accepted with boyish stoicism the
castigations which fell pretty regularly to his lot, bore no one any
grudge for them, but rarely thought of mending his ways, in order to
avoid them. They were somehow part of the established order of things
which it was useless to criticise. In his reminiscences from his early
years, which he published some years ago, he is so delightfully boy,
that no one who has any recollection of that barbaric period in his own
life can withhold his sympathy. The following, for instance, seems to me
charming:
"I can still feel how she (Kvaen Marja, the maid) pulled us, cowering
and reluctant, out of our warm beds, where we lay snug like birds in
their nests, between the reindeer skin and the sheepskin covering. I
remember how I stood asleep and tottering on the floor, until I got a
shower of cold water from the bathing-sponge over my back and became
wide awake. Then to jump into our clothes! And now for the lessons! It
was a problem how to get a peep at them during the scant quarter hour,
while the breakfast was being devoured down in the dining-room with
mother, who sat and poured out tea before the big astral lamp, while
darkness and snow-drift lay black upon the window-panes.
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