foolish vapidity, its utter futility, and its elegant wickedness and sinfulness, are boldly displayed. Unfortunately men and women without conscience, without comprehension of duty, have always existed and still exist, but we doubt if their evil influence is as far-reaching and all-important as latter-day novelists and dramatists would have us believe.

In his latest play, Heimat, produced January 7, 1893, Sudermann takes for theme the duty owed by the child to the parent, and that due from parent to child. A high-spirited and talented girl, daughter of commonplace, conventional parents, to the scandal of all concerned, leaves her home to carve for herself a career in the world, and by reason of her fine voice becomes a celebrated singer. After an absence of many years chance brings her professionally to her native town, and a very natural desire is awakened in her to revisit her parents and her home. Her father, whose health had been destroyed through the effects of her former disobedience, wishes her to come back provided she renounces for ever the life she has been leading. This she has no desire to do, but for her father's sake she is not all unwilling to yield. When, however, she is further required to break with certain ties very dear to her, she refuses, and the father dies from the shock. Now when we carefully read the play, or see it acted by competent artists, it is clear that much might be said on both sides. But as there is nothing in the world more beautiful and holy than the tie that binds parent and child, so is the contemplation of conflict between them always unlovely. We grant that in the storm and stress of modern life such conflict is at times unavoidable, but it is scarcely the stuff of which works of art should be formed.

A new play, a comedy, Schmetterling-Schlacht (Butterfly Battle), is to be produced shortly at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna. Again a moral problem is to be presented to the consideration of the public. The three heroines, honest working girls, paint butterflies on fans for a living. Two of the girls, tired of being sweated, give up fan painting; they take to painting their faces instead, and practice other abominations. The third girl continues her work, and remains virtuous. The play chiefly consists of a series of discussions between the girls as to which way of life is preferable.

Like his contemporaries, Ibsen and Björnson, Zola and Tolstoi, Sudermann would transfer the sermon from the pulpit to the stage: he sets before us certain phases of life that have come under his notice in all their ugliness and brutality, and would have us forthwith leave the theatre sworn enemies of the evils he denounces. But his characters are contented to preach and discuss, they never feel that they are called upon to act. Thus they lack life and reality, we have little sympathy with them, and are never profoundly touched.

As a writer of fiction, however, Sudermann's high position is unassailable. He ranks with the great masters in all countries who have sought, and are still seeking, to set before us modern life in its manifold aspects, in its complexity and its difficulties, but who, unlike the more pronounced school of naturalists, remember Joubert's maxim that "fiction has no business to exist unless it is more beautiful than reality."

August, 1894.

THE WISH.

I.

In the old doctor's bedroom a cheerful fire was flickering. He himself still lay a-bed, quite penetrated by the delightful sensation of a man who knows his life's work is completed. When one has been sitting half a century through, for twelve long hours every day, in the rumbling conveyance of a country doctor, thumped and bumped along over stones and lumps of clay, one may now and again lie in bed till daylight, especially when one knows one's work is safe in younger hands.

He stretched and straightened his stiff old limbs, and once more buried in the pillows his weather-beaten, yellowish-grey face, covered with white stubble like granite with Iceland moss. But habit, that austere mistress, who had for so many years driven him forth from his bed before dawn, whether it was necessary or not, would not let him rest even now.

He sighed, he yawned, he abused his laziness, and then reached for the bell standing on the little table at his bedside.

His housekeeper, an equally grey, tumble-down specimen of humanity, appeared on the threshold.

"What time is it, Frau Liebetreu?" he called out to her.

Since the day on which the young assistant arrived in Gromowo, the old Black Forest clock hanging at the doctor's bedside, and whose rattling alarum had often unpleasantly jarred upon his morning slumbers, was no longer wound up. "So that I know that my life too henceforth stands still," as he was wont to say.

"A quarter to eight, doctor," the old woman answered, beginning meanwhile to busy herself about the stove.

"For shame! for shame!" cried he, raising himself up, "what a lazybones I am getting to be! I say, have any letters come?"

"Yes, a few by post, and one that young Mr. Hellinger brought himself two hours ago."

"Two hours ago! Why, it was dark yet at that time!"

"Yes; he said he had to drive out to the manor farm, and could wait no longer. Yesterday evening, too, when you were at the 'Black Eagle,' sir, he called, and sat here for about two hours."

"Why didn't you send for me?" cried the doctor, in the blustering tone of voice of old, good-natured grumblers.

"Well, and hadn't he forbidden us to do so?" cried his housekeeper, in exactly the same tone of voice, which seemed, however, more an echo of her master's manner than personal defiance. "He was sitting in the study till ten o'clock--or rather he was not sitting, he raced about like a madman, and laughed and talked to himself--I hardly knew the calm, quiet man again; and then I brought him beer--six bottles--he drained them all; and I had to drink with him. As I tell you, he was quite beside himself."

"Ah, indeed, indeed," muttered the old man smiling to himself with satisfaction. "I should say Olga had something to do with that. Perhaps after all she----. Well, do you intend bringing me my letters to-day, or not?" he suddenly shouted, as if he were goodness knows how wild, but his face laughed the while. And when his housekeeper had grumblingly done his bidding, he drew out with a sure hand from the little heap of letters one without a stamp, not deigning to look at the others at all. His hands trembled with happy excitement as he unfolded the paper; and he read, while his grey face beamed with pleasure:

"Dear old Uncle,--You shall be the first to know it. If only I had you with me, that I might press your dear old hands and tell you face to face what is in my heart! I do not realise it yet--my head whirls when I think of it! Uncle, you were at my side in the days of darkest trouble, helping and protecting. You were the only one to take Martha's part when all--even my parents turned their backs on her with coldness and suspicion.

"You could not save her for me, uncle--the Lord asked her back of me. But when, at the bedside of my dead wife, my reason threatened to give way, you took my poor head between your hands and spoke to me--as a preacher speaks. And you were right. Of course I do not believe that I can ever quite revive and become again as I was before the cares of existence and my longing for Martha made my head dull and heavy; for even Martha--even my wife--could not accomplish that in the three years of our quiet happiness. But life seems about to give me whatever it has left for me yet of joy