"This was his scenery, the true milieu of his nature, idylls, poor rugged rocks, covered with pine forest, thrown out on wide stormy fjords with the immense sea as a distant background. He remained true to this love ... and neither the Alps of Switzerland, the olive-dad hills of the Mediterranean, nor the cliffs of Normandy could oust this rival." Love of nature did not curb August's high spirits in childhood. At the age of ten he played wild games, climbed trees, slid down mountains on pieces of wood, robbed birds' nests and shot their innocent owners. He rode bareback, could swim, sail a boat and handle a gun. During a summer holiday August and his brothers were sent as boarders to the house of a sexton. It was the father's wish that his sons should share in the work on the farm as well as prepare for the winter's schooling. In the sexton's kitchen August saw the wafers prepared and stamped for Holy Communion. He mischievously ate them and reflected that there was not much in the Sacrament. He broke covenant with his host by rushing into the church, turning the hour-glass on the pulpit, and delivering a sermon. He ran through the church on the backs of the pews and threw over the reading-desk, on which the hymn-book lay. The disjointed pieces of the desk frightened him and reminded him of possible consequences. Yielding to the first impulse of self-preservation he knelt and said the Lord's Prayer. [Illustration: Strindberg's mother, Ulrika Eleonora Norling] [Illustration: Strindberg's father Oskar Strindberg] A thought came to him. He rose, examined the reading-desk, saw that the damage was not irreparable, took off his boot and mended the desk with a few well-directed blows. He then calmly walked out of the church feeling that the power within himself was, after all, more reliable than the God whose help he had invoked. The mysterious interrelation between whole-hearted prayer and the dormant powers within ourselves is seldom understood. The child's logic humorously reflected the spiritual instability of average humanity. His self-reliance was, however, fitful. Sometimes he wept bitterly, battling with an uncontrollable duality within his own mind, a divided will which made him unreasonable and capricious. He developed sudden antipathies, endured fits of shyness and self-abasement, during which he had to run away from other children and hide himself. At such times he would deliberately keep away when good things were distributed, and on being forgotten, revel in his martyrdom.