Those, whose knowledge of Strindberg's writings is limited to his naturalistic plays, have judged his powers as a literary artist from an entirely inadequate point of view. When Justin McCarthy spoke of the real Strindberg, as revealed in _The Father, Lady Julie_ and _Comrades_, he ignored, not only the volumes of essays, stories and novels which preceded the plays mentioned, but those which were published at the same time. Strindberg has been described as a man who had no interest to spare for social problems, or politics, or the great movements of his time--as a dramatist whose knife was forever delving in the pathological tissue of passions, and whose eyes saw nothing but the broad and sombre outlines of inevitable tragedy. Those who know _The People of Hemsö_ (1887), a novel of the fishermen's life in the Stockholm Archipelago, fresh as the salt breeze of the sea, bright with sunshine, and the jollity of a man with steady nerves, who is thoroughly at home in a boat and in a hut, are familiar with another side of Strindberg. Or the volume of short stories entitled _Fisher Folk_ (1888), with its sketches of life on the island, broadly humorous, impressive in its unaffected narrative of the struggles and ambitions of the hardy toilers among the rocks. The stories bring us in the midst of the island folk: we know their practical, wind-dried minds where superstition lurks in a corner; we see their sparse bodies--sometimes fed on herring-heads and potatoes. We attend the dance which the poor, hunch-backed tailor gives to the young people as an offering on the altar of joy, and lament with him the devastation wrought by terpsichorean orgies in his garden. We accompany Westman, the ungodly pilot who has harpooned a seal from his little boat, and is dragged out to sea by the cruel monster in spite of pitiful recitals of the Lord's Prayer, and offers of a pure silver chandelier to the local church. We are made to participate in the people's life. In both books there is a wealth of descriptive power, and there is something fundamentally healthy in the figures of the common people whom he draws, a natural pathos in their vulgarity, and even in their criminality.