with the same care with which he wrote the fair copy of a new play. Such an important task he could not possibly entrust to any one else, not even to his wife. One of his paradoxes was that ‘a woman never knew how to sew on a button so that it would hold.’ But if he himself sewed it on, it held to all eternity. Fru Ibsen smiled roguishly and subtly when the creator of Nora came out with such anti-feminist sentiments. Afterwards she told me in confidence, 'It is true that Ibsen himself sews on his vagrant buttons; but the fact that they hold so well is _my_ doing, for, without his knowledge, I always ‘finish them off,’ which he forgets to do. But don’t disturb his conviction: it makes him so happy.'” “One winter day in Munich,” Herr Paulsen continues, “Ibsen asked me with a serious and even anxious countenance, ‘Tell me one thing, Paulsen—do you black your own boots every morning?’ I was taken aback, and doubtless looked quite guilty as I answered, ‘No.’ I had a vaguely uncomfortable sense that I had failed in a duty to myself and to society. ‘But you really ought to do so. It will make you feel a different man. One should never let others do what one can do oneself. If you begin with blacking your boots, you will get on to putting your room in order, laying the fire, etc. In this way you will at last find yourself an emancipated man, independent of Tom, Dick, or Harry.’ I promised to follow his advice, but have unfortunately not kept my word.” It is evident that Ibsen purposely transferred to Gregers this characteristic of his own; and the sentiments with which Gina regards it are probably not unlike those which Fru Ibsen may from time to time have manifested. We could scarcely demand clearer proof that in Gregers the poet was laughing at himself. To Hedvig, Ibsen gave the name of his only sister, and in many respects she seems to have served as a model for the character. She was the poet’s favourite among all his relatives. “You are certainly the best of us,” he wrote to her in 1869. Björnstjerne Björnson said, after making her acquaintance, that he now understood what a large element of heredity there was in Ibsen’s bent towards mysticism. We may be sure that Hedvig’s researches among the books left by the old sea-captain, and her dislike for the frontispiece of Harrison’s _History of London_, are remembered traits from the home-life of the poet’s childhood. It does not seem to be known who had the honour of “sitting for” the character of Hialmar. Probably he is a composite of many originals. Moreover, he is obviously a younger brother of Peer Gynt. Deprive Peer Gynt of his sense of humour, and clip the wings of his imagination, and you have Hialmar Ekdal.