"I really thank you for this. You see it is with the mind as with the house you dwell in. If it was so narrow that you could scarcely get your head in and your legs stretched out, you would be obliged to widen it. And fiction elevates the mind and enlarges it. If those ideas were falsehood that are above absolute necessity, then those which ARE absolute necessity would surely become falsehood too. They would thus press you down in your house of clay that you would never reach eternity, and yet it was just there you wished to be, and it was these very same thoughts, that in faith should bear you thitherward."--"But fiction is something that has verily never been, and so it must surely be falsehood?" said Randi thoughtfully.--"No, it has often greater truths for us than that which we see," answered Odegaard. Here they all looked at him doubtfully, and the young man threw out: "I never knew before that the story of Askeladden was truer than that which I see before my eyes."--They all tittered.--"Then tell me if you always understand that which you see before your eyes?"--"I am not learned enough for that!"--"Oh, the learned certainly understand it still less! I mean those things in daily life that give us sorrow and trouble, and that 'worry us sore,' as the saying is. Are there not such things?" He did not reply, but from the bundle it sounded earnestly: "Yes, often."--"But if you heard a fictitious history, that resembled your own in such a way, that as you heard it, you understood your own,--would you not say of this story,--which gave you the comfort and encouragement that understanding gives--would you not say that it had greater truth for you than your own?"--"I once read a story," said Else, "that helped me so in a great sorrow, that that which had long been a trouble seemed almost a joy." It coughed from the bundle;--"Yes, that is true," she added timidly.