Such had been the literary output of Miss Lagerlöf before she was chosen for the Nobel winner of 1909. Already she had been given a gold medal for her work by the Swedish Academy and the degree of LL.D. by the University of Upsala. Five years after the award she was elected to membership in the Swedish Academy, “the eighteen immortals”--the first woman to be thus honored. When the prize was given to her, with a grand fête at Stockholm, she was the guest of honor at a banquet at the Grand Hotel, given by King Gustav V. Her acceptance was in the form of a unique speech, a story, briefly told, of her summons to her father to aid her in saying the right words, this father who, long dead, had been her inspiration for her first work in literature and her spiritual guide in many crises. Wistful beauty and delicate humor were blended in the closing words:[71] “Father sits and ponders a while; then he wipes away the tears of joy, shakes himself, and strikes his fist on the arm of the chair. ‘I don’t care to sit here any longer and muse on things which no one, either in heaven or on earth, can answer!’ he says. ‘If you have received the Nobel Prize, I shan’t trouble myself about anything but to be happy.’ “Your Royal Highness--Ladies and Gentlemen--since I got no better answer to all my queries, it only remains for me to ask you to join me in a toast of gratitude, which I have the honour to propose to the Swedish Academy.” Miss Lagerlöf was fifty-one years old when this honor came to her; in the years since then she has exemplified, in spoken and written words, “the noble idealism, the wealth of imagination, the soulful quality of her style.” Her speech, in 1911, when the International Suffrage Congress was held in Stockholm, was widely read and translated. In this, as in so many of her stories, she stressed the idea of home and its influence throughout every avenue of betterment in the world. This year marked, also, the publication of _Lilliecrona’s Home_, translated in English three years later by Anna Barwell. The setting was Varmland and the hero’s home, Lövdalla, closely resembles the home of the author, Mårbacka. This is, perhaps, the most poetic and mystical of all her stories. The violinist who found in “music and music alone his home, his place of rest,” is a haunting character, sharing many traits with Gösta Berling. His life-passage is turbulent, often dramatic, sometimes melancholy, ending in a happy romance for him and Maia Lisa, the pastor’s daughter. There are scenes of emotional vigor, like “The Bride’s Dance” and “The Accusation.” These are comparable to the more familiar chapters in _The Story of Gösta Berling_, like that where the autocratic Mistress of Ekeby is driven forth by her pensioners because they discover that she has vowed a soul each year to the devil (in expiation for her secret sin) or the redemptive power of Countess Elizabeth in reclaiming Gösta’s manhood. Beautiful descriptions of