At that time in Christiania, and later on when we returned for snow-shoeing, Society was very simple, but very interesting. Night after night at parties we met such men as Nansen, Ibsen, Björnson, Leys the poet, and Ilef Petersen the artist. There were no grand dinners, just simple little supper-parties, beer and milk being the chief beverages, with one hot dish and many delicious cold compounds. The daughter of the house, more or less, waited at table. Everything was simplicity itself, but brains and talent, wit and humour were omnipresent. The greatest personality of all this group was undoubtedly Björnson. He was one of the finest men, both in appearance and brain, that I have ever met, and I have met many great men. I made a few notes, remembered much more; and finally, when friends begged me to write a volume of these travels, I wrote _A Winter Jaunt to Norway_. It went into two or perhaps three editions, but that was only as a _hors d’œuvre_. It contained personal chapters upon such people as Nansen and the latter-day dramatists of Norway, Ibsen and Björnson. Ibsen had not then the cult that he immediately afterwards acquired, and it is curious now to read of the hostility which his writings provoked. Sir Edwin Saunders wrote to me: “You have gone far to sweeten Ibsen, which is no ordinary achievement.” Mr. W. C. Miller, the editor of the _Educational Times_, wrote: “Some time I propose to try Ibsen again, when, I dare say, I shall be reviled (once more) almost as if I were advocating robbery and murder.” One appreciates most the compliments of one’s own fellow-countrymen. But the foreigner is charming, so frank and free, so naïve. How could a young writer be otherwise than pleased to receive this letter from a Norwegian? “How well you bring out the poetry of winter in your Norway book! I think you are more of a poet than you know of yourself. I think, too, that you are a born story-teller. I never knew anyone seize so quickly and unerringly the spirit of those Icelandic tales. I believe you could modernise one of the Sagas so as to make it as interesting to a modern reader as a novel. I have an unbounded belief in you. “Yours truly, “J. STEFANSSON.” Even as I write, the vision of Ibsen’s simple home, his plebeian wife, and the old man seated at his desk with his little dolls laid out before him, comes floating over the space of years. A most unromantic figure, surely! though at the end of his life Ibsen formed an attachment for a young girl which was tenfold returned by her. He was, notwithstanding the rough exterior, an amorous old gentleman, fond of squeezing ladies’ hands and whispering pretty things into their ears, so I was not so surprised as some of his admirers on this side seem to have been.