Or else he describes the marriage of a private tutor with a lady of noble birth who has never experienced a single womanly feeling, abhors her duty as a wife, and only does not refuse her husband when she wishes to obtain something from him. At the same time she is anxious to enjoy all the social advantages of a married woman, and for the sake of her frugal caresses the poor honest fellow allows himself to be chosen a member of all the associations and public institutions in which her empty vanity wishes to shine, till at last, much against his inclinations, he becomes a member of Parliament. In the midst of these tales of woe, of social and intellectual privation, Strindberg describes himself in a story about an author and his family, called _The Bread Winner_, in which many of his brethren will recognise themselves. It describes the great author who gets up in the morning to make his own coffee, while his wife and the servants are still asleep, it describes him hard at work till the evening when he throws himself down upon the bed dead tired--Money! Money! All for Money! It tells of every single unsatisfied longing of which our age is possessed, of the everlasting means which never ceases to become an end in itself. The children run about aimlessly, while the servant girls read novels and the wife allows her friends to pity her for her husband’s neglect. His mornings are spent in feverish effort which exhaust him till he is ready to faint, but the whip of anxiety and uncertainty urges him on till the post comes, and he opens his letters with a beating heart; the remainder of the day, until the late dinner hour, is consumed by negotiating with extortionate publishers and pressing creditors, corresponding in three languages with foreign newspapers, and reading reviews where anonymous rivals seek to deprive him of the goodwill of the public by which he lives, pointing at him with their inky fingers, leaving a dirty smudge on his reputation. And he is defenceless. How is he to punish the nameless vermin who lay their maggots in his flesh and afterwards fly off? Then follows the dinner in a strange restaurant, where the celebrated author is expected to contribute wit and intellect to the conversation, and people are offended if the exhausted man stares at his plate in dyspeptic silence. In the evening, when he would like to be with his family, his wife goes to a party or to some place of entertainment. And one day the overworked “bread-winner” dies suddenly, his wife faints in the conventional manner, and her old women friends--with or without petticoats, as the case may be--exclaim in pained sympathy: “Poor unfortunate woman! He always was inconsiderate towards her, in life as in death!”