404 
THE AMERICAN-SCANDINA VI AN REVIEW 
wave corresponds to the ripple of a flower petal, the cuive of a chin. 
Then some spring day, maybe, the stone is undermined, an unknown 
obstruction in the furrow of the stream of life is cleared away, and the 
wave is transformed, the flower petal changes, the curve of the chin 
becomes different and softer. 
Leonard was not the first man who had philosophized above the 
running stream. But he found no rest thereby. His thoughts merely 
played on the surface; they served only to sharpen his feeling of uncer¬ 
tainty. The fettered wave irritated him with its feeble trembling, its 
futile tossing. The continuous roar was like an indefinite warning, a 
dark threat. A warning of what? A threat of what? Ah, thou won¬ 
derful month of May! 
Leonard clenched his empty fists and sank down on a bench m 
complete despair. 
With that his eye fell on a little old man of the fisher trade. He 
was smoking in great repose a short pipe, muttering to himself, and 
picking at his clasp-knife, which he had taken apart and hung on the 
railing to dry. Leonard observed him a long time with secret envy. 
In winter it s all very fine to be young, he thought, but in spring a man 
ought to be as old as possible—or at least to have rheumatism that lets 
up in fair weather. He got up laboriously and pushed his way to the 
fisherman. 
“What have you to say to a day like this?” he grumbled. 
“Eh, well, just that I think there are bream under the bridge piers 
to-day,” the old man said reflectively, and puffed out a little blue cloud. 
Leonard was struck by the answer. He began a long conversa¬ 
tion with the fisherman, whose name was Lundstrom. The best fishing 
was spring and autumn, he learned. It was mostly smelt and bream. 
Perhaps a perch now and again. And before Christmas everybody got 
a burbot or two in eel-pots a little further up the Malaren. ^ 
He doesn’t make any too much, thought Leonard. But he doesn’t 
talk about his fishing in the surly tone that poor men mostly use in 
growling about their scanty earnings. He is proud of his catches, he 
fondles his tackle, and his eyes rest confidently and patiently on the 
water. I gather from that, that he is a true fisherman, which a man 
isn’t very likely to become unless he has left much behind him. 
This quiet fisher person had a strange and enigmatical charm for 
Leonard. The old man had pulled together the large iron rings, and 
already the dip-net was swinging festively at its gallows on his low 
green-painted craft. There was only the grapnel to be pulled in. 
Thereupon Leonard reached over the railing and pleaded touchingly 
to be taken along for once. Yes, that would be all right enough. 
The boat was first hauled along the stone quay to the bridge and 
then out, with the stem set straight into the roaring whirlpool. A few 
quick, well directed oar-strokes, and they floated calmly in the back 
