THE AMERICAN-SC AN DIN A V IAN REVIE W 
611 
pulled his hat far over his eyes so that the glare would not set him to 
sneezing, and picked up another clod of the black dirt to crumble. 
“Now just suppose I were to go home this spring. Just suppose. 
... Just suppose. . . . What would it be like, what would I do? 
... I arrive, let us say. I see myself tossing the postilion a gold 
piece, and am amused at the way his eyes stick out. I enter the door¬ 
way of the little cottage where I was born and see my mother sitting 
by the open window. She is enjoying the heather-scented breezes from 
the heaths. Her Postil is lying open on her lap. At first she is sur¬ 
prised and a bit frightened, perhaps, to find such a great lord in her 
tiny house. Then I announce who I am, saying, ‘Before you stands 
Karl-August, your eldest son, who has been away to America for so 
many years!’ Then she says, “Can it be possible that this is my little 
Karl-August ?’ 
“ ‘No, my dearest mother,’ I say grandly, ‘but it is your big Karl- 
August, the American!’ ” 
“Mother laughs then and is quite herself again. She claps her 
hands and jumps up and down, for she is such a girlish young mother 
still. She hurries about making the coffee. Ah, the inevitable coffee! 
But first she sets me before the fire and gives me my old father’s pipe 
to smoke. While I am smoking and she is brewing the coffee, we talk 
about everything under the sun. There is much to be talked about 
after forty-one years. How did Uncle Mons die and what became of 
the torp ? When did the government drain the marsh and where could 
the trolls have gone to afterwards? For how many years now had the 
chasuble been omitted from the High Mass, and did the old folks 
object? Is the young Pastor Malmquist as good a shepherd as his 
father was before him? I ask especially about my school comrades, 
how they have lived and how they have died. We sit over our coffee. 
I sip critically and praise the cup. ‘This is verily the best cup of coffee 
I have drunk since I was here last, mother.’ 
“She says, ‘Oh, pt-s, no! America has good coffee, surely. Amer¬ 
ica has the best of everything, I well know. Your American wife 
brews a better cup than this, I hope.’ 
“I laugh and pat her hand and insist that her coffee is nectar. 
She insists it is not, and thus we quarrel happily for all the world as 
though I had come all these many miles to court her. After a while 
she says, ‘You are much changed, my little Karl, and yet you are the 
same, somehow.’ 
“Then I say, ‘What do you mean, mother? I do not understand.’ 
But, of course, I know perfectly well what she means. 
“She says, then, much as I expect, ‘You are sixty-one years of 
age, but still you are not old exactly.’ 
“‘That is because I am young in soul, mother!’ I answer tri¬ 
umphantly. 
