THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN REVIEW 765 
interpreting Holberg, a new domain was added to Marstrand’s art. 
Beginning with the painting of Erasmus Montanus disputing with 
Peer the Deacon, a host of paintings, sketches, and drawings illustrat¬ 
ing the Comedies came from his hand. With a sure touch he depicted 
the Holberg scenes as if they were not happening on the stage at all 
but in our midst. The characters became real persons who seemed to 
live before our very eyes; though their dress was rococo, their type 
was of our own time. So humanly convincing are they that we Danes 
can scarcely imagine Peer the Deacon, Jeppe, Erasmus Montanus, 
or Jacob von Tyboe in any other presentment than that which Mar- 
strand has given them in his finished paintings or, better still, in his 
fluent sketches, often mere scrawls on the paper, which he strewed 
around him—lightly born children of his eternally creative genius, his 
sparkling humor, and his pungent wit. t 
Mother Malena’s Hen 
By Ernst Ahlgren 
Translated from the Swedish hy Charles Wharton Stork 
Although Mother Malena lived at the poor-house, she still kept 
possession of her hen, and that was a terrific luxury; it was usurping 
the good things of life at the expense of others, it was exalting oneself 
above those less fortunate. Mother Malena was acting above her class 
at the poor-house. 
This hen was a continual seed of dissension. When Pernilla’s 
youngsters broke anything, it was immediately blamed on the hen, 
though, Lord knows, the hen was so clever and intelligent that Per¬ 
nilla’s youngsters might have given thanks on their bare knees if 
they had been half as sensible as she. And if there was anything on 
the table that ought not to be there, at once “it must have been the 
hen.” This though Mother Malena knew on her soul and honor that 
the hen was the cleanest animal that could walk the ground; and that 
in such a question one might rather pick up the hen in one’s bare hands 
than one of Pernilla’s brats with the tongs. On such pretexts Per- 
nilla turned up her eyes like a saint and said that she knew for sure 
it was a slow death to be devoured by chicken lice, but it would be her 
fate just the same. Whereupon Mother Malena could answer with a 
malicious grin that it was a still slower end to be pecked to death by 
geese, but she didn’t intend to go that way, so it wasn’t worth their 
trouble to try—the geese that is, by which in other words she meant 
