“Excuse me for interrupting you a moment,” I exclaimed;—“please tell me whose face is that.”
The druggist glanced at the photograph, and then smiled—as people smile at silly questions.
“Is it possible that you do not know?” he responded.
“I do not,” I said. “Years ago I saw that photograph and I could not find out whose picture it was.”
“You are joking!”
“Really I am not,” I said;—“and I very much want to know.”
Then he told me—but I need not repeat the name of the great tragédienne.... At once flashed back to me the memory of my old friend’s declaration:—“There is some strange blood there.” After all, he was right! In the veins of that wonderful woman ran the blood of Indian kings.
What drove him at the end of the two years to endeavour to reach Cincinnati, Ohio, is not clear. The only light to be gathered upon the subject is from the fifth part of the autobiographical fragments, which suggests that he made the journey in an emigrant train and had not money for food upon the way. After thirty years, the clearest memory of that dolorous pilgrimage was of the distress of being misunderstood by the friendly girl who pitied his sufferings. The record of it bears the title of
MY FIRST ROMANCE
There has been sent to me, across the world, a little book stamped, on its yellow cover, with names of Scandinavian publishers,—names sounding of storm and strand and surge. And the sight of those names, worthy of Frost-Giants, evokes the vision of a face,—simply because that face has long been associated, in my imagination, with legends and stories of the North—especially, I think, with the wonderful stories of Björnstjerne Björnson.