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The Viking, who had settled down in Chicago, to whom we are indebted for this.

Out there he went by the name of Mr. Strand, and he had undertaken to print the entire work and to reproduce the illustrations. The enterprise was such a success that The Swedish People at Home next to the Bible was the most popular book in the Swedish language in the United States of America. The publisher had made a net gain of $20,000 on Strindberg, and when I told him that the author was somewhere in the skerries outside of Stockholm in a most destitute condition, Mr. Strand declared that he wanted to send Strindberg a royalty of $2000, if he only could get his address.

After our meeting in Friedrichshagen we wrote, both Strindberg and myself, to Strand with reference to the royalty, which would have come in very handy for Strindberg at that time. But we never received an answer, and according to what I learned later on Strand lost every cent he had made on Strindberg, when he tried to publish a second work of the author.

As usual we discussed that evening everything between heaven and earth. The strongest impression that I received of Strindberg at that time, was his joy at having broken off all relations with belles lettres. It seemed as if this sort of authorship had fagged him out entirely—he had, shortly before, performed such a volitional tour de force as A Fool's Confession—as though he had been quite tired out with this groping in space to which poetic activity is so conducive.

Now, having entered the province of science, he felt