OCR Text |
Show SOUTH CACHE COURIER HYRUM, UTAH Home Car Conductor; flip -- Unless you see the name Bayer on tablets, you artf not getting genuine Aspirin prescribed by physicians for 21 years, and proved safe by millions. Say Bayer I SAFETY FIRST! Accept only an unbroken package of genuine Bayer Tablets of Aspirin, which contains proper directions for Headache, Earache, Toothache, Neuralgia, .Colds, Rheumatism, Neuritis, Lumbago, and pain generally. Strictly American I Handy tin boxes of 12 tablets cost but a few cents Larger packages. I AsDlrlu la tba trad mark of Bayer Mr js47ttZZ73 coimry- - id you ever hear of Knut Hamsun before he won the Nobel prize for literature? Well, you neednt feel lonesome unless you are an resident of Chicago, where conhe was a horse-ca- r ductor back in the eighties. Anyway, Knut Hamsun, who is a life Norwegian and lives a in the wilds of Norway, has been awarded the belated prize of 1919 whereat most Americans are vastly astonished. Some Chicago residents of Scandinavian blood remember Knut they seem to think in those days that it was spelt with three letters. Why, sure, I knew him ; I knew that Knut Hamsun, said Dr. Anders Doe, for many years prominent In Den Norske club. He was such an lad; he was very poor. No, he had no money. That was in the early eighties, when he came to Chicago after working as a plowboy on the virgin North Dakota prairies. He got a job as conductor on the old Halsted street line. The horses pulled th cars then. And, my, it was cold on the back platform, I still remember Ivnuts chapped, red wrists, where his forgot to meet his mittens. And he carried books in his pockets. Always books, Euripides, Aristotle, Thackeray. Such a dreamer1 The passengers used to get mad.' He would forget to pull the rope. They missed their corners. And so disaster befell Conductor Knut Hamsun. The Halsted street horse-ca- r was not for him.. He couldnt remember the streets. On pilgrimages down the line he used to call out North avenue, for Division street. One day an old laity asked Hamsun If the car was southbound. Hamsun scratched his scraggled blond hair. He ran forward, trampling over the pas sengers feet. Are we going south? he asked the driver. We are going to h 1, growled the driver. And so the superintendent of the car barn gave Knut Hamsun the sack. He said the Norwegian was too stupid even to cruise as skipper of a Halsted street car. Hamsun went to New York. He got a berth on a Newfoundland fishing-smacLater he worked his way to Norway as a seaman. It is restless life, full of adventure that we find in Hamsuns which are properly called writings, the authors confessions. He is truly representative of the Scandinavian bohemians whom he lets look In the glass In his novel, The Earth. 0P?T ln Gubrandstal on August 4, ISM), Hamsun wrote little poems when a young shoemaker He apprentice. did not like that trade. His irrepresslve for adventure drove him to longg the United States where he tried to make a living as a cabin boy, miner, store clerk, horse-cconductor, and what not. that period he wrote a sketch orDuring poem once in a while, or was an aggressive agitator of atheism and anarchism, hen he believed he was a consumptive he was, for a short time, a er and devoted Jhis spare time preachand energy to the study of religious mystiLaHauah old-tim- e near-herm- it old-tim- i e coat-sleev- k. w cism. In ail dilemmas of his me Hamsun was homesick.adventurous When he landed at Copenhagen he was without money or friends. Disgusted with life, he hid in a garret to starve himself to death. His sketch "Hunger was the offspring of the struggle between voluntary starvation and the Instinct of that could not be conquered by the longing for the sreat unknown." When printed in Danish newspaper, Hunger placed Hamsun in the first rank of Scandinavian authors. His novel of the same title, Hunger, made him The masterly and Impressive analysis of the human soul in Hunger is characteristic of all of Hamsuns writings. His great success and fame notKnut Hamsun conwithstanding, tinues to live a solitary life; he did not care for honors. When his fiftieth birthday was celebrated throughout Norway and the Norwegians rhapsodized over him as the greatest living poet, Hamsun retired to a hut i.n the fprest near Gulbrandstal. A'llien he had reason to assume that his admirers would find him there he " eut further north to the Hamsun farm, where he lived when a little child. From there he issued his Honor to the Young, coming out for youth against age, In defiance of the accepted theory of the superiority of the old. That he himself had not aged he proved by his novel, A Wanderer Plays With the Sardine. Subsequently he wrote the wonderful satire of the drama, Gotten by the Devil which showed that the high quality of his own dramatic creations was not adversely influenced by his contempt of dramatic art and technique. His other drama the trilogy At the Door of the Wealthy, Queen Tamara (his best drama), and Munken Vendt (an impressive picture of the life of a debauched theologian) is powerful. world-famou- s. ic Still better are Hamsuns novels, them among Mysteries, ."Editor Lange and the love story Pan. All these writings are a strange mixture of rude realism, dreamy mysticism and Impulsive sentiment. On the one hand Hamsun lets loose the reins of phantasy and introduces us to a world of wonderfully dear dreams; on the other hand, he Is a cold critic of the human soul, who exposes the weak side of modern life with penetrating intellect. It Is said that 85,000,000 pages of Hamsun s work have appeared In 23 languages, but it is safe to say that the average American had never heard of him. In short, the award comes as a distinct shock. By what mischance all these years has he overlooked the Norwegian writers name suddenly to be humiliated by his own Ignorance? If he subjects to examination his acquaintances who have earned the reputation of being ers in the world of books, it explormay be some consolation to find that they are no better informed about Hamsun and his works. Have American publishers done their duty to a country whose forests are rapidly being depleted In the cause of ' literature in slighting an author held worthy by the Stockholm Jury of signal honors? In former years when the Nobel were announced there was no such cause for At least It was reassuring to know that they were persons of world-widrenown, however widely read. Sully. Prudhomme, Mommsen, BJornson Mistral, Echegaray, Sienkiewlcz l, Kipling, Paul von Heyse, Maeterlinck, and the rest, whether French German, Norwegian, Spanish, Polish Italian, English, or Belgian, for the' occasion needed no introduction. Then In 1916 came the crowning of Vemer j well-rea- prize-winne- d rs self-reproa- e Car-ducc- Ileldenstam, the Swede, and after a gap of three years it is now the turn of Knut Hamsun, the Norwegian. Evidently if Americans are to keep up with the times they must pay more attention to the Scandinavian languages or put the translators to work. It is no impeachment of the judges or the r that, Hamsuns fame should have been so long in crossing the Atlantic, although his romance, Hunger, was published as long ago as 1888. The Nobel prize, under the terms of the founder, is to be given annually to the person who shall have produced the greatest work. In the Ideal sense, in' the world of letters. The names are apparently those of authors with a wide continental reputation rather than those most es teemed by their own compatriots. Hamsun is 'evidently a born writer. Perhaps his boyhood in the Far North helped to make him a writer, poet and dreamer. The long arctic nights may have brought out the hereditary trait. For such a nature as his is described, paradoxical and rebellious as it is poetic and picturesque, seems necessarily the final fruit of powerful hereditary tendencies, and his peasant forbears are said to have been marked out from their neighbors at least once in each generation by an artistic tendency that made of them skilled craftsmen. At any rate, from the time he learned to make his letters he was striving at literary creation, and when at seventeen he consented to be apprenticed to a shoemaker it was in order that he might earn the money to have printed at his own expense his first two complete works, a short novel and a long poem. The next use he made of his apprenticeship was to jump the job with some more savings and go to Christiania, where he hoped to work his way through the university. But in that hope he failed. There were two reasons for this failure. The more Important was that he had hoped to pay for his lectures by selling stuff to the Christiania publishers of newspapers and periodicals and he couldnt do it. They did not want his poetry, his fiction or his essays. This failure produced the second reason why he could not remain at the university. He became either an unbearable nuisance to his fellow students or the butt Of their jibes. They did not understand him and he made no effort to be understood. So he left the university and came to Amerprize-winne- ica. Hamsun, like other geniuses, was apparently born to be misunderstood. Shallow Soil, published in Anyway, 1893, was the result of Hamsuns life among the Bohemians of Christiania after his street car experience In Chicago. It does not seem to have been a pleasant period in his life. Evidently he was no better understood or liked by the bohemians than he had been by the students at the university a dozen years before. Hamsun took his revenge by his violent attack on the bohemians in "Shallow Soil. The same life has been by Strindberg in a much more way. Hamsuns career and final success seem to point anew the moral that It is hard to keep a good man down. He had a hard life, and success seemed a mere Ignis fatuus, but ha kept on trying. good-humor- Uuulwlen af Monoacetlcaoldaator of SallcyllcaaM KNEW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN HE HAD John, for. Once, Thought of an Effective Comeback During a Little Matrimonial Tiff. Postmaster Quite Ready to Resign After Satisfactory Financial Settlement Had Been Made. Judge Gary of the United States Steel corporation was discussing marriage. Many a marriage which began as a pure love match, lie said, develops into an eternal wrangle. Havent you seen marriages wherein the contracting parties do nothing but argue and fight and contradict each other over trifles from daylight until dark? I remember dining once with such a menage. When the soup came on t,hey started an argument about the price of parlor carpet or some such ridiculous matter, and the serving of the fruit saw this argument at its height. Then the wife interrupted herself, to say to her husband plaintively: I dont know what would happen, John, if you ever agreed with ms on any topic. Id be wrong, said John. Id be wrong. When J. K. laukling was secretary of the navy he wrote to the postmaster of a small village in the South as follows: Sir: This department wishes to know how far the Tonibigbee river runs up. The answer came back : It dont. It runs down. The postmaster general was informed of the affair and failed to see the humor of it. He wrote a letter to the postmaster that said: Sir: Your appointment as postmaster is hereby revoked. You will turn over funds, etc.; pertaining to your office to your successor. In no wise put out the postmaster once more took up his pen, and the postmaster general received this: Th? revenue for this office for the quarter ending September 30 lias been 65 cents; its expenditures, same period, for caudles and twine, 85 cents. Please instruct my successor to adjust Synonyms. Men who wrestled with the obstructive French language overseas will appreciate the spirit and success of a certain French bride who rapidly 7 is mastering English. Ah she says, your English, it is at once so difficult and so delightful. There are so many acts for you under one name. In my little book I keep a list of all you do when you run in or run down or run up. I find a new deed each day. And your synonyms so many interesting words all for one dull object. A few minutes later, speaking of a pleasant Sunday supper, she said : And we had that so good American dish, bungalow cheese. ! Nature Lesson. Do nuts grow on trees, father? They do, my son. Then what tree does the doughnut grow on? The pantry, Magazine. my son. Harpers SOMETHING COMING No Wonder. How do you do, sir? saluted the suave agent at the door. I am offering to the few persons in each community who are of sufficient culture to appreciate it this valuable literary work, which undoubtedly pardon me, but what is the matter with the lady at the telephone there? Is she having a fit or Thats my wife, replied honest She is listening Farmer Fumblegate. in on the party line while a lady who stutters is relating in confidence to another lady who is deaf the details of a right revolting scandal. Kansas City Star. Some Husbands Still Timorous. In old colony days it was against the law for a man to kiss his wife on Sunday. I fear we are still feeling the effect of those laws. - No law can do much to protect the foolish ; no, nor protect the wise from the foolish. Coffee-Po- t Jfyour has boiled too often If too many cups of coffee have set your stomach and nerves on edge, put the pot on to boil again- But this time use POSTUM Cereal in place of coffee Boil it a full fifteen min- utes after boiling starts and you will bring out its rich, satisfying flavor. The benefit to health will soon be appaient. There's a Reason Made by Bostum Cereal Company, Inc. Battle Creek., Michigan. |