Wanderers

The vicarage buildings lay on the slope of a small hill; from the top, the land stretched away flat and level, with alternating timber and clearing. It struck me that here would...

So I pull myself together again, and start saying all manner of foolish things, to make her laugh. I drink a good deal and that helps; at last, she really seems to fancy I am ma...

“Funny to go and forget a thing like that,” he said. “It's gone clean out of my head. But come up home now. I'll be sure to hit on it again.”

Now it seemed to me that the young lady was inventing. But she put in excellent answers, and tied my tongue. It sounded all so natural; she writes an ordinary letter to her peop...

“Only think of letting that engineer creature.... How she ever could, I don't know! And then to go down and stay with him there, after, as she did; what a thing to do! And she's...

Eyah, it's over-foolish of a man to fall in love when he's getting on in years. And who was it set out to show there _was_ a way to quiet and peace of mind?

“You'll be going back to Øvrebø now, I suppose?” she said. “And I thought I'd like.... H'm!... You're sorry to be leaving here, perhaps? No? No, no, of course not. But I must te...

I do not know how I got home. I remember I sat on a stone by the roadside and read the letter and put it in my pocket, and walked on till I came to another stone and did the sam...

One day, while I was in a shop, I heard that there had been some slight difference of opinion between Engineer Lassen and his cousin. A commercial traveller was telling the shop...

“But now I was at my wits' end what to do,” Ragnhild went on. “I stood a minute all in a flurry, and was just going to knock at the door all at once--”

All the guests are gone--stout Captain Bror, the lady with the shawl, Engineer Lassen as well. And Captain Falkenberg is getting ready to start for manoeuvres at last. It struck...

Falkenberg set his bottle to his lips and drank before the eyes of all, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and passed to the nearest man. There was a better feeling...

I went out to the carriage, my heart beating fast. How miserable and desperate she must be! I opened the carriage door, and asked respectfully if Fruen would let me drive this t...

At three in the morning I heard Nils go out to feed the horses. At four he knocked to rouse me out of bed. I did not grudge him the honour of being first up, though I could have...

When the river is high, a mighty roar of sound goes rushing through the place, dividing it in two. Folk live in their little wooden houses north or south of the roar, and manage...

I had an idea she found it hard to say no, and touched my cap and was turning away, not to trouble her any more. But she must have found something strange about Falkenberg, comi...

A little after I wake again, and walk over to the nearest ploughman. I want to find out something about the Falkenbergs, if they are still there and all well. The man answers ca...

Falkenberg had chanced to mention that morning where Petter's home was, and I now made for that. There would hardly be work for me on so small a place; but now that I was rich,...

“She said something about it,” answered Ragnhild. And then she went on something like this: “It began with the Captain asking if she didn't think it was this local sickness she...

An autobiographical element is evident in practically everything that Hamsun has written. But it is particularly marked in the two volumes now published under the common title o...

Time went on. On wet days, when there was little we could do out of doors, the Captain wanted me to paint a bit here and there about the house inside. He showed me some fine ena...

I remember a lady, the mistress of a house: she did no work at all, and saw to nothing, least of all to herself. And ill she fared in the end. But six or seven years back I had...