22 Ellen Key the clear ice, or, better still, when the moon shone, she would glide away on skates at a merry pace. But stor3rtelling and books came first among her earliest pleasure. Ellen Key considers one of the fortunate assets of her childhood the nurse with her inexhaustible store of folk-tales, which she would delightfully recount to the children gathered before the fire. When Ellen was eight years old she would get out of bed, and listen at the door to her parents reading Rydberg's Last Athenian, and afterwards she acted the story with her paper dolls. At this age, Runeberg also became dear to her. She knew his Fdnrik Stal almost by heart and had soon read everything he had so far written. She listened eagerly to her old friend, Captain Hultin's recital of his hunt- ing and fishing trips with Runeberg during a visit to Finland, and her first experience of grief came at the tidings of Runeberg's death. She passed the day in tears, and shortly after- wards she began to hold weekly "Runeberg- Evenings, " in which she gathered her sisters and brothers for reading. It is characteristic of Ellen Key that, at ten years of age, she greatly enjoyed epic poems such as Runeberg's Algskyttarne and Goethe's Hermann und Doro-