Childhood and Early Youth 33 easy to her in talking and writing, but she never can learn them grammatically. If, for example, you speak of relative subordinate clause, or dependent clause in the Swedish language, she declares that in her humble opinion you are "humbugging," for she has never understood any difference between them, and in her mind the conjunctions stand on just as shaky legs as the foiu* simple rules of arithmetic. In writing, her language is de- termined only by her sense of style, and she rewrites all her manuscripts four, five, some pages even ten, twenty times, or until it sounds well to her ear. Except for this shortcoming in grammatical knowledge she would have been even a greater literary artist. The home-life at Sundsholm was secluded, and spent in serious occupations. There were no neighbours except those already mentioned, and young people's parties, with dances and exctirsions, were of rare occurrence, as were amusements in the ordinary sense. One gets the impressions that the cultured father lived chiefly for his literary and political interests, and the mother with him, while the children lived their own life.