Youth and First Years in Stockholm 49 of tragedy-comedy, if we are to understand how, in later years, with acquired gentleness, she goes so far as to contradict her own life- ideal by a tolerance probably too great. It is obvious that the blood coursing in her veins, and making her heart beat more passion- ately than is the common lot, she has inherited from strong, vital personalities, who did not trudge the dull path of commonplace existence, but lived rich and unusual lives. Thus we find that only after decades of thought and study, did Ellen Key, at a mature age, enter the arena to fight the marriage institution, as it exists at present, "which, with its proprietary rights, has converted the tenderest expression of personal liberty into life-imprisonment, where the highest possibil- ity of life-joy is changed into a shelter for life- loathing. But before she appeared as a writer on this and similar subjects, her powers had been engaged in quite other spheres.