The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-04-09

TNDISPUTABLY the most picturesque figure in the old world literature of \ his day, Henrik 1bsen was at once an inveterate poseur and a misanthrope. Nor did he care whether the whole world, pointing it's fingers at him, exclaimed, "Sour old man," so that 1t noticed him at all. He seemed always to dread the possibility of any one passing him without recognition. He loved the gaze of the crowd as he loved his daily tipple of brandy and soda He put himself on rec ord as a reveller in pessimism for its own sad sake, and he was as outspoken in his dislike of strangers as he was anxious that they should gape at him and comment on his personal appearance. Ibsen, great genius and sociological scholar that he was, acquired, in his latter years, the small vices of a vain child; he was an in- tellectual peacock.
 To have visited Christiania and not see Dr. Henrik Ibsen would have been like touring Egypt and missing a sight of the Spinx and pyramids. He was the most interesting parsonage in the Norwegian capital, and Ibsen before any one was conscious of that fact Down the Karl Johanns Gade to the Grand hotel he walked every day, rain or shine, when the weather was particularly inviting he paid two daily visits to thes hotel. On such days he appeared punctually at 1 in the afternoon and again at in the evening Ibsen was above all things a methodical man. His life was governed by the clock. He had his own table in the
 tl,A o.,d t,n minute he arrived a mute but well-trained waiter placed before the shaggy philoso- pher and playwright a bottle of brandy and another of soda. This was the au- thors favorite stimulant, and two glasses of the liquor his limit at a sitting. With the care of druggist compounding pre- scription he measured and mixed his drink, which he slipped, swallow at a time, with such perfect regularity that one could tell off by his action the lapse of each five minutes with no recourse to clock or watch These daily libations seemed, toward the end of his life, to af- ford Henrik Ibsen the one consolation of an existence whose ingrained melancholy impressed itself on all who got near enough to him to converse informally.
 One day it was borne in upon this ob- serving old man that those who haunted the public cafe of the Grand hotel were, for the most part, his own fellow-coun- trymen, and that if he was to be seen by travelling Englishmen, Americans, Frenchmen, Germans and Italians, 1t would be necessary to take up his post in the hotel proper. Accordingly, he chose for himself a table In a most conspicu- ous part of the gallery, which overlooks the big garden, where all foreigners take their dinners, and thus it was possible to be ''the observed of all observers" with no fear of being approached or inveigled into conversation.
 Having taken his seat, the first of mod papers, his hat, his spectacles, with all the fussiness of stage spinster SIX pairs of eye glasses were laid out Tn row on the table. For every paragraph
 he read he placed fresh pair of glasses on his nose, always pausing to poilsh them and hold them to the light AS ne read. apparently absorbed In the contents of his newspaper, close observers re ouently detected the old mans eyes row ing from the printed page In the direction of the people looking his way. He was a sIv old rascal, was Ibsen. If ladies were among those who watched him the ruddy face at once lit up with the radiance of self satisfaction. It was an i'll day for Ibsen and the Grand hotel when foreign CTS were few in the garden. But the strange old genius was rarely without his audience, and the more the audience stared and huttered the more genial and luminous became the Ibsen countenance.