He had intended to become a
Unitarian minister. Instead of doing so he had to work as a farm-hand on
the prairie, street-car conductor in Chicago, dairyman in Dakota; and he
varied these pursuits by giving a series of lectures on French literature
in Minneapolis. By that time he probably imagined that he was equipped for
a more successful attack on the literary strongholds of his own country,
and returned to Christiania. Disappointments and privations followed more
bitter than any he had ever known. He starved and studied and dreamed;
vainly he made the most desperate attempts to gain recognition. In despair
he once more abandoned the battle-field and fled to America again, with
the avowed purpose of gaining a reputation on the lecture platform.
Once more he failed; his countrymen resident in the Northwest would have
none of him. Beaten back in every attempt, discouraged, perhaps feeling
the need of solitude and the opportunities for introspective thought which
he could not find in the larger cities, he exiled himself to that most
desolate of existences, a life on a Newfoundland fishing-smack. Three long
years he spent as one of a rude crew with whom he could have nothing in
common save the daily death-struggle with the elements.
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