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But his linen was irreproachable, and a certain dash in his manner, and the loud fashionableness of his attire, gave unmistakable evidences of prosperity. "Come, Bjerk," said he in a tone of good-fellowship, which was not without its sting to the idealistic republican, "you must take up a better business than selling yesterday's `Tribune. That won't pay here, you know.
After that eventful December night, America was no more what it had been to Halfdan Bjerk. A strange torpidity had come over him; every rising day gazed into his eyes with a fierce unmeaning glare. The noise of the street annoyed him and made him childishly fretful, and the solitude of his own room seemed still more dreary and depressing.
But, unfortunately, Bjerk was inclined to hold the government in some way responsible for his own poor success as a student, and this, in connection with an aesthetic enthusiasm for ancient Greece, gradually convinced him that the republic was the only form of government under which men of his tastes and temperament were apt to flourish.
ON the second day of June, 186 , a young Norseman, Halfdan Bjerk by name, landed on the pier at Castle Garden. He passed through the straight and narrow gate where he was asked his name, birthplace, and how much money he had, at which he grew very much frightened. "And your destination?" demanded the gruff-looking functionary at the desk. "America," said the youth, and touched his hat politely.
If this had been the fate of our friend Bjerk, we should have dismissed him here with a confident "vale" on his life's pilgrimage.
These were the sunny days in Halfdan's career, days long to be remembered. They came to an abrupt end when old Mrs. Bjerk died, leaving nothing behind her but her furniture and some trifling debts.
Van Kirk, having for awhile measured her visitor with a glance of mild scrutiny. "Halfdan Bjerk." "Half-dan B , how do you spell that?" "B-j-e-r-k." "B-jerk. Well, but I mean, what is your name in English?" Halfdan looked blank, and blushed to his ears. "I wish to know," continued the lady energetically, evidently anxious to help him out, "what your name would mean in plain English.
The man's anger suddenly abated; he picked up the paper which he had thrown on the sidewalk, and stood for a while regarding Halfdan curiously. "Are you a Norwegian?" he asked. "Yes, I came from Norway yesterday." "What's your name?" "Halfdan Bjerk." "Halfdan Bjerk! My stars! Who would have thought of meeting you here! You do not recognize me, I suppose."
Halfdan Bjerk was a tall, slender-limbed youth of very delicate frame; he had a pair of wonderfully candid, unreflecting blue eyes, a smooth, clear, beardless face, and soft, wavy light hair, which was pushed back from his forehead without parting. His mouth and chin were well cut, but their lines were, perhaps, rather weak for a man.
As one of his fellow-students remarked in a fit of jealousy, "Once when Nature had made three geniuses, a poet, a musician, and a painter, she took all the remaining odds and ends and shook them together at random and the result was Halfdan Bjerk."
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