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THE LATEST PLAY OF IBSEN

"Little Eyofl," in Which He Lays Bare the Human Heart.

A Deep and Delicate Study in Human Emotions -- The Main Incidents in the Play.

The Great Norwegian May Have Taken A Lesson From Maeterlinck, the Belgian Dramatist.

Henrik Ibsen's last play is "Little Eyolf," and it is prettily published by Stone and Kimball, Chicago, in Green Tree Library.

It is a psychological presentation of an unhappy marriage. The woman, Mrs. Allmers, loves her husband passionately. He loves her quietly, incidentally and complaisantly. She is beautiful and rich. He has married her because of these things, and because her beloved sister had suffered with him the inconveniences and chagrins of poverty. That sister had a home with him, and spent most of her time caring for Eyolf, the maimed son of Allmers. This little Eyolf was injured by falling from the table when he was a little babe. Allmer's sister Asta had gathered him up in her arms, and carried him, broken and harmed past remedy to the young parents, where they sat oblivious of the world wrapped in each other's smiles.

"The law of change" had been doing its fatal work. Allmers was absorbed on a book he was writing on "Human Responsibility." Mrs. Allmers, idle, beautiful, neglected, wandered about her gardens, or down by the melancholy fiord, or about her magnificent rooms and brooded on love. She was thrilled with the consciousness of her own witchery. She knew that any man book he was writing. She would, perhaps, have destroyed it if that would have availed to bring him closer to her.

Allmers, meantime, brooded upon the words he was writing in this commentary of human responsibility. He left home and went up among the mountains. He determined to return, sacrifice his book, which he had expected to be his life work, and devote himself to his unfortunate little son -- who was dreaming of being a soldier, and who could never, at best, be anything more than a scholar.

He comes back, finds his little son cricked out in a tiny soldier's uniform, and is moved at the pathos of the contrast between the possibilities and the poor lad's aspirations. He is tender with his sister, and kindly with his wife, and in this mood confides to them his change of plan. His wife, who has had one triumphant moment when she hears him declare that he is about to relinquish the writing of his book is seized with a new torment of jealous when she learns that he intends to devote his life to her strange little child -- the child she has never been able to get close to her heart.

In the midst of this scene on fo those peculiar characters by which Ibsen and Maeterlinck imbue their tales with an awesome fatality -- a presage of inevitable disaster -- enters. This is the "rat-wife," who has the power to lure the rats from any house, or island, or town by playing upon her pipe. With her she carried an ugly flat-nosed dog which possesses like herself a hypnotic power over vermin of any sort. There is a suggestion of the pied pier in all this, of course, and yet more suggestion of the old pagan tales of the obedience of animals to luring music. Perhaps that is more than a hint of a fact at the bottom of it. Anyway, the old rat-wife terrifies them all with her mystery and her threats. The rat-wife looks at her dog, and says, nodding at Allmers:

"Moseman and I -- we two do it together. And it goes so smoothly -- for all you can see, at any rate. I just slip a string through his collar, and then I lead him three times around the house, and play on my Pan's pipes. When they hear that, they've got to come up from the cellars, and down from the garrets, and out of their holes, all the blessed little creatures!"

Little Eyolf asks: "And does he bite them to death?"

"Oh, not at all," she responds. "No, we go down to the boat, he and I do -- and then they follow after us, both the little and the big ratkins. Then we push out from land, and I scull with one oar, and play on my Pan's pipes. And Moseman, he swims behind. (With glittering eyes) And [?], creepers and crawlers, they follow and follow us out into the deep, deep waters. Ay, for they have to!"

They try to get rid of the rat witch -- who says she once lured her own lover into the black water. She goes, half-chagrined, but inscrutable, pausing to say [?]. Allmers: "If your ladyship should find that there's anything that keeps nibbling, and gnawing, and creeping, and crawling, then just see and get hold of me and Moseman."

The husband and wife are left alone. She chafes and fumes under his inattention. At length she breaks into a jealous woman's railing against her own child, who has evil eyes, she says.

And a few minutes later the little boy, who has gone to play on the beach, having followed the old rat-wife, is drowned. His crutch is found floating on the water.

Then follows a study in remorse. It is refined in that terrible and haunting way in which Ibsed can refine an emotion till it seems like the distillment of some tortured human heart. It has an air of actuality which refuses to be discountenanced. The reproaches of the husband and wife are as foolish, as angry and as unjust as one can imagine their early vows of love were excessive, voluptuous and unholy. The child which has been given them as the accident of nature does not seem to them to be the palpable form of their love -- as it would had their natures or their relations been different. He accuses her of having lured him to her arms, and made them both forget the little one on the day it was injured. She is haunted with those large eyes staring at her from under the green water, where, the peasant boys say, he floated slowly after the boat of the rat-wife. "Are they evil eyes?" Allmers horis at her, in cruel reminder of her own angry remark, "are they a child's evil eyes?"

His love for her seems dead. She is maddened with remorse. They cannot bear to be together. Meantime, the sister Asta, has discovered that she is not the sister of Almmers, as both of them had always supposed. This causes her to reject the importunities of a very frank, and charming young civil engineer, who seems the one perfectly healthy and happy mortal in the play. For Asta feels that her happiness during the years she and Allmers struggled together in poverty arose from other reasons that that of their supposed relationship. Meanwhile, the hatred between husband and wife seems to hourly increase. her tumult wears itself away -- as even, the most violent storms must do -- and she grows calmer, and sets about laying out a plan of life for herself. She has lost her child, and in losing him has lost her husband. She could not live with such a vacuity as that in her heart. She decides to look after the wretched little children who have swarmed over her estate -- the children of her tenants. Her husband, who has confessed his life to be empty, and who has spent his time since the event of the tragedy looking in melancholy mad infatuation at the waters of the fiord, comes at length to attain a sort of respect for her resolve. Though he has declared that they could never live together again, he concludes to make the effort. She accepts this decision with humility -- too worn with suffering to rejoice when joy comes. And, indeed, it is but the faint shadow of joy. In short, after several years of wedded life, these two people enter for the first time upon something which may develop into a marriage in the sacred sense of the word.

The whole play seems to be alive with unseen forces. It is not the personages in the play any more than their Destiny that holds one.

It has often been said that Maeterninck felt Ibsen's influence, but certainly in "Little Eyolf" the influence of the great Flanand is felt by Ibsen.

The trick of turning the sensitive human heart as bare as the scalpe; lays bare the brain is Isben's own, however. He probes deeper than any man, living or dead, into the mysteries of marriage, which, by common consent, men and women conceal by a conventional smile. He knows that nothing but love can bring serenity, and is too much of a student of human nature to suppose that serenity is frequently an incident of married life among highly cultivated and complex creatures. To depict the various sorts of miseries is his sorry work. He builds no ideals -- Isben. He presents only what seems to him to be the conditions. Probably he would say that he is not responsible for them. He is master and when his men and women suffer other men and women raust needs suffer in sympathy. But his books are sorrowful, and remind one that the century is very old and weary.

He does not, however, remind one that the sky is as young today as it was yesterday, or that the springs of a thousand years from now will bring out grasses as delicately fringed as those that grew on the mountain paths when Petrarch was a lover. For Ibsen the sky is gray and the fiord is sighing. He stands among his fellows a giant, swathed in dun, draperies -- a master with a mysterious brow -- a man with no message, but with an eloquently weary plaint. ELIA W. PEATTIE.

FALSE STORY CAUSED DEATH

Little Ednee Brower Dies of a Broken Heart.

Hot Springs, Ark., Feb. 9. -- Ednee Brower, the 12-year-old invalid who was known either personally or through correspondence to people all over the United States, died hard. For seven years she had been unable to walk or move any part of her body except her hands and head, on account of injures to her spine, received by a fall when was only 5 years old. She was a bright child and could read and write. For a year or more past she has been collecting canceled postage stamps, and friends from all over the United States were sending them to her. In this way she supported herself by selling stamps to dealers. During the past year she collected 1,000,000 stamps in this way, for which she received $100. She had to lie on her stomach all the time, and in that uncomfortable position she could work day after day, writing letters and counting stamps that had been sent to her, but she was always bright and cheerful.

A few days ago the mails brought her a copy of the Washington Post, which contained a notice that she was a fraud, that she was not an invalid. This was an error, which probably grew out of the fact that a Miss Edna Brown of Illinois, is also collecting stamps in a similar way for the support of an invalid sister. This notice had the effect of breaking Ednee Brower's heart, for she became ill and died this morning. She talked of the publication all the while and said she would collect no more stamps, for she would rather starve than be pronounced a fraud. A few moments before she died and opened her eyes and asked the physician Dr. W. H. Barry, how long it would be before she could go to heaven, then she closed her eyes as though she had only fallen asleep.

FIRST TRAIN ARRIVES.

Pittsburg Has Railway Service After a Long Delay.

Pittsburg, Pa., Feb. 8. --The first through train from the east is more than twenty-four hours arrived at 9 o'clock this morning. This tells the condition of traffic as a result of the severe weather. The train referred to was No. 7, which carries the fast mail, due here yesterday at 8:30 a. m. When others, due in the interim, will arrive, is entirely a matter of conjecture. The trains from off the Pennsylvania company's lines west of Pittsburg are arriving from two to five hours late. General Manager Woods has ordered a temporary suspension of freight movement.

FIRED TWO SHOTS:

Holland Tries to Assassinate Banker Hellman of San Francisco.

San Francisco, Cal., Feb. 9. -- An attempt was made at 9:15 o'clock this morning to kill F. W. Hellman, president of the Navada bank and one of the leading financiers of this city.

A man named Holland, said to be a foreigner, fired two shots at the banker near his residence on California street and then shot himself. He is mortally wounded. The shots fired at Mr. Hellman went wide of the mark.

The police say the attempted assassination was the result of the bank's refusal to cash a check signed by Holland, believing it to be a forgery.

SCORCH AT SCOTIA.
Special Dispatch to the World-Herald.

Scotia, Neb., Feb. 9 -- This quiet little village was suddenly surprised by an alarm of fire about 9 p. m. last night. The general merchandise and grocery store of B. Wilcox was found to be on fire. It is a frame building, with two frame buildings on either side. No metropolitan fire company is located here, and the old-time bucket brigade was called. The citizens did faithful work and finally extinguished the flamed which partly damaged the building. The stock was fully insured.

KICKED TO DEATH.
Special Dispatch to the World-Herald.

Morse Bluffs, Neb., Feb. 9. -- Mary Dufek, daughter of Joseph Dufek, living near Linwood, was kicked to death by a horse yesterday afternoon.

POWDER INJURES TWO.

Alliance, O., Feb. 9. -- Two kegs and a half of powder exploded in a room of the Houston Coal company's mine at Palmyra last night. David Lloyd and David Linse were fatally injured.

POLICE PARAGRAPHS.

George McCormack is in jail for being drunk and abusing his family.

A. C. Thompson, the insane man who was sent to the county hospital, has been taken to his home at Jacksonville by a brother who arrived here Friday.

A dispatch has been received from Tekamah, Neb., requesting the police to "send Miss Katie Boyce, who is working at 2016 South Thirteenth street, home immediately."

Charles Felix is wanted for the larceny of 100 pounds of millet from Nicholas Nelson. The amount alleged to have been stolen is said to be two tons, but there is no evidence of more than the amount specified in the complaint taken by Felix.