The balls were followed by serenades and "punch evenings." John had a great longing for strong drinks; they seemed to him like concentrated liquid nourishment. The first time he was intoxicated was at a students' supper at Djurgårdsbrunn. He felt happy, joyful, strong, and mild, but far from mad. He talked nonsense, saw pictures on the plates and made jokes. This behaviour made him for the moment like his elder brother, who, though deeply melancholy in his youth, had a certain reputation afterwards as a comic actor. They had both played at acting in the attic; but John was embarrassed; he acted badly and was only successful when he was given the part of some high personage to play. As a comic actor he was impossible.

About this time there entered two new factors into his development—Art and Literature.

John had found in his father's bookcase Lenstrom's Æsthetics, Boije's Dictionary of Painters, and Oulibischeff's Life of Mozart, besides the authors previously mentioned. Through the scattering of the family of a deceased relative, a large number of books came into the house, which increased John's knowledge of belles-lettres. Among them were several copies of Talis Qualis's poems, which he did not enjoy; he found no pleasure in Strandberg's translation of Byron's Don Juan, for he hated descriptive poetry; he always skipped verse quotations when they occurred in books. Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, in Kullberg's translation, he found tedious; Karl von Zeipel's Tales, impossible. Sir Walter Scott's novels were too long, especially the descriptions. He therefore did not understand at first the greatness of Zola, when many years later he read his elaborate descriptions; the perusal of Lessing's Laokoön had already convinced him that such descriptions cannot convey an adequate impression of the whole. Dickens infused life even into inanimate objects and harmonised the scenery and situations with the characters. That he understood better. He thought Eugène Sue's Wandering Jew magnificent; he did not regard it as a novel; for novels, he thought, were only to be found in lending libraries. This, on the other hand, was a historical poem of universal interest, whose Socialistic teaching he quickly imbibed. Alexandre Dumas's works seemed to him like the boys' books about Indians. These he did not care for now; he wanted books with some serious purpose. He swallowed Shakespeare whole, in Hagberg's translation. But he had always found it hard to read plays where the eye must jump from the names of the dramatis personæ, to the text. He was disappointed in Hamlet, of which he had expected much, and the comedies seemed to him sheer nonsense.

John could not endure poetry. It seemed to him artificial and untrue. Men did not speak like that, and they seldom thought so beautifully. Once he was asked to write a verse in Fanny's album.

"You can screw yourself up to do that," said his friend.

John sat up at night, but only managed to hammer out two lines. Besides, he did not know what to say. One could not expose one's feelings to common observation. Fritz offered his help, and together they produced six or eight rhyming lines, for which Snoilsky's A Christmas Eve in Rome supplied the motive.