Glimpses of Three Coasts

led correctly, the letter would not have been half so likely to be read; but that extra outsider of an r was irresistibly attractive. The words of the letter itself were, if not

less, willing, thoughtful, helpful, eager, shrewd little creature than Katrina never chattered. Looking back from the last day to the first of my acquaintance with her, I feel a remorseful twinge as I think how near I came to taking instead of her, as my maid for a month's journeying, a stately young woman, who, appearing in answer to my advertisement, handed me her card with dignity, and begged my pardon for inquirin

f dark cloth. I had seen her before, flitting about in shawls of various sorts, loosely pinned at the throat in a disjointed kind of way, which gave to her appeara

are warmly dressed. This summer you keep in Norway

ce then it always reminds me. That was six years ago; but it reminds m

g in her speech. She had been for several months a house-servant in New York, "with an Irish lady; such a nice lady. Her husband, he took care of a

; a nephew, by the way, of the famous Norwegian giant at Barnum's Museum,-a fact which Katrina stated simply, without

words, and to teach her true synonymes; but as for meddling with her pronunciations, I would as soon have been caught trying to teach a baby to speak plain. I fear, towards the last, she began to suspect this, and to be half aware of the not wholly disinterested pleasure which I took in listening to her eager prattle; but she did not accuse me, and I let her set off for home not one whit wi

the way, and compelled to give room. A Norwegian can elbow his boat through a tight-packed mass of boats with as dexterous and irresistible force as another man can elbow his way on foot, on dry land, in a crowd of men. So long as you are sitting quiet in the middle of the boat, merely swayed from side to side by his gyrations, with no sort of responsibility as to their successive direction, and with implicit faith in their being right, it is all very well. But when your Norwegian springs up, confident, poises one foot on the edge of his own boat, the other foot on the edge of another boat, plants one of his oars against the gunwale of a third boat,

mpskibs can place no dependence whatever; and that is the engaging beforehand of his stateroom. To have engaged a stateroom one week beforehand, positively, explicitly, and then, upon arriving on board, to be confronted by a smiling captain, who states in an off-hand manner, as if it were an every-day occurrence, that "he is very sorry, but it is impossible to let you have it;" and who, when he is pressed for an explanation of the impossibility, has no better reason to give than that two gentlemen wanted the stateroom, and as the two gentlemen could not go in the ladies' cabin, and you, owing to the misfortune of your sex, could, therefore the two gentlemen have the stateroom, and you will take the one remaining untenanted berth in the cabin,-this is what may happen in a Norwegian dampskib. If one is resolute enough to halt in the gangway, and, ordering the porters bea

by my side, bending above me, and saying something Norwegian over and over in a gentle voice; and Katrina behind her, saying, "This is the lady what has care of all. She do say, 'Poor lady, poor lady, to be so sick!' She is sorry that you are sick." I gazed at her in stupefied wonder. This radiant creature the stewardess of a steamboat! She was more beautiful near than at a distance. I am sure I have never seen so beautiful a woman. And coming nearer, one could see clearly, almost as radiant as her physical beauty, the beauty of a fine and sweet nature shining through. Her smile was transcendent. I am not over-easy to be stirred by women's fair looks. Seldom I see a woman's face that gives me unalloyed pleasure. Faces are half-terrifying things to one who studies them, such paradoxical masks are they; only one half mask, and the other half bared secrets of a lifetime. Their mere physical beauty, however great it may be, is so underlaid and overlaid by tokens and traces and scars of things in which the flesh and blood of it have played part that a fair face can rarely be more than half fair. But here was a face with beauty such as the old Gre

k of the good-will and efficiency of his stewardess. He assented warmly to my praise of her; adding that she was born of v

re beauty, also. I have neve

imagine what it was he had intended. He also, then, had recognized, as this phrase shows, the truly classic quality of the girl's beauty; and he is the o

ere came testimonies t

rgen, by my husband and me. She can be trusted; I can tell in one firstest minute vat peoples is to be truste

ess, "but dis time," she said, "he had it before I knowed anyting, don't you see? He didn't tell me. I always tink dere is de wifes and children, and maybe de mens don't take home no bread; and den to sit dere and drink, it is shame, don't you see? But if he don't do, some other mans would; so tere it is, don't you see?

endeavoring to engage Anna a

or she vill go to America next year. If she can English speak, she get twice the money in America. Oh, ven I go to America, I did not know de name of one ting; and every night I cry and cry; I tink I never learn; but dat Irish lady I live by, she vas so kind to me as my own mother. Oh, I like Irish peoples; the Irish and the Americans, dey are what I like best

berths being built across instead of lengthwise, the result is a perpetual tossing of heads versus feet. As Kat

he stern solemnity of their mountain-walled fjords must the Norwegians have drawn their ancient inspirations, I imagine, from the wooing, baffling, luring, forbidding, locking and unlocking, and never-revealing vistas, channels, gates, and barriers of their islands. They are round and soft and mossy as hillocks of sphagnum in a green marsh. You may sink above your ankles in the moist, delicious verdure, which looks from the sea like a mere mantle lightly flung over the rock. Or they are bare and gray and unbroken, as if coated in mail of stone; and you might clutch in vain for so much as the help of a crevice or a shrub, if you were cast on their sides. Some lie level and low, with oases of vividest green in their hollows; these lift and loom in the noon or the twilight, with a mirage which the desert cannot outdo. Some rise up in precipices of sudden wall, countless Gibraltars, which no mortal power can scale, and only wild creatures with tireless wings can approach. They are lashed by foaming waves, and the echoes peal like laughter among them; the tide brings them all it has; the morning sun lights them up, top after top, like beacons of its way out to sea, and leaves them again at night, linge

r his first scheming to rob me of my stateroom, the captain now magnanimously offered to me the whole of the ladies' cabin, for which he had no further use. How gladly

eep well! Sleep well!" they

feets any more. De oder way is bestest," ad

, and tried to tighten it. In my ignorance and fright I turned it the wrong way; in poured the dirty water. There stood I, clapping the window to with all my might, but utterly unable either to fasten it or to hold it tight enough to keep out the water. Calling for help was useless, even if my voice could have been heard above the noise of the boat; the door of my cabin was locked. Swash, swash, in it came, more and more, and dirtier and dirtier; trickling down the back of the red velvet sofa, drenching my pillows and sheets, and spattering me. One of the few things one never ceases being astonished at in this world is the length a minute can seem when one is uncomfortable. It couldn't have been many minutes, but it seemed an hour, before I had succeeded in partially fastening that port-hole, unlocking that cabin door, and bringing Anna t

r hard twist at the handle. "I tink you vill be glad ven you comes to Chr

urns around, and as if seeking the outer sea it has left behind runs due south for miles, making the peninsula of Nesodden. On this peninsula is the little town of Drobak, where thirty thousand pounds' worth of ice is stored every winter, to be sold in London as "Wenham Lake ice." This ice was in summer the water of countless little lakes. The region round about the Christiania Fjord is set full of them, lily

e shores on either hand were darkly wooded; here and there a country-seat on higher ground, with a gay flag floating out. No Norwegian house is complete without its flagstaff. On Sundays, on all holidays, on the birthdays of members of t

mountains stood always on their heads;" that is, "their heads down to the heads of the other mountains." He then spoke of the strange looming of the water-line often seen in Holland, where he had travelled; but where, he said he never wished to go again, they were "such dirty people." This accusat

at is that? You do not

he table; "made just like what we put for flowers; and they put it always on the table when they are eating. I have myself seen it. And they do eat and spi

ry day,-an invention, no doubt, of poverty in the first place; for the Norwegian has been hard pressed for centuries, and has learned to set his fragrant juniper and fir boughs to all manner of uses unknown in other countries; for instance, spreading them down for outside door

do say that it is in America spitted everywhere; and that an American who wa

tty little oval brass pan, filled with juniper twigs, standing on the hearth of the turret-like stove in my Ber

spitted. And when the servant came in he said, 'Take away t

;" but he was reassured by my hearty laughter, and my confession that my own ignora

d are wooded peninsulas and islands; and everywhere are to be seen light or bright-colored country-houses. The first expression of the city itself, as one enters it, is disappointingly modern, if one has his head full of Haralds and Olafs, and expects to see some traces of the old Osloe.

tious

omes to h

th but

ears he l

eyes he

wise le

rwegian s

king with my eyes, I saw long dark corridors, damp courtyards, and rooms on which no sun ever had shone, I spoke little, but forthwith drove away in sea

ite right. "I don't see vhy tey need make a hótle like dat; nobody vould stay in prison!" At the Hotel Scandinavie,

s and write all night, if he chose and could pay for his candles. But neither money nor ingenuity can compass for him a normal darkness to sleep in. The Norwegian house is one-half window: in their long winters they need all the sun they can get; not an outside blind, not an inside shutter, not a dark shade, to be seen; streaming, flooding, radiating in and round about the rooms, comes the light, welcome or unwelcome, early and late. And to the words "early" and "late" there are in a Norway summer new meanings: the early light of the summer morning sets in about half-past two; the late light of the summer evening fades into a luminous twilight about eleven. Enjoyment of this species of perpetual day soon comes to an end. After the traveller has written home to everybody

another of the five windows, and looking up and down the busy streets; "not in Christiania, but I tink not

na?" said I, trying to speak as

ch for one week, you see; and I only get half an hour, maybe, or few minutes, but I steal de book, and read all vat I can. I vas only little den: oh, it is years ago. But it is our best story in all Norway. Ingeborg was beauty,

at all, Katrina," I said. "I don't

den he lost her himself. I tink it was on the ice: it broke. A stranger told dem

er eager enthusiasm over it was delicious. Her face kindled as she repeated, "Oh, it is our best story in all Norway!" and when I told her th

y, sure of her success and of my satisfaction. She burst into the room, brandishing in one hand two turnips and a carrot; in the other she hugged up in front of her a newspaper, bursting and red-stained, full of fresh raspberries; under her left arm, held very tight, a little old copy of the Frithiof's Saga. Breathless, she dropped

" I ex

t is not mont since I vas eating dem in Bergen. I tought in a great place like Ch

me ejaculated bit of translation, beginning always with, "Vell, you see!" I kept her hard at work at it, reading it to me, while I lingered over my lonely breakfasts and dinne

it, came the most refreshing t's and d's. The worse her pronunciation and the more broken her English, the better I liked it, and the more poetical was the translation. Many men have tried their hand at translation of the Frithiof's Saga, but I have read none which gave me so much pleasure as I had from hearing Katrina's; neither do I believe that any poet has studied and rewritten it, however cultured he might be, with more enthusiasm and delight than this Norwegian girl of the people, to whom many of the mythological allusions were as unintelligible as if they had been written in Sanskrit. She had a convenient way of di

my own country. I can make songs. I make a many: all te birtdays and all te extra days in our family, all come to me and say, 'Now, Katrina, you has to make song.' Dey tink I can make

much to see it, Katrina," I

said, laughing, tapping her broad

suade her to give it to me. She persisted

t be harder than the Frithiof's Saga

oken English. At last, however, I got it. She had been hard at work a whole forenoon in her room with her dictionary and pencil. In the afternoon she came to me, holding several sheet

RTURE FROM BERG

f departur

no more i

be thou my

now how i

the big

father a

w for sure

lace will be

s to all

er father

t land, as we

shall be

that we never

h is that

you and

bring my com

e where my c

Akrehavns

tely took

, my father

to my

nks for all

bestowe

farewel

dear f

s fortune, ho

ou wherev

u are all

ep th

Haarfager we

m away

th of

ine or tw

r nati

lark ha

well-mea

t we al

ed wit

t carry our wr

aven'

robation of her simple little song, and

ig book of all my songs. Nobody but myself could read dem papers. I