to come hither a few months before. His young and pretty wife was standing in the kitchen, where a fire was blazing, boiling groats as I entered; I accosted her in Swedish. She was amazed at first, and terrified by the late visit, as her husband was from home on an official journey, and she was here quite alone with her little brother and an old woman servant; but she received us with true Northern hospitality and good will, and she was ready to do everything in the world to entertain and accommodate us. As the house was small, and its resources not very ample, Mrs. C. and her sister drove to the house of an American farmer who lived at some little distance, I remaining over night with the little Norwegian lady. She was only nineteen, sick at heart for her mother, her home, and the mountains of her native land, nor was happy in this strange country, and in those new circumstances to which she was so little accustomed. She was pretty, refined, and graceful; her whole appearance, her dress, her guitar which hung on the wall, everything showed that she had lived in a sphere very different to that of a log-house in a wilderness, and among rude peasants. The house was not in good condition; it rained in through the roof. Her husband, to whom she had not long been married, and whom for love she had accompanied from Norway to the New World, had been now from home for several days; she had neither friend nor acquaintance near nor far in the new hemisphere. It was no wonder that she was unable to see anything beautiful or excellent in “this disagreeable America.” But a young creature, good and lovely as she is, will not long remain lonely among the warm-hearted people of this country. Her little nine-years old brother was a beautiful boy, with magnificent blue eyes and healthy temperament (although at the present moment suffering from one of the slow, feverish diseases peculiar to the country), and he thought yet of becoming a bishop
