Opposite to their long wooden, one-storied house, was another very similar, the large wooden, yellow-painted school-house.

We had hardly arrived before lads in brown suits with narrow red facings, caps and jackets alike, and little girls with coloured handkerchiefs pinned over their heads, came streaming up in little groups through the flowery meadows, from their happy homes amongst the birchwoods, under the gray rocks, or by the blue coves and creeks. Then came the "uncles" and "aunts," simplehearted-looking and sunburnt couples, who as soon as they were congregated partook of coffee under the oak trees. The Swedish peasant would as soon think of going without his drop of coffee, his "tear of coffee," as he calls it, as an English washerwoman without her tea.

There was one clumsy-featured, bronze-faced man, of about five-and-thirty, with earrings, with whom I had a good deal of conversation, and wonderfully intelligent he was. He seemed to know all about England, and told his "old woman" how quickly one could get there, and I had to hear a long story about a friend of theirs who wished to emigrate to America by going to Liverpool.

As soon as the worthy couples had all drank their coffee, shaken hands with Fru Lundbäck, and thanked her, the children came, and then the ball commenced in the great schoolroom, beginning between three and four o'clock, having for orchestra two fiddlers, one an elderly man, the other a young man, who both reminded me of wooden effigies, only that the music worked through them down to their very toes, so that they were all alive, them and their brown fiddles, fiddle-strings and bows. But in

truth all the men and women had features which might have been cut in wood, and when at the beginning an old man-though by the by he was not old, only they call each other "old man" and "old woman "—began solemnly whirling round with his partner, gradually followed by another and another couple, all looked as mournful and danced as soberly as if at a funeral. Life, however, came into them when the little lads and lasses and every one began to dance. As for the noble young lady, the Fröken, who is the schoolmistress, and the young schoolmaster, they danced away the whole afternoon, as if they were some wonderful pieces of mechanism, and were the very soul of the entertainment.

The favourite dance is the twist polka. A large circle of dancers dances round the room to the music, couples also swinging round in the middle. Whenever you like to leave the circle and choose a partner you may do so, and go swinging round hand in hand, sometimes four together, with hands crossed. As for Fröken Erhenstein and the schoolmaster they were dancing round with partners, little boys, young lads, young girls, men and women, nearly the whole time.

It is so easy that it requires no learning; I danced four, Sofi, Manager Lundbäck and Pastor Lagerväll, and then again and again with the country people. And I can assure you that being spun round by the men was like being driven by a windmill. Then there is a single polka, or polska more properly, which is danced to a particular step, though the polka step will do very well for it. After I had danced it with a woman and was gone back to my place, she beckoned me to her in a very

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mysterious manner. This was to beg of me to go and ask her "old man" to dance. The men were too shy to ask us, so we had quietly to take hold of them and lead them out. Then they danced gladly enough, though always with a solemn, yet well-satisfied air.

There was the curtseying polka, too, a sort of long string and follow-my-leader dance. We danced it out of the ball-room by one door into the sandy court, dancing all the while, and in at the other door, then coiled up into a ball, so that we were just like packed herrings, and then untwisted again, which was a great relief. There was another, a very amusing dance, called "Weaving Walmar," the homespun cloth which the men wear. The schoolmaster and the Fröken with their partners were the shuttles which kept flying backwards and forwards, their hands clasped above the circle of stooping attendant dancers, who clapped their hands all the time.

The dancing went on incessantly till about a quarter . past nine, when the children filed off for their supper, under the oak trees. The supper consisted of tremendous slices of various kinds of bread and butter, with slices of cheese and different kinds of meat. There had been an interval before, during which people were refreshed with various beverages, and afterwards the children played at a game; but all the time the two fiddles of Peter and Söderström had been going and the men and the women indefatigably dancing in the schoolroom.

At weddings the peasants dance several nights running, and last winter the daughters at the parsonage frequently danced from six o'clock in the evening till four in the morning, going to bed and sleeping till the

two o'clock dinner, after which they would again dress and drive off to another dance. On the evening of the Galön festivity they did not reach home before half-past twelve, there being some singing and a little religious service, also a distribution of gingerbread to each child, and then a drive of an hour-and-a-half after we had left. They were eight in number in that cart-like carriage of theirs, drawn by two little brown horses, so that they did not travel rapidly. We reached home about half-past

ten.

XI.

A PEEP AT RUSSIA AND THE SHORES OF

THE BALTIC.

OR several reasons, most of them connected with

FOR

-to me-grave and important business, of which I shall not here speak, I visited Russia in the autumn of last year. Sailing direct from Hull to St Petersburgh I spent a fortnight in that city and in Moscow, returning via the coast of Finland, as far north as Abo, thence to Stockholm, and by the lakes to Gottenburgh and Copenhagen. The whole tour occupied less than two months. Some things which I saw and heard interested me, and an account of them may, perhaps, be interesting to those who have the misfortune to know as little of those parts as I did before I chanced to visit them.

THE VOYAGE OUT.

I have little to say about it. The fact is that almost all voyages out of sight of land are much the same. In every ship there is the same sort of steward and pas