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168 LETTERS.
oyster-dinner. After dinner, I kept the young people at
the piano, and they sang Norwegian songs both grand and
simple. Between whiles , who is said to be a book-
worm, and I, who am the same, taught each other a num-
ber of pieces out of Lord Byron’s works, whilst I in secret
admired our perseverance in keeping up a mutual instruc-
tion of which we both knew equally much, or equally little.
After this lesson, I was obliged to go out, overpowered by
my migraine, which the music had kept back, but which
the conversation about Lord Byron had brought on again.
At last I was obliged to go to bed.
Nearly all with whom I have come in contact here ap-
pear to me to have the universal characteristic of kindness,
cheerfulness, and enjoyment of life, together with a home-
liness which is almost too naive; but from the last I must
except the Countess W , who in any society would be
distinguished for her natural wit and elegant taste.
Life here is absorbed in domestic occupations, and from
people with cultivated minds, or longing after cultivation,
one often hears painful lamentations that they stand alone,
have no one to speak to, and that the duties of their daily
life entirely exhaust and kill their Aand (soul). In general,
I think the Norwegian mothers of families are to be pitied,
for they must be housekeepers to a degree which we in
Sweden have no idea of. It is true, they read here with
pleasure all the modern authors, and young ladies discuss
Bulwer, “tout comme chez nous,” and we have even in
Moss our masquerades with Greek and Swiss girls, and
great hospitality, and kindness, and good-will meets one
everywhere. I have had a good share of this, which I hold
in grateful memory; but by the culture among the country
people, I have been very little edified. I saw with aston-
ishment last Sunday, when the people wended their way to
a chapel in the neighborhood of this estate, peasants and
small farmers in dress-coats and fashionable hats, regular
“dandies;” their wives and servant-maids and others in
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