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NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS. MORAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS. 157
The households in Sweden were, far into the nineteenth century, often very
large, but their average size has diminished in later times, as the number of
servants is less numerous, and the assistants in employments nowadays only
exceptionally belong to the household of the employer. At the census of 1870 there
were to be found for every thousand households 195 women servants, but in the
census of 1890, only 129. A great number of Swedish servant girls emigrate
every year to America, where they are much in request on account of their
reliability and willingness.
On the way to the hayfield. Photo, oösta flobiiax,
" Stockholm.
Volumes have been written concerning the manner of living:, the customs, and
observances of our people, as of other nations; to do more here than make
some few scattered allusions to the same, is, of course, impossible. As for the
educated classes, their ways of life are, on the whole, like those generally found
in the Western Europe of to-day, with that shade of distinction which can be
derived from the special characteristics of our nation, such as the marked
disposition to entertain and to show hospitality, a certain pretentiousness
concerning necessities of life, but also the polite tact and chivalrousness, that real
humanity in the widest sense of the word, which are so often found in the
educated Swede. The Swedish temperament’s having also the characteristics of
being easily kindled and somewhat fantastic, lends very naturally its colour to
our manner of living, which is no less marked by the strong appreciation of Nature
— a feeling which, in our days, expresses itself in a well developed tourist- and
sportinglife. In the lower classes all this recurs in simpler forms, and also respecting
the manner of living, the gaps between different classes diminish more and
more. — It has already been mentioned in the preceding pages that a certain
coarseness of disposition still exists in many places, as an inheritance from the
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