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THROUGH SWEDEN. © 31
terefting route for a traveller. The paradife of all Sweden is Sca-
nia, where many of the nobility and people of fortune fix their
refidence in fummer. You meet there with fine avenues of trees
and other improvements of art. But as it is not my intention to
defcribe the fouthern provinces, I fhall proceed no farther in my
account, nor do I mean to enter into a detail of the different
towns in this part of my journey. Lidkoping, Marieftadt, Orebro,
and Arboga, might pafs for fourth rate towns in France or Italy.
The laft ftage, or poft-houfe, called Fithia, is remarkable for no-
thing fo much as its double meaning in the Swedifh language,
when it is pronounced by ftrangers. I was told by different per=
sons that this ambiguity frequently ferved as a fubject of great
-amufement to Guftavus III. who would fometimes at his table,
in a very audible voice, afk any ftranger that might happen to be
prefent, the queftion, how he liked the laft poft-houfe he had
paffed in coming to.Stockholm, viz. Fithia. The ftranger, ignorant
of the equivocation, perhaps faid that he liked the houfe very well;
or that he thought it but a contemptible little place. On which
the king would, with little regard to delicacy, fall a laughing,
and, looking fignificantly at the ladies, obferve, that Mr. Such-
a-one was in the right; that Fithia was indeed but a paltry little
place. This anecdote is introduced here, folely for the purpofe of
warning ftrangers againft mentioning this poft-houfe in the com-=
pany of Swedith ladies.
We arrived at Stockholm on the 19th of September, 1799, at
nine o’clock at night. As we had not ufed the precaution of pre-
vioutly.
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