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802 SKETCHES.
two equal parts. On the other side of this lane, you may,
especially on certain market days, see the country-people
with large wagon-loads of hay, grain, meat, wooden uten-
sils, and other produce, as well as cattle. Here is a stir
and a life as in an ant-hill. At the upper end of the square,
along the houses, women and girls sit busy weaving wreaths
of flowers and moss and red whortleberries to Jay upon
graves, offering you the fragrant produce of the forests.
Here amongst the country people you may admire one
or more tall, fine figures, in their provincial dress, and the
little Swedish peasant horses, with short-cut, comb-like
manes, small hoofs and heads, looking as if they were
not capable of long journeys and heavy work, but which
the Arctic traveller, Sir John Ross, avouched to be the
horses best suited for an expedition to the North Pole.
The commerce in this part of the market-place is most
lively between the hours of ten and twelve. After that
time the place begins to get empty. Business is car-
ried on much longer in the other part. About noon the
market-women take their humble dinner, each at her
table; in rainy weather, under: large umbrellas. After
dinner they drink their coffee. This is all very comfortable
in fine weather, but in rain and wind — ugh!
We cannot, in contemplating the arrangements here and
comparing them to those which are made for similar pur-
poses abroad, help admiring with what few comforts and
small resources we here in Sweden understand how to
work our way. And yet here, more than in many other
countries, some consideration and care ought to be shown
those who are every day exposed to the rigor of the climate.
One cannot help wishing that these poor market-women,
wives and girls, should have the advantage of wooden floor-
ing and a roof over their head. When we see them sitting
all day long with their feet upon the cold, wet ground, their
head not sheltered against snow or rain, or at best only by
an old ragged umbrella, while their goods are not sheltered
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