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4
FOREWORD
ber, the walls of which are hung round with rude pictures
from the Bible; and brings you her heavy silver spoons,
—an heirloom,—to dip the curdled milk from the pan.
You have oaten cakes baked some months before; or bread
with anise-seed and coriander in it, or perhaps a little pine
bark.
Meanwhile the sturdy husband has brought his horses
from the plough, and harnessed them to your carriage.
Solitary travellers come and go in uncouth one-horse chaises.
Most of them have pipes in their mouths, and hanging
around their necks in front, a leather wallet, in which they
carry tobacco, and the great bank notes of the country, as
large as your two hands. You meet, also, groups of
Dale-karlian peasant women, travelling homeward or
town-ward in pursuit of work. They walk barefoot, carrying in
their hands their shoes, which have high heels under the
hollow of the foot, and soles of birch bark.
Frequent, too, are the village churches, standing by the
road-side, each in its own little garden of Gethsemane. In
the parish register great events are doubtless recorded. Some
old king was christened or buried in that church; and a
little sexton, with a rusty key, shows you the baptismal
font, or the coffin. In the church-yard are a few flowers,
and much green grass; and daily the shadow of the church
spire, with its long tapering finger, counts the tombs,
representing a dial-plate of human life, on which the hours
and minutes are the graves of men. The stones are flat,
and large, and low, and perhaps sunken, like the roofs of
old houses. On some are armorial bearings; on others only
the initials of the poor tenants, with a date, as on the roofs
of Dutch cottages. They all sleep with their heads to the
westward. Each held a lighted taper in his hand when he
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