ady
drawn up on the flat strand, which here is covered with large stones.
These stones served the persons who landed, as bridges; the boats were
laid alongside them, and the people clambered up, and went and bore
each other on land. There certainly were at least a thousand persons
on the strand; and far out on the lake, one could see ten or twelve
boats more coming, some with sixteen oars, others with twenty, nay,
even with four-and-twenty, rowed by men and women, and every boat
decked out with green branches. These, and the varied clothes, gave to
the whole an appearance of something so festal, so fantastically rich,
as one would hardly think the north possessed. The boats came nearer,
all crammed full of living freight; but they came silently, without
noise or talking, and rowed up to the declivity of the forest.

The boats were drawn up on the sand: it was a fine subject for a
painter, particularly one point--the way up the slope, where the whole
mass moved on between the trees and bushes. The most prominent figures
there, were two ragged urchins, clothed entirely in bright yellow,
each with a skin bundle on his shoulders. They were from Gagne, the
poorest parish in Dalecarlia. There was also a lame man with his blind
wife: I thought of the fable of my childhood, of the lame and the
blind man: the lame man lent his eyes, and the blind his legs, and so
they reached the town.

And we also reached the town and the church, and thither they all
thronged: they said there were above five thousand persons assembled
there. The church-service began at five o'clock. The pulpit and organ
were ornamented with flowering lilacs; children sat with lilac-flowers
and branches of birch; the little ones had each a piece of oat-cake,
which they enjoyed. There was the sacrament for the young persons who
had been confirmed; there was organ-playing and psalm-singing; but
there was a terrible screaming of children, and the sound of heavy
footsteps; the clumsy, iron-shod Dal shoes tramped loudly upon the
stone floor. All the church pews, the gallery pews, and the centre
aisle were quite filled with people. In the side aisle one saw various
groups--playing children, and pious old folks: by the sacristy there
sat a young mother giving suck to her child--she was a living image of
the Madonna herself.

The first impression of the whole was striking, but only the
first--there was too much that disturbed. The screaming of children,
and the nois