e made our temporary home at the Grand, a spacious and
comfortable establishment.

There is an original institution of a charitable nature in the
capital, called a Steam Kitchen, where food is cooked upon a large
scale, and entirely by steam. This large establishment, situated on
the Torv Gade, was built especially for the purpose of benefiting the
industrious poor of the city. Here two or three thousand persons are
daily provided with good wholesome dinners at a minimum charge,
calculated to cover the actual cost. While hundreds of persons carry
away food to their families, larger numbers dine at the neat tables
provided in the establishment for that purpose. The inference drawn
from a casual observation of the system was, that no possible
benevolence of a practical character could be better conceived or
more judiciously administered. It seemed to be the consummation of a
great charity, robbed of all objectionable features. None appeared to
feel humiliated in availing themselves of its advantages, since all
the supposed cost of the provisions was charged and paid for.

Upon visiting a new city in any part of the world, the writer has
learned more of its people, their national characteristics and all
local matters worth knowing, by mingling with the throng, watching
their every-day habits and conventionalities, observing and analyzing
the stream of life pouring through its great thoroughfares, reading
the expression upon human faces, and by regarding now and again
chance domestic scenes, than from all the grand cathedrals, art
galleries, show palaces, and guide-books combined. Years of travel
fatigue one with the latter, but never with Nature in her varying
moods, with the peculiarities of races, or with the manners and
customs of every-day life as characterizing each new locality and
country. The delight in natural objects grows by experience in every
cultivated and receptive mind. The rugged architecture of lofty
mountains, tumbling waterfalls, noble rivers, glowing sunsets, broad
land and sea views, each has a special, never-tiring, and impressive
individuality. While enjoying a bird's-eye view of Christiania from
the height of Egeberg, a well-wooded hill four hundred feet in height
in the southern suburb, it was difficult to believe one's self in
Icelandic Scandinavia,--the precise latitude of the Shetland Islands.
A drowsy hum like the drone of bees seemed to float up from the busy
city below. The beautiful fjord