ered births are illegitimate, to say nothing of the
illegitimate children born _in_ wedlock. Of the servant-girls,
shop-girls, and seamstresses in the city, it is very safe to say that
scarcely ten out of a hundred are chaste, while, as rakish young Swedes
have coolly informed me, many girls of respectable parentage, belonging
to the middle class, are not much better. The men, of course, are much
worse than the women, and even in Paris one sees fewer physical signs of
excessive debauchery. Here, the number of broken-down young men, and
blear-eyed, hoary sinners, is astonishing. I have never been in any
place where licentiousness was so open and avowed--and yet, where the
slang of a sham morality was so prevalent. There are no houses of
prostitution in Stockholm, and the city would be scandalised at the idea
of allowing such a thing. A few years ago two were established and the
fact was no sooner known than a virtuous mob arose and violently pulled
them down! At the restaurants, young blades order their dinners of the
female waiters, with an arm around their waists, while the old men place
their hands unblushingly upon their bosoms. All the baths in Stockholm
are attended by women (generally middle-aged and hideous, I must
confess), who perform the usual scrubbing and shampooing with the
greatest nonchalance. One does not wonder when he is told of young men
who have passed safely through the ordeals of Berlin and Paris, and have
come at last to Stockholm to be ruined.[B]

It is but fair to say that the Swedes account for the large proportion
of illegitimate births, by stating that many unfortunate females come up
from the country to hide their shame in the capital, which is no doubt
true. Everything that I have said has been derived from residents of
Stockholm, who, proud as they are, and sensitive, cannot conceal this
glaring depravity. The population of Stockholm, as is proved by
statistics, has only been increased during the last fifty years by
immigration from the country, the number of deaths among the inhabitants
exceeding the births by several hundreds every year. I was once speaking
with a Swede about these facts, which he seemed inclined to doubt.
"But," said I, "they are derived from your own statistics." "Well," he
answered, with a naive attempt to find some compensating good, "you must
at least admit that the Swedish statistics are as exact as any in the
world!"

Drunkenness is a leading vice among the Swede