itious to learn American ways.
She makes the most delicious pancakes that ever fluffed upon a griddle
or united with butter and maple syrup. She is religious, she is tender
with children, she is full of love for her native land. Her lovers are
not encouraged.

"I go back to Sveden to visit it once more in five years. I go back
before I marry any man, now my debt is all paid."

This Svenska maid is full of folk-stories. She tells the children how
St. John's eve is celebrated in Sweden. The young men and girls bring
boughs and construct arbors. They stay up all night, eating, playing,
and visiting from arbor to arbor. About midsummer, it is true, there is
very little night in Northern Sweden.

"This was once in the papers," says Marie innocently. "They said it was
true. There was a girl going to take her first communion, and she got
into the churchyard before she missed her braid. Then she turned round
and started home after her braid, and met a man with a covered basket on
his arm. He asked her what she was going for, and she told him she was
going home for what she forgot, and the man said, 'Look in the basket,
and see if that is your switch.' She looked, and there was the hair
coiled up. Then he asked her if he might put it on her head, and the
girl said yes, and he put it on, and she went to church.

"It came to the place where the minister gives her the bread, and her
braid slipped down on one shoulder; but when he gave her the wine it
jump like it going to strike the cup, for it was a snake the man put on
her, and it was fast to her head and never came off again."

Marie's mother in youth worked for a Swedish farmer, and it was her duty
to get up about three o'clock in the morning and light a fire under the
boiler where the cows' feed was heated. This was in the barn. The cows
stood upon a floor over a large pit wherein were caught all the liquids
of the stable. The sleepy maid took a coal upon a chip, instead of
matches, and this primitive custom saved her from horribly drowning. For
as she opened the cows' stable one morning, and was taking a step
within, the chip flared up, and showed her three cows swimming below in
the pit. The floor had given way.

"Sometimes there are excursions across the ocean," says Marie, speaking
of that star of a home visit which lures her into the future, "and you
can go and come back for twenty-five dollars. They do not have nice
things to eat in the steerage, but you can keep a