th
sweet melody.

Of the incidents of my childhood I will mention a few, which have left
the most vivid impression on my mind:

Once my parents took me along to see the king, who was to pass by on the
highway a short distance from our home. The people from the country
around had congregated by thousands to see his majesty. Most of them,
however, did not get a chance to see anything but a large number of
carriages each of which was drawn by four or six horses, and postillions
and servants in splendid liveries. In the midst of this confusion I,
however, succeeded in catching a glimpse of King Oscar I, as he passed
by. In my childish mind I had fancied that the king and his family and
all others, in authority were the peculiar and elect people of the
Almighty, but after this event which produced a very decided impression
on me, I began to entertain serious doubts as to the correctness of my
views on this matter.

At another time I went with my mother to the city of Kristianstad to
hear the Rev. Doctor P. Fjellstedt, who had just returned from a
missionary tour in India. I can never forget how eloquently he described
the Hindoos, and the Brahmin idolatry, all of which aroused in me an
eager longing to visit the wonderful country and learn to know its
peculiar people. But little did I then dream that I was to go there
thirty-six years later as the representative of the greatest country of
the world.

At one time I went in company with my mother to the Danish capital,
Copenhagen, we being among the first Swedish families that traveled by
rail, for we took the railroad from Copenhagen to Roskilde, the same
being finished several years before any railroads were built in Sweden.

In the summer of 1847, shortly after my confirmation, I was properly
supplied with wardrobe and other necessaries, and saying good-bye to the
happy and peaceful home of my childhood, I left for the city of
Kristianstad to enter the Latin school. In kissing me good-bye my mother
urged on me the precious words, which she had inherited from her mother:
"Do right and fear nothing."

When I entered this school I was fourteen years and a-half old, tall of
stature and well developed for my age, and, like other country children,
somewhat awkward in dress and behavior.

My schoolmates welcomed me by giving me a nick-name, and trying to pick
a quarrel with me, which they also succeeded in doing, and before the
end of the first day a drawn battle had been