encouraging thrift and economy. While the saloons are closed on pay
day, the savings banks are open until midnight.

It is difficult to become accustomed to the long twilights in Norway.
One can read and write at a window as late as ten o'clock without
difficulty, and during the months of June, July, and August few
artificial lights are used, either in the streets or in the shops or
in the residences. A candle is usually kept handy for an emergency,
but it is light enough to dress and undress at any hour of the night,
and it seems childish to go to bed before dark. The hours for meals
are awkward to those accustomed to American ways. Breakfast is usually
served from seven till nine o'clock. Four o'clock is the fashionable
dinner hour, without luncheon. After dinner men return to their
business and keep open their shops and offices until a nine or ten
o'clock supper during the long days.

No one will ever starve to death in Norway. American palates may not
always crave the food, but they can not complain of its abundance. The
table is usually loaded with all sorts of fish and cold meats, both
fresh and preserved, that foreigners are usually afraid of. The
Norwegians are fond of things with a pronounced flavor, the more
pronounced the better, and cheese is one of the chief articles of
diet. A Norwegian housewife would not consider a meal complete without
five or six different kinds of cheese of all degrees of pungency in
taste and odor upon the table. At breakfast you are served sardines,
anchovies, smoked salmon, dried herring and five or six other kinds of
fish and an equal variety of cheese before they think of offering you
coffee and meat and potatoes. You get seven or eight kinds of bread
also, but it is all cold. The national bread, which is made of flour,
water and a little salt, with a sprinkling of caraway seed, rolled
very thin and punctured with holes like a cracker, is baked only once
or twice a year, and then in large quantities, as New England women
bake mince pies and put them on the top shelf to season. It is called
_grovboroed_, and tastes like a water cracker.

The servant-girl problem has been solved in Norway to the satisfaction
of all concerned, although it is doubtful whether a similar solution
would be accepted by domestic servants in the United States. In large
cities like Bergen and Christiania, there is a central employment
bureau under the direction of the municipal government, and twice a