a great deal--only three months of
school in the year!

The wonder is that the children contrive to remember anything that
they have learned, with nine long months in which to forget it. Yet
they work hard while they are about it; they are inspected every
year, and they are required to pass quite difficult examinations at
the end. It is expected, however, that before long the twelve weeks'
compulsory schooling will be increased to fifteen weeks.

In the towns the children are not forced to attend school for more than
the twelve weeks in the year, but there are, of course, numbers of
private schools, high schools, etc., to which parents can send their
children, on payment, for a superior education. And at such schools
the work goes on for a much longer period of the year--in fact, all
through the year, except for two months in the summer and a week at
Christmas and at Easter.

It is all much the same as our own arrangements in England. There
is the Government school, where the education is free, and there are
other schools, where a higher education is paid for. But the compulsory
schooling does not end with the seven years at the Government schools
referred to above, for there are continuation schools, at which the
pupils have to put in a further twenty-four weeks.

In Norway there are no large public schools for boarders, so, in spite
of their long holidays, the children do not have half the fun that
English boys and girls have. There is no cricket, football, hockey,
golf, or any game of that sort, and there is not a racquet-, fives-,
or tennis-court in the land. How then, you will ask, do they manage
to amuse themselves?

It must be remembered that the winter is much longer in Norway than it
is with us, and even if the boys wanted to play football they would not
be able to do so, as the ground is covered with snow. At that season
they have their various winter sports to keep them busy--ski-ing,
skating, tobogganing, and the like, and they do not require any other
games. In the summer, instead of playing cricket, they go for walking
tours into the mountains, or they go fishing in the rivers and lakes,
or sometimes shooting.

Though the Norwegians boast that ball games have been played in the
country since Saga times, such games are of the most elementary kind,
and would be scorned by any English boy. But for all that the Norse
boys are every bit as manly as any other boys, because they enjoy
many forms of sport