h-pew, the painted wooden chairs, and
the spinning-wheel striped with green, to contrast with the scarlet
petticoat of the spinner.

Yonder stands the pot in which the butter is kept, and the paddle with
which it is worked, and here is the tobacco-box, and the grater of
elaborately carved bone.

And, finally, over the door which opens into the kitchen is a large
dresser, with long rows of brass and copper cooking-utensils and
bright-colored dishes, the little grindstone for sharpening knives,
half-buried in its varnished case, and the egg-dish, old enough to
serve as a chalice.

And how wonderful and amusing are the walls, hung with linen
tapestries representing scenes from the Bible, and brilliant with all
the gorgeous coloring of the pictures of Epinal.

As for the guests' rooms, though they are less pretentious, they are
no less comfortable, with their spotless neatness, their curtains of
hanging-vines that droop from the turf-covered roof, their huge beds,
sheeted with snowy and fragrant linen, and their hangings with verses
from the Old Testament, embroidered in yellow upon a red ground.

Nor must we forget that the floor of the main hall, and the floors of
all the rooms, both upstairs and down, are strewn with little twigs
of birch, pine, and juniper, whose leaves fill the house with their
healthful and exhilarating odor.

Can one imagine a more charming _posada_ in Italy, or a more seductive
_fonda_ in Spain? No. And the crowd of English tourists have not yet
raised the scale of prices as in Switzerland--at least, they had not
at the time of which I write. In Dal, the current coin is not the
pound sterling, the sovereign of which the travelers' purse is
soon emptied. It is a silver coin, worth about five francs, and its
subdivisions are the mark, equal in value to about a franc, and the
skilling, which must not be confounded with the English shilling, as
it is only equivalent to a French _sou_.

Nor will the tourist have any opportunity to use or abuse the
pretentious bank-note in the Telemark. One-mark notes are white;
five-mark notes are blue; ten-mark notes are yellow; fifty-mark notes,
green; one hundred mark notes, red. Two more, and we should have all
the colors of the rainbow.

Besides--and this is a point of very considerable importance--the
food one obtains at the Dal inn is excellent; a very unusual thing
at houses of public entertainment in this locality, for the Telemark
deserves only too w