more or less seriously. The tips of the ears were taken off, and a sharp rock cut a circular bit out of the side of the left boot, sock, and ankle at one stroke. The loss of blood, although so great, did not seem to be permanently injurious. The only serious effect has been the reduction of a naturally retentive memory to a very commonplace one; and although my recollections of more distant occurrences remain unshaken, the events of that particular day would be clean gone but for the few notes which were written down before the accident.

EUROPE

The Midnight Sun

By LANGLEY COLERIDGE

NORWAY is a land of pure delight to the traveler.

There are no picture-galleries to make one's neck ache; no museum to make the weary feet throb; no promenades; no sherry-cobblers to sip while bands play in the gardens; no continuations of London and Brighton. There are no crowds; you may see a magnificent waterfall all by yourself, or ascend a hundred Rigis without meeting a soul. There are no loafers; and you may get into boats and out of boats, into carrioles and out of carrioles, without one humpbacked beggar-boy or man with his eye in a sling to whine at you, or one officious person getting in the way in order to be paid for it. There are no mammoth hotels, where you have to climb a dozen flights of stairs before you can reach your bed; no billiards when once you have left the three chief towns; no stuffy railways to whiz you past the best scenery; no dressing for dinner.

Now, all these things, to one who has been over and over again to the most civilized places in the world, are very refreshing; and yet these are perhaps but minor points, and do not explain the secret of the great charm of Norway. Rip Van Winkle's was a wonderful sleep; he woke and found the world had gone forward a hundred years; but the traveler who sleeps on the North Sea and wakes up in the morning in Norway has had a more wonderful sleep. He wakes and finds the world has gone back half a mil

lennium! Southward the countries of Europe have struggled and slaved in the race for the perfection of civilization, while Norway is as it was in the beginning. Southward, the countries have obeyed the watchword, "Forward!" way has obeyed the signal, "As you were ! "

Nor

Now, fancy yourself arriving at a little village in an outof-the-way place in Norway. Nobody flutters about your carriole to escort you to a hotel, but you enter the "station," a low, rambling wooden structure, with diffidence. You see the lady of the house and shake hands with her; you ask her to be good enough to let you stay there the night; you enter a bedroom, where everything is plain as a deal box, but clean as a Dutch tulip. Then you sit down with the family in the general room to your meal. It will assuredly consist of either trout and salmon, or salmon and trout, with perhaps an egg, perhaps potatoes, perhaps black bread. No Bass, but perhaps some Norsh Öl, a very pleasant beverage. After supper you will smoke a pipe with your landlord, who will probably invite you to see the pigs, or will lend you a hand to splice up any broken harness of your carriole.

About nine or ten o'clock you will go to bed, in the broad daylight if it be summer-time, and in the morning you will wake up, finding the landlady's daughter at your bedside, with a delicious cup of hot coffee and a natty little roll, or perchance a biscuit. And then, still early in the morning, you will bid farewell as to old friends, you will shake hands all round, and away in your carriole to drive through romantic scenery, and to feel as though Norway had been made specially for you.

Before you have been two days in the country you will love the quaint, unsophisticated people, so hearty in their kindness, so ungrudging in their hospitality, and their OldWorld manners and customs, so genuine in an age of sham, so solid in an age of veneer. One great charm of Norway, then, is its people; another, and perhaps more to be appreciated by some, is its scenery.

"Is it like Switzerland?" No; Norway is only like