lance when we are
sure that our happiest experiment has been completed."

We are not sure of that, even yet. We are still engaged, as a committee
of two, in our philosophical investigation, and we decline to make
anything but a report of progress. We know more now than we did when we
first went honeymooning in the city of Washington. For one thing, we are
certain that not even the far-famed rosemary-fields of Narbonne, or
the fragrant hillsides of the Corbieres, yield a sweeter harvest to the
busy-ness of the bees than the Norwegian meadows and mountain-slopes
yielded to our idleness in the summer of 1888.

II

The rural landscape of Norway, on the long easterly slope that leads up
to the watershed among the mountains of the western coast, is not unlike
that of Vermont or New Hampshire. The railway from Christiania to the
Randsfjord carried us through a hilly country of scattered farms and
villages. Wood played a prominent part in the scenery. There were dark
stretches of forest on the hilltops and in the valleys; rivers filled
with floating logs; sawmills beside the waterfalls; wooden farmhouses
painted white; and rail-fences around the fields. The people seemed
sturdy, prosperous, independent. They had the familiar habit of coming
down to the station to see the train arrive and depart. We might have
fancied ourselves on a journey through the Connecticut valley, if it had
not been for the soft sing-song of the Norwegian speech and the uniform
politeness of the railway officials.

What a room that was in the inn at Randsfjord where we spent our first
night out! Vast, bare, primitive, with eight windows to admit the
persistent nocturnal twilight; a sea-like floor of blue-painted boards,
unbroken by a single island of carpet; and a castellated stove in one
corner: an apartment for giants, with two little beds for dwarfs on
opposite shores of the ocean. There was no telephone; so we arranged
a system of communication with a fishing-line, to make sure that
the sleepy partner should be awake in time for the early boat in the
morning.

The journey up the lake took seven hours, and reminded us of a voyage
on Lake George; placid, picturesque, and pervaded by summer boarders.
Somewhere on the way we had lunch, and were well fortified to take the
road when the steamboat landed us at Odnaes, at the head of the lake,
about two o'clock in the afternoon.

There are several methods in which you may drive through Norway. The