several of the movements which
she had so ardently espoused: the law that unmarried women in Sweden
should attain their majority at twenty-five years of age; the
organization at Stockholm of a seminary for the education of woman
teachers; and certain parliamentary reforms.

In addition to her novels and short stories, she wrote some verse,
mostly unimportant, and several books of travel, among them 'Hemmen i ny
Verlden' (Homes in the New World), containing her experiences of
America; 'Life in the Old World'; and 'Greece and the Greeks.'

* * * * *

A HOME-COMING

From 'The Neighbors'

LETTER I.--FRANCISCA W. TO MARIA M.

ROSENVIK, 1st June, 18.

Here I am now, dear Maria, in my own house and home, at my own
writing-table, and with my own Bear. And who then is Bear? no doubt you
ask. Who else should he be but my own husband? I call him _Bear_
because--it so happens. I am seated at the window. The sun is setting.
Two swans are swimming in the lake, and furrow its clear mirror. Three
cows--_my cows_--are standing on the verdant margin, quiet, fat, and
pensive, and certainly think of nothing. What excellent cows they are!
Now the maid is coming up with the milk-pail. Delicious milk in the
country! But what is not good in the country? Air and people, food and
feelings, earth and sky, everything there is fresh and cheering.

Now I must introduce you to my place of abode--no! I must begin farther
off. Upon yonder hill, from which I first beheld the valley in which
Rosenvik lies (the hill is some miles in the interior of Smaaland) do
you descry a carriage covered with dust? In it are seated Bear and his
wedded wife. The wife is looking out with curiosity, for before her lies
a valley so beautiful in the tranquillity of evening! Below are green
groves which fringe mirror-clear lakes, fields of standing corn bend in
silken undulations round gray mountains, and white buildings glance amid
the trees. Round about, pillars of smoke are shooting up vertically from
the wood-covered hills to the serene evening sky. This seems to indicate
the presence of volcanoes, but in point of fact it is merely the
peaceful labor of the husbandmen burning the vegetation, in order to
fertilize the soil. At all events, it is an excellent thing, and I am
delighted, bend forward, and am just thinking about a happy family in
nature,--Paradise, and Adam and Eve,--when suddenly Bear puts his great
paws around me, and