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e made our temporary home at the Grand, a spacious and comfortable establishment. There is an original institution of a charitable nature in the capital, called a Steam Kitchen, where food is cooked upon a large scale, and entirely by steam. This large establishment, situated on the Torv Gade, was built especially for the purpose of benefiting the industrious poor of the city. Here two or three thousand persons are daily provided with good wholesome dinners at a minimum charge, calculated to cover the actual cost. While hundreds of persons carry away food to their families, larger numbers dine at the neat tables provided in the establishment for that purpose. The inference drawn from a casual observation of the system was, that no possible benevolence of a practical character could be better conceived or more judiciously administered. It seemed to be the consummation of a great charity, robbed of all objectionable features. None appeared to feel humiliated in availing themselves of its advantages, since all the supposed cost of the provisions was charged and paid for. Upon visiting a new city in any part of the world, the writer has learned more of its people, their national characteristics and all local matters worth knowing, by mingling with the throng, watching their every-day habits and conventionalities, observing and analyzing the stream of life pouring through its great thoroughfares, reading the expression upon human faces, and by regarding now and again chance domestic scenes, than from all the grand cathedrals, art galleries, show palaces, and guide-books combined. Years of travel fatigue one with the latter, but never with Nature in her varying moods, with the peculiarities of races, or with the manners and customs of every-day life as characterizing each new locality and country. The delight in natural objects grows by experience in every cultivated and receptive mind. The rugged architecture of lofty mountains, tumbling waterfalls, noble rivers, glowing sunsets, broad land and sea views, each has a special, never-tiring, and impressive individuality. While enjoying a bird's-eye view of Christiania from the height of Egeberg, a well-wooded hill four hundred feet in height in the southern suburb, it was difficult to believe one's self in Icelandic Scandinavia,--the precise latitude of the Shetland Islands. A drowsy hum like the drone of bees seemed to float up from the busy city below. The beautiful fjord
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