ch he
was born. He should never know that Norway had been his mother's home;
therefore she would give him no name which might betray his race. One
morning, early in the month of June, they hailed land, and the great New
World lay before them.

III.

Why should I speak of the ceaseless care, the suffering, and the hard
toil, which made the first few months of Brita's life on this continent
a mere continued struggle for existence? They are familiar to every
emigrant who has come here with a brave heart and an empty purse.
Suffice it to say that at the end of the second month, she succeeded in
obtaining service as milkmaid with a family in the neighborhood of
New York. With the linguistic talent peculiar to her people, she
soon learned the English language and even spoke it well. From her
countrymen, she kept as far away as possible, not for her own sake,
but for that of her boy; for he was to grow great and strong, and the
knowledge of his birth might shatter his strength and break his courage.
For the same reason she also exchanged her picturesque Norse costume for
that of the people among whom she was living. She went commonly by the
name of Mrs. Brita, which pronounced in the English way, sounded very
much like Mrs. Bright, and this at last became the name by which she was
known in the neighborhood.

Thus five years passed; then there was a great rage for emigrating to
the far West, and Brita, with many others, started for Chicago. There
she arrived in the year 1852, and took up her lodgings with an Irish
widow, who was living in a little cottage in what was then termed the
outskirts of the city. Those who saw her in those days, going about the
lumber-yards and doing a man's work, would hardly have recognized in her
the merry Glitter-Brita, who in times of old trod the spring-dance so
gayly in the well-lighted halls of the Blakstad mansion. And, indeed,
she was sadly changed! Her features had become sharper, and the firm
lines about her mouth expressed severity, almost sternness. Her clear
blue eyes seemed to have grown larger, and their glance betrayed secret,
ever-watchful care. Only her yellow hair had resisted the force of time
and sorrow; for it still fell in rich and wavy folds over a smooth white
forehead. She was, indeed, half ashamed of it, and often took pains to
force it into a sober, matronly hood. Only at nights, when she sat alone
talking with her boy, she would allow it to escape from its pris