this bucket brigade, that stands in line
and passes slowly by the serving windows, which are attended by half
a dozen brawny Norwegian women with bare arms and broad,
good-natured-looking faces. They wear neat white aprons and caps, and
handle the food with a dexterity that shows long experience. They seem
to know most of the customers and carry on a familiar conversation
with them while falling their orders. When a bucket and a ticket
passes up, blue for a nine-cent and red for a seven-cent dinner, the
waitress first plunges a huge ladle into the soup pot and empties its
contents into the bucket; then passing along the rows of kettles she
harpoons a piece of meat with a long two-pronged fork, scoops up a
quart of rice with a wooden shovel, and then, adding a portion of
potatoes, slams on the cover, and, grabbing a cube of bread, passes it
over to the purchaser with a joke or a few pleasant words.

Many of the customers are well dressed, according to the Norway
standard, but no people in the world seem to care so little for
their personal appearance, except on Sundays, when you can scarcely
recognize men and women you have been familiar with during the week.
On the day I ate at the restaurant, my cicerone pointed out at the
dining table two professors of the University faculty, a lawyer in
good standing, a photographer, and a sub-editor of one of the daily
papers, who were his personal acquaintances. The remainder of the
customers appeared to be professional men, clerks, bookkeepers, and
a good many laborers, many of them coming for their dinner without
having removed the traces of toil from their faces and hands. At one
of the tables was a group of students inclined to be boisterous and
evidently enjoying themselves. The "Steam Kitchen" is the favorite
eating-place for the undergraduates, from four to five hundred being
served every day.

Such an institution as the "Steam Kitchen" is especially suitable to a
Norwegian city, where a portion of the population work for very small
wages, the average income of the wage-earner being less than $100 a
year--so small that, measured by the American standard, it would seem
a difficult problem to find food, clothing, and shelter for a family.

Few Norwegians suffer from poverty or privation, even through the cold
and gloomy winters that are eight months long. Our own people might
die, or at least suffer seriously under the same circumstances, but
the Norwegians are a hardy rac