e town.
In the suburbs are circuses, open-air theaters, concert gardens, and
other forms of entertainments, simple and serious. A number of fine
restaurants are maintained in the parks, where people can get a good
dinner and spend the evening under the cool foliage, listening to
an orchestral concert or a band. Every form of outdoor amusement is
furnished, and the people eat, drink, and are merry, making the most
of their time from June to September before the long and dreary winter
comes upon them.

The working classes have their simple amusements also, and during the
summer evenings in every village there is music and dancing, even if
an accordion or jewsharp is the only instrument to be obtained. The
national dances are quite energetic, and furnish a form of exercise
which lazy people would not admire, but both the men and women of
Sweden are famous for their muscular strength, and the young woman who
can dance down her companions is as much of a hero as the champion
wrestler of the town. Those who can not enjoy the opportunity of
visiting rural Sweden will find in the suburbs of Stockholm, at the
favorite resort and place of amusement of the common people, a perfect
representation of Swedish country life. It is called Skansen, and
is rural Sweden in miniature. It is a patriotic and scientific
enterprise, conceived and undertaken by the late Dr. Artur Hazelius,
an eminent ethnologist, for the purpose of preserving the habits and
customs of the Scandinavian races. In no country of Europe, excepting
perhaps Russia and Turkey, have the people adhered to the manner and
costumes of their fathers so tenaciously as in Sweden, and the life of
past generations is preserved in its picturesqueness. The conservatism
of the people, their tenacious preference for their own ways and means
has kept out innovations, and very few changes have been made since
the beginning of the eighteenth century. But fearing that the peasants
of Sweden, like all other peoples, would sooner or later surrender to
modern fashions, Dr. Hazelius attempted to collect at Skansen actual
types representing every industry, activity, and national trait. His
thought was expressed in a motto inscribed over one of the gates of
this outdoor museum:

"The day will come when all our gold will not be sufficient to buy an
accurate picture of the times long past."

He procured from the king a rocky plateau on the edge of a royal park
known as _Djurgarden_, covered