Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 Excerpt:... a Methodist preacher's study, with the relics of a couple of centuries of rural Norse domesticity scattered about in festive disorder. My first attack in this curious room is upon the mantel. There, some Bibles and prayer books, in Norse, repose. Opening the former, I begin to read in St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans; and remembering the English unrevised text, the similarity of the languages interested me. Father Ole Bolkesoe watches me out of one corner of his eye. He asks our guide in Norse: "Is he a priest?" When informed that I was only a Congressman, he rushed to his docket or register, and with great delight shows the names of U. S. Grant and wife, our Consul Gaade, and the Prince of Monte Negro. They had honored his inn. This was a compliment, which was appreciated. I asked him if he himself were not a member of the Storthing (Congress). He said that his father had been, many, many years ago. This was our bond of confidence. Then, he began, in lugubrious monotone, to deplore the state of politics and religion in all the nations of the world. He was evidently a pessimist. "Ah, sir, it is a miserable epoch! the world is corrupted! Even your own President is shot, and the Lord's anointed on this continent is not safe. There is too much dynamite and liberty, too much!" Thus speaking he turned the seven vials of his wrath upon Professor Bjornsterne Bjornson, the gifted poet, writer and orator of Cornell University, and who is now in Norway, attracting its people to his peculiar tenets of faith and republican theories. "Why does he not let us in Norway remain in peace?" exclaimed our host. "Why does he not go back to your country, since he likes its institutions so much? Why make our simple folk discontented? He even at...