At the upper end of the street there is a commodious and well constructed church. Several of the front yards boast fine clumps of mountain ash; one of these tree clumps is the pride of the city, as it has attained a considerable growth, a remarkable size for this exposure and high latitude. Behind the street on the steep hillside, patches of potatoes and turnips checker the entire bank of the fiord for a mile or more. It is a pleasing picture when contrasted with the grimness of the ice-covered ridges beyond. There is a spacious hotel, long kept by an eccentric Dane by the name of Jensen. It has recently changed hands. I have often heard it stated that he had no regular scale of prices but charged his guests according to his likes or dislikes. If the guest was winning, the genial Dane reduced the charge; but if the guest had been disagreeable, or in any way did not appeal to the fancy of the proprietor, then the price was raised. Whatever the truth of the report may be, one thing is certain, the host was genial, kept a good house, cared for his guests, and the prices, according to my experience, were reasonable. It is possible that his philosophy was correct, that the guest who makes unnecessary demands or is difficult to please should be the one to pay the extras, while the guest who takes what is provided, makes no special demands, considers the local conditions which obtain and demands no special service for himself at the expense of other guests, should be favored in the reckoning. I think Jensen’s method is correct. How he regarded us I do not know; suffice it to state that we had a good room with two beds and excellent food in a private dining room with the best of attention and that our bill for twenty-four hours was only the equivalent of two dollars for both of us. There was one exception to our comfort at this hostelry, but this can not be charged to the eccentricity of the landlord. My bed seemed comfortable when I retired, but long before I went to sleep I found a hard bunch in the mattress that persisted in getting between my shoulders no matter how I twisted and turned. It was a narrow bed and afforded me no retreat from the offending bunch. I rose, stripped the bed, instituted a search and finally ripped open the mattress at the corner, worked that lump to the slit and pulled out a rooster’s head with the longest bill that was ever presented to me in Iceland. It had been pecking my shoulders persistently in spite of the fact that this rooster had fought his last fight many years since. If I had damaged the cover a little, I reasoned that I had avenged the sleeplessness of many a former occupant of this couch and was rendering a good service to future guests.