But there were also other ennobling influences which surrounded and emanated from our home, and I recollect most vividly those connected with nature. The house was surrounded by a large beautiful garden, with choice flowers and fruit, fine grass plats and luxuriant trees, the branches of which were alive with singing birds, the most noted among these being the nightingale, which every summer filled the garden with sweet melody. Of the incidents of my childhood I will mention a few, which have left the most vivid impression on my mind: Once my parents took me along to see the king, who was to pass by on the highway a short distance from our home. The people from the country around had congregated by thousands to see his majesty. Most of them, however, did not get a chance to see anything but a large number of carriages each of which was drawn by four or six horses, and postillions and servants in splendid liveries. In the midst of this confusion I, however, succeeded in catching a glimpse of King Oscar I, as he passed by. In my childish mind I had fancied that the king and his family and all others, in authority were the peculiar and elect people of the Almighty, but after this event which produced a very decided impression on me, I began to entertain serious doubts as to the correctness of my views on this matter. At another time I went with my mother to the city of Kristianstad to hear the Rev. Doctor P. Fjellstedt, who had just returned from a missionary tour in India. I can never forget how eloquently he described the Hindoos, and the Brahmin idolatry, all of which aroused in me an eager longing to visit the wonderful country and learn to know its peculiar people. But little did I then dream that I was to go there thirty-six years later as the representative of the greatest country of the world. At one time I went in company with my mother to the Danish capital, Copenhagen, we being among the first Swedish families that traveled by rail, for we took the railroad from Copenhagen to Roskilde, the same being finished several years before any railroads were built in Sweden. In the summer of 1847, shortly after my confirmation, I was properly supplied with wardrobe and other necessaries, and saying good-bye to the happy and peaceful home of my childhood, I left for the city of Kristianstad to enter the Latin school. In kissing me good-bye my mother urged on me the precious words, which she had inherited from her mother: "Do right and fear nothing." When I entered this school I was fourteen years and a-half old, tall of stature and well developed for my age, and, like other country children, somewhat awkward in dress and behavior.