The ride to “Mon Repos” brought our steamer passengers into pleasant relations. We had come to feel less like strangers, and more like acquaintances, not to say friends. I came on deck early this morning, and had a cup of coffee at the same little table with a lady whose grace and beauty had rendered her somewhat a point of attraction yesterday. Two little children were playing at her feet, and a nurse for each was in waiting. I soon learned from her, as we fell into conversation naturally, that she spoke all the languages of northern Europe, as Russ, German, Swedish, Finnish, and the French besides, but not a word of English, and this she regretted all the more, she said, since so many Americans are now travelling through her country. _Her_ native tongue was Finnish, and her education would have been finished had she known _mine_. Rarely in any country is a lady to be found with a wider culture and more accomplished manners than this Finland wife and mother has. She _reads_ the English language, but has never attempted to speak it; and the standard authors of our country and of England were her study and delight, as the best French and Italian writers are familiar to educated persons among us. The company by degrees came on deck, and all nationalities were soon merged into one family. Two or three from the capital are talking in English to an English party on their way to the interior of Finland, going a-fishing. Norway is farmed out to English gentlemen, so that it is hard to find a good stream for salmon and trout that is not the private property of some one in England, who keeps it for his own enjoyment. Finland is now persecuted by these piscatorial parties. One of the English gentlemen was loud in his praises of the fish of Finland, and his own wonderful skill in “killin’ of them.” The streams are very swift, and the true sportsman uses only the fly hook. This gent said, “I kill them _loyally_, with fly only; sometimes, when they will not rise to it, I take a bait, but in that case I throw them back into the water, even if they weigh twenty or thirty pounds. It’s the pleasure of killin’ of them that I enjoy; it’s not for the fish, it’s the killin’ of them.” The “parties” expect to enjoy two or three months in Finland fishing and shooting. It was an entertainment to note the pleasurable anticipations of these pleasant people, on their way to _enjoy_ what to me and many must be about as great a bore and punishment as could be endured in the name of sport.