It is very strange that the intercourse of nations does not lead to the more rapid adoption of improvements which have been found to be useful. Nations are slow to learn of one another. We in America have railroad arrangements that Europeans know, but will not introduce. They have many things in their system that we ought to apply, but will not. People of different countries have an idea that what they do not know is not worth knowing, and so they prefer a poor way of their own to a better way of others. But we have nothing to learn from Finland in the line of travel. Patient endurance is something, and the people of Finland deserve credit for the spirit with which they have borne themselves through the long period of their dreary history. They are not numerous, the entire population amounting to but 1,800,000 souls: 40,000 are members of the Russian or Greek Church; the rest are Protestants, mostly Lutherans. It embraces only 6,844 geographical miles of surface, and no other country is so much covered with water. Yet it has a splendid university, with thirty-one professors; it abounds in churches, it has a peaceful, moral, and intelligent population, and some of the gentlemen and ladies whom it was my pleasant fortune to meet were among the most agreeable and cultivated persons I have encountered abroad. CHAPTER XXXIII. SWEDEN. The day was bright as we left the harbor of Abo, and struck out into the sea among the Aland Isles. The wind was strong, but not enough to disturb the weaker brethren who are easy victims of the sea. Breakfast was served at ten and a half o’clock, and already the Swedish customs at meals began to show themselves. Before sitting down to the table, or immediately on taking a seat, as you prefer, little glasses of gin schnapps are passed around, and each one is expected to take a nip as an appetizer. The same at dinner. Ditto at supper. Also after meals a punch, not like the American drink of that name, but something that looks thick, oily, amber-colored, and inducing a smacking of the lips, which, without uttering a word, say, “It ees goot.” Breakfast, after schnapps, comprised radishes sent around as the first course, with Bologna sausages, tongue and dried beef, salt fish, bread and butter, beefsteak and potatoes, ham and eggs, with coffee if you insisted on having it. There is evidently no need of starving when you get all that for breakfast, and about four hours afterwards sit down to dinner and take soup (if you _can_), with fish following, and beef, poultry, game, salad, cucumbers, puddings, fruit, nuts, &c., and wine at your order. Eating is one of the principal institutions in these northern climates. There is but one other institution more highly valued, and that is drinking. They keep at one or the other or both pretty steadily. Besides the four regular meals, lunch and supper, in addition to those I have