Returning from our excursion, we heard the sound of children’s voices, and were led to a neat school-house in a pleasant enclosure, retired from the street, and being in the pursuit of knowledge we turned in to see and hear. About fifty children were receiving instruction from a master, who courteously bade us enter, and proceeded with his work. All the scholars, and they were of both sexes, were standing, and reading in concert from a history of Sweden. The reading being finished, the teacher put questions to them on the portion they had read, which they answered promptly, and showed lively interest in the lesson. Around the walls were suspended maps of the world and of the several countries, and there were black-boards and all needful appliances, such as would belong to a well appointed school. In the Universal Exhibition at Paris I had seen a Swedish school-house with its furniture, &c., and had remarked that no country made a better exhibition of the apparatus for educating children than Sweden. Returning from the visit to the Vetra-Kloster, and its graves of the kings and the Douglases, we found that the boat had made its way through the eleven locks and was once more fairly launched on the peaceful bosom of the grand canal. It was the hour for dining, and the table was spread on deck, awnings overhead and at the sides to shelter us from the cool wind while eating. The Swedish dinner, even on a canal-boat, was good, preceded by the inevitable schnapps and radishes and other appetizers, and followed by a tolerable soup, fine fish, veal, puddings, and various trimmings needless to mention. I give you the bill of fare merely to show that there is enough to eat all the world over, and that you are not likely to suffer for want of comfortable food, even on a canal in the heart of Sweden. We pass through many villages, each with its venerable church, and houses shaded with overhanging trees, farms well tilled, and now smiling with growing harvests and heavy clover. I saw no Indian corn, though I looked for it often. Probably the warm weather is too short-lived for the crop to ripen. No women were working in the fields. But we came to a drawbridge, and whistling for some one to open it, a woman ran from her house with the lever in her hand, ground away as for dear life, and by the time we reached it the draw was open for us to pass through. The poor woman was exhausted by the severe exertion, her lips were white as snow, and she looked ready to faint as we glided by her, and the pilot gave her a caution to keep a better lookout next time.