Pytheas of Marseilles, the explorer who about the time of Alexander the Great gave the world its first news of Norway, said that the people of Thule made from honey "a very pleasant drink." This beverage could hardly have touched the right spot, for when the product of the still reached the Thulites they fell upon it with the joyous abandon of the inexperienced. A century ago Scandinavia was the home of hard drinkers. Even yet, in our cities, the "toughest" saloons are kept by old-time Norsemen, who left the fatherland before it began to dry out. One hears a proverb which runs, "What won't the German do for money and the Swede for whisky!" As charity seekers and hospital patients, our Scandinavians are not so alcoholic as the British, but more so than the Teutons. More and more, however, they come to us temperate, and strong believers in sumptuary legislation; for within a generation Scandinavia has become the Sahara whence issue the desiccating simooms--Gothenburg system, _samlag_ system, etc.,--which have taken much "wet" territory off the map. FAVORITE OCCUPATIONS Rugged Norway freezes into the souls of her sons a sense of the preciousness of level, fertile land, and there are no great cities to infect the imagination of her country dwellers. What wonder, then, that in 1900 nearly four-fifths of our Norwegians were outside the cities, most of them sticking to the soil like limpets to a rock! In 1900 half of them were tillers, and sixty-three per cent. of their grown sons. For the rest, they are to be found in the forecastles of the great lakes, in the copper and iron mines of upper Michigan, in the coal-mines of Iowa, in Northern lumber-camps, where they wield another pattern of ax than did their forbears, who, eight centuries ago, were known as "ax-bearers" in the Eastern emperor's body-guard. They work in the building trades, on the railroads, in the flour-mills of the wheat centers, and in the furniture-mills, the plow-wagon-and-implement factories of the hardwood belt. From his vast new circle of opportunities, the Norwegian immigrant chooses those that enable him to continue his life at home. He insists on getting his living in connection with soil, water, and wood. In the East he shuns mill drudgery, but shines as a builder. A fourth part of the Norwegian wage-earners in New York are carpenters, while none are on the farms. In Iowa two-thirds are on the farms, and only seven per cent. are in the building trades. Through the occupational choices of our Danes, one can catch a glimpse of the lush meadows of Jutland. Forty per cent. of them are on the farm, ten per cent. are laborers, and four per cent. are carpenters. In butter-making and dairying they are six times as numerous as in the general work of the country; in cabinet-making and before the mast they are three and one-half times as strong. As stock-raisers and drovers, the second generation are five and one-half times as strong as they are in other lines.