Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1895 — No Hurry in Norway. [ARTICLE]

No Hurry in Norway.

These Norwegians are a wonderfully patient people. They never hurry. Why should they? There is always time enough. at 0. Monsieur goes to business at 10 or so, and returns to his dinner, like all the rest of the Scandinavian world, at 2:30. We reach coffee and cigarettes at about 4, and then monsieur goes back to his office, If he likes, for two or three hours. We sometimes see him again at supper at 8:30, but usually there Is a game of whist or a geographical society lecture or a concert or a friend’s birthday fete (an occasion never overlooked by your true Norwegian), or someone has received a barrel of oysters, and would not, could not, dream of opening them without champagne and companymasculine company only. It seems to me that there are entirely too many purely male festivities here. In fact, the men say so themselves, and that they would really enjoy many of the occasions much more if ladles Wbre present But “it is not the custom of the country” (a rock on which I am always foundering) to omit or to change In such Monsieur only does as do all the other men of his age, which is elderly, and condition, which is solid. There Is a curious feeling concerning America over here, in one way and another. Morgenbladet, the chief conservative paper, an organ locally of the first importance, keeps a sort of horror chamber of Americana. The reason is, I suppose, that in these very dark and troublous political times, when not only the union, but the monarchy itself, is threatened and tottering, the conservative interest thinks it dangerous to aMow any virtue to appear In a re-~ public, and especially in ours, the most flourishing, and therefore the most pernicious, example of that invention of evil bred. ..... .