Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/240

Rh enlarged his log-house by a little frame-house which he had built up to it; and in the log-house he had the very prettiest, kindest, most charming young Swedish wife, with cheeks as fresh as red roses, such as one seldom sees in America, and that spite of her having a four-weeks old little boy, her first child, and having, with the assistance only of her young sister, to do all the work of the house herself. It was a joyous and happy home, a good Swedish home, in the midst of an American wilderness. And the dinner which I had there was, with all its simplicity, exquisitely good, better than many a one which I have eaten in the great and magnificent hotels of America. We were ten Swedes at dinner; most of the number young men, one of whom was betrothed to the handsome young sister of the mistress of the house. Good milk, excellent bread and butter, the most savoury water-fowl and delicious tarts, cordial hospitality, cheerfulness and good feeling, crowning the board; and, besides all the rest, that beautiful Swedish language spoken by every one,—these altogether made that meal a regular festival to me.

Our young and handsome hostess attended to the table, sometimes went out into the kitchen—the adjoining room—to look after the cooking, or to attend to her little baby in the cradle, which cried aloud for its dinner, then came back again to us, and still the roses bloomed freshly on her cheeks, and still the kind smile was on her lips, spite of an anxious look in those clear blue eyes. Both sisters were blonde, with round countenances, blue eyes, light hair, fair complexions, regular, white teeth, lovely and slender figures—true Swedes, especially the young wife, a lovely specimen of the young Swedish woman.

In the afternoon she took me by a little path through the wood, down to the wonderfully beautiful Pine Lake, on the banks of which, but deeper still in the woods, her home was situated, and near to which the other Swedish