The Winter Night. 383 



and Amundsen' having established a music factory. 

 The cardboard plates of the organ had suffered greatly 

 from w r ear and damp, so that we had been deplorably 

 short of music during the winter. But, yesterday, I 

 set to work in earnest to manufacture a plate of zinc. 

 It answers admirably, and now w y e shall go ahead with 

 music sacred and profane, especially valses, and these 

 halls shall once more resound with the pealing tones 

 of the organ, to our great comfort and edification. 

 When a valse is struck up it breathes fresh life into 

 many of the inmates of the Frain. 



" I complain of the wearing monotony of our 

 surroundings ; but in reality I am unjust. The last 

 few days dazzling sunshine over the snowhills ; to-day, 

 snowstorm and wind, the Frain enveloped in a whirl 

 of foaming white snow. Soon the sun appears again, 

 and the waste around o-leams as before. 



o 



" Here, too. there is sentiment in Nature. How often 

 when least thinking of it, do I find myself pause, spell- 

 bound by the marvellous hues which evening wears. 

 The ice-hills steeped in bluish-violet shadows, against the 

 orange-tinted sky, illumined by the glow of the setting 

 sun, form as it were a strange colour-poem, imprinting 

 an ineffaceable picture on the soul. And these bright 

 dream-like nights, how many associations they have for 

 us Northmen ! One pictures to oneself those mornings 

 in spring when one went out into the forest after 

 blackcock, under the dim stars, and with the pale 



