SKETCHES FROM SETERSDAL. 219 
him in his home, see him roaming about amongst pigs, 
goats, fowls, cats, and ducks, on a floor beyond all 
description, the coating of which would be amply suffi- 
cient to manure a moderate-sized field, and in an in- 
credible atmosphere, composed of the thickest impurities, 
arising from the human and animal world which this 
novel Noah has collected in his ark. No Irish cabin 
ever came up to it! In the next place, you should see 
him in his hideous leather breeches, in his nameless 
shirt sleeves, that have no more of their original colour 
than had the milk above mentioned, with his wife and 
daughters, in their summer dress and home costume, the 
short white woollen blouse which they wear underneath 
their dark, short-skirted, corded over-dress, and whose 
whiteness is replaced by a yellow-brown gray, which 
forms the ground colour, in which are a multitude of 
marks and spots of all shades and colours like a rain- 
bow; though the greasy and dark spots ave the most 
numerous. One can hardly believe that they are the 
same beings which so short a time ago might have been 
seen in the churchyard so clean and picturesque-looking 
in their best Sunday attire; but that, reader, was the 
poetical and bright side, this the prosaic and real—for 
the fundamental element is dirt! The white shining 
shirt sleeves, and silver studs, and cleanly appearance 
are laid aside as soon as service is over. It does not 
last even to the close of the day, but is put by after 
