82 TEN YEAKS IN SWEDEN. 



One thing I like much. You rarely enter a peasant's house 

 without seeing a large Bible lying on the table. I recollect, 

 once having an argument with an old peasant who was very 

 poor, on something which happened in the Mosaic age. 

 The poor old fellow said if he had only a Bible he should feel 

 so much interested in the accounts of the earlier days. He had 

 a New Testament, but had never been able to save money 

 enough to buy a Bible. I asked him which he would rather 

 have, an old pair of boots I had promised him, or a large type 

 Bible. He hesitated, for his feet were " very near the ground/' 

 but he chose the Bible. I gave him both, and when I paid 

 him a visit afterwards, I found him deep in the wars of the 

 Philistines, spelling his way with the aid of a pair of 

 monstrous spectacles made out of window glass. I met the 

 old fellow about a year afterwards and he slily drew me into 

 a discussion on the comparative merits of David and Saul, 

 just to prove to me that he had read my Bible. 



On the whole we may take the peasants throughout the 

 country as a very good, sterling, simple-minded, contented, 

 race of men. Honest, civil, well-behaved, and particularly 

 willing to help a stranger. We rarely bolt a door at night 

 in the country, and I never had a row with a peasant the 

 whole time I was in Sweden. Murders or highway robberies 

 are not often heard of, although both in Stockholm and 

 Gothenburg I have seen some most villanous-looking 

 scoundrels hanging about, whom I should be very sorry to 

 meet on a dark night without my revolver. 



Crime, they say, is on the decrease, owing, as some will 

 have it, to the greater difficulty of procuring spirits ; others 

 (myself among the number) to the increased severity of prison 

 discipline. 



The punishment for crimes in Sweden is very severe. 

 For a theft, the prisoner is doomed to pay a certain sum, pro- 

 bably double the value of the goods stolen, and in default 

 of paying, to be kept on bread and water for so many days, 

 and after that to be kept at hard labour for a certain time. 

 I noticed that a thief who had broken into the Bishop' s 

 house at Lund, in the end of 1863, was doomed to be kept 



