330 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



Even a lady might live happily in it : yet it is only an 

 everyday example. The man lifted aside a stone by the 

 doorstep to get at his own cottage key, whence he took the 

 still more carefully hidden key of the great botanist's 

 house. These keys were the exception to the rule in 

 Sweden of placing keys where they can be easily found 

 and used. People conceal their keys very innocently 

 in Sweden, like Miss La Creevy slipping her door-key 

 under the fender or the doormat ; only the Swedes make 

 no mystery of it. Inside the brass door of the parlour 

 stove is a favourite summer hiding-place for keys. 



Hammarby is a roomy and comfortable house. We 

 glanced round the rooms downstairs first in the dining- 

 room, as we should call it, which seemed to be the general 

 living-room of the family : a good-sized room with a 

 two-storeyed stove of green enamelled tiles, white- 

 washed ceiling, and plain wooden wainscot horizontally 

 boarded ; over a plain sideboard is a portrait in oils of 

 Linnseus's father, marked ' ^Etatis 68 : Natus 1674.' A 

 fine old man the father, with considerable likeness to 

 his eminent son ; bright-eyed, alert, yet with long silky 

 white hair and white moustache, and beard flowing down 

 over his hands. One hand is on a clasped bible, the 

 index of the other on a skull ; a large ring, his marriage 

 ring, on the fourth finger of the right hand. Here are 

 also portraits of the botanist's brother round-faced and 

 fat, with periwig, snowy bands, and one of his bright- 

 eyed sisters ; and an old print or two one of Hammarby 

 itself. A Japanese tray is also hung up, and a neo- 



