BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
29 
“September 24, at Grand Hotel, there was an evening re¬ 
ception to Henrik Ibsen, the distinguished Norwegian poet, 
whom I was introduced to and shook hands with. He was of 
rather short stature, ruddy face, wiry, brown hair, and side 
whiskers. He wore decorations and a wide red ribbon across 
his breast. The reception was held in a suite of rooms of the 
Grand Hotel. About nine o’clock, the guests passed into the 
large dining-room set with long table in middle on which 
the supper was placed: cold fish dressed with delicious sauce 
and cold peas, carrots cut fine, small cabbage, vegetable some¬ 
thing like pods of beans, cold potatoes, delicate cutlets with 
peas, the Norwegian game, white meat like a partridge, the 
berry like cranberry only smaller, and salad cut fine. The 
waiter passed, after serving the game, a tray on which was a 
sauce and little dishes holding other articles. After that came 
a kind of charlotte russe surrounded with ice cream. 
“Before sitting down, the guests go first to smaller tables 
covered with small round plates like soup plates with the food 
arranged very artistically, — cold beef in thin, small slices, 
raw fish, sardines left in boxes. The middle of the table has 
two piles of plates, which, however, the Swede never uses when 
eating this hors d’oeuvre. First one helps one’s self to a thin 
slice of bread or a piece of the Swedish knäkkebrad, a rye bread 
which is like Jewish bread in appearance, a coarse kind of 
pa§sover bread. The knife is then brought into use, and butter 
is taken from a large butter dish; then with a fork some kind 
of cold meat or fish is chosen and eaten. I noticed also a small 
kind of fried sausage, and a decanter and glass for the strong, 
white, Swedish whiskey. 
“There was an absence of obsequious serving on the part 
of servants, each person helping himself, and no servants were 
seen helping at the beginning of the supper. Wine, claret and 
sherry, also beer and seltzer water, were opened and standing 
about for each to help himself. 
“Before drinking, the glasses are always touched with the 
word skald, meaning “health.’ In saluting, the ladies give 
a little courtesy, bending the knee, which it is considered very 
polite to do though not obligatory. The men bow quite low, 
