“The port is covered with ice during some four months in the year. During the mild seasons some two thousand vessels yearly enter the harbor.
“Olaf, the Saint, the King of ‘Norroway,’ who preached the Gospel ‘with his sword,’ is the hero of the western coast. I might relate many wonderful stories of him, but I would advise you to read ‘The Saga of King Olaf,’ by Longfellow, in the ‘Wayside Inn.’
“His capital was Drontheim, far up among the northern regions, where the sun shines all night in summer, and where the winters are wild and dreary, cold and long. It is a quaint old town. Summer tourists to the western coast of Norway sometimes visit it. Its cathedral was founded by Olaf, and is nearly a thousand years old.
“And now in ten nights’ entertainments, you have taken hasty views of Germany and the old Kingdom of Charlemagne. Narratives of travel and history have been mingled with strange traditions and tales of superstition; all have combined to give pictures of the ages that are faded and gone, and that civilization can never wish to recall. Men are reaching higher levels in religion, knowledge, science, and the arts. Kingcraft is giving way to the governing intelligence of the people, and superstition to the simple doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount and to the experiences of a spiritual life. The age of castles and fortresses, like churches, is gone. The age of peace and good-will comes with the fuller light of the Gospel and intelligence. The pomps of cathedrals will never be renewed. The Church is coming to teach that character is everything, and that the soul is the temple of God’s spiritual indwelling.”
The tenth evening was closed by Charlie Leland. He read an original poem, suggested by an incident related to him by a fisherman at Stockholm.
LAKE IN NORWAY.
THE FISHERMAN OF FAROE.
When life was young, my white sail hung
O’er ocean’s crystal floor;
In the fiords alee was the dreaming sea,
And the deep sea waves before.
The Faroe fishermen used to call
From the pier’s extremest post:
“Strike out, my boy, from the ocean wall;
There’s danger near the coast.
Beware of the drifting dunes
In the nights of the watery moons,
Beware of the Maelstrom’s tide
When the western wind blows free,
Of the rocks of the Skagerrack,
Of the shoals of the Cattegat;
Strike out for the open sea,
Strike out for the open sea!”