"You speak English wonderfully well," we answered, really surprised at the purity of the man's accent.
"Yes," he said, "I was several years in America, where I lost all the money I had made at sea. It took me a long time to collect enough to come home again, but I have just come back, and if not richer, anyway I hope I'm wiser." And he thereupon began to explain the advantages and disadvantages of emigration.
Imagine in the far North, almost on the borders of Lapland, being addressed in our own tongue by a man in rags. We were astonished; yet all over Finland one meets with sailors who speak the King's English, and in Uleåborg we were struck with the fact on two other occasions—the first being when the man at the helm of a small penny steamer addressed us, and the second when a blue-coated policeman entered into conversation.
This shows how universal our clumsy grammarless language is becoming. But still, although English is the language of commerce, and with English one can travel all over the world, better than with any other tongue, the only way really to enjoy and appreciate voyaging in foreign lands is either to speak the language of the people, or, if that cannot be managed, to have some one always at hand capable and willing to translate.
Knowledge of the language of a country is a golden key to enjoyment.
As we left the salmon ground a lady, who had apparently been watching the proceedings from afar, desiring to know more of such strange beings as the "two English ladies," advanced, and, on the trifling pretext of asking if we had lost our way, addressed us in excellent French.
We thanked her, and replied we had been for several days in Uleåborg and knew our way quite well; but she was not to be baffled—she came to have a talk and she meant to have it—therefore she walked beside us the whole way back to the hotel, giving us little bits of information, though much more inclined to ask us questions than to answer those to which we were really in need of replies.
Will any one deny that the Finlander is inquisitive? Perhaps the reader will be inquisitive too when he learns that unintentionally we made a match. Nevertheless, the statement is quite true. We, most innocent and unoffending—we, who abhor interference in all matrimonial affairs—we, without design or intent, made a match.
It came about in this way.
By mere chance I chaperoned a charming and delightful girl down the Gulf of Bothnia. Her coming with us was only decided upon during the last five minutes of our stay, and her clothes were positively repacked on the platform of the station to enable her to do so at all.