has not replaced them. These Swedish stoves are much like the German porcelain heaters, only they are built on a more generous scale. They occupy a whole corner of the room, and often extend from floor to ceiling. Usually they are of white porcelain, though often other colored tiles are used, and sometimes they are highly ornamented with cupids or dragons, or like allegorical animals.
In the morning, quite early, the pretty chambermaid makes a fire of short birch sticks, filling the firebox up to the top. Then the drafts must be left open until all the gases and smoke have escaped, which have such a tortuous course to travel through the many pipes concealed within the porcelain that gradually they heat the great white monument through and through. When the birch is reduced to living coals, the dampers are shut off; the heat is thus retained, and a genial warmth is given out for the rest of the day. Even at night the tilings of the stove are quite warm, and you seldom want more than one “heating” in the course of the twenty-four hours, except in the most extreme weather.
After this little excursion into stoveland, let me return for a moment to our fascinating statistics. It is said that the Swedes are the longest-lived people in the world, and within a hundred years they have reduced the death rate nearly one half. I wonder if this low death rate is not due in part to their cleanly habits. I suppose the fresh, northern mountain air, crisp and frosty in the winter, and the out-of-door life which a people largely agricultural live has much to do with it, but I am also inclined to think that their love of the prosaic bathtub is partly responsible, for I suppose that the Scandinavians, with the exception of the Japanese, and perhaps the Finns, are the cleanliest people in the world.
I have seen a funny picture which represents a school bath. It is a photograph, too. Here is a big school bathroom with a dozen tubs shaped like washtubs setting on the floor, each one occupied by a sturdy little youngster of some ten summers. Each one is industriously scrubbing the back of his next neighbor, while he is immersed up to his middle in the warm water. Over each boy’s head is a shower bath, and if friendly competition does not make the back of each of those boys immaculate I do not know how cleanliness can be achieved.
However much the school tub may have to do with the longevity of the Swede, I know that the blue ribboners would ascribe the increasing span of his years to the temperance law which the last parliamentary half-century has seen enacted and enforced. Sweden once had the sad reputation of being the most drunken country in Europe, and no wonder, for in 1775 Gustavus III made liquor selling and liquor making a State monopoly, and much revenue was derived from intoxicating fluids. The heaviest drinker was the greatest benefactor of the State, for he was thus adding with every dram to the public revenues. Tea and coffee were shut out of the country by the laws, lest some poor toper should prefer them. Beer even was unknown, and wine was rare and costly.
Who do you think was the first man to protest against this wholesale drunkard making? It was no other than Linnæus, the gentle botanist, to whom the world is indebted for naming more plants than Adam ever named. He tried to convince the people of the awful effects of alcoholism upon the national life. After about a decade and a half the government became ashamed of itself and abolished its monopoly. But then things went from bad to worse, for the making and selling of liquor became absolutely free. Everybody who had a little grain made it into whisky. Every large farm had its distillery, and to make drunkards became, not the business of the State, but of everybody who wished to make money.
Thus things went on for some forty years, when the Neal Dow, or more properly the Father Matthew of Sweden, came to the front. This was Canon Wieselgren, who in 1830 began to write and lecture against this awful national evil, and at last, aided by famous men of science, who made exhaustive studies of alcoholism, he brought about a complete and blessed reform in the liquor laws. The tax on whisky was raised so high that private individuals could neither make nor sell it. Local option was allowed, and many communities forbade altogether the sale of liquor. At last the famous Gothenburg system was adopted, and “the monopoly of the manufacture and sale of spirits was given to a company which is allowed to make only a fair rate of interest out of the capital employed, and must hand over the surplus to the community, to be used in the support of such institutions as may tend to diminish the consumption of liquor and combat drunkenness.” The company is guaranteed five per cent on its capital should the sale fall below a certain minimum. This system has the great advantage that it precludes all desire on the part of the company and its retail sellers to increase the sale of drink, as the interest on the capital employed is secured and is not liable to be increased by a larger output.
There are various other regulations which are of interest to all in our country, since the liquor problem is always a burning question. The retail seller must provide food as well as drink, and is not allowed to sell liquor without food, and then only in a small glass to each customer. Youths under eighteen years of age cannot buy, and the retail shops must close at six o’clock. The profits that are made by the company must be used in providing rooms, free libraries, lectures, sports, and games, and it is said that the visitors to the seven reading rooms thus provided in Gothenburg reach half a million every year. Now Sweden and Norway are the most temperate countries in Europe. A drunken man is a rara avis. Crime has diminished in like proportion, as is to be expected.
Let me tell you of one more Swedish phenomenon before I close this letter. During all this visit to Stockholm, and in my previous visits as well, I have never seen a fire engine go tearing through the streets, though one could hardly live for a day in Boston or New York without such an excitement. And yet they have fire engines and horses ready harnessed day and night in Stockholm, and men sleeping in their boots ready to drop down through a hole in the floor on to their seat on the fire engine at any moment. One would think that the men would get tired of waiting for an event that so seldom happens, and that the horses would die for lack of exercise, as they undoubtedly would if they had to wait for a fire to give them a good run.
Do you want to know, Judicia, why the excitement of a fire is so rare in Stockholm? I will tell you, as my friend, Mr. Thomas, the ex-Minister to Sweden, has told me. “Once a year, if you live here, two gentlemen will call on you with book and pencil in hand and carefully examine every stove in your rooms. They also examine all the flues and chimneys. They are officers of the municipality, and the patriarchal government of Stockholm wishes to see that there is no danger of your burning yourself up.”
If they find that your chimneys are foul, a little boy with a sooty face, with white teeth and eyeballs shining through the grime, will wait on you. He will have a rope wound around his neck, with an iron hook on the end, and you must let him go down your chimney and clean out all the soot and cinders. You must also comply with twelve regulations when you build your house, which relate to the material for the walls and the roof, the construction of the cellar, etc., and the house must not be more than sixty-eight feet high. If you think these regulations are too severe, they will at least reduce the size of your insurance bill, for $1.25 will insure your house for $2500 for a year; that is, the premium is a twentieth of one per cent—less than a quarter part of what it would be in America. For $17.50 you may insure your house forever for $1000. If it stands for two hundred years you will never have to pay another cent; so you see there are some advantages, even if there are some annoyances, in a paternal government.
I know your aversion to statistics, my dear Judicia, and in spite of their proverbial dullness it does seem to me rather necessary for one who would feel the deepest charm of Sweden to know something about the characteristics of the Swedes and their comparative standing in matters material and moral with the other nations of Europe. But since, in an early letter, these matters have been disposed of, I can promise you in my next something to which your romantic soul will respond more generously.
Faithfully yours,
Phillips.
FOURTH LETTER
Wherein Phillips tells of the many beautiful excursions from Stockholm, and soon takes Judicia into the heart of Dalecarlia, noted for the fertility of its soil and the bright costumes of its maidens. He also rehearses the romantic story of Gustavus Vasa,