No man can be blamed for running when he is sure to be worsted in an encounter of this kind. Many a brave Californian has taken to his heels when pursued by a grizzly, and I have scarcely a doubt that I would pursue the same course myself under similar circumstances. Only it must look a little ludicrous to see a fat Englishman, a representative of the British Lion, forced to adopt this mortifying alternative rather than suffer himself to be torn into beef-steaks. It may be, however, that in this instance our Nimrod has suddenly discovered that it is about dinner-time, and is hurrying back to camp lest the beef should be overdone.

These bear-hunting Englishmen take care to have as many chances on their own side as possible. Hence they usually go into the mountains well provided with guides, ammunition, provisions, etc., and prepare the way by first. securing the bear in some favored locality. This is done by killing a calf or hog, and placing the carcass in the required position. A hired attendant lies in wait until he discovers the bear, when he comes down to the station or camp, and notifies the hunter that it is time to

start out. Thus the risk of life is greatly reduced, and the prospect of securing some game proportionally augmented. The black bears of Norway are not very dangerous, however, and, hunted in this manner, it requires no great skill to kill them. They are generally to be found in the higher mountains and defiles, a few miles

from some farming settlement. In winter, when their customary food is scarce, they often commit serious depredations upon the stock of the farmers. Every facility is freely afforded by the peasants for their destruction, and every bear killed is considered so many cattle saved.

It was late in the afternoon when I descended a rocky and pine-covered hill, and came in sight of the station

called Djerkin, celebrated as one of the best in the interior of Norway. This place is kept by an old Norwegian peasant family of considerable wealth, and is a favorite resort of English sportsmen bound on fishing and hunting excursions throughout the wilds of the Dovre Fjeld. The main buildings and outhouses are numerous and substantial, and stand on the slope of the hill which forms the highest point of the Fjeld on the road from Christiania to Trondhjem. The appearance of this isolated group of buildings on the broad and barren face of the hill had much in it to remind me of some of the old missionary establishments in California; and the resemblance was increased by the scattered herds of cattle browsing upon the parched and barren slopes of the Fjeld, which in this vicinity are as much like the old. ranch lands of San Diego County as one region of country wholly different in climate can be like another. A few cultivated patches of ground near the station, upon which the peasants were at work gathering in the scanty harvest, showed that even in this rigorous region the attempts at agriculture were not altogether unsuccessful. As usual, the principal burden of labor seemed to fall upon the women, who were digging, hoeing, and raking with a lusty will that would have done credit to the men.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

WOMEN IN NORWAY AND GERMANY.

I MUST say that of all the customs prevailing in the different parts of Europe, not excepting the most civilized states of Germany, this one of making the women do all the heavy work strikes me as the nearest approximation to the perfection of domestic discipline. The Diggers of California and the Kaffres of Africa understand this thing exactly, and no man of any spirit belonging to those tribes would any more think of performing the drudgery which he imposes upon his wife and daugh

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ters than a German or Norwegian. What is the use of having wives and children if they don't relieve us of our heavy work? In that respect we Americans are very much behind the times. We pay such absurd devotion to the weakness of woman that they rule us with a despotism unknown in any other country. Their smiles are threats, and their tears are despotic manifestoes, against which the bravest of us dare not rebel. It is absolutely horrible to think of the condition of servitude in which we are placed by the extraordinary powers vested in, and so relentlessly exercised by, the women of America. I, for one, am in favor of a revival of the old laws of Nuremberg, by which female tyranny was punished. By a decree of the famous Council of Eight, any woman convicted of beating her husband or otherwise maltreating him was forced to wear a dragon's head for the period of three days; and if she did not, at the expiration of that date, ask his pardon, she was compelled to undergo a regimen of bread and water for the space of three weeks, or until effectually reduced to submission. Something must be done, or we shall be compelled sooner or later to adopt a clause in the Constitution prohibiting from admission the State of Matrimony. What would the ladies do then? I think that would bring them to their senses.

Not only in the matter of domestic discipline, but of business and pleasure, are the people of Europe infinitely ahead of us. In France many of the railway stations are attended by female clerks, and in Germany the beersaloons are ornamented by pretty girls, who carry around the foaming schoppens, having a spare smile and a joke for every customer. Of opera-singers, dancers, and female fiddlers, the most famous are produced in Europe. The wheeling girls of Hamburg, who roll after the omnibuses in circus fashion, are the only specimens in the line of popular attractions that I have not yet seen in the streets or public resorts of New York.

What would be thought of half a dozen of these street

acrobats rolling down Broadway or the Fifth Avenue? Doubtless they would attract considerable attention, and probably turn many a good penny. I fancy the Bowery boys would enjoy this sort of thing. A pretty girl of sixteen or seventeen, with her crinoline securely bundled up between her ankles, wheeling merrily along after an omnibus at the rate of five miles an hour, would be an attractive as well as extraordinary spectacle. For my part, I would greatly prefer it to our best female lectures on phrenology or physiology. I think a girl who can roll in that way must be possessed of uncommon genius. The wheeling boys of London are but a clumsy spectacle compared with this. No man of sensibility can witness