NORWAY AND SWEDEN

It is all very sad about Norway and Sweden! A handsomer country couple—or couple of countries—it would be hard to meet anywhere, and so propinquous! Have they not been next-door neighbours from the infancy of the world?

And everybody knows what Propinquity does.

It is Cupid’s middle name; what more natural than that they should get married?

Haven’t you heard? Well, it all happened so quickly, they were married in Vienna in 1815, and—well, you know Propinquity is the Devil’s middle name, too—they were divorced in 1905 after a brief married life of only ninety years!

What could have been the trouble?

Some say the food, others attribute it to the Domestic Drama. Perhaps it was both. Here is a typical Scandinavian Menu—

Pjkled Ojsters
Bjsque of Snajls
Frjed Fjsh
Natjve Wjne
Qujnce Jce-cream
Onjons and Bjsqujts

It might almost pass for an Ibsen Play with the average theatre-goer; it has what the average theatre-goer calls “atmosphere.”

I once drew Ibsen, looking bored
Across a deep Norwegian Fjord,
And very nearly everyone
Mistook him for the Midnight Sun. Norway is the home of the Ibsenian or stodgy, as distinguished from the stagey, Drama.

James Huneker, the eminent Lexicographer, as a compliment to that great and hirsutiferous playwright, has re-christened Norway “The Land of the Midnight Whiskers.”

The inhabitants of Norway and Sweden are the most Moral and Patriotic People in the World, and they won the World War.