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called me instantly "The Right Honourable Miss." But when I petitioned to be addressed only as Madame, my little waiting-maid, after almost staring her eyes out, precipitately left the room to give vent to her laughter in another. "A Madam,” is the title given here to charwomen and the lower order of working women. The pronoun you is never used in conversation; it is an offence to say it to a servant. To all classes you must either speak in the third person, addressing them by name or or title, or use the familiar pronoun-the sign of love, friendship, or familiarity-thou. General acquaintances must always be addressed by the title, whatever title it be, whether of rank, or office, or employment, or even of trade. I was once seriously embarrassed by not knowing the name of a coachmaker from whom I hired a carriage, because I had only heard him called Mr. Coachmaker. Wives take their husbands' titles, and are quite as tenacious of them. Thus, you address a clergyman as Priest, and his wife as Priestess; a major's wife is Majorskan; a colonel's, Ofverstinnan; and one lady has sent me her card in French, "Madame le General." And every time you speak you must use the title, "Will Generalskan be so good

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as to give me Generalskan's company," &c. asked my grefve if I ought to say Kammerjunkerskan-which title, I believe, would signify "femaleyoung-gentleman of the chamber;" but he told me one could not use the feminine of Kammerjunker.

All lawyers, a tribe almost as numerous as nobles, are styled Royal Secretaries; and one of these, when leaving me his address, modestly said it would be too troublesome to me to write the Swedish title on the letter, and therefore he only left me the initials, H. A., to put before his name. "What does that mean?" I asked.

"It is when we do not know the full title," he replied; "it means the Highly Noble."

I have still a letter of introduction to a country doctor in Sweden, which bears on the envelope just fourteen titles.

The pay of a Lieutenant in the Royal Guards is, I think, less than that of our foot soldiers; but the army is the grand depôt for the young offshoots of that old tree of the Swedish nobility which my literary friend would persuade me has lost all its sap, and is decayed to its roots.

There is an interruption; and I am glad of it, for I am tired of titles.

24

CHAPTER II.

AND what was the interruption? A card, the first look of which told me it was English, an English lady's-and a titled one too; but so brief, so simple as our proud titles are!

Lady L. had come to take me out; and so in a nice English carriage I went round the élite of Stockholm, and dropped a card all round the diplomatic circle; and I assure you that I began to feel very glad that it had been the native Swede and not the English stranger who had called the aristocracy of Sweden a Lik. I very soon found that there was a strong life in the body he pronounced defunct; a warm, kindly, and

generous life, which will enliven my own winter in Stockholm, and cause me to look back with friendly gratitude to many a pleasant hour spent within its influence. Yes, there are nobles in Sweden who would do honour to the aristocracy any land; and those who speak or write without knowing them, would make as great a mistake as I should have done if I only took my old Countess-housekeeper for an example, or my literary Swede for a rule of information.

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Now, then, I begin to see the way opening to my acquaintance with the social life of Swedenan acquaintance I might have been long in making had I depended on the intervention of my complimentary correspondent. Up to this day I had felt both lonely and restless, for I was in an intermediate state between summer and winter, society and solitude; looking forward to a six or eight months' blockade in Stockholm, and not seeing how I was either to prepare for that time, or to contrive to employ it. I was in the latter days of October, and the whole of this busy month had been as yet a dreary one to me. Had I left Stockholm then, I should have left it without taking with me many pleasant recollections.

When I returned from my visits I expressed to

my hostess the pleasure I felt at making acquaintances, and hinted at the fact that I had come to her with a view to being brought into the social life of Sweden.

"And how, Madame, have you expected to make acquaintances ?" she asked. think

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to do that by remaining in your room? do you think you are like the Queen, and should wait here, and have people come to seek you?"

"I have expected, certainly, to receive visits from those persons who, you told me, wished to make my acquaintance."

"But you did not go to visit them; you would not expect them to come first to you?"

"I did expect them to do so," I answered. The good woman lifted up her hands, and head, and eyes, and burst out laughing.

"Madame, you know nothing. I advise you never to say that again in our country; they would laugh at that here; they would see you had not been in renowned society. O, no! Madame, if you go into the great world here, you must learn our customs. In England, you see, they do not care; they stay shut up in their rooms, and think every one must come and seek them."

"Be so good as to tell me," I cried, "is it the

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