than in Berlin or London, and it is contended that there are more than
in Paris, but that is doubtful. The total number of instruments in use
is nearly 50,000 to a population of 300,000. You can find a telephone
in every shop and in almost every house, and in the parks and on the
street corners on lamp posts are little booths similar to those
used for police boxes in the cities of the United States. They work
automatically. You drop a little coin worth three cents into the slot,
and then ring the bell. For several years every room in the principal
hotels has had its own telephone, on the same system that has recently
been introduced into the United States, and upon some of the steamers
sailing from Stockholm there is a telephone in every stateroom. The
long distance 'phones and all the lines outside of two or three of
the principal cities belong to the government and are operated by the
Postoffice Department. The rents vary from $10 to $28 a year.

The telegraph system is owned by the government, which charges a
uniform rate of fifteen cents for ten words to any part of the
country.




CHAPTER XV

THE PEOPLE: THEIR MANNERS AND CUSTOMS


Because of its geographic isolation, the Scandinavian peninsula is the
home of the purest Teutonic ethnic stock. The Norwegians, Icelanders,
Swedes, and Danes are racially closely related, and they belong to the