Yours very truly,
LAURITZ BOLDEMANN SEEHUS.




KRYDSVIG, December 25, 1889.

MR. EDITOR,

After having, in the course of a long and very stormy life, given heed
to the clouds of the sky and the various aspects of the sea, which can
change before your eyes as you look, like a woman who discovers another
whom she likes better, and you stand forsaken and rejected, because a
girl's mind is like the ocean above-mentioned, and full of storms as the
Spanish Sea, and I early received my shock of that kind for life, of
which I do not intend to speak, but the weather is of a nature that I
have never before observed in this country, with small seas, rare and
moderate storms, and on this first Yule-day a peace on the earth and
such a complacent calm on the sea that you might row out in a trough.
The wreckage that came in on the 8th and 9th December last was the only
extravagance, so to speak, of the sea this year, for there was too much
in some places, and this will probably give the Lensmand a pretext for
holding an auction, to the great ruination of the people, for the planks
were rare ones, both long and good-hearted timber. But at an auction
half the pleasure is lost, besides more that is very various in
kind--for instance, brandy: and the town gentlemen who sell such liquor
to the farmer must answer to their consciences what substances and
ingredients such a drink is cooked out of, as it brings on mental
weakness and bodily torment, proof of which I have seen numberless times