be found. And I spared no pains. I wrote to the
postmaster at Tuckahoe, and to a minister I heard of
there. I inquired of the Swedish consuls in New York and
Philadelphia. Indeed, in the end, I went to Tuckahoe
myself, with her, to inquire. But this was long after.
However, I may say here, once for all, to use an old
phrase of my mother's, we never found "hide nor hair" of
him. And although this grieved Frida, of course, yet it
came on her gradually, and as she had never seen him to
remember him, it was not the same loss as if they had
grown up together.

Meanwhile that first winter was, I thought, the
pleasantest I had ever known in my life. I did not have
to work very hard now, for my business was rather
the laying out work for my men, and sometimes a nice job
which needed my hand on my lathe at home, or in some
other delicate affair that I could bring home with me.

We were teaching Frida English, my mother and I, and
she and I made a great frolic of her teaching me Swedish.
I would bring home Swedish newspapers and stories for
her, and we would puzzle them out together,--she as much
troubled to find the English word as I to find out the
Swedish. Then she sang like a bird when she was about
her household work, or when she sat sewing for my mother,
and she had not lived with us a fortnight before she
began to join us on Sunday evenings in the choruses of
the Methodist hymns which my mother and I sang together.
So then we made her sing Swedish hymns to us. And before