The Argosy — page 147: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

132 Under Northern Skies. it for ever. Hot and tiring by day, at night yielding neither rest nor quiet. At two o’clock in the morning commenced a procession of carts, which, thundering through the streets with a noise that would have wakened the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, forbade all further repose for anyone but Gothenburg’s well-seasoned inhabitants. Throughout Sweden there is something in the construction of houses or streets, or both combined, which makes the sound of anything passing down the thoroughfares so terrific, that one’s very nerves jar in concert with the noise, one’s ears are in danger of losing all sense of hearing. A learned engineer endeavoured to explain the mystery by showing how in some special way sound was not deadened, at the time of construc- tion, by the ordinary methods. ‘The cause was too technical and i fe = uz: PHOLLANOS EXPED HALMSTAD—SQUARE AND CHURCH. abstruse for a novice, and remained a mystery: enough that the effect was a great reality. Like a phantom haunting its familiar, it followed one throughout Sweden, not excepting the capital itself. I had promised to spend a day with friends living south of Gothenburg: a promise made in happy ignorance of the fact that it would entail a twenty-six hours’ journey by sea and land, and a night spent at an hotel en route. My friends on their part had no idea that plans would have been formed limiting that visit to twenty- four hours. But having promised, I performed, and did not regret doing so. The only parallel case at this moment recurring to memory is that of a sixteen hours’ rough drive once taken in Shetland to pay a morning call. E. decided to vegetate the while in Gothenburg, and remained behind to revel in sea-bathing, and search out, if any existed, the hidden beauties of the town. ECORMICLOOOKS (Ee)