Читать книгу "Gamle Norge": Rambles and Scrambles in Norway онлайн

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The brightness of the morning favoured our al fresco toilets, and one of our party (who carried a dressing-case full of wonderful things, and generally known in the list of impedimenta as “Somebody’s luggage”) became the centre of attraction. In front of his tent were laid out a waterproof sheet and a saddle-bag, partially opened and supported at the back; the latter sustained the looking-glass, in front of which knelt a figure shaving (No. 1). Now, although the Norwegians shave almost universally, there was something about our friend’s manipulations which took the fancy of all present. The girls giggled; the short ones tried to peep between the tall ones. Why? Did the performer pull his own nose to a greater length than usual in this country when he took the long sweep down his cheek? Hardly. The fact was, the good folk thought the whole thing was but an overture to some other performance, and that the dressing-case, with its numerous silver-topped glass bottles, contained all kinds of medicines, panaceas for everything—cures for gout, sciatica, tic douloureux, trichinæ spirales, hypochondria, dipsomania, and every other mania.