It is an interesting sight, this bucket brigade, that stands in line and passes slowly by the serving windows, which are attended by half a dozen brawny Norwegian women with bare arms and broad, good-natured-looking faces.  They wear neat white aprons and caps, and handle the food with a dexterity that shows long experience.  They seem to know most of the customers and carry on a familiar conversation with them while falling their orders.  When a bucket and a ticket passes up, blue for a nine-cent and red for a seven-cent dinner, the waitress first plunges a huge ladle into the soup pot and empties its contents into the bucket; then passing along the rows of kettles she harpoons a piece of meat with a long two-pronged fork, scoops up a quart of rice with a wooden shovel, and then, adding a portion of potatoes, slams on the cover, and, grabbing a cube of bread, passes it over to the purchaser with a joke or a few pleasant words.

Many of the customers are well dressed, according to the Norway standard, but no people in the world seem to care so little for their personal appearance, except on Sundays, when you can scarcely recognize men and women you have been familiar with during the week.  On the day I ate at the restaurant, my cicerone pointed out at the dining table two professors of the University faculty, a lawyer in good standing, a photographer, and a sub-editor of one of the daily papers, who were his personal acquaintances.  The remainder of the customers appeared to be professional men, clerks, bookkeepers, and a good many laborers, many of them coming for their dinner without having removed the traces of toil from their faces and hands.  At one of the tables was a group of students inclined to be boisterous and evidently enjoying themselves.  The “Steam Kitchen” is the favorite eating-place for the undergraduates, from four to five hundred being served every day.

Such an institution as the “Steam Kitchen” is especially suitable to a Norwegian city, where a portion of the population work for very small wages, the average income of the wage-earner being less than $100 a year—­so small that, measured by the American standard, it would seem a difficult problem to find food, clothing, and shelter for a family.

Few Norwegians suffer from poverty or privation, even through the cold and gloomy winters that are eight months long.  Our own people might die, or at least suffer seriously under the same circumstances, but the Norwegians are a hardy race.  They have inherited the power of endurance and the ability to survive hunger and thirst and discomforts better than most races.