Malerstuen

Malerstuen. BY NEPHI ANDERSON, AUTHOR OF "ADDED UPON," "THE CASTLE BUILDER," "DAUGHTER OF THE NORTH," ETC. I. Have you ever speculated on why you made your entrance into this world at the particular time and place that you did? Why did you come now instead of in the time of Constantine, or Paul, or David, or Methuselah? And why did you make your entrance at London or at Salt Lake City,rather than at Cape Town,or Sidney,or Rio de Janeiro? And then consider, a little more in detail, the environment into which you came. Why were you born in a farmhouse instead of a city mansion, for instance? Why were your parents poor instead of rich, or the opposite? I shall not attempt to answer these questions for you in any degree of defiiiteness, but I do think that this coming to earth is the result of a chain of sequential events, reaching away back into past worlds. There is no chance in nature. He who "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the

MALERSTUEN. 593 bounds of their habitations"—He surely sees that the coming of his children to this earth is done according to law and order. Our arrival here is usually heralded with joy and rejoicing. When our Elder Brother made his advent as a babe in Bethlehem, he was announced by a star, and a multitude of angels sang praise to God in celebration of the event; and thus we also receive the quieter welcome of glad parents and pleased brothers and sisters. But what of our departure from that pre-existent home? Was there the sorrow "up there" at parting as there is down here? or did we have more knowledge then, seeing more of the end from the beginning? We read that at one time, when this earth was being prepared for us, "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy;" and this seems to infer that the veil which hung before our eyes was not so impenetrable as that which now separates us from the life beyond the grave. I can well imagine that when the Firstborn came to part from his Parents and kindred to perform his earthly mission, a chorus of the heavenly host sang a parting hymn, and the occasion was made a time of solemn rejoicing. We also were in that first estate. We also had parents and friends grown dear to us by time-immeasured association. Though infinitely less than our Elder Brother, who became our Lord and Savior, might not we also have been sent forth with some demonstration of Godspeed and farewells until we should meet again? II. I thought of these things—and a great many more—as I sat on the ruins of a stone wall, that warm July afternoon, and looked at Malerstuen. I had left President Heber J. Grant and party at Stockholm the day before—July 4, 1906—and had hastened on in advance to Norway and to Christiania, that I might have more time to visit my native country and city, and Malerstuen, the house where I was born. I had hurried from the city out to Vestre Aker on the electric cars, and from the end of the line, I had walked some distance out into the country. Not having been quite sure of my way, I had asked a farmer, who was cutting grass by the roadside, if he could direct me to Malerstuen. "Yes;" he had said without hesitation, "go down this way

IMPROVEMENT ERA. • 594 for fifteen or twenty minutes, and you'll see it on the left side of the road." Malerstuen had been built for over fifty years, and I was gratified to learn that it was still known by its original name. I found the house readily. It stood on a rising knoll, a few rods back from the road. It was a small, plain, wooden structure. The tiles on the roof and the boarding on the sides were nearly the same color of rusty red, the corners, cornice and porch being painted white. The rock foundation was still intact and solid. A stone wall had extended along in front of the house, but now only a remnant was to be seen. Our neighbors of forty years ago used to say—so I have been told—that the devils sat thick on this wall while the ''Mormons" held services within the house. Perhaps this accounted for the decay of the wall and the preservation of the dwelling. On one side of the house stood some tall lilac bushes, and out beyond them in the distance, could be seen patches of gleaming water. Christiania fjord lies in that direction, and down in the lowest parts of the depression between the rounded green hills shone the water of the fjord. Fields surrounded the house on every side, and out away from the city they stretched to the hills. These gradually rose, pine-clad to the summits, where, in the openings among the trees, stood the rustic hotels overlooking the fjord, the cities, the villas, the farm houses and Malerstuen. So this is the spot on which I first stepped when I came to this world! And could there be a more beautiful place upon which to alight? True, I came in the winter, when all this beauty of field and hill and fjord lay under a cover of snow; but by the time I was old enough to observe, many snows had come and gone, and many a time the land had been decked with grass and flowers, and the long Norwegian days had distilled their beauty into my soul. The winter evenings may have been long and cold, but all that comes to me of them are faint remembrances of wonderful Norwegian fairy tales told to the children by my father. Here my infant feet had trod. This earth they had first pressed. Here I had played while the wonders and beauty of my new home had unfolded to me. I had experienced some fears of the disillusion that a return to one's native place often brings,

MALERSTUEN. 595 but I was happily disappointed. I wanted to lie on the green grass and look up into the blue sky, and dream away the day. I sat down on the steps of the porch in a reverent mood, and my soul was flooded with a divine peace. The sky was fair; the air was cool and sweet; a bird chirped from the lilac bushes: I was in love with Malerstuen. The years turned back to the time when heaven lay about me in my infancy; for, as Wordsworth says: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And coraeth from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home. And a reflection of that glory was about me, and the man perceived that it had not altogether died away, nor faded "into light of common day." I went into the house, and was kindly received by the old lady who lived there. She became interested in me, not so much, I fancy, because I had been born in the house, but because I was from America. She had a son in that goodly land who had not forgotten his mother. I saw the big room where the early Saints used to meet for service, and noticed the big joists across the ceiling. With my kodak I took some views, and when the old lady learned that she was in the picture, she exclaimed: "Good! Now I, also, shall go to America." III. Many of the Saints who joined the Church in early days in Christiania will remember Malerstuen. Its first owner was one Andreas Rasmussen, a painter. The word "painter" in Norwegian is maler, and the house or cottage due; therefore, Malerstuen means the house of the painter. My father, Christian Anderson, while yet a young man, learned his trade from Painter Rasmussen, who joined the Church and came to Utah. My father was baptized in 1857, and, with his young wife, moved into Malerstuen. Thus the name of the humble cottage was perpetuated.

W6 IMPROVEMENT ERA. Maler Anderson was soon appointed president of the Aker's branch of the Church, and meetings were held in his home. This created much stir in the neighborhood, and priests of the state church, and officers of the law, made not a little trouble for the Saints. But the work went on, and many honest souls heard the restored gospel for the first time within the painter's cottage. Among the clearest of my childhood recollections, is that of my father's deep, rich voice when he became eloquent in his preaching. In the fall of 1860 he was called on a mission. Leaving his wife and babies, he started northward without purse or scrip, into the snow-bound mountains of Norway. On this trip he reached Trondhjem on the north coast. He walked most of the way, a distance of nearly three hundred miles, ani then trudged the long way back again. Two years later he was again sent on a mission to the upper valleys of his native country. This time he spent eight days in prison for preaching and performing some of the ordinances of the gospel. He was not very rich in worldly goods in those days, and he could leave his family very little save his blessing. The winters were long and severe. Though the walls of Malerstuen popped with cold, and the fare of its inmates was meager at times, yet there abode with them the peace which comes from a sense of duty well done. The years, with their suns and their snows have gone since then, but Malerstuen still stands, rich in the memory of events, which, I hope, have added a grain of good to the world. Tranquility. What breaks the shaft of a great ocean liner is not the work it does in driving the ship forward through the sea, but the tremendous speed at which it is driven when the waves lift the stern into the air and it is doing no work whatever. It is so with the most perfect of all machines—the human body. It is not work that wears us out, or suddenly snaps the cord, but rather it is the extra strain we put upon the machine by the waves of passion and folly that sweep over us. We have noticed that those who live long and happily are those who have lived tranquilly, and circumscribed their desires within due bounds.—Farm Journal.