The Settlers by Vilhelm Moberg

visit. On the wall hung a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Jackson as bride and groom, but it was not a painted picture of her and Henry, and that was the strange thing about it. She and Henry had been placed in the picture by an apparatus. It was like a miracle. Mr. Paul Hanley, a member of the Baptist congregation and now Elin’s employer, had bought the apparatus; he was one of the directors of the lumber company and a rich man; he wanted to have a picture of them in their bridal outfit. To take a photograph, he had called it. It was a new invention. They had stood in front of the machine, quite still, for a few moments, while Mr. Hanley had gone to the other side of it with a cloth over his head and manipulated something. And so, quite by magic, they had got their likenesses printed on a thick paper, as nice as any painted picture. And their likenesses did not scale off or fade away but had remained there on the wall, exactly as they were now, for a whole year. They would stick to the paper for all eternity, Mr. Hanley had told them.
    Next to the groom, who wore a knee-long coat and narrow pants, stood Ulrika in her white bridal gown of muslin and a wide-brimmed hat, her very first hat.
    Below the picture of the bridal couple, a notice from the St. Paul Pioneer was cut out and glued to the wall. The paper had printed a piece about the Jackson wedding:
Baptist Church Is Scene of First Wedding
The first marriage in the history of the Stillwater Baptist Church took place Saturday, when Miss Ulrika of Vastergohl became the bride of the Reverend Henry O. Jackson, minister of the Baptist congregation. The bride belongs to the very old noble family of Vastergohl in Sweden.
The Reverend R. E. Arleigh who teaches at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul read the service.
Attendants were Cora Skalrud, bridesmaid; Betty Jean Prescott, maid of honor; Paul Hanley and Bob Orville, both best men.
A reception at the new home of Mr. and Mrs. Henry O. Jackson in Stillwater followed the ceremony.
    Ulrika translated for Kristina, telling her that the man who had come to write about the wedding for the Pioneer had asked her if she belonged to a noble family in Sweden. The Swedes he had met previously in America had all been counts and barons. But she had felt that her ancestry was none of his business, and to his rude question she had, of course, replied that she came from such an old noble family that it could be traced back to the time when Father Adam and Mother Eve walked about with their behinds bare in Paradise. Whether it was because of her English, which wasn’t quite perfect yet, or because the writer had taken her seriously—whatever the reason—this writing man had printed in his paper that she had been born into an ancient noble family in Sweden.
    And as she had been the first Swedish bride in the St. Croix Valley, it somehow seemed as if it were required of her to have a noble name. It was an honor to her homeland, perhaps. Anyway, it didn’t hurt her to be taken for a noble Swedish lady. The aristocratic ladies in Sweden were of course quite uppity, but as far as she knew they did not have bad reputations. And she didn’t feel their good names were besmirched when the paper raised her to noble status.
    Ulrika prepared dinner for Kristina, sure that she was hungry after her long ride. She treated her to an omelet, warm from the oven, made of ten strictly fresh eggs which had been given to Henry for a sermon in Marine a few days ago.
    “Henry is serving as priest in Franconia today,” said Ulrika. “He won’t be back until late. You must stay the night with us!”
    “Come with me to the store and help me buy,” pleaded Kristina. “I can’t talk to the clerks.”
    “I’ll be glad to be your interpreter, of course. But you must speak to Americans so you learn the language!”
    Through her marriage to an American, Ulrika had become so familiar with English that she could understand it well and equally well make herself