ON PROBATION

Shannon News, 23 November 1928, Page 2

ON PROBATION

AMERICAN GIRL IN NORWEGIAN HOME. How many girls could stand the strain of three months’ probation in the home oP ner future mother-in-law before her j marriage was celebrated! Yot that was the experience of Mrs. Eyst.cn Berg, who is at present in Aus: tralia with her husband. "I came through the ordeal with considerable credit," she said, "but it was a unique experience for me." Mrs. Berg, tall and blonde enough to be Nordic instead of American, is a Bachelor of Agriculture of Stanford University, U.S.A., and first met her husband, a Norwegian, when he was lecturing. After taking a post-gradu-ate course at Columbia University, she went to Norway—to be looked over. Specialising in fertilisers. Mrs. Berg said that she has obtained all her real agricultural training in Europe. She is a good right hand for her husband, whose work is concerned with nitrates, and who is in Australia to examine the possibilities of procuring oil from our brown coal deposits. Mrs. Berg, who Was a nurse in the A.E.F., spends six months of the year in Heidelberg and six months in London. ' After her marriage in Norway, she went to Moscow and later to Leningrad. While in Mexico Mrs. Berg bought, an island off the coa-st of Guaymas. "It’s really only a pile of red,dirt," said the traveller, "arid it’s not much use for anything.. Fifty feet below the surface you find, salt water. We tried irrigation, but before very iongj we .discovered we were playing about with the ocean. An Irishman wanted to lease it, to grow walnuts, saying that he‘d have salted nuts if nothing , else." Mrs. Berg, despite her American birth, says, that she prefers Heidelberg for her home, and pay 3 a tribute to the mn rvellous manner in which the Germans are restoring industry. She and her husband —who chatter to each other in three or four different, languages, according to mood —expect , to be in Australia for a couple of months.