94 STRAY -AW AYS 



with calm, a simple virtue, but one denied to many 

 of the other races of Europe. 



Calm, I may add, was enforced upon me and my 

 cousin by the extreme toughness of the veal cutlets ; 

 in fact, for half an hour or so we remained silently 

 engaged in a process which must have given the 

 waiters the idea that we were chewing the cud — 

 possibly a custom with the English. Having fallen 

 back on coffee, a second half-hour was spent in the 

 endeavour to find out in a phrase-book the Danish 

 for bread-and-butter, a thing which a riper know- 

 ledge has shown us does not exist in Denmark in the 

 ready-made slice. But what, we would ask in friend- 

 liness, as man to man, what end is served by filling 

 the phrase-book with such sentences as " The bill 

 is reasonable," " Which is the way to the clergyman's 

 house ? " " Are the wheels greased ? " " Let the boat 

 drop down " ? These are a meagre solace to the 

 humble inquirer for bread-and-butter; indeed the 

 remotest exigencies of life seem unable to provide 

 the moment in which we shall find them useful. We 

 asked in desperation for smorhrod, and were presented 

 with plates covered with thin slices of cheese and 

 cold sausage, and after a pantomime of dissatisfac- 

 tion, were offered yet more plates with thin slices of 

 beef and ham. We then left and took our tickets 

 for Aarhus. 



The burden of the tourist is much eased in Denmark 

 by the fact that no one expects him to know anything 

 of Danish pronunciation or Danish geography; the 

 Danes themselves say that no one will learn their 

 language, and therefore they must learn every one 

 else's. They are not pained when they have to 

 inform strangers that Aarhus is pronounced " Or- 

 hoose," or that it is, after Copenhagen, the most 

 considerable town of their country, or even that it 



