IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 95 



exists. They are humble about themselves, almost 

 distressingly so, and generally convey the idea that 

 it is far from enjoyable to be a little nation among 

 big nations, revolting as the sentiment may seem to 

 the Home Ruler. 



It was two or three hours' rail to Aarhus, travelling 

 north along the east coast, through the small, pretty 

 country. The low beech-woods rustled on the slopes 

 in a sea-breeze so cool that we closed the windows; 

 the foliage was hardly thinned as yet, hardly a leaf 

 was yellow, but autumn had irrevocably chilled the 

 air, in spite of sunshine on the blue Baltic, in spite 

 of pleasure-boats in the harbour of Veile, in spite of 

 the summer clothes of the people at the stations. 

 It was evident that this was Danish hot weather, a 

 fact which was seriously depressing. It was a com- 

 panion disappointment to discover in the countrified 

 groups at the stations nothing of dress or face that 

 was national or even new; the difficulty was to 

 imagine one's self out of England. Any Enghsh 

 market town could have supplied the clean old women 

 with shabby black dresses and heavy baskets, the 

 fair-complexioned schoolgirls, the tradesman's wife 

 and her bugled bonnet, the sallow spinster, redolent 

 of her dairy and her bunch of roses. Their eyes met 

 ours with the wonted strangeness of fellow-travellers, 

 and little more than that ; it was the English glance, 

 only of a more simple and friendly type, and it com- 

 prehended us by inborn kinship. But yet we wished 

 for the foreign trick of eye, that should with lightning 

 speed rate us as a spectacle, the slight foreign gesture 

 that should make the cleavage of race as deep as 

 the English Channel. 



The local Danish railways seldom consider a first- 

 class carriage to be an everyday necessity. There is 

 a sumptuous second-class, frequented by the class 



