IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 99 



red and green. Its course is draped by the gloomy 

 flaimtings of old-clothes shops, where the children 

 sit in their thousands on the doorsteps and loll their 

 white heads among trousers at two kroner, and cotton 

 stockings at thirty ore, while smells unutterable rise 

 from the apparent cleanliness of the street. 



Presently the street turns into a pier, forming one 

 side of a large, deserted harbour. There is one ship 

 alongside, discharging a cargo of indigo which has 

 stained the clear sea- water with a scum of furious 

 blue. There is a suggestion of foreign traffic about 

 the indigo that is out of keeping with the provincial 

 calm of the harbour ; one feels it ought to have been 

 hay. Outside is a huge expanse of sea, with distant 

 low islands ; nothing indeed is high except the red 

 spire of the Aarhus Cathedral, which stands with 

 astonishing significance on these long levels of the 

 coast. 



The sun was almost hot in the open square by the 

 cathedral, and the quiet was unbroken except by 

 two old women in wooden shoes clattering laboriously 

 over the monster blocks of the pavement. Approach- 

 ing from the distance was a solitary figure wearing a 

 poke-bonnet with a scarlet bow in it. She was 

 instantly discordant; even her scarlet bow was a 

 pert retort to the mellow brick-red of the cathedral. 

 She developed into a Hallelujah Lass with a pale 

 face, and eyes worthy of a purified soul, and we 

 retired into the cathedral more than usually silenced 

 by the energies and the anomalies of the Salvation 

 Army. 



The swing-door slammed jealously behind us, and 

 we and a misanthropic female verger were left alone 

 in the paleness and coolness, with golden altar decora- 

 tions gleaming far off behind the cobweb-ironwork of 

 the rood screen. Probably any properly educated 



