IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 115 



through the dark pine plantations to the Pavihon 

 on the Links that we liad left six hours before. The 

 wind had dropped, and the sea was sueking and 

 mouthing about the weedy beach, a low- voiced 

 discontent in an otherwise immense stillness. 



It might have been a spirit voice murmuring at the 

 bedside in some language that even a dream could 

 not assimilate for its own purposes. When my eyes 

 opened, the delicious reek of coffee was steaming 

 up from among various bread-and-butters and pastries 

 on a tray, and something that sounded like " Fair- 

 segawd " remained on the ear, while the door closed 

 on the starched skirts and blushing bashfulness of the 

 housemaid. 



It was not the first time of noticing this mystic 

 murmur. Customers in the Aarhus shops had in- 

 variably opened proceedings with it ; when tendering 

 payment they said it again; the shopman gushed it 

 forth when he brought back the change, and with 

 renewed unction when he handed over the parcel ; 

 railway officials and passengers said it in chorus when 

 the tickets were snipped. Hamlet and the grave- 

 digger must inevitably have used it in handing 

 Yorick's skull about, but Shakespeare is slipshod in 

 these matters. It is spelled " ver saagod,^^ and signifies 

 primarily " be so good," but life seems to hold 

 no possibility in which it is de ti'ojJ. It cannot be 

 reduced to a system; it must be used with a large 

 blind confidence, like a patent medicine. 



I do not wish to make reflections on any one's 

 capacity for sitting " foot to foot " with the aristocracy, 

 but it is a remarkable fact that on the morning after 



