IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 117 



and outliouses, the home of three hundred cattle and 

 tlieir commissariat. 



All were now sprinkled abroad over their enormous 

 pasture-lands ; the big central yard was empty, and 

 the endless rows of stalls contained nothing but 

 cleanliness and some farm-horses, pale, serious creatures 

 with heavy necks and hollow backs, looking as if they 

 were fed on ciu'ds and whey. In the absence of the 

 three hundred ladies to whom our visit was specially 

 directed, the manager very kindly suggested that w^e 

 should see the pigs, who in these dairies are largely 

 cultivated as receptacles for skimmed milk, and we 

 lightly acquiesced. 



Nothing that we had yet met with in Denmark 

 proved as rapidly satiating as the atmosphere of the 

 first pig-shed. It was a long, large house, filled with 

 pens as neatly subdivided as the squares of a chess- 

 board, and within them lolled uncountable swine, 

 grunting with repletion, squeaking with an ill-humour 

 which may have been conversational or may have been 

 merely an accompaniment to their own vile medita- 

 tions. It was a nightmare of guileful eyes, leering up 

 in red sockets, of carnivorous noses, snuffing with 

 watchful greed, of an odour that paralysed feeling, 

 appreciation, politeness, everything but the determina- 

 tion to fly. It was some comfort to see that our 

 hostess w^as already in full retreat, vanishing round 

 the corner of a pen by the door, where a tall and bristly- 

 maned boar surveyed his visitors with an intelligence 

 and distaste that were more than human. Wliy is it 

 said of prodigal sons that they have " gone to the 

 dogs " ? Why not to the pigs, those original boon 

 companions of the prodigal ? As Dahlia, the red-and- 

 white setter, delicately sniffed the tainted gale of the 

 pighouse, and withdrew to await her party outside, 

 it seemed as if her only possible relation to him would 



