IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 127 



possibly pointed out the antidote, and that even the 

 so-called nierry-go-round may have its base uses. 

 Looking back to it all, we cannot help feeling sorry 

 that we did not patronise the Chicago Exposition. 

 It was there, in a very large tent, presided over by 

 a yovuig lady, whose severely English tie and high 

 collar were mitigated by an eruptive burst of paste 

 brooches. No one, so far as we were aware, set foot 

 in the Chicago Exposition throughout the long day, 

 not even a tentative inquiry disturbed the frozen 

 sulk of the doorkeeper. 



After the crowding and staring of the fair, the 

 sticky mud, the showers pattering on an acre of 

 umbrellas, it was an act of singular repose to get rid 

 of wet wraps in the hall of a villa that stood back 

 among its fruit trees by the street of Odder, and 

 sit at a flowery table, eating pears and plums and 

 grapes, and drinking the delicious Denmark coffee. 

 Cream-coloured Tauchnitz volumes lay about the 

 tables, and the talk went easily to and fro among 

 them and their authors, none the less easily, and all 

 the more pointedly, because of the Danish accent 

 and the earnest choice of English ; the air breathed of 

 the impalpable foreign elegance, and all things were 

 suave, simple and characteristic. For the twentieth 

 time the foreign gift of conversation impressed upon 

 us our own inferiority ; it was impossible not to suffer 

 in self-esteem from contact with that graciousness 

 that thinks it worth while to decorate slight things, 

 that pliant responsiveness that accepts the proffered 

 idea as an acquisition, and returns it whetted and 

 burnished like a borrowed lance. Not in the casual 

 villa of the British Isles is the art of talking thus 

 usually demonstrated ; how infinitely more probable 

 are the sodden generalities upon life's dullest details, 

 he inevitable climatic convention, the caution that 



