144 STRAY -AW AYS 



sign, drove away into the night. We remained in 

 the station yard for some minutes in blank stupe- 

 faction, while droitschkes whirled in all directions, 

 and the porter was not. My cousin at length ad- 

 dressed herself in German to two elderly officials, 

 who seemed to rule the outer tumult, beings resembling 

 the most ornate Dublin policemen, of towering height, 

 and endued with such stomachic curve as is usually 

 only beheld in light comedy. They replied unintel- 

 ligibly, but with obvious kindness, and proceeded 

 to harangue the night air majestically in Danish. 

 Nothing happened ; we wandered aAvay into the 

 immensities ; then suddenly, from nowhere, the 

 droitschke, the porter, the luggage, everything. 



Copenhagen looked brilliant and idle when we 

 emerged into it. Opposite blazed the gateway of 

 the much-vaunted Tivoli, and a rich clash of brass 

 music came from it across a great platz, where mani- 

 fold trams crossed and diverged in the spurious 

 gaiety of their coloured lamps ; placards in the 

 entrance of a big theatre announced the serpentine 

 dance of Lottie Foy, and the whole population 

 seemed to be abroad, moving about the roadway in 

 throngs, as we have seen on Sunday evenings in 

 summer the Dublin suburban street marching in its 

 thousand variations of corner-boy, to the piping of 

 the William O'Brien fife-and-drum band. 



The droitschke plodded on through the crowd in 

 the Ostergade, a longer and narrower Bond-street, 

 where, as in all Denmark, the shop floors were a few 

 steps higher than the pavement, so that the cellars 

 might lift their heads into daylight, and be shops, 

 also, of scarcely inferior dignity. The heads of the 

 people who sat in subterranean revel in the many 

 restaurants below the street level showed dark 

 against the white tablecloths ; one suddenly realised 



