IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 173 



that played deafeningly inside a huge paviHon crammed 

 with people. Hardly could the old ladies place their 

 camp-stools, hardly the waiters find passage for the 

 little pewter tea-pots and the sugared cakes; the 

 intolerable strength of the music seemed to add to 

 the crush, and we squeezed forth again, through 

 phalanxes of fashionable young men, who stood at 

 the door in their long-looped ties and turned-down 

 collars, into the spaciousness of cold air, tainted with 

 bad tobacco. The noise was hardly out of our ears 

 before the dogmatic rhythm of dance music was 

 launched with drum and brass from another pavilion, 

 whose ring of coloured lamps show^ed fitfully through 

 the ever-rustling beech branches. Its sides were 

 open, and all round it ran a gangway for spectators, 

 on W'hich the people were clinging like bees. We 

 waited till a fat shopkeeper and his mother got down, 

 and clambered into their places. Holding to the rail 

 we looked down into a swarming circle, where forty 

 or fifty couples were revolving in a waltz — soldiers 

 in their light blue and silver, sailors in the well-known 

 low collar and cap, shop-boys in tall hats, students, 

 fishermen, dancing with the blowsy fair ones of their 

 choice. They held each other round the waists, and 

 laughed in each other's faces, spinning, racing, jostling, 

 reversing; and a major-domo, in the centre, directed 

 all things. The heat came up round our faces in 

 unpleasant wafts, and the cold air was at our backs; 

 stiffly we got down, and thought about getting home. 

 A lake, with limelight and a ship, did not long attract 

 us; we stood for some time in a crowd outside an 

 open-air theatre wuth a drop scene formed of a pea- 

 cock, whose monster spread tail furled to slow music, 

 and revealed a juggler and his glinting knives, and 

 his incredible feats of balance. 



Everything was fresh, ingratiating, and even, in 



