182 STRAY-AWAYS 



Chamber, where the members are elected by any 

 or every Dane who is over twenty-five years of age, 

 and has not the misfortune to be a felon, a bankrupt, 

 a domestic servant, a lunatic, or a woman. 



Calm and saloon-like are the memories of the 

 Danish Parliament; its mild ornateness, its members 

 meditating compromise and habitually drinking weak 

 tea, its placid acceptance of uncaged womankind, its 

 Minister approaching crisis and victory with the 

 same sang-froid with which he had for nineteen 

 years ignored defeat. And there calmness dies, 

 slaughtered that evening by the urgent portmanteau, 

 packed by slow torture to its final apoplexy, the 

 dinner eaten in the expectancy of the cab and the 

 paramount expectancy of seasickness. 



Down the asphalte of the Ostergade the droitschke 

 went smoothly through the sauntering crowd; every 

 one except ourselves at ease with the world, every 

 one sipping the lamp-lit idleness of Copenhagen in 

 infinite leisure. With a rattle over paving-stones, a 

 wrench across tram-lines, we loirched away out of 

 holiday; the true pang of parting was there, edged 

 by fore-knowledge of long fatigues, of warfare with 

 douaniers, of the certainty of missing the Hamburg 

 train at Kiel. The central station seethed to the 

 doors with a mob of tourists on their way home 

 from Norway; there were but two seats left in the 

 train, and they were in the hot heart of a crowded 

 carriage ; the netting was already full of small 

 luggage, therefore ours must travel on our laps. 



There was indeed a corner seat, but we could not 

 but yield it to the English youth who was leaning out 

 of the open window and saying good-bye to a Danish 

 girl. He wore, according to Danish custom, the 

 ring that betokens betrothal ; her hand was in his, 

 and they seemed to find conversation a difficulty. 



