Through Scandinavia to Moscow. Edwards William Seymour

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СКАЧАТЬ what is stored behind the plain exteriors, for the Dane has not yet learned the art of window display, nor has he acquired the skill of so showing his goods that the buyer is caught at a single glance. If you would purchase, you must have already determined what you want, and then, upon asking for it, will be given liberal choice.

      The shops are mostly small, each seller dealing in a single ware. Only one Dane, a wide-awake newcomer from Chicago, has dared to introduce the complex methods of “department” trade. He has opened an immense establishment called the Magazin du Nord, where thus far is done a rushing business. But the conservative merchants of Copenhagen have not yet become so well assured of the success of this innovation that they are willing to follow the example set.

      In company with the ladies I have been out all the afternoon along these narrow streets – streets where the narrow sidewalks are altogether insufficient to accommodate the passing crowds, which consequently fill up the middle of the way – and we find the Frus and Froekens of Copenhagen apparently as much devoted to what is called “shopping” as our own fair dames at home. Buxom and yellow-haired and rosy-cheeked, they throng the streets each afternoon. They are comely to look upon, and carry themselves with more graceful carriage than do the women of England. They walk deliberately, with none of the nervous scurry of their transatlantic sisters. Indeed, it is hinted to me, they have not come out so much to buy as to meet some friend or neighbor, and exchange a bit of news or gossip in one of the numerous and cozy cafes where is sold conditterie: – candies and chocolates and coffee and little cakes.

      Next to conditterie, the Copenhagener is fondest of his books and the town abounds in bookshops, big and little. Every Dane reads and writes his native tongue, and among the educated, English and French and German are generally understood. In the book stores I visited I was always addressed in English, and found French, German and English and even American books upon the shelves; and more newspapers and magazines are published in Copenhagen, a Danish friend declares, than in any other city in Europe of its size. The Danes have, too, a widely established system of free circulating libraries and book clubs, which extend throughout the countryside of Zealand and Funen and Jutland, as well as in the towns, while Copenhagen is supplied also from the extensive collections of the University and Royal Libraries.

      The public schools and the University we did not see, for the season was the vacation interval, and the teachers, professors and students were all dispersed. But the schools and University of Copenhagen are modernly equipped. The Dane is intelligent above all else, and he has always paid great heed to the adequate education of his race. Indeed, Copenhagen was the first city in Europe to establish real public schools, opening them in every parish more than three hundred years ago.

      There are many Torvs about the city, market-places where all sorts of things have once been sold, but which are now become wide-open public squares. The old word Torv has already lost its ancient meaning, even as has the word Circus, which in London first sounds so strange to American ears. But while the Gammelstorv, the Nytorv, the Kongen’s Nytorv and many others are now degenerated into these mere open breathing spaces between the big buildings of the town, there are yet Torvs where fish, and flowers, meats and vegetables, and things else are offered for sale. The most attractive of them all to me were those where are sold the flowers and the fish.

      In the Amagertorv were heaps of pale and puny roses, and diminutive asters and chrysanthemums, along with splendid pansies – “stepmother flowers,” as the Danes call them – and luxuriant piles of mignonette, and big baskets of pinks and phloxes; where rosy-cheeked women, in starched white caps, smilingly urged me to buy, and one Froeken with a wealth of yellow hair and cobalt-blue eyes, pinned on my coat a monstrous pansy for boutonnière.

      Among the fishwives of the Gammel Strand there was always lively stir, for their fisk must early find a buyer, and by midday they themselves must be back to their nets and boats. These Danish fishwives, moreover, have a burden of responsibility quite unknown to their English, German, Dutch and French sisters. Not merely must they sell the fish which the men turn over to their keeping, but they must also preserve it hearty and alive, else the dainty Danish housewife will not buy. The fish are kept in large tubs and tanks filled with fresh sea water, where they swim about as keen and lively as they might do in the sea. The buyer scrutinizes the contents of these tubs with a fine and practiced eye; she picks out the fish which swims and splashes to her mind; has it lifted out alive, and carries it home in a bucket of water which she has brought to the market for that purpose. A fish which is dead, a fish which has died of strangulation in the air, is looked upon with horror and rejected as unfit for food by all right-acting Danish stomachs. No dead fish, preserved from becoming stale through the use of chemicals, ever enters a Danish kitchen. Is it any wonder then, that the buxom red-cheeked women and sturdy men of these seafaring lands prefer a square meal of sweet fresh fish to any other! Sauntering along the Strand I espied the cod and mackerel and herring under names I did not know, and everywhere foremost among them all the now familiar roed spoette, the Danish epicure’s delight.

      The streets of London are choked with moving vehicles, or those drawn up in line awaiting fares. In Copenhagen one is struck at once by the absence of the equipages of the rich, the very limited number of cabs anywhere about, as well as the small number of heavy drays, even upon the wholesale business streets. One might almost say that the streets would seem deserted if it were not for the pigeons and the dogs. There must be many dove-cotes in Copenhagen and the birds certainly have hosts of friends. But the dog, the unabashed and capricious dog, is the real king of Denmark’s capital. After seeing him in Holland and in France, where his dogship is a faithful co-worker with man, toiling all the long day and longer year to eke out the income of his master, one almost envies the lot of the dogs of Copenhagen. These beasts abound throughout the city; neither tag nor muzzle adorns them, nor do owners seemingly claim them, but from puppyhood to gaunt old age they lead a boisterous and vagabond life, to the terror of small children and their nurses, and the well-gowned women who may chance to cross their trail. Whether they survive through performing the office of scavenger, as do the dogs of Constantinople, I have never been informed, but whatever the cause, the curs of Copenhagen take as full possession of that town as do the tame vultures of Vera Cruz.

      We visited, of course, the many objects of interest the tourist is expected to see; we studied the splendid collection of the masterpieces of Thorvaldsen, housed in the stately building where also is set his tomb; we looked at the collection of ethnological relics, one of the most notable in the world; we lingered in the old castle of Charlottenborg, and the new art galleries where are gathered many of the master paintings of which the Danish capital is so proud; we admired the great round tower, up the spiral causeway of which a squadron of dragoons may ride to the very top, and Peter the Great ascended on horseback; we duly marveled at the much bepraised Fredriks Kirke, a marble edifice, smothered beneath a ponderous and ornate dome; and H and I spent a delightful hour in the noble Vor Frue Kirke, where her grandmother was wedded some sixty years ago; the banks and the Bourse, the imposing new Hotel de Ville – the finest modern building in Denmark – the Legislative Palace, Christiansborg and Rosenborg and Amalienborg and Fredriksberg. We saw what of them the public is allowed to see; we also drove and strolled upon the fine wide Lange Linie Boulevard along the water side, shaded by ancient and umbrageous lindens, whence may be viewed the inner and outer harbors and Free Port and the spacious, new and half empty docks, and much of the shipping, and where of a pleasant afternoon the fashion and beauty of the city are wont to ride and drive. We joined in with the multitude upon the long, straight Fredriksberggade, where the life and movement of the city may be watched and studied, even as upon New Orleans’ Canal Street and New York’s Broadway; and we did all else that well instructed Americans are taught to do. But after all, these are the things that Baedeker and the guide books tell about. To me it is ever of higher interest to learn from the people themselves by word and touch what my own senses aid me to see and hear, and so it was only when I met some of my wife’s Danish kin, and a broad and burly Berserker clasped me in his arms and implanted a smacking kiss upon either cheek, ere I knew him to be of her relations, – that I felt my acquaintance begun with the most polished and elegant branch of the Scandinavian СКАЧАТЬ