"Oh, well, ma'am," she said, "I'm such a child of Nature that I shall enjoy it as much as if I were younger, and I've all the Danish history, ma'am, at my tongue's end, ma'am. There's nothing I can't tell you, ma'am. Though we've been very hard-working, I've always been one that was for making all I could: and I've been with my children at their lessons always,—we gave them all good schooling; and I've a volume of Danish poetry I've written, ma'am,—a volume that thick," marking off at least two inches on her finger.
"Danish?" said I. "Why did you not write it in English?"
"Well, ma'am, being raised here, the Danish tongue is more my own, much as I spoke English always till my parents died; but I'll write some in English for you, ma'am, before we part."
So I had for the third time alighted on a poet. "Birds of a feather," thought I to myself; but it really is extraordinary. Norwegian, Dane—I wonder, if I take a German maid to carry me to Oberammergau, if she also will turn out "a child of Nature" and a scribbler of verses.
The way from Copenhagen southward and westward by land is delightful. It plunges immediately into a rich farming-country, level as an Illinois prairie, and with comfortable farm-houses set in enclosures of trees, as they are there; and I presume for the same reason,—to break the force of the winds which might sweep from one end of Denmark to the other, without so much as a hillock to stay them: no fences, only hedges, and great tracts without even a hedge, marked off and divided by differing colors from the different crops. The second crop of clover was in full flower; acres of wheat or barley, just being sheaved; wagons piled full, rolling down shaded roads with long lines of trees on each side. Roeskilde, Ringsted, Soro,—three towns, but seemingly only one great farm, for seventeen miles out of Copenhagen. Then we began to smell the salt water, and to get a fresh breeze in at the windows; and presently we came to Kosör, where we were to take boat. A big man in uniform stood at the door of the station, looked at our tickets, said "Kiel," and waved his hand toward a little steamer lying at the dock.
"They say they fear it will be rough, ma'am, as the wind is from the southeast," said the old lady.
"Oh, well," said I, "it is only an hour and a half across. We cross the Big Belt to Nyborg."
She accepted my statement as confidingly as a child, and we made ourselves comfortable on the upper deck. It was half-past nine o'clock. I took out my guide-book and studied up the descriptions of the different towns we were to pass through after our next landing. A green dome-like island came into sight, with a lighthouse on top, looking like the stick at the top of a haystack. "That's in the middle of the Belt, ma'am," said Brita. "In the winter many's the time the passengers across here have to land there and stay a day, or maybe two; and sometimes they come on the ice-boats. Very dangerous they are; they pull them on the ice, and if the ice breaks, jump in and row them."
It seemed to me that we were bearing strangely to the south: land was disappearing from view; the waves grew bigger and higher; spray dashed on the deck; white-caps tossed in all directions.
"I believe we are going out to sea," said I.