THE EXCHANGE, COPENHAGEN.
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.
THE GAMMEL STRAND, COPENHAGEN.