WHAT a sensation when the group stepped down the gangplank from the ocean liner, and news reporters and camera men flocked around them, all eager to get a story and a picture! How funny! Here they were, one hundred and one regular boys; but to every single person on this Danish pier they seemed to be so many curiosities.

In a procession of taxis, marked with big signs, they were whisked through Copenhagen, where pedestrians turned around and whispered to one another. If they could have caught the words: "De amerikanske Drenge," and have had them translated, they would have heard scores of Danes say, "There they go, the American boys!"

By rail they went further through Denmark. Most of them ad never ridden in a European train before, and this experience created great excitement. Songs, cheers, yells echoed from each compartment, and every station master in his ornate gold-buttoned uniform and gold-trimmed hat got a vocal greeting which seemed to him like a message from somewhere beyond this world.

All change! Now they were on a coastwise steamer. It was thronged with a big crowd of Summer vacationists. What a strain to try to make yourself understood, because, whether you used English or the Danish words you had learned on the ocean passage, nothing seemed to register with a Danish farmer and his wife or his children. Five hours with them was exhausting, and, when we consider the fact that the ocean passage had not encouraged anybody to get too much sleep, it is no wonder that the group looked a bit worn-out. The realization that the small steamer in a few moments would land at the town which was the goal for which they had left New York thirteen days ago failed to restore their strength.

"All on deck and grips ready to go ashore!" This instruction aroused no enthusiasm where many were taking a snooze and others trying to imagine what would be next. Lazy and weary, they dragged themselves and their bags to the meeting place, some embarrassed because they did not know how to apologize when they pushed Danish fellow passengers, and others not caring whether they were pushing or being pushed. But what was happening there on shore? Some said they saw a million people, where a sane estimate would say thousands. To be exact, two thousand men, women, and children were massed on the wharf. One boy asked, "What's the trouble?" and the answer was: "They are here to meet you!" This brought a sudden change, and never have you seen a livelier and more expectant group than this when they stood on their toes, peeped over heads and shoulders, and, as if with one voice, exclaimed, "So this is Aarhus!"

Let us see how this scene looked from the wharf. The translation below is picked from four illustrated columns which Aarhus Stitstidende, one of the leading papers of the town, carried under the caption

When the American students yesterday went ashore in Aarhus, they had already conquered a part of the town---the part which had watched their arrival from the wharf, and this means to say fully two thousand Aarhus citizens. During the week to come, they will undoubtedly conquer the rest, because one will have a long search to find youths more wholesome and livelier than this group.

When the steamer swung into the harbor basin, the two thousand spectators on the wharf noticed a group of young men who waved small Danish flags from the bow of the boat. Presently a young fellow in a light suit emerged and led a cheer, and the yells vibrated across the wharf, while the cheer-leader worked his whole body as if to give swing to the sound. It finished with "Aarhus, Aarhus, Aarhus!" loud and perfectly timed. Then the young men bared their heads and intonated the Danish national anthem, joined in by all present and followed by the "Star-Spangled Banner," whereupon the reception committee walked on board.

Hr. Grosserer Paul Hammerich, its chairman, welcomed the boys most cordially in good English. "Compared to America," he said, "Denmark is a very small country, and for that very reason we Danes love it so much more. We hope that you will like it so well that you will want to return to see more of Europe. Three cheers for the United States and Denmark!" The boys replied with renewed piercing cheers, and their leader spoke on their behalf: "We have reached our goal. To be sure, Aarhus has never been on the map of these boys, but it will be there when they return home. Let's seal this promise with a cheer for Aarhus!"

Then came the strangest spectacle the boys had ever witnessed and which will stick in their memories as long as they live. They arranged themselves alphabetically in a long line, each with a card with his own name and the name and address of a Danish family, and every single boy filed down the gangplank under two huge American and Danish flags and was met on the wharf by his host-to-be. One said of this scene that it reminded him of the old days in the South when they used to sell slaves---only this was the reverse of slavery. Boys and girls, men and women, looked up with expectant smiles, eager to catch a glimpse of the boy on the gangplank whom they were to entertain; greetings in Danish and English, shouts, laughter, handclasps.

In less than half an hour the boys had disappeared all over Aarhus and vicinity---all scattered in a foreign town with foreign people, received as honorary guests of private families in a foreign land. The hospitality visit had begun.

As Aarhus is a town of only eighty thousand inhabitants, the visiting boys would often meet in the streets, walking and riding with Danish boys and girls. Moreover, the organizing committee had arranged for group programs, not only for the benefit of the guests and their host families, but also of the public. It amused the boys, but also in a way flattered them, that so many took an interest in them and their activities, and it gradually dawned upon them that ordinary American boys transposed as a group to a town on the east coast of Jutland were anything but ordinary.

So was the summer evening when they gathered at the Aarhus stadium in the company of a troop of visiting British Boy Scouts and were watched by a packed grandstand of society people. Imagine the Americans' surprise when suddenly the whole grandstand rose to its feet, bared its head, and silently watched a small procession of men, one towering shoulder high above the others, approaching through two lines of Danish Boy Scouts. "It looks like the seventh inning; but why so much dignity?" asked one. The reply was that King Christian of Denmark was crossing the field to watch them play football. There he came in his blue suit, in stature a head higher than the rest, and by constitutional law the head of the Danish people, and took his seat. The boys were tickled because so much honor was bestowed upon them, and they were still more elated when they heard that His Majesty had taken time off from a private party at his summer palace near Aarhus, just in order to catch a glimpse of their game. There was a great deal of extra fight in the two American teams when they rushed in to show their stuff. It looked like a battle royal, although it was just an exhibition game. There was also a great deal of extra volume when they clustered around the King and sang the Danish national anthem. And there were those who shook hands with His Majesty!

There was not so much excitement afterwards in seeing Danish farmer boys and girls in national costumes perform native dances, or in hearing the British Boy Scouts sing their folk songs; but when the evening was concluded with a few words about the importance of having representatives of the two leading world-powers, the United States and Great Britain, united as welcome guests of the people of a small but high-minded nation, all present felt that they were on a path towards a goal of further cooperation. In this case everyone had contributed---the King of Denmark, the host families and their friends in the grand stand, the dancers, the Danish Boy Scouts, and the American and British guests. Without any thought of class or nationality, everyone had found his place in this picture of international enjoyment.

Another meeting place for many of the boys and their host families was the Aarhus Cathedral on their first Sunday morning in Denmark, when they sat under the age-old arches below its towering steeples. Its bells had peeled over the hills and valleys of Jutland years before Columbus set out to find the land which their ancestors had made their home. Now, far from that homeland, they were listening to hymns which in English versions had sounded in their ears in their home churches many a Sunday, and they were stirred by the thought of how much unites the old and new worlds and how many sentiments all peoples have in common, regardless of dividing oceans. They were thinking, too, of how their parents in church were sending loving thoughts to them far away among strange and foreign people. If their fathers and mothers had only known that by this time the Danish families were less foreign to them than many of their fellow countrymen!

It is thrilling to notice how the presence of people will add life to buildings which by themselves appear to be just so much wood, stone, and mortar. This was felt in what is called the Old Town in Aarhus. In a park were erected a couple of dozen buildings collected from all over the country and renovated to look exactly as they did when they stood on the main and side streets of Danish provincial towns, several of them in Aarhus proper. Now the boys strolled through the buildings with the people whose ancestors four or five hundred years ago had built them, had slept in the beds, cooked in the kitchens, eaten their meals at the tables, and worked with the tools in the various workshops. The atmosphere of sightseeing disappeared, giving way to a spirit of living aroused by the presence of the descendants of the ancestors who had inhabited these very buildings. It created a contact between old times and modern days, a realization that, after all, we people of modern days are simply a product of ages gone by.

The feeling of contact with days of old was strengthened on a motor trip out into the Danish farming country. At almost every mile along the road they passed cottages, and big farm buildings, all cosily settled in valleys and surrounded by gardens and trees, so that even the houses looked as if they were growing out of the soil. Some of them were new, while others looked as if they had stood there for centuries, and, as a matter of fact, they had. In many instances the sites had been occupied from Viking days. Farmers, men and women, were busy in the fields, but looked up and waved kindly as the automobile procession went by. Where the party stopped for luncheon, it happened that a couple of hundred farmers and their wives were gathered for a picnic. Apparently most of the younger men and women had stayed at home to take care of the daily chores, and everyone present looked as old as the ages. "They must be the brothers and sisters of the Danish Vikings," said one of the boys. None of these old farmers could speak English, of course, and the interpreter had to tell them that here was a group of Americans. Imagine the surprise of a couple of Massachusetts boys when one of the oldest men, beaming with expectation, asked them whether they knew his son who had emigrated; he was now living near Omaha, Nebraska. This man had no idea of the size of the United States and its multitude of one hundred and twenty-five million people, and it was perfectly natural to him that anybody who came from the United States might know his son. No one wanted to disappoint the old fellow; quite on the contrary, and they hurried to send for Duane Rainbolt, whose home was in Omaha. It was a touching scene to see the old Danish farmer write a greeting to his son and Duane tuck it away to bring it back to search for him. It should be added that Duane found him and delivered the message.

"Old Denmark, so they call these rolling hills and valleys!" This line from the national. anthem stuck in the ears of the boys. "When do we see the hills and valleys?" they would ask. "It's all flat." They were all the time expecting to find rugged mountains and gorges, and it amused them that the Danes seriously would call their gently undulating farm land hilly. It seemed almost like a joke when they were taken to "Himmelbjerget," a three-hundred-foot hill in Jutland, and heard that the exact translation of the word was "the sky mountain." From the top they gazed over an expanse of lakes, fields, and forests, and they forgot their amusement and joined with the Danes in their pride of their land, and realized that the poet was right when he wrote in the anthem: "There is a charming land, where grow the wide-armed beeches by the salt eastern strand." They began to appreciate how people become attached to the places where their ancestors have lived and toiled for centuries, how the love of one's own country creeps into the souls and minds of its natives, and how natural it is for them to express their pride and love.

HIMMELBJERGET--- THE SKY MOUNTAIN

THE DANISH VILLAGE CHURCH

At one more athletic exhibition and contest, they felt almost as much at ease with a couple of thousand Aarhus spectators as with their hosts and their friends. They were on speaking terms with all of Aarhus, and the spirit was most friendly all around the stadium; but, of course, it did not compare with the intimate personal spirit which prevailed at a farewell party with their host families.

It was held at the Hotel Royal. All dressed up, they gathered for a banquet followed by a dance. Here was nothing to remind them of days of old. It was modern life in a modern environment and everyone could almost forget where he was. To the boys this hotel ballroom might just as well have been in any town in America, and not on the east coast of Denmark, and their girl partners might have imagined themselves transferred across the Atlantic when they listened to jazz and the flow of English conversation. The parents who watched their children moving so freely and naturally with boys whom they had received in their homes a week ago as perfect strangers had changed their idea of them. Just a few days had made them seem like old acquaintances. Late that evening when they strolled home through Aarhus, a spirit of intimacy echoed back and forth in the quiet streets and a sense of mutual happiness settled upon all, Danes and Americans alike.

It was late at night when the group left Aarhus. Who would try to count the mass which now was gathered on the wharf? Impossible! But the newspaper reporter had been right that undoubtedly they would conquer all, because the countless faces illuminated by the lights from the steamer proved that a good bit of the population was here to say good-bye. The scene had changed from that of the arrival. Words and shouts crossed freely back and forth, and they were not confined to just hosts and guests. The whole throng seemed to have something to say to the departing boys. Finally the chairman of the committee raised his voice above the shouting and in cordial words thanked the Americans for their visit and asked them not to forget the little old town of Aarhus when they returned to their vast new America, but to try to hold it in their memories, as all of Aarhus would remember them. The leader replied that he was sure that they could keep their promise that Aarhus would be on their map from now on and even checked with red. The steamer slowly moved away from the shore, putting an end to the visit to the first town in Denmark to show hospitality to American Boys Abroad.

The visit was over, but not forgotten. It lived in the memories of the boys as vividly as it was expressed in the farewell message which appeared a couple of days later in all the Aarhus papers:

Aarhus! Dear old Aarhus! Beautiful Aarhus!
We, the boys of the United States were glad to see you.
We appreciate you and your kindness,
Your very wonderful hospitality,
Your big clean-heartedness of spirit.
Sorry we are that our stay was so short.
But we, the boys of the United States,
Can only show our gratitude in one way:
We shall carry in our minds and souls the memories of Aarhus forever!
Aarhus! Dear old Aarhus! Beautiful Aarhus!
May you progress in peace, health, and prosperity!

AFTER the Aarhus visit, none of the boys had any misgivings about the success of the rest of the stay. So far Aarhus to them was Denmark, and all of it would be like Aarhus, Copenhagen included. Their leader, however, had his doubts. He appreciated the difference between a town of eighty thousand people and a city of eight hundred thousand. To him the Aarhus visit had been like testing out a show in Bridgeport before bringing it to Broadway. Regardless of its success before a provincial audience, it might be a flop before the mass of a metropolis.

What happened proved that he was wrong and that the boys were right. This was obvious from the very minute of the landing at the crowded wharf and the repetition of the "slave market" scene. The only difference was that the cordial people here were Copenhagen families. Sure, Copenhagen was like Aarhus. "My! Doc, you don't seem to know your own city," said a boy. He knew it well, but it is not always that your fondest dreams come true.

And what an opening night---the Public Bonfire in the Wolfes' Valley in the Royal Deerpark. The boys never learned that their leader looked upon this bonfire as a celebration of his homecoming and an occasion which he treasured. He was returning to the very spot where three years ago he had faced the Copenhageners at the time of the World Jamboree, when under his leadership tens of thousands had gathered upon these slopes beneath the wide-armed beeches and had listened to and taken part in the activities of five thousand Boy Scouts from thirty-four different nations.

In his shirtsleeves and sucking a lemon to soothe a sore throat, or maybe to conceal his nervousness, he was now to introduce his own group of American boys to the Copenhagen public and to boys from a dozen different countries who happened to be Denmark's guests on this occasion. In the silence of the night and the glare of the flaming fire, the convivial sound of songs, music, and speeches arose from the boys and from the ten thousand fathers and mothers, relatives, and friends gathered here. Peace and harmony settled over the whole valley as the French sang their folk songs, Austrians whistled their mountain tunes, and Americans chanted Southern melodies; and when representatives of each nation one by one rose and in their native tongues called out the names of their own countries, this Danish forest witnessed the fact that oceans and continents cannot forever bar the flow of all the thoughts, sentiments, and activities which the younger generation has in common.

MR. MARION LETCHER, CONSUL GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES TO DENMARK, AND MRS. LETCHER (IN THE CENTER ABOVE) AT THEIR GARDEN PARTY TO AMERICAN BOYS ABROAD AND DANISH GIRLS, 1927

Few boys know that throughout the world their country is being represented by government officials whose job it is to establish firm contacts between their own country and the country where they reside and work. If they do know it, it does not occur to them that any of these officials would want to add a garden party to their daily duties. This was done by Mr. Marion Letcher, Consul General of the United States to Denmark in 1927, and Mrs. Letcher. What a treat when the boys gathered on the lawn in front of the consular residence and discovered piles of delicious sandwiches and mountains of ice cream, and an array of pretty Danish girls! A cheer for Uncle Sam, whose government activities took a shape like that! For a couple of hours a quiet, residential suburb rang with laughter as the girls tried to teach the boys old-fashioned Danish games. It was a lesson in folklore which will stay in the memories of the boys as long as they can think of a pretty girl in a white dress on a green lawn. Another feature about this garden party was that the boys could say that they had made "official" contacts, thanks to the consular representative of the Coolidge administration!

Copenhagen had got out of the wrong side of the bed on the morning when Politiken, the leading morning paper, invited the boys to be its guests on what may be called a wholesale bargain day of visits to the city's outstanding attractions. But what did it matter that Copenhagen looked downhearted with its dripping wet streets and that the boys spent the whole day in slickers, as long as the door of every building flew open whenever Politiken pushed the button?

It was before America had opened up its passenger air lines; so imagine the thrill when the first button pressed was at the gate of the airfield, and the big planes swooped down from Sweden, unloaded and reloaded passengers, and took the air again! Off they zoomed for Hamburg, Berlin, Paris, and Amsterdam. All change for London! The next button was at the City Hall. "Is this a church?" was asked when the big gate swung open and a dignified hall spread out before their eyes. It was not; nor was it a sermon with which Dr. Ernst Kaper, the Mayor, greeted them. "You are coming from a big country, from a nation whose technical culture has made it famous. We are proud of showing you what we possess in this city. We know that our fellow-countrymen who have become American citizens left here with a great inheritance. If you happen down into the vaults of Absalon's Well, you will understand our pride in the efficient craftsmanship of our ancestors. The city of Copenhagen welcomes you. Take our greetings to the big America from a nation which has stood for a thousand years." They filed through the halls and corridors of the huge building, climbed the many hundred steps to the balcony of its tower overlooking the homes, plants, workshops, and offices of eight hundred thousand people, and discovered the site of Absalon's Castle. Finally, everyone signed his name in the Golden Book of the City. The City .Hall gate closed behind them, and two skipped away from the group. They directed their steps to the old castle site, and there stared down into Absalon's Well, lined by masonry made a thousand years ago by the hands of the first citizens of Copenhagen and still holding water from which Absalon, its founder, had quenched his thirst. There they realized what the Mayor had meant by his words about the inheritance of Danish craftsmanship.

These two boys missed a great sight. In the City Hall square one of the sight-seeing busses had been replaced by a four-in-hand coach drawn by four black steeds, and ninety-nine boys made a wild dash to climb into it. This was a more antiquated object than they ever had expected to find in a modern city, and all the rest of the day much energy was spent in securing a seat in this vehicle, with the result that it always got a double load. The coach stood out as the day's funniest sight.

A luscious lunch at Copenhagen's largest restaurant was not missed by anybody, and American songs sounded lustily until the four black steeds again pulled their double load to the Rosenborg Castle, where are the crown jewels of two dozen generations of Danish kings; and to the Zoo, where a boy wanted to have his picture taken with the camels, "the only Danes who drink water," as he expressed it. They investigated the Royal Porcelain Works and were very much surprised to find out that all the "working girls" were individual artists. At the next stop they were carried back to the days of the Egyptians, the Glory of the Greeks, and the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, the treasures of which were collected in the Copenhagen Glyptotek to remind the Danes of the fact that Denmark may feel old, but that it was not even born as a nation at the time when the Pharaos rested in their Pyramids, Socrates walked the streets of Athens, and Cæsar was felled by the hand of Brutus.

The final stop was made in front of Politiken. A unanimous vote of thanks to the paper for the wonderful buttons it had pushed so effectively from early morning was topped with a cheer, and the roar created a traffic jam which made the "cops" throw up their hands and the four old steeds of the coach become so rejuvenated that they looked young enough to do the whole day's trip over.

Tivoli put an end to the day---Tivoli with its symphony-orchestra, three bands, pantomime theater, two dance floors, fifteen elaborate restaurants, five dozen Coney Island amusements, and its forty thousand visitors, representing every class of citizen from bank presidents to street cleaners, with their respective wives, moving gaily and yet peacefully around in this park right in the center of the city. The day finished here with a dinner, after which most of the hosts joined the boys, and anyone who saw them together realized that the boys felt just as much at home in this favorite park as the citizens themselves.

By this time the whole nation knew of the boys' presence in Denmark. Reports had spread through the provincial papers to the farthest corner of the country, where they would have liked to have seen them. This was not possible, but they should have a chance to hear them; so a broadcast was arranged over the government network with a program which gave a half-hour description of Boy Life in America, a greeting to all the boys of Denmark, and a reply from a Danish boy. The three million people of Denmark would never have forgiven the manager if he had not let the program finish with a cheer---an Americanism which on every occasion left Danes, young and old, momentarily stunned. It certainly was funny to see three boys before the microphone striving to produce the volume of a hundred voices. A Dane told them afterwards that it came across like three thousand!

The city got a day's breathing spell from American cheers and the boys got a rest from city life, when a procession of private motorcars took them out into northern Sealand, the island on which Copenhagen is situated. First they stopped at one of the barrows in which the chieftains of Denmark used to be buried in the days before the "White Christ conquered the Dark Gods of the North," as the historian puts it. They crawled on hands and knees through the passageway beneath the big boulders into the musty grave where the heathen chief had rested, surrounded by his axes, arrow heads, and other stone age implements until he was taken out and put in a showcase in a museum.

The second stop was at Elsinore, the place made famous by an old classroom friend of theirs, and they chased around to find a trace of the ghost of Hamlet's father, research which appealed a bit more to them than studying about him in school. So did the exploration of the subterraneous castle barracks, where they found the statue of Holger the Dane, the personification of the Spirit of Denmark, who, according to the legend, will rise when danger threatens the country, draw his sword, and guard his people. "What will get a rise out of him?" asked one of the boys, and he seemed to be racking his brains for something which would make the old fellow do his trick.

The third stop was the climax of the excursion. It was at the luxurious summer beach home of a Copenhagen family on the Sound, and across the calm waters they could see the church steeples in Sweden. Mr. Cicco Pens and Miss Pens, the host and hostess of two of the boys, had arranged a typical Danish garden party. There was everything in the way of eats from ice cream to "Æbleskiver," a special kind of Danish pastry made steaming hot in a temporary bakery, which the crowd soon made look like a piece of pie discovered by flies. There was fresh fruit, melons and bananas, hanging from the trees, probably for the benefit of the particular boy who had filled his pockets with bananas before leaving the ocean liner because he didn't expect to find them in Denmark! There were all kinds of delicious soft drinks, and there were girls, and a dance floor on the lawn. And what was not there, the boys supplied---dancing partners and music by their own orchestra, which added red-hot jazz to the cooler atmosphere of a Danish summer evening. They would probably have been dancing all night if the members of the orchestra had not got blisters on their lips, and the hosts had not known that the boys had half-a-dozen more whole-day programs lined up by the organizing committee. The following day a group crossed the Sound and motored in Sweden, realizing that the waters which used to separate two warring countries now unite two peaceful Scandinavian nations.

Mr. Clayton H. Ernst used this caption for his story about the evening spent together by one hundred and one American boys and three hundred Danish students seated at long tables in the big hall of Studenterforeiningen---the University Club of Copenhagen. The Berlingske Tidende, Denmark's largest paper, had invited them, and many of Copenhagen's dignitaries honored the party by their presence. The head table was lined with a group who would do honor to any gathering. There were Mr. Percival Dodge, United States Ambassador to Denmark, and Miss Dodge; Dr. Ernst Kaper, the Mayor of Copenhagen, Dr. Vincent Næser, one of the founders of the International Students' Association; Dr. Harald Ingholt, the archeologist; and several of Denmark's outstanding educators. The party was presided over by Mr. Louis Henius, chairman of the Berlingske Tidende's board of directors.

What an introduction to the program of the evening! From down there at the end of the hall, a cry went up: "Extra, extra! Get your extra! Daily News, Daily News!" The Americans gasped and craned their necks. Were they dreaming? That familiar cry! In Copenhagen? .But there they came---half-a-dozen newsboys---hurrying between the tables passing out newspapers. They seized upon these sheets and exclaimed in surprise; for that little newspaper looked just as if it had come fresh off a New York printing press. There they were in photographs they had never seen before, dozens of them, and the copy all in English. Those Danes were clever! Here was a souvenir to treasure always.

Sousa's "Stars and Stripes" gave the first note of festivity, and it increased as Mr. Svenn Poulsen, the editor-in-chief, rose to thank all the honorary guests for their presence and expressed the wish that the Danish and American students would join in friendship, not only for that evening, but would do their share to tie strong bonds between the students of all countries. Mr. Einer Andersen, headmaster of one of the Copenhagen Preparatory Schools, was called upon. "I must confess," he began, "that from my early boyhood I didn't like America. From one of our favorite Danish poems I had learned that America was a country of everything that is good; but a little later I had to memorize the names of all forty-eight States, and America didn't look so good to me! We don't know so much as we should about America; and I think that Sven Knudsen, who generally is looked upon as a bright fellow, was particularly bright when he originated the plan to bring one hundred young Americans to our country so that they could get to know us well and we could learn from them. You learn more from people in a week than from many volumes of literature in years. I agree with the person who said: 'Make friends with at least one young man of another country and God will make a better future for the whole world.' " A storm of applause greeted his words, and Mr. Clayton Ernst replied in kind: "We Americans have learned a lot here in Denmark, and more than to take our breakfasts in bed. The boys have gained lastingly from their contacts with Danes and they will be sad when they leave you." Jim Laughton of Phillips Exeter Academy said that Denmark was first among the countries which he had ever wanted to visit. Its old and modern culture had impressed him in reading and now his stay had made it a living reality.

The meal, also a living reality, made a solid foundation for the entertainment, which was a mixture of Danish and American stunts. One of these was a song by Mason Smith from the Nichols School in Buffalo. "What is this?" the leader had asked him when Mason submitted the manuscript. "You ought, to know," was the reply. "Aren't you a Dane? And this is Danish." He had mixed up with English all the Danish which he had learned on the boat and picked up in Denmark; but every word was spelled as it sounded to him---and what Dane could ever read that, let alone sing it? And could any American, either? You just try it.

It turned out to be one of the hits of the evening because it contained practically the entire Danish vocabulary of every American boy in the party. It was pressed hard in popularity, however, by a song by Per Barfoed, Berlingske Tidende's chief humorous song writer. Mr. Barfoed had gone the other way around and mixed with his Danish all the English words which he knew and had written his song to the tune of Yankee Doodle, as a letter from an American boy to:

Delano Boynton of the Tower Hill School, Wilmington, Delaware, and Mr. Fremont Loeffel, physical director of the same school, put on a dancing skit in which the coach, weighing a scant 195, dressed in filmy georgette, impersonated the part of a coy(?) and retiring(?) maiden and the slim "Skipper" Boynton, tastily attired in a tracksports costume, made Pavlowa look like an amateur. A gang treated the audience to "Where Do You Worka, John?" The hall was cleared and the dancing began. Of course, the evening had to finish with a cheer. This was anticipated by the writer of the concluding song of the evening:

Well, gentlemen and ladies, with our friends we shake the hands,
The boys of U. S. A. so strong and clever:
We give them such a cheer as our "Sven Spejder" it commands,
A cheer such as they forget it never,
With Stars and Stripes and Dannebrog forever!

Denmark consists of five hundred and twenty-six islands, and to become well acquainted with the land you must first know its waters; so the members of the Royal Yacht Club invited the boys to a regatta. Boys from the Middle West trembled when they boarded what to them resembled flimsy crafts. They had weathered the waves of an ocean, but how would they feel under bulging canvas on the crisp billows of the blue Sound? They did not feel like Vikings, to be sure; and we are not quite sure either that they had eyes for the beauty of twenty white yachts under white sails breezing up along the coast of Sealand. From boat to boat crossed sailors' expressions which had come down to the yachtsmen from the days of the Vikings; but many a boy wished that soon he would be lying under a green tree. As usual the goal of the fleet was a big luncheon, and, true to form, this was taken in one of the many fishing villages which cluster on the shores. "Is it far to walk to Copenhagen?" asked one of the boys just before the return run. He noticed that the Sound had become quite a bit livelier, enough for several of the craft to take in a reef or two and for one of them to split a mast before they reached smooth water behind the Copenhagen breakwaters. It had been a true experience of the wind and waves of an Island Kingdom, but not quite in style with the life of boys of the solid plains of a continent.

Another excursion, this one by motor coaches to the southern and central part of Sealand and, of course, again as guests, this time of B. T., Copenhagen's smartest afternoon paper. The boys looked over the printed program and felt that everything would have to go like clockwork from 8:30 in the morning until 11:15 at night. It said. "The first place to stop---blow-outs don't count---is in the town of Roskilde. It doesn't look very big; in fact, it looks small. It has only thirteen thousand inhabitants living in nearly one hundred streets and alleys, but both town and inhabitants are still growing."

This sounded the note which characterized the whole day's expedition. Of course, serious moments were interspersed, as when they sat in the pews of the Roskilde Cathedral, under whose two towering steeples ten generations of Danish royalty had found their resting places and whose vaulted roof on this occasion resounded with an organ concert. They felt pretty small at the foot of the column on which all the royalty of Europe who had visited Denmark, from King Edward of England to Czar Peter the Great of Russia, had had their measurements marked. King Christian the First, six hundred years ago, was the tallest of them all, and the present King Christian came within half an inch of him; so one of the boys was generous enough to remark that Denmark wasn't slipping much! The luncheon was substantial., and gave the reason why the Roskilde inhabitants were still growing.

Past the mighty estates of noblemen and the modest cottages of farmers, the busses wound their way to Sorø Academy, one of Denmark's oldest boarding schools. They found it in session, but heaved a great sigh of relief. No classes for them in Denmark! The Danish students were just as relieved, because this visit meant practically a day off. From the sixteenth century Danish boys had attended school on this spot in view of the beautiful lake fringed with forests. Its students now gathered on the athletic fields, with hundreds of inhabitants from the town of Sorø, and watched a football game and gave an exhibition of Danish gymnastics. The cordial host, Mr. Raaschou-Nielsen, the headmaster of Sorø Academy, may well have pondered over the educational values of the two forms of athletics, so different in looks and yet so similar in character building. And he may have pondered still more over the comparison of the students of two continents when he presided at a dinner in the Hall of Honor at the Academy and, facing the product of American schools, told of four hundred years of Danish education. Many cards with names and addresses were exchanged and, just before leaving, two boys, a Dane and an American, stood chatting on the shore of the quiet lake. Little did they imagine that their meeting would be repeated, but the next time on the shore of a lake in America. The busses returned through Sorø around nine o'clock in the evening, and hardly a soul was to be seen in its quiet streets and behind its drawn blinds. A boy whispered to the driver, "Don't blow your horn or you'll wake them up!" but his considerate words had no effect on the three bus loads. Bursting out into cheer upon cheer, they gave Sorø a regular good-bye.

The day of returning to America approached. But how could this visit be concluded without seeing all assembled who had made the Copenhagen stay possible? They simply had to meet; so on the eve of departure, in gala dress, a mass of hosts, hostesses, and their sons and daughters flocked from taxis and private cars in front of Nimb's, Copenhagen's most exclusive restaurant, and each family brought its American guest. The toastmaster welcomed more than three hundred joyous people at this farewell banquet, the last committee accomplishment. Courses galore; beer and wine, and, for more delicate palates, lemon pop and ice water; speeches, songs, cheers, and dancing made this an occasion of continuous festivity mingled with only one drop of regret---that tomorrow an ocean liner would put an end to it all--- To make use of every minute seemed to be the evening's slogan. Not one word was left unsaid, not one dance missed, and not one friendly gesture omitted---everything was taken in from beginning to end. It was like living over all the days and weeks spent in Denmark. What a pity that one of the many Danish waters separated Copenhagen from Aarhus, so that all acquaintances could not be united for this farewell! There was Aarhus, however, right on the screen, in a motion picture which had been taken hour by hour from the day of their arrival. Now it was all like a big reunion of friends, nobody missing.

It was in the small hours in the morning When the party broke up. In the quiet streets, late venturers forth turned around and said: "There are the American boys; they are leaving us tomorrow." Leaving us! True, they had come as guests of a few selected families, but they had come to belong to the whole city. It looked that way, anyhow, on the pier the following morning. Where usually a couple of hundred people gather to see the Atlantic steamer off, four or five thousand were massed. They simply had to see the boys once more, and they were so eager to get in front that they hardly gave the real leave-taking people a chance. Here and there you would notice small groups of live or six Danes. They were members of the host families shaking hands with "their" boy for the last time and loading him with packages of candy and flowers and the last snapshots of happy incidents from their home which had been his too for a while. We could not hear all the words in the groups. The reporter from Ekstrabladet, the leading liberal afternoon paper, however, must have had longer ears. He wrote: "It wasn't just empty words and exchanges of politeness. There was genuine sadness in the air when Sven Spejder and his young American left here this morning on the S.S. United States. There were smiles and laughter, to be sure; but the smiles were forced and tears dimmed the eyes of many of the boys. The leave-taking of the Danish hosts and hostesses from their young guests from the other side of the globe was really touching."

Hang that whistle! It was merciless, however, although it could not get the better of this crowd, and for the last time the cheer-leader got busy. "Are you ready? A locomotive for Copenhagen!" And while the big hulk of the liner swung out, the boys tried to drown their sentiments in a last cheer. It rolled over the water and died down. How much longer, however, you can watch a pair of shining eyes and see a waving hand!

Chapter Five
Table of Contents