"Oh, yes!" exclaimed both boys at once, for Karl had pleasant memories
of Saturday afternoons he had spent studying all the fine exhibits in
the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago. They had soon climbed the
broad granite steps, and were walking through the long corridors and
halls filled with great paintings, each bearing the artist's name on
the frame.
"The New Picture Gallery affords a good opportunity for studying Danish
pictorial art, just as the New Glyptothek does for studying Danish
sculpture," said Hr. Svensen, as they were leaving.
"What canal is that?" asked Karl. "It certainly is a pretty one, with
that beautiful promenade and park along one side."
"Yes, that is Holmen's Canal, one of the finest in Copenhagen,"
answered Hr. Svensen. It was full of ships and other water-craft.
"And that marble building which looks like an Etruscan tomb is the
Thorvaldsen Museum, one of the principal attractions of Copenhagen. We
shall have to take another day for that. But, just to please Valdemar,
we will spend a moment inside the church where Thorvaldsen's 'Christ,'
the 'Angel of the Baptism' and 'The Twelve Apostles' are all standing
in the places for which they were designed."
"The Danes have accomplished much more in sculpture than in painting,
haven't they, Uncle Thor?" Valdemar asked.
"Yes, you are quite right, Valdemar. Denmark, as yet, has produced no
painter to compare with Thorvaldsen."
They paused a moment at the _New Raadhus-plads_, with its castellated
roof, and paved semicircle in front, and again, near by, at the New
City Hall.
"What an attractive part of Copenhagen this is," remarked Karl, as
he observed the many broad, fine, well-kept _Pladser_,[16] with
their electric cars gliding noiselessly back and forth with American
celerity. "Copenhagen seems to me a much cleaner, prettier city than
Chicago, father. Don't you think so? But where are its beggars? We've
not yet seen one."
Hr. Svensen was quick to answer that they were not likely to see one.
That Copenhagen, with a population of nearly five hundred thousand,
has a pauper element of less than three per cent. "For the Danes are
naturally a thrifty, industrious people, more than half of whom are
farmers, and many also go to sea in ships," explained Hr. Svensen.
[Illustration: "WHERE JOLLY-LOOKING WOMEN WITH QUAINT HEADDRESSES WERE
SELLING THEIR WARES"]
They took a tram down Stormgade over a bridge to the island of
Slotsholmen, with its famous Fruit and Flower Market, where
jolly-looking women with quaint headdresses were selling their wares;
then over another bridge into _Kongens Nytorv_, the King's New Market.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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