Some of the pleasantest recollections I have of Europe are the talks I had, through an interpreter, of course, with some of these same ignorant but hard-working, sometimes barefoot, but always kindly peasants. The result was that long before I had completed my journey I had ceased to take some of the pictures of peasants I had seen literally. I discovered that the artist whose pictures had made so deep an impression upon me had sought to compress into the figure of a single individual the misery and wretchedness of a whole class; that he had tried, also, to bring to the surface and make visible in his picture all the hardships and the degradation which the casual observer does not see, perhaps does not want to see. It was not until I reached Denmark, however, that I began to feel that I had really begun to know the European peasant, because it was not until I reached that country that I saw what the possibilities of the peasant were. Before this I had seen a man who was struggling up under the weight of ignorance and the remains of an ancient oppression. In Denmark, however, this man has come to his own. Peasants already own a majority of the land. Three fourths of the farms are in their hands and the number of small farms is steadily increasing. In Denmark the peasant, as a certain gentleman whom I met there observed, is not only free, but he rules. The peasant is the leader in everything that relates to the progress of agriculture. The products of the coöperative dairies, the coöperative egg-collecting and pork-packing societies, organized and controlled by the peasants, bring in the markets of the world higher prices than similar products from any other country in Europe. The peasants are now the controlling influence in the Danish Parliament. When I was there half the members of the ministry in power were peasants, and half the members of the cabinet were either peasants or peasants' sons.