"
Unfriendly and sneering looks from the windows at Flensborg very soon
showed the travellers that Danish students' caps were not a welcome
sight there. The Angel peasants, however, were very pleasant. The
festival, which lasted all day and concluded with dancing and fireworks,
was a great success, and a young man who had been carousing all night,
travelling all day, and had danced all the evening with pretty girls
till his senses were in a whirl, could not help regarding the scene of
the festival in a romantic light, as he stood there alone, late at
night, surrounded by flaring torches, the fireworks sputtering and
glittering about him. Some few of the students sat in the fields round
flaming rings of pitch, an old Angel peasant keeping the fires alight
and singing Danish songs. Absolutely enraptured, and with tears in his
eyes, he went about shaking hands with the young men and thanking them
for coming. It was peculiarly solemn and beautiful.
Next day, when I got out at Egebaek station on my way from Flensborg,
intending to go to Idsted, it seemed that three other young men had had
the same idea, so we all four walked together. They were young men of a
type I had not met with before. The way they felt and spoke was new to
me. They all talked in a very affectionate manner, betrayed at once that
they worshipped one another, and seemed to have strong, open natures,
much resembling each other.
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