SPEECH AT THE BANQUET IN COPENHAGEN, APRIL 1st, 1898

PROFESSOR HANSEN’S speech has confused me and upset my answer. I must now extemporize and kindly ask for your attention. To-day is the first of April. On the same day in the year 1861 I arrived for the first time in Copenhagen. That is now thirty-four years ago. Remember the date and the year! I travelled southward, through Germany and Austria, and passed through the Alps on the ninth of May. On the high mountains the clouds hung like great dark curtains, and underneath these and through the tunnel we rode until we suddenly found ourselves at Miramare, where the beauty of the South, a wonderfully bright gleam, shining like white, marble, suddenly revealed itself to me and placed its stamp on my whole later production, even though not all in it was a thing of beauty.

This feeling of having escaped from the darkness into the light, from the mists through a tunnel out into the sunshine, that feeling I again experienced when the other morning I gazed the length of the Sound. And then I found here the trusty Danish eyes. It seemed to me that these two journeys acquired an inner connection, and for this I give you most cordial thanks.