LIBRARY) UNIVERSITY OF CALhOR N | A SAN 01 .G ' * II THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND BY WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS 2 H < M E9 U t> < fc a BC H THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY LIBRARY OF TRAVEL VOLUME TWO THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND SENTIMENTAL RAMBLES IN THE ELEVEN PROVINCES OF THE NETHERLANDS BY WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS, D.D. MEMBER OF THE NETHERLANDISH SOCIETY OF LETTERS IN LEYDEN BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON. MIFFLIN & COMPANY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE 1907 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED [n fl^moriam KATHAKINE LYRA * DECEMBER 9, 1898 ZENITH STAR IN THE HEAVEN OF MEMORY PREFACE THIS book has been written by one who can boast no Dutch blood or ancestry. It contains the impressions, observations, studies, and sentiments of an American, who has learned to love the Dutch country and people for their solid worth. In five journeys I have seen the Dutchman's home-land. I have rambled not hastily but lei- surely, not in one or two, but in all the provinces of the Netherlands. The majority of Americans, like most British folk, visit only the two Hollands, North and South, and then see but a narrow line of landscape from the car windows. For the aver- age tourist, the elect route is from Rotterdam to Amsterdam. Yet I confess to delightful days in such far-off places as Dokkum and Finsterwolde, Doesburg and Goes, and in such mysterious lands as Drenthe and Limburg. My hope is that my fellow countrymen will discover that in Queen Wilhelmina's realm there are nine other provinces, besides the two Hollands; yes even a North, a South, and an East as well as a narrow strip, be- tween the two Dams, of cities near the sea. In giving my impressions and expressing my vi PREFACE sentiments, I may be accused of frivolity, but my aim has been to refresh the reader, break the strain of plain prose, and reveal the poetry under- lying the Dutch epic of toil and triumph. My first visit to the Netherlands, when I crossed the country from east to west on inland waters, and tarried for a night in Rotterdam, was in 1869. My subsequent visits were in 1891, 1892, 1895, and 1898. Unsought and unexpected was election, in 1896, to membership in the Netherlandish Society of Letters at Leyden; and, from the Netherland Circle of Journalists, in 1898, the invitation, as a private individual, to witness the enthronization. I was further honored in being sent by the Ameri- can Historical Association, as its delegate, to the International Congress of Diplomatic History at the Hague, and by " The Outlook " and " The Na- tion " as their representative at the inauguration of Queen Wilhelmina. I sincerely trust that by this work I may inter- est Americans to become more familiar with Dutch history and the country itself, outside of the two Hollands, fascinating as are these maritime pro- vinces. W. E. G. ITHACA, N. Y., October 4, 1899. CONTENTS CHAPTER * AflB HOLLAND IN 1869. I. DOWN THE RHINE INTO HOLLAND . , . 3 NORTH HOLLAND. II. IN HOLLAND WITH A JAPANESE ... 13 III. AMSTERDAM AS BRAIN STIMULANT ... 22 IV. THE FLOKAL CAPITAL OF EUROPE . . 30 V. A SENTIMENTAL TRIP TO BLOEMENDAAL . . 40 VI. IN THE EGMONT COUNTRY .... 49 VTI. CHARMING LITTLE ZAANDLTK .... 58 FRIESLAND. VIII. THE LION CITY OF THE NORTH . . . '71 IX. QUAINT HINDELOOPEN 78 X. FRANEKER, SNEEK, AND AMERICAN PRECEDENTS 85 XI. DOKKUM AND OUR PAGAN FORBEARS . . 93 GRONINGEN. XII. GRONINGEN : PROVINCE AND CITY . . . 107 XIIL STORIES TOLD BY RELICS AND ARMS . . 113 DRENTHE. XIV. DRENTHE HEATHS AND GIANTS' GRAVES . . 125 XV. THE TURF-YARD OF THE KINGDOM . . 134 XVI. ALONE TO COEVORDEN ..... 143 OVER-LJSSEL. XVII. OvER-IjssEL : STEENWIJK AND KAMPEN . 155 XVIII. ZWOLLE AND THOMAS A KEMPIS . . . 163 XIX. THE GLORIES OF DEVENTEB .... 168 viii CONTENTS GELDERLAND. XX. GLORIOUS ARNHEM ...... 181 XXI. THB AMERICAN ARTIST IN HOLLAND . . 188 XXII. FROM HARDERWIJK TO HET Loo . . , 201 UTRECHT. XXm. UTRECHT: PROVINCE AND CITY . . . 215 XXIV. BY THE STORIED RHINE 222 NORTH BRABANT. XXV. IN THE OLD GENERALITY: NORTH BRABANT 233 LIMBURG. XXVL THE VALLEY OF THE UPPER MAAS 247 XXVII. MAASTRICHT AND ROERMOND . . 256 ZEALAND. XXVTII. MlDDELBURO, THE HOME OF FREEDOM . . 267 XXIX. FLUSHING AND MANHATTAN ... 278 XXX. THE LITTLE CITY OF GOES 288 SOUTH HOLLAND. XXXI. SOUTH HOLLAND 303 XXXII. ROTTERDAM 311 XXXIII. GOUDA, OUDEWATER, AND WOERDEN . . 322 XXXIV. THE CITY OF GROTIUS AND ORANGE . . 331 XXXV. THE COUNT'S HEDGE 340 XXXVI. CLASSIC LEYDEN 350 THE INAUGURATION OF QUEEN "WILHELMINA. XXXVII. QUEEN'S MONTH ...... 365 XXXVIII. THE JOYOUS ENTRY ...... 377 XXXIX. THE ROYAL INAUQURATIOH . . . 386 INDEX * 397 LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS PAGB THE INAUGURATION OF QUEEN WILHELMINA, SEPTEMBER 6, 1898 (page 386) Frontispiece. MAP OF HOLLAND 14 DR. ABRAHAM KUYPER 22 STALL CARVINGS IN ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH, BOLSWARD . 46 SCRIPTURE HISTORY CARVED IN WOOD, BOLSWARD . 82 ARMS OF THE TOWNS IN GRONINGEN 116 THE " GIANTS' GRAVES " AT ROLDE .... 128 LEGISLATIVE CHAMBER AT ASSEN, DRENTHE ... 136 DEVENTER SQUARE AND CHURCH OF ST. LEBUINUS . 170 GATEWAY OF THE OLD MINT, DORDRECHT ... 208 NEW BUILDING OF UTRECHT UNIVERSITY . . . 218 THE Two QUEENS VISITING MAASTRICHT .... 254 THE MAID OF THE DIKES 284 DORDRECHT ON THE MERVEDE 304 DELFSHAVEN AND SLUICE AT PILGRIM'S QUAY . . 318 PROFESSOR ABRAHAM KUENEN, OF LEYDEN . . . 358 PALACE, DAM, AND CHURCH ON INAUGURATION MORNING 382 HOLLAND IN 1869 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND CHAPTER I DOWN THE EHINE INTO HOLLAND " MONDAY, September 19, 1869. Cold and raw to-day, as in early morning we sailed out of Prussia into Holland. Passed the examination of the custom- house officers at Emmerich. All right! Arnhem soon in sight." So declares my diary. My thoughts were something like these. Hav- ing no dutiable articles, cigars, brandy, diamonds, or gunpowder, we soon satisfied the Dutch custom inspectors that we were neither smugglers nor ped- dlers. On a Rhine steamer we two, Quandril and I, one of us fortunately able to see with a sister's eyes, moved out of the great German into the tiny Dutch world. Having spent a summer, our first, in Europe, and seen the kingdoms of the world, British, French, Italian, and Teutonic, we were to enter Brave Little Holland. From High Dutch to Low Dutch means a descent in geography, as well as a change of language. We were coming into an Egypt-like, hollow land, 4 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND where old Father Rhine loses his name. We had seen his mountain cradle and rocky nursery, 'twixt sky and glacier, place of riotous youth and terrific leap at Schaffhausen, strong race and majestic flow through the heart of Europe. We had passed cities, castles, peaks, and spires, as we rode upon his back and slipped down the gradient. We shall see how the river behaves in old age and in the valley of the shadow of death. Its unity lost, divided into as many branches as there are bars to a gridiron, it will be henceforth hard to tell where and what the Rhine is. We shall be confused by many names. The flood with twelve thousand feeders, and draining enough square miles of plain and valley to make two Empire States, holds its name only from the German frontier to the little town of Wijk-bij-Duurstede. From snowflake to sea-shroud it ought to be one, but its unity lost, we shall behold it reaching its ocean grave by means of many outlets. The Rhine story, as of too many human lives, is from in excelsis to de profundis. We are entering a geographical cellar, moving between dikes into the world of wooden shoes, gy- rating windmills, canals crossing the country like strips of steel, and houses down below on the dry land. We see their ridgepoles lower than our decks. Meditative storks perch on the chimneys. They are one-legged, each like a Blondin in mid-air, their beaks and necks long enough for balancing poles. The American notes that granite instead of wooden piers front the towns. The steamer passes swiftly DOWN THE RHINE INTO HOLLAND 5 the broad-prowed lazy galliots bumping against the river waves. Brick and brickyards multiply. The raw material ground off by glaciers from the tops of Swiss mountains, the scourings of the German hill slopes, the silt from France, the ooze rolled down from a thousand streams through ages of ages, make the beds of Holland's rivers, which ever tend to rise higher. It is an historic land whose threshold we cross this autumn morning. Being just out of college, Motley's pages are fresh in my mind. Did I not read " The Rise of the Dutch Republic " and " The History of the United Netherlands " while at Rut- gers, the school " On the Banks of the Old Rari- tan " founded by Dutchmen ? Were not my fellow students descended from the first settlers of New Netherland ? Did they not bear names which, on first sight, when read in the college catalogue at home in Philadelphia, seemed fearfully and wonder- fully Dutch ? Shall I ever forget the peals of merry laughter, as Quandril and the other sisters read the double and triple-decked names and tried to pro- nounce them? Of English descent, and my ears more acciastomed to names from Devon and Notts in old England, I found in these labels of personality linguistic puzzles, then and to us equal to anything in Sanskrit or Choctaw. Verily, everything Dutch was then new, odd, and outlandish. Four years of college life made these name-puzzles plain. Like their owners, they proved to be " gentle and easily entreated." To learn their meaning be- 6 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND came a delight. In number, of course, the " vans " led. From places such as Cleve and Blaricum ; from the hills, the meadow, the turf, the tower, the sea, the well, the pile, the dike, the bilt, and the buren ; or their homes " at the " (ten) oak f or the ash, the forefathers of these lads had long ago come westward across the sea. That list of names bloomed into a parterre of brilliant flowers. Even yet they are fragrant with those rich associations of friend- ship which only college life can beget. Other family names mirrored history. They showed the callings and occupations of the industrial people who first settled New Netherland, the empire region con- taining the Middle States, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Happy were the vacations of those four college years, when, during summer rest and frolic, I en- joyed Dutch America, so full of names of Indian origin, of classic romance, and of nation-making history. One must look on the map, where " the American Rhine " flows from the Cloud-Tear Lake on Mount Marcy to the salt Atlantic, to find the old Dutch America in its length. Does not its best part lie between the Adirondacks and the Catskills and in the valley of the Mohawk ? Behold here a land of innumerable " kills," once pure, cold, and crystal- clear trout streams, or watercourses over which beavers made their homes. Here also are plenty of " dams," like Rotterdam and other place-names ending in that sound, jocose, rather than profane, to the English ear, but falling innocently with its DOWN THE RHINE INTO HOLLAND 7 broadened vowel upon the Dutch tympanum. Few are the " dikes," but plenty are the " hooks," like Kinderhook (the children's corner). Many a sunny nook, like Claverack (clover reach) and Coxsackie, are suggestive of Dutch outdoor origins. Within this romantic region are Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle's land, into which Irving, who was of Scottish origin and knew very little of real Holland, imported old Teutonic legends and reset them in a Hudson River valley environment. So also does Boucicault, the Irishman, make his Rip, the Catskill Dutchman, on the stage talk German, both of Penn- sylvania and of the Fatherland, but not the Dutch of Holland. Yet who does not forgive the owner of Sunnyside his caricatures, or his " immortal jest," because of his gayety, his style, his stimulus to research ? Here also is Corlear's country and the scene of the labors of the Iroquois culture-hero, Hiawatha. Here dwelt some of the first of America's literary men : Van der Donck, the lawyer, who wrote the best description of New Netherland, and after whom, as the young lord or yonk heer, Yonkers is named ; Domine Selyns, the Latinist and poet, who versified well in two languages ; and Megapolensis, the learned scholar, who preached the gospel to the Indians long before John Eliot. In this same land arose the first school of native American writers, Hoffman, Irving, Cooper, and Drake. They made a literature dis- tinctive of the soil, when " literature " on our side of the Atlantic meant little more than political tracts, sermons, or polemics bound in pigskin. Here 8 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND also was the seat of the Indian republic ; first of five and then of six confederated nations. The Iroquois, senators of the forest, met in council at Ouondaga, but they dominated the whole land be- tween Niagara and the Hudson, and from Corlear's Lake to Chesapeake Bay. Here lies the halcyon region of winter sports, of sleds, sleighs, of stoves, of the ice yacht and the toboggan. Here most of the first things in United States history took their rise. Here the idea of a national union, first conceived by Leisler in 1690, and again set forth in 1754 by Franklin, was born and nourished. Here constructive principles were wrought out. Here the most decisive events in colo- nial, revolutionary, and constitutional history took place. This is Dutch America, too often and inac- curately called " New Netherlands," but always, and from the first, New Netherland, possibly so named in token of victory over secession and foreign ene- mies, and of the consolidated union of the Dutch United States beyond sea. In this enchanted land, and in the time of college days, the student from Philadelphia city founded by the son of a Dutch mother first sailed up the Hudson River by summer moonlight, to reach the star-daisied meadows of Greenbush, the fair fields of Guilderland, the wonders of Indian Ladder, and the superb scenery of the Helderberg, all places named long ago by the Dutch colonists. How I enjoyed the lovely homes there, rich in culture, religion, and happiness. Here were men of sturdy character, faithful mothers, pink-cheeked maidens, DOWN THE RHINE INTO HOLLAND 9 lads strong and hearty. It was like traveling in a foreign land, while yet at home, to note quaint and curious survivals of speech, custom, belief, architec- ture, and farm detail copied from " Patria," the old home-land beyond and below the sea. How often did we, lads and lasses, read poetry together, talk of Motley and the glorious art and wonders of Hol- land, the land I was already learning to love. With most of them there was a sentimental and ancestral strain of admiration for things Dutch which I, of English descent, could not share. Mine was but a student's passion to see the country that led Europe in freedom's wars, England's dike against the Spanish flood. On this autumnal day of 1869 the student's dream has become vision. How natural it all seems ! Land and story fit well together. The people are like their country. We glide all day along a river the bed of which is higher than the fields on either side of it. We pass many Dutch towns and cities with not a few reminders of Holland's heroic past, and in mid-afternoon we enter a forest of masts, and amid a crowd of hulls find lodgment on the Boompjes, the avenue of little trees, to spend a scant thirty hours in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, the first to greet our eyes, the second in the kingdom, and the home of William Penn's mother, not the least of Rotterdam's honors. The sounds were strange enough. Many of the sights still glow in memory. The next day at sunset, on a steamer neat and comfortable, loaded with several myriads of what looked like red cannon-balls, but which proved to be 10 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Edam cheeses, we dropped down the Maas through the darkness, past unseen historic towns. It was after midnight that we entered the North Sea, bound for Hull and Glasgow. Our voyage was to be " be- tween the hooks " of Holland and of New Jersey. Good-by, Netherlands. We hope to see more of you when we come again. We have read of your old republican days on the pages of Motley, who is now our American envoy at the Court of St. James. May he live to finish his full story of the United Netherlands, yes, even of their career until the Re- public died in 1795. Meanwhile, only the kings of one house and line .rule over this land wrested from the river and the ocean floods. King William III. and his Queen Sophia, with children and kin numer- ous enough to make an imposing court, with a suffi- ciency of possible heirs, hold the affections of the Dutch people. So we Quandril and I thought and felt in 1869, not knowing that Japan land that for two hundred and fifty years had shut herself from all the world except Holland, and which was even then in the throes of civil war, the old and the new contend- ing would woo us both away, even under the shadow of Fuji Yama, and mid-life come before we should see Netherland again. From the Hook of Holland to Sandy Hook, both named by the Dutch and both once spelled " hoek," we had begun our salt-water voyage. NORTH HOLLAND CHAPTER H IN HOLLAND WITH A JAPANESE JUNE 12, 1891. We enter Holland this time through a western gate. We are on our way for a month's pleasuring in the land hospitable to the exiled Pilgrims, whose old homes we shall see in the cities of Rembrandt, Amsterdam and Leyden. At Delf shaven we shall stand on the quay from which they sailed into the new world and into history. Now, two hundred and seventy-one years later, the better England, the one that holds the future, is calling home her once outcast children. We shall see Scrooby and Plymouth. From all nations the men who believe in democracy in church as well as in state will assemble for fellowship and cheer at the International Council in London. This will be held near the Old Fleet, in the prison of which martyrs for conscience rotted out their lives, and down the channel of which ships sailed for the new home of freedom beyond the sea. The main party, mostly descendants, either in flesh or spirit, of the Pilgrims, will cross the Atlantic a month later, numbering on the steamer one hun- dred and one, exactly the same number of the origi- nal company of Separatists and nation-builders English, Hollandish, Huguenot, Walloon, and other 14 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND folk, reinforced with the ideas of Dutch republican- ism in the Mayflower. We have crossed the ocean on the Dutch, the "N. A. S. M.," the Holland-America line. The Veendam having broken her shaft, we took passage on the Rotterdam. Our own party, that started from Boston and is now in Holland, consists of three. The bright particular star of the constellation is Lyra, " maiden beloved, wife cherished, mother honored." A male traveler, without woman's eyes to help his own, is blind indeed. Well says Japan's poet : " In the world a friend ; in traveling a com- panion." Number three is Tasuke* Harada, a Japa- nese comrade and friend, as sunny as the name and isles of his own country. Having traveled as com- panions in Japanese history and literature, we shall now see Holland "isshoni " (together), as his coun- trymen would say. For over two centuries, when Dai Nippon was Thornrose Castle, the Hollanders held the privilege of friendly intercourse, and kept the keys of the Cliff-Fortress Country. Harada is a man of New Japan, a Christian Samurai who shares in the hopes of his rejuvenated nation. I come again to the Netherlands after life in New York, in Japan, in the old Dutch town of Schenec- tady, and in the city of Shawmut on Massachusetts Bay, which has expanded over Tremont and into the South End and Back Bay. Boston " town " rested on rock and hard land : Boston city stands on stilts. The American municipality resembles Amsterdam at three points. It is built on piles. It has con- quered from a river and the sea a place to rest upon. r:--\ V V r*Wl SVfNr.^ Ms-P^/^ IN HOLLAND WITH A JAPANESE 15 The South Bay and the Back Bay were made into terra firma with streets and parks just as this Dutch "\ r enice of the North" has encroached upon the Y and the Zuyder Zee. Europe has changed since 1869. Germany and France have had their settlement. Napoleon III. and his Paris are no more. Strassburg is a Prussian city. The conglomerate of German feudalism has become a great federal empire under the spiked helmet. In Asia, and on the Pacific Ocean, Japan is leader of Asiatic progress and one of the Powers of the world. Netheiiand has lost her king. Those who formed the royal family of 1869 are no more. The House of Orange is extinct in the male line. Queen Emma is regent. Wilhelmina, a little girl of ten, whose sweet face, in photograph, we have looked upon daily during our sea voyage, is sover- eign of all the Netherlands and empress of Insu- linde. She will be crowned at Amsterdam in 1898, when she is eighteen years old. Oranje Boven ! With endless energy the men of this land of the spade, pump, and dredge have constructed the North Sea Canal, fifteen miles long, to Amsterdam, the crescent city of ninety islands. No longer need ships, as until 1825 they had to do, make a northern detour by way of the Texel and the Zuyder Zee. Nor to get from Amsterdam to the ocean need they now, as until 1876, pass by way of the North Hol- land Canal up to the Helder, a length of nearly fifty miles. With a channel twenty-two feet deep, sixty-six yards broad, our steamer loses no paint from her sides even when passing other craft as large as herself. 16 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Yesterday past the chalk cliffs of England and through the straits of Dover, we had coasted along the low and nearly invisible sand dunes of Holland for half a day. At night, having finished another voyage " between the hooks," we saw from afar the great glaring orbs of a pair of Cyclops. I made my first continental landfall when the Emerald Isle rose gloriously at early morn. My second gave a view of Long Island's Shinnecock Hills. My third was the white crest of Fuji wearing the dayspring'a glow while its mass was invisible in darkness. My fourth was the Golden Gate. To-inorrow what shall I first behold ? It is all fog and no landmarks when eyes open at daylight. Peering through our state-room windows, we observe some wooden shoes moving along the top of brown mud banks. Looking further, we discern woolen socks, trousers and coats, and finally boys stowed away inside of them, between flat caps and klomps like gondolas. On deck extra coats are comfortable, though it is mid-June. We glide high above the meadow. It seems like riding on the top of walls. Soon the mist is rent and torn by struggling sunshine. Down on the damp grass are blanketed cows and sheep, with their necks also well swathed. How droll they look ! Somehow they remind us of the giraffe in Central Park with his " five feet of sore throat." Seeing overcoats on man and beast alike, we learn what we do not forget, at least for a fortnight, that Holland is cold until well into July. Harada sees many points of resemblance between IN HOLLAND WITH A JAPANESE 17 his native land and that which we now enter, though Xetherland is but one twelfth the size of Dai Nippon. The low one-story houses with roofs of thatch or tile are wonderfully like those in Japan. Wooden shoes recall the clogs and foot-blocks in the land of bamboo. The landscape is devoid of fences. The rectangular polders suggest rice-fields. As in oriental fashion, footgear, when wooden, is left at the doorway. By the size and number of the clogs one may judge of the household or assem- bly within. Waterways and narrow field-paths are numberless. Like those in Japan, the rivers of Holland have their beds above the level of the sur- rounding country, and must be embanked or curbed. For ages the Mikado's empire has been a heavy sufferer from floods, and dikes and drainage have formed the chief engineering industry, while the government spends millions annually in maintain- ing the river banks. There are perhaps as many miles of dams and dikes in Japan as in Holland. The length and utility of hedges are probably about equal in each. In both countries the rivers take various terms, which differ throughout their length. Think of the many named Dutch Rhine and the Japanese Sumida. The cranes of Japan, the storks of Holland, and the herons in both are numerous, welcomed of man, and prominent in art and heraldry. In both coun- tries clipped trees and artificially stiffened and trained plants abound. Arboreal fashions have been borrowed one from the other. The clumsy, inartistic, weather-pitted and worn effigies in stone 18 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND of the high country recall those in the low country. Japanese obey rigidly, almost to fanaticism, the laws of cleanliness. So do the Dutch. Houses, alleys, and back yards are kept in order ; there is but little dirt, and there are but few such ash heaps and littered streets as are so often seen in the United States. The many-trousered rural Mynheer reminds one of the well-petticoated Samurai. The world is indebted to both people for their keramic wares, the Seto-mono or common blue " china " of Japan being the prototype of the Delft ware in Holland. Many are the " gedempte " in Dutch, " tsukiji " in Japanese ; that is, filled-up places or " made " land. The island archipelago and the submarine coun- try are also alike in this, that they have impressed the world with their art rather than their literature. Each has an aesthetic people, but notably subject to manias and fads, the tulips in the one answering to the camellias and rabbits in the other. In Tokio and Amsterdam, New Year's is the chief day of the year. The girls, both from the houses resting on piles and on pebbles, are rosy-cheeked, pretty, and usually sweet mannered. They are sisters in that they go outdoors with no other headgear than hair- pins, shining metal, or decorative bit of lawn or crepe. It would not be difficult to show that even in their political development there have been many parallels between these two nations. Yet, alike as they are in many respects, these antipodeans differ at more points. Dutch speech is mighty in its consonants ; the Japanese excels in its IN HOLLAND WITH A JAPANESE 19 vowels. The Nippon-Jin, when ultra-polite, sucks in his breath, lest it defile you ; the Netherlander ex- plodes his hard consonants like a cannon, or condenses the whole Dutch phrase for " if you please " into one puff and three sibilants. Unlike the oriental land- scape, this in the Occident is rich in animal life. The velvet green of the meadow is niultitudinously decked with mild-eyed cows and fat sheep, while the air is bustling and merry with the sound and sight of bird life. Dai Nippon, poor in live-stock and plains, is all mountains and valleys, in the main high above the "blue plain of the sea." Netherland has, for the most part, no hills excepting such as the brown man would laugh at. Instead of wayside shrines, torii or temple portals, red pagodas, and the boom of the single and low-hung bell tongueless in Buddha's island stronghold, the church spire here dominates the landscape, and peals from great families of bells high up in the bulb-spires make ceaseless carillon. In place of old Tokio's " fire-blossoms " of conflagra- tion, constant earthquakes compelling low building, and constant monotonous level of roofs, royal Amster- dam, solid and fireproof, shows imposing variety of edifices, and is rich in soaring towers, church steeples, and music that rains like a lark's from high in the azure. In an octavo Havard has contrasted Am- sterdam and Venice. Harada and I compare the imperial cities on the Y and the Kamo. What a change here since mediaeval baron in the thirteenth century upreared his brick castle beside the Amstel stream, on a little dam raised above the alluvial ooze. Generations of fishermen have built 20 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND this richest of Dutch cities " out of herring-bones.'* Kioto, the Kio, or chief seat of the emperor, city of peace and mountain-girdled, will in 1895 cele- brate her eleven hundredth anniversary ; but until 1200 A. D., Amsterdam had no history. Indeed, no Dutch town whose name ends in u dam " was known before the twelfth century. In the making of a sin- gle empire, in teaching an aesthetic nation, Kioto has been perennially potent. Amsterdam, though boasting fewer centuries, has been in the van of civilization, influencing the whole world. Not least to her credit has been her leadership in freedom of conscience, the noblest of all freedoms. To the Classis of Amsterdam that ever benevolent and great missionary federation of churches and Chris- tians hundreds of communities, civil and reli- gious, all over the world, and most of all our four Middle States, owe endless gratitude. Any attempt to write American history, and especially the history of New York, without having a knowledge of the records of the Classis of Amsterdam is useless. It is time to step ashore and prove the difference between ship coffee and that furnished at the Bible Hotel. One's stomach behaves differently, accord- ing as it is undergirded by rocking deck or based on fast land. In de loods (in the sheds) is where we leave our chairs and wraps. Then, despising the hotel runners, vehicles, and horses, we enjoy the luxury of a walk on hard soil. In the heart of the oldest part of the city we pass the old West India Company's house. With ancient churches and chimes, renowned structures IX HOLLAND WITH A JAPANESE 21 all around us, the Bourse, the Palace, the Dam, one of the oldest of all dams, and the Kalver Straat just around the corner, we find quarters in the old Bible Hotel fronting the Damrak. Stepping out on the bedroom's iron balcony, the first object that greets our eyes eastward is a bronze Atlas carrying a very green world. He stands far above the metal roof of the Palace, now the occa- sional seat of visiting royalty, but in reality the old City Hall, built by the people in the days of the Republic. This copper man's copper globe, not being a rolling stone, has gathered mossy patina. He and his burden are green, not with envy, but with age. He welcomes us to see in Holland the world in epitome. CHAPTER III AMSTERDAM AS BRAIN STIMULANT AMSTERDAM furnishes a tremendous brain stimu- lant to the student of American history. The city recalls cradle memories of the founders both of New England and of New Netherland. Here is one of the first homes of our nation's chief glory, religious freedom. Bright and clean as is this most smart city in the nineteenth century, brilliant as one of the dia- monds cut and polished on its own mills, yet my thoughts are not at first on the present, but fly back to the days of liberty in religion fought for, won, and intrenched here, when England wanted no such dangerous stuff. Leaving Lyra and the ladies for a morning in the shops and the Burgomaster Six's gallery of paint- ings, I started at once to find three sites, the Pil- grim quarters, the place of the martyrs, and the Brownist's alley. We are all to meet again at four P. M. in front of Rembrandt's " Night Watch " in the Rijks Museum, and then go to drink five o'clock tea in a home on the Heerengracht. Harada hies to Leyden to see Professor Abraham Kuenen. In the evening we shall both call on Dr. Abraham Kuy- per. Of the Reformed theological world in Holland, DR. ABRAHAM KUYPER AMSTERDAM AS BRAIN STIMULANT 23 these eminent men are the antipodes. Each one is father of the faithful among seekers after truth. In every Dutch city one can buy at the bookshop a platte-grond, or ground-plan of the streets. With this in hand it is easy to find the points sought, especially if one knows a little polite Dutch. From the Dam, the old core of hard land, once inside the medieval burg, or castle walls, I started for long rambles in the Kalver Straat, the Begum Hof, Doelen Straat, the Nieuw Markt, Bloed Straat, Barndesteeg, Brownisten Gang, down to the Schrey- er's Toreu, and thence to the Dam again. All these are names and places luminous in that story of Dutch freedom which is part of our American inheritance. As on a rosary, we tell the beads and think of more, our fathers refugees from England for conscience' sake, the blood shed and the bodies burned, the little street of the " Brownists," and the Weeper's Tower, call up again the martyr, the Pilgrim, the Henry Hudson and Half-Moon story. Then, by tram-car, from the Dam we reach the Bijks or National Museum. First impressions are powerful, whether of the ocean, Niagara, or Fuji San, especially when joined with sudden surprise. In the level lights of later afternoon, when everything swam in a sea of that golden-brown glory which Rembrandt loved to put on his canvases, I passed up through the hall, corridor, and gallery of the Rijks Museum. Unexpectedly, and in a moment, I stood before the great picture popularly called " The Night Watch." The effect was electric. My soul was fascinated. 24 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Here was the miracle of genius. Reverent admira- tion was the overpowering emotion of the mo- ment. I wanted neither to speak nor to hear a word. " Come thou, expressive silence, muse His praise." What a splendor of color, perfection of figure, depth of perspective, glory of composition, delicacy of detail ! Descriptions, criticisms, panegyrics, a hundred times over had I read them. All were as nothing in the presence of the splendid reality. Be- fore such a triumph of one Dutch painter's genius, for the moment, at least, America's glories paled. She has no Rembrandt and no art like this. Amsterdam is the place for the study of this Shakespeare of color, light, and shade, this greatest of the northern painters. I found that to know Frans Hals one must go to Haarlem ; to see Jan Steen and Paul Potter one must visit the Hague ; but here in Rembrandt's own city are the mightiest of his mighty works. What a mar- vel was this child of genius, Rembrandt van Rhijn. Born in Leyden in the year that saw Jamestown founded, he grew to manhood while the founders of Massachusetts were enlarging their souls with his in the same heroic city. He painted this, his most wonderful work, in 1642, when thirty-five years old. This was in the year before the New England Con- federation, and when the Dutch Republic was in its bloom. The picture, which measures eleven by fourteen feet, is set near the ground, suggesting ad- mirably the life and motion of Frans Banning Cock's Company of Doelen, or Targeteers, who are march- ing out of their Doel, or Guild House, into the sun- AMSTERDAM AS BRAIN STIMULANT 25 light, to practice at the butts on the Singel. This is not a " night watch," but a day picture. Tradi- tional or popular names given to paintings are often as misleading as the chapter-headings set on by printers and dogma-makers in the Bible ; or as in the newspapers, where the editor's headlines do not correspond with text or fact. What a grand interpreter of elemental forces, both in nature and in the human soul, was Rem- brandt ! He set on canvas, in line and color, ex- actly what the Dutch peasants believed about Christ and the holy things of Scripture. He was a realist of the first order. He would be satisfied with no- thing but ultimate actualities. He honored the human intellect and the right of the individual, apart from privilege and corporations, to interpret things elemental, eternal, and divine. How this truth-loving interpreter must have delighted in the text, " I make light, I create darkness " ! The cav- ernous deeps in his perspective fascinate the eyes that look often into them. His chiaroscuro seems to be perfect. "With naked truth and that love of it characteristic of the Teutonic occidental, he yet delights in an oriental splendor of color and deco- ration. It is most interesting to study Rembrandt's works in the order of time and note the evolution of his power. It is a sweet surprise to greet the pretty face of Saskia, his beloved Frisian wife, as she appears and reappears in many of his pictures. Often she is loaded with jewels and the richest oriental fabrics. Hosv splendid are Rembrandt's golden-brown tints ! 26 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND How richly does he combine the total effects of the oriental masters of color with those of the western masters of line and form ! Some of his paintings show that he reached the secret of the Japanese artists ; while with the harmonies of Hindoo color- ing he must certainly have been familiar. I recog- nize umbrellas, fans, dainty keramics, and bricabrac from Kioto and Nagasaki, in not a few Dutch pic- tures of the seventeenth century. In one, Saskia holds a Japanese parasol. Look at the weapons. Fascinating is the study of the evolution of the leaden arrow from flint head, through bronze and iron point and barb, steel-headed bolt, round and cylindrical bullet, to the long-range rifle shaft of our day, Mauser or Krag-Jbrgensen. In Rembrandt's pictures the arquebus, or bow-gun, is becoming a musket. In the stock we still behold the sunken place between the butt and the trigger. In the old days of clumsy machinery one had to get a good grip with all his fingers upon the neck of the stock, so as to be able to cock his musket and even to fire it. The hair-trigger is the fine nerve of centuries of evolution. The Murata rifle of Japan, with a breech-movement delicate enough for a lady, but which would quickly come to smash in the hands of British soldiers, fits exactly the taper fingers of the little men of the Orient. Note also the prize to be given to the winner. The girl in -the picture is holding up a cockerel. The gift of a capon, presented by a richly attired young woman, was as common in those days as is a silver coffee-pot at present. Rare is the Dutch pic- AMSTERDAM AS BRAIN STIMULANT 27 ture of outdoor life which does not have a chicken of some kind on the canvas. In that which shows the Pilgrims leaving Delfshaven, perhaps painted by the Cuyps, wherein my friend Mr. George H. Boughton, R. A., its discoverer, declares, with great plausibility, that he can pick out Captain Miles Standish and Elder Brewster, there is in the background the inevitable fowl. In Hondecoeter's pictures we have the genius of the greatest of Dutch painters of feathered life shown. He did for our " little brothers of the air " what Landseer has done for dogs, and Verboeckhoven for sheep. No artist has so glorified the parental love and care of speechless creatures as this master. I could look at but one picture that day. I was even glad to pass by the miles of paintings in the Rijks Museum. However, to oblige our kind Dutch convoy, we spent some time before his particular favorite. It is by Rembrandt, and depicts an old woman, pi-obably the artist's mother. The perfec- tion, the face lines, wrinkles, and flesh tints show fascinating reality. The lady seems to have just fin- ished speaking. Leaving her, I turned once again to gaze at the supreme picture, until the whistle of the orange-collared custodians sounded five o'clock. Then, with reluctance, we all departed. Soon in the home of one of the young bankers of Amsterdam, who lives on the Heerengracht, our interest is less in the liveried butler, ancestral por- traits, grand old heirlooms and furniture, massive and invitingly cosy, than in his wife, the bonnie madonna of the steaming cups, as she brews and 28 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND pours fragrant tea. Beside her heart-warming wel- come, she chats in faultless English. Soon Lyra, whose thoughts have flown back over the Atlantic, pleads to see the children, who are yet invisible. The light of mingled pride and delight breaks over the young mother's face as she taps the bell and orders down the platoon. Five recruits and a maid answer the call. Flaxen hair, blue eyes, white arms, and dimples are soon " in evidence." Four are boys. One, the oldest, is in a naval suit ; one is in the nurse's arms ; and one, the fifth, is a tiny maid. The two older answer our questions in good English. All bear themselves handsomely, the little ones receiving the caresses of Lyra, who is suspected of fondling them vicariously for her own babes left behind in Boston. " May we ? " is hardly spoken before our hostess divines our wish and says, " Will you ? " A trip up- stairs to the nursery gives opportunity to enjoy the sight of this our first, but not last, introduction to the penetralia of a Dutch home. The play-room is a child's paradise. The governess teaches but one of those four languages, Dutch, French, English, and German, which almost every educated Dutch gentle- man or lady is able to speak. We meet also a sister of our convoy, who is married to a grandson of the historian and novelist, Van Lennep, whose works so many Americans, besides millions of Dutchmen, have read. To this lovely home we have since come again and again, but this our first was also even though I saw the Queen come to her enthronement our AMSTERDAM AS BRAIN STIMULANT 29 greatest day in the Netherlands. In the gladness of fresh surprise we have had our introduction to Holland's two greatest treasures, her art and her home life. Can any nation on earth excel the Dutch in these ? How pretty their own proverb, " One God, one wife, many friends." CHAPTER IV THE FLORAL CAPITAL OF EUROPE HAARLEM has a thousand magnets to attract the tourist. It is the capital of North Holland. It is the city of Frans Hals, the greatest portrait painter of Northern Europe. Here was born and lived Coster, the alleged inventor of printing. Opposite the cathedral his effigy stands in enduring bronze, holding between thumb and forefinger a little mov- able type. Here too lived Kenau van Hesselar, who on the walls of the besieged city led the warriors of her own sex. In its origin this city on the Spaarn was a brick castle, the burg of Heer or Count Wil- lem. Fuse into one word Heer or haar and the last syllable in Willem, and you get Haarlem (the city of Lord Willem). In "the twelfth century the pro- tecting castle and the protected folk around it had become a municipality, which took part in the war between Holland and West Friesland. The Haarlemers were active in the Crusades. History, art, and legend have glorified the incident in which Frederick the red-bearded, or Barbarossa, in presence of the patriarch of Jerusalem, granted to the city her coat of arms, a sword laid on a shield, whereon are four stars, with the motto " Vicit vim virtus," Courage conquers force. The THE FLORAL CAPITAL OF EUROPE 31 story reminds us of the origin of the crest of the Tokugawa family, which from Yedo ruled Japan for nearly three centuries. Three mallow-leaves laid on a dish containing cakes, in token of the subjection of a province by lyeyasu, formed the original of that resplendent trefoil, so common in Japanese art. At the end of the fifteenth century the old Dutch city was extended to the other side of the Spaarn. In 1492, while Columbus was sailing westward, Haarlem was distracted by the famous Bread and Cheese riots. In 1573, in the longer war of brave little Holland against giant Spain, it suffered during seven months the memorable siege by Don John of Toledo, son of the infamous Alva. Commercial his- tory and scores of Dutch paintings tell of Haarlem's bleaching - grounds, Bleekvelds or Blakeslees, on which thousands of Bleekers or bleachers earned an honorable living. Hundreds of acres of linen were whitened by the waters of the Spaarn and by the air rich in ozone. The linen made in England was also sent here to be whitened. Then, reex- ported, it was sold as " Hollands." Here also is the horticultural capital of Europe. All the world knows of Haarlem's tulips, her bulb lands, her hothouses, and her renowned botanists. Haarlem's most illustrious conquerors have been florists and engineers. The story of the triumph of science and patience in the drainage of Haarlem lake, and of its conversion into rich farms and gardens, has been told by many pens, but by none better than that of our own Waring, who took " A 32 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Farmer's Vacation," cleaned the streets of New York with his host of " white angels," and died a true martyr for Cuba. In our century Haarlem is renowned in science and literature, as well as in politics. To no country in Europe is Christendom more indebted for flowers and horticulture than to this sandy patch of land. A German, in 1559, brought from Constantinople the Persian " turban flower," or tulip, to Augsburg. He reared bulbs which quickly found a congenial home in Holland. The Dutchmen multiplied varieties at a time when civic architecture was also in richest bloom. Soon a double craze was parallel in their minds, to have tulip spires in the air and tulip bulbs in the soil. The floral mania reached an acute stage about 1636, when a sum, the value of which would now equal twenty thousand dollars, was paid for one bulb. Sometimes several men held a single tulip in shares. People went as crazy over turban flowers as I have seen them during the Pennsylvania petroleum ex- citement, when houses, furniture, food, and clothes were sold at a sacrifice for " Slippery Eock " or other oil stock. Ten Dutch cities were infected with the mania. Grave officers and citizens deserted their posts to engage in the tulip trade. The bubble burst when more bulbs were daily bought, sold, or exchanged than the soil, or storehouses, or anything but the fancy of a fool's head, could contain. The Dutch still love this child of the Orient, and supply the world with descendants of the old blood-red Tu- fyja Gesneriana. The manifold varieties of bulbs, THE FLORAL CAPITAL OF EUROPE 33 with flowers which are marvelous in their flakings, featherings, and pencilings, no longer depend on lunatics for culture and appreciation. One gorgeous bloom has been named the Abraham Lincoln. Would one know the facts and figures of Tulipo- mania ? Let him scan the encyclopaedias. In fiction ? He must read Alexander Dumas's extravaganza, "The Black Tulip," which tells of the feud between Van Baerle and Boxtel in the days of John and Cor- nelius DeWitt. Lyra once read me this and other romances of Dumas. I was impressed by that pas- sage which tells us that a man may give his name to a child, a flower, or a book. I am not certain but that, as to cultivated flowers, I prefer the ways of the Japanese, who give poetical rather than per- sonal names to new floral varieties. It is said that the tulip is a man's flower, women merely liking its vivid beauty, while men gaze spellbound over the dazzling dyes seen in a bed of them. None of these standard attractions, let me say, drew me to Haarlem " by first intention," as surgeons say. I wanted to see the ancestral seats of the set- tlers of Manhattan Island, and the original Haarlem, from which the American foolishly drops one " a." Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Bloemendaal were near each other in both old and New Netherland. From Manhattan's Bloomingdale, anglicized from the an- cient Dutch Bloemendaal, in college days a "rare and radiant maiden " and a Rutgers College student used to go up to the Harlem of Manhattan Island. To-day I shall see the original seat of perfume and beauty. 34 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND From Amsterdam we reach the city of types and tulips on an early morning in mid-June. The train crosses the Spaarn River, which flows east of the dunes. The air is cool, delicious, electric, after the rainstorm of the previous evening. My eyes feast on an ocean of color. On this early June morning myriad blooms of most gorgeous hue sparkle with innumerable prismatics, as the sun's rays strike the dewdrops on their petals. Every- thing in the city seems shining, polished, and as clean as Kioto. I pass up the main street, and into the ancient place of siege. The cross streets lead to the Groote Kerk, the old town's cor cordis, heart of hearts. The Great Forest Street takes one to the park outside, where Coster cut his wooden types long ago, and finding the sap-stain on the paper, thought of printing by presses without pen or en- graver. Other Dutch cities are proud of their moats, dockyards, shipping, arsenals, or commerce ; Haar- lem, of her trees. Soon inside the old " gedempte," or dumped-full outermost moat of the old town, one is at the ancient centre of things. In most Dutch towns one naturally seeks the source of water supply for the canal, even as one inquires for the supply of the whole country, which is a sort of Egypt, very hollow and sandy, the Rhine for the province, and the Spaarn for this city. The moats once mirrored brave walls and towers, but now, except the imposing Amsterdam gate, re- flect only peaceful houses and gardens. Early morning is the green room, rather than the stage, of the day's business. The late riser may THE FLORAL CAPITAL OF EUROPE 35 dwell for years inside of a city and never know how half the world lives. In China, for example, one might argue the question for ages as to the preva- lence of child-murder, or the exposure of infants. He would never see how sickly babies were disposed of unless he got up early, and saw the matutinal inferno, the dead cart, and the load of little corpses dumped in the grave-pits. We see how the hard- working half of Haarlem occupies itself. The turf wagons are long, narrow affairs, loaded with the soil of Drenthe or Over-Ijssel, cut and dried in brick-like form, or shaped like old Tycoon's caps. These sun- dried sods are burned in the stoves, porcelain in the parlor, iron in the kitchen. The milk-woman is round and around, with her brass-banded pails shin- ing like gold, with her white painted tubs and fir- kins. Modern science declares itself, in new-fangled phrase, on push-carts fresh from the paint-shop and floating their advertisements of u bacteria-free milk." This is the country of contrasts. Noise and silence are in alternation, the one wounding, the other poul- ticing the ears. Fat Dutch women and stalwart men in klomps make terrific noise as they scuffle over the pavements, while along the sidewalks go scores of trades-folks in big slippers. Some of the sabots are so big and clumsy that one almost imagines the wearers could float in them on a wet day. The dogs are amazingly abundant, but few of them are free. True, they are not beasts of burden, but rather draught animals. They ai*e harnessed underneath the vegetable wagons, push-carts, and all kinds of vehicles for the delivery of milk, turf, and 36 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND other household necessities. Though Belgium excels Netherlands in the figures of its dog census, yet Holland has a whole army of harnessed dogs that earn their living. Here an American sees what the old saying which is itself only one of hundreds of Dutch proverbs about these friends of man means, " to work like a dog." Nine tenths of the vehicles employed in this country are moved by a combina- tion of traction and propulsion by four-footed and two-legged creatures. The dog is not the only mo- tor. Carts and canal-boats are driven or drawn by horses, steam, electricity, wind, woman, man, mule, and small-boy power, as I have seen. The street names here, as in every land, mirror history. Of course we have the usual "butter," " cheese," " fish," and " meat " streets, correspond- ing to the physical bases of life. Then come those which tell where the mills and the gardens were, and where the archers and arquebusiers, the gentry, the knights, and the lords lived. Other old avenues call up in their names ghosts of monks, nuns, and their numerous cells and cloisters. From the newer street-names, one may judge the measure of popular- ity accorded to the various members of the royal family and House of Orange. Historical associations cluster richly around the open market square. Within the great church of St. Bavo is the world-famed organ, and in the lofty tower a carillon. Rung nightly at nine o'clock, the merry bells announce not the curfew, but a daily celebration of the victory won on the Nile centuries ago. According to one legend, the Haarlem crusad- THE FLORAL CAPITAL OF EUROPE 37 ers at Damietta captured the Saracen city by hav- ing in the sterns of their ships great saws, by which they cut in twain the iron obstacles under the water. As in our civil war the stern-wheelers sawed their way into and through swamps along the Mississippi, so the Haarlemers won the day. According to an- other legend, they made a tower, by setting up four masts, level with the ramparts. By throwing out a boarding-scuttle they rushed upon the walls, and with their good bright swords subdued the foe and lowered the crescent flag. Inside the great nave there Lung for centuries models of these Haarlem ships. When the originals fell to pieces, they were succeeded by the present little craft (now pendent on wires from the ceilings), which seem to be sailing through the air.. Like a great wen on its forehead, the church wall has, sticking on its face, a Spanish cannon-ball fired during the siege, a memorial of the days when " Better Turk than Spaniard " was the cry. Opposite the great cathedral is the town hall, once the home of Willem and other counts of Holland. Many of the interior timbers were hewn and set in 1250 A. D., though the edifice was remodeled in 1633. Alongside of it is the Meat House, with its strik- ing architecture, possibly suggested by the Saracen style, brick and marble in successive layers of alternate white and red. It is the model followed by the architects of one of the Collegiate Reformed churches, and not a few other edifices in the upper part of the borough of Manhattan, in Greater New 38 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND York. The American renaissance of Dutch archi- tecture is very noticeable in this last decade of our century. The vulgar call this the " zebra " or " beefsteak " style, a strip of fat and a strip of lean. When used as a house of meat, for the body or the soul, the result, in the hand of a master, amply justifies itself. There are other things one may see and enjoy, but to the cultured tourist, Haarlem is above all the city of Frans Hals. Of the two great painters of that name, one wrought by the banks of the Scheldt. The younger and the greater lived a joyous life near the Spaarn. After Rembrandt, Frans Hals is -the greatest colorist in that long line of painters that adorn Holland's bead-roll. The father was born in the year midway between the birth of the Dutch United States in 1579 and their Declaration of In- dependence in 1581. The son had already entered upon his career when the victorious nation had won truce and recognition from Spain. " The first smile of the Republic was art." The best works of the younger Hals are here, between the tulips and the sand dunes. I spend a morning with Frans Hals and his life- sized figures and faces. They seem so real that one wants to step up and shake hands with the debonair heroes. These are the civilians and soldiers of Hol- land's heroic age. So hearty and hospitable they look that they appear ready to talk with us, yet, do we try it, silence "pours on mortals its beautiful disdain." In this Haarlem gallery, as at those at the Hague THE FLORAL CAPITAL OF EUROPE 39 and Amsterdam, our own American artists, Allston, Vanderlyn, Trumbull, and a host of their successors, have studied and gained inspiration. Indeed, All- ston's debt to Netherlandish art is more than that of a student, for one of his distant ancestors was Vanderhorst, a contemporary of Rubens. Allston lavished praise upon Ostade for his mastery of the technique of light, and for his power of imagination, which he thought quite equaled that of Raphael. " We moderns cannot touch these masters," said my fellow passenger, Charles Stanley Reinhart, " but in their affluence, they show us new lines of endeavor, which we may follow." Adrian Ostade, one of these matchless painters of incidents who was endlessly interested in the com- mon life of the Dutch people, was one of the pupils of Frans Hals. He painted novels on canvas. His aim in life was to depict every-day experience. He developed that school of genre painting which Ten- iers founded. In the days before modern fiction, which aims not to portray facts, but the truth of life in glow, color, and movement, these artists were the novelists of their time. CHAPTER V A SENTIMENTAL TRIP TO BLOEMENDAAL Now begins our sentimental journey to Bloemen- daal. Not that we expect to find anything especially interesting there, but because of the sweet memo- ries of the Bloomingdale once near but now absorbed in New York, we visit the original Vale of Flowers. We take the coach and ride due north through the old bleaching-grounds and past the fields of hya- cinths, tulips, crocuses, and anemones in amazing variety of color. One must come in April or May to enjoy the delicious perfumes of Dutch flower farms, but even on June days their beauty is almost overpowering. Lovely villas and charming homes line all the way. At the terminus we get out for a walk behind the dunes. These to-day are at the back of the wes wind. Here are those great masses of centu^- tossed sands, looking like a frozen and bleached ocean. The war of wind and wave throughout aeons has piled up these irregular formations, which are the defenses furnished by Nature against the sea. God, in spite of the proverb, did help to make this Dutch land. We pass, on the left, the lunatic asy- lum with its well-cultivated grounds, and soon come within sight of the ruins of the castle of the illustri- ous family of Brederode. A SENTIMENTAL TRIP TO BLOEMENDAAL 41 Here is a relic of old feudal days. The structure dates back to the time when society was organized by and for two classes, the landed and the landless. The baron and the bishop lived in castle and palace with their retainers. The serfs worked the soil, but were in a social condition little above that of slavery. The Dutch, having no rocks, except here and there a chance boulder brought down by glaciers or ice- bergs from Scandinavia, were perforce obliged to rear their strongholds out of baked clay. They took their native soil, divided it into bits, fired these to hardness in the kiln, and piled them up until they made foundation walls, towers, gateways, ramparts, and keeps. Hence the striking difference of material in Dutch castles and cathedrals, as compared with the ma- sonry of France, Germany, or England. A stone castle north of the Waal is an almost unknown rarity. Though Holland had hundreds of feudal fortifications and some of them of great architectu- ral beauty, they were the products of the kiln and not of the quarry. Well moated and furnished with drawbridges, they were able to defy the ordinary attack of summer enemies. In cold winters that which was usually their defense often became a solid highway for an attacking party. Jack Frost could in one night become a Pontifex Maximus, or bridge- builder of the first class, laying a pontoon of ice thick enough for an army to cross over. Yet win- ter was never favorable to military operations in the Middle Ages, and sieges, even with ice as an ally, were rarely attempted. 42 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND This castle of Brederode is sufficiently well pre- served to show the chief features of mediaeval de- fense. We cross the moat called " de Kijn " (the Rhine) and stand inside the fore-court, which we must traverse in order to get through the " Binnen " or inside gracht, or canal, and reach the main in- closure containing chapel, great dining-hall, the resi- dence portion, various gates, storehouses, and all that belonged to the economy of the lord's dwelling. From the breezy tops of the tower we can look out over the scenery between Brederode's chateau and the city of Heer Willein. The Brederode name is one of the oldest among the Dutch nobility. It first appears in the eleventh century. Dirk, the oldest son of Arnold (Arnoud) of Holland, asked of his father that Sicco, the younger of his two nephews, should receive the por- tion of his inheritance measured with broad rods (breede roeden) ; hence the name. Thenceforth for eight centuries flourished an illustrious line of de- scendants, whose achievements concern themselves not only with politics and war, but also with litera- ture, religion, and art. One of the oldest printed books in the Dutch language is a literary work by Jan van Brederode, who had traveled in Ireland, and, returning, built a chapel in honor of Saint Patrick at Zaandport, just north of Bloemendaal. After taking part in many wars, he was slain at Agincourt in France in 1415. English readers know most about that Brederode who headed the deputation of the nobles, or " Beg- gars," as Berlaniont called them, in Brussels. It A SENTIMENTAL TRIP TO BLOEMENDAAL, 43 was he who proposed and first wore as emblem the beggar's wooden bowl, with cups and wallet. He aspired to leadership of the nation. His chief quali- fications were ancestral pride, a love of wine, and a hatred of water as a beverage. Such a leader sug- gested blindness and the ditch. He was a failure, and died obscure and forgotten in Germany. The Brederodes became extinct in this century, when Colonel Hendrik Lodewijk Petrus and his two sons died, the last on the 3d of September, 1832. Their dust rests in the little church of Hillegom, south of Haarlem. The romancers and dramatists have much to say about the Brederodes. The encyclopaedias give the facts. Hofdijk and Van Lennep describe their castles, and picture in word, form, and color their feudal glory. The fringed banneret of the Brede- rodes was of scarlet and gold, bearing on its front the lion of the counts of Holland. Their first castle built on this spot was destroyed by Count van Loon in 1204, and the second by the Haarlem " Codfish " partisans in 1436. Again rebuilt and occupied by the family, it was forsaken when, in 1472, Brederode became Lord of Vianen on the Rhine. Gradually this old home dilapidated into the desolation we now behold. I enjoyed greatly my first Dutch ruin, thus seen in the sunny hours. The ground plan of inner and outer court and moat, hall, and chapel is easily traced. Upon the battlements, and where bedrooms had been, I wondered whether these mediaeval lords, stout fighters, mighty drinkers, devout crusaders, 44 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND robed in fur and velvet, with ladies in satins and jewels, had a tithe of the comforts enjoyed by either the mechanic or common soldier of to-day. I pictured the children playing here, the hawking parties sallying forth, the mirth of summer serenade or of winter night's skating on the moonlighted moat, or of song, jest, story, and harper's music around the great hearth-fire, the forays and returns of knights and men-at-arms swathed in chain mail or plate armor. I thought of the sieges and sorties, the blood shed and the torch applied. To-day feudalism is past ; the home and its joys, law and justice, be- long to all. In the Middle Ages the castle as well as the monastery was a factor in civilization. What was then exclusive privilege is now the common man's inheritance. The printer's types, the rifle's leaden arrow, the democracy of Christianity have leveled thrones, castles, and cathedrals, knight's pride, and priest's craft. To-day Brederode's castle is but the side attrac- tion of a restaurant. I sat under the superb old trees and sipped Java coffee with a diminutive spoon, served with a tiny jug of cream and three dominoes of beet-root sugar, dreaming of the past and of the two Bloemendaals. Now for a glance at Beverwijk, or Beaverville. The beaver is no longer extant in Holland, though numerously in its nomenclature. Its name is joined to the syllables " dam," " wijk," and "hoek," in a dozen place-names in Netherlands geography. The brute envied for its fur may also have taught the aboriginal man engineering. As a dam and home A SENTIMENTAL TRIP TO BLOEMENDAAL 45 builder, employing knife-like teeth for cutting down trees, webbed feet for mixing and building in water, and a trowel-like tail for plastering and finishing, what animal more worthy of commemoration in Dutch heraldry ? Yet we do not find him in art. He has been hunted and killed off in North Europe, as the bison has been on our plains. The Dutch crossed the Atlantic to trade for beaver even as the Puritans came to catch fish and the Cavaliers to cultivate tobacco. The beaver in those days covered men's heads, not women's shoulders. The Indians called the whites, "men with hats on." In their wampum, they pictured in beads the warrior who wore a scalp-lock and the white trader who roofed his head with a beaver skin. In New Netherland the glossy pelts became cur- rency, and on the seal of the province is a beaver in token of the new-found wealth. On the " arms " of the city of New Amsterdam, the New York of to-day, besides windmill, sails, and flour barrels, is this same animal. The first large Dutch settlement, where Albany now stands, was named Beverwijk, after this ancient wijk in the Fatherland. It lay in a country rich in the four-footed makers of dams. The practiced eye in the Mohawk valley of to-day discerns numerous old beaver settlements as easily as a geologist recognizes glacier moraines. As an emblem of patience, and of that perseverance which conquers all, the beaver was printed on the money issued by the Continental Congress. Beverwijk, the old and original, has on its arms 46 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND lions of heraldic shape. These are set under three fleurs-de-lis, laid on the upper half of a shield which is grasped on either side by a nude angel, who stands inside of and holds the open curtain of a canopy. What chiefly interests us in the quiet little village is the church, with pillars and arches of the thir- teenth century. Stone tower and wooden spire rise above a porch with entrance in Doric style. In the frieze we read the sweet benison : " The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore." Inside one sees at once the close resemblance between this house of worship and the church edifices in early Dutch America. Pulpit, precentor's desk, and lecturn, pews, aisles, curtains, arrangements for light, collec- tion bags hung on the wall, benches for elders and deacons of the Consistory, are, in plan and details, about the same as were those .in Beverwijk-on- Hudson and in the Dorp on the Mohawk. In the belfry still hangs a bell cast in 1733, by the same makers and in the same foundry as that which from 1733 to 1848 summoned the people of Schenectady to Sabbath devotions. Here in Holland we read : " Nicoleus Muller, Amsterdam, me Fecit Anno 1733." The old Schenectady church bell was purchased after a subscription, by 152 persons, of ,45 6s. 6d., mounted in 1734, cracked in 1848, recast in Troy, rehung, and melted in the fire of 1860 (which Lyra saw and remembers well). On it was one inscrip- tion in Dutch, " The bell of the Low Dutch congre- STALL CARVINGS IN ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH, BOLSWARD A SENTIMENTAL TRIP TO BLOEMENDAAL 47 gation of Schenectady (Schenechtiade) procured by themselves in the year 1782." Another in Latin reads : " Me f ecerunt De Grave et Muller, Amsterdam." The American bell was the older of the two. Evidently, also, Nicoleus Muller took a partner after casting the bell for the church in what was then called, " the far west " of America. There was a pretty legend current in " Old Dorp " on the Mohawk, which I often heard. When in the mother-land the molten metal was nearly ready to pour into the mould, there came many friends and acquaintances in Amsterdam of those in the American frontier church, and cast into the great crucible silver cups, spoons, dishes, and trinkets as mementos, with prayers for the kin beyond sea. Certainly the old bell sounded very sweetly to the aged people who told me of its silvery notes. An- other story is that a twin-sister bell, cast by Muller in Amsterdam about the same time, was hung in Kaughnawaga or Fonda ; captured by the Indians, it was taken to Canada and rehung in a French convent. Travelers from the Mohawk valley in the Dominion quickly recognized its note. I learn from a book of " Antiquities of North Holland " that on the bell at old Beverwijk, besides a rand-schrift, or rim inscription, is a four-line stanza with the names of burgomaster, aldermen, domine, churchmaster, and sexton. The predik-stoel, or pul- pit, is embossed with Scripture. On the floors and walls are the usual memorials of departed glory. The tomb of the Harencarspel family, under the 48 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND organ, with eagles, weeping figures, symbols of the four evangelists, and festoons made of coats of arms, is unusually fine. This finishes our first tour in Kennemer land, the region behind the dunes, and the portion of Hol- land most closely associated with Manhattan Island in the seventeenth century, and, indeed, with Amer- ican colonization by the Dutch. I have looked on many of the mossy marbles and time-eaten grave- stones in the cemeteries of Amsterdam and the towns near by. The names are those of neighbors and old acquaintances. As my friend Asa Gray, the botanist, found variations of feature between floral ancestors and their descendants, so, except for slight changes in spelling, the epitaphs and names of Holland families in America resemble those in the Fatherland. CHAPTER VI IN THE EGMONT COUNTRY MEDIAEVAL maps of Alkmaar show the old city lying at the edge of the Schir-meer, or lake, and in place of the primeval pagan shrine, a Christian church with an abbey near by. In the tenth cen- tury Alkmaar was the chief city in Kennemer land, with a castle and the abbey of Egmond not far away. So early as 1143 it had a mint and coined money. Of even more enduring value than old Alkmaar's gold and silver, now vanished except an occasional relic, have been the chronicles written by the monks. For these all historians are perpet- ually grateful, for they form the chief fountain of North Netherlandish story. In a word, this is a classic soil, seat of the city, castle, seaport, and monastery of the Egmonds, one of the oldest and most illustrious families of the Netherlands. The name, from Engen mond, mean- ing narrow mouth, refers, it is said, to the oldest ancestral seat near some branch of the Rhine, which, with small aperture, emptied into the sea. The name of that Count Egmont who in youth, beauty, and plenitude of fame, fell victim on the scaffold to the jealous hatred of Alva and the cruel perfidy of Philip II., glorified in art and the drama and by the 50 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND pens of Schiller and Motley, and set in enduring marble in Brussels, is but one on a long and lus- trous roll. Warriors, statesmen, and scholars of the Egmont line shine on the pages of Dutch history during eight centuries. Securing a carriage, Lyra and I rode out to Egmond-op-den-Hoef, that is, Egmond-on-the-Farm, where once rose lofty and lordly towers, square and round, against the blue sky. On the surface of the wide moat were mirrored crow-stepped gables, pointed roofs, windows, portholes, and square-topped walls. The massive structure was L-shaped. At the north, on a little island, were the stables and stores of fod- der, the other areas containing the numerous build- ings which fronted on two open courts. The walls were from three to five feet thick. A stone bridge with three arches crossed the moat opposite the en- trance. On two pinnacles, between the front main towers, sat two lions holding the shield of Egmond, while higher in the air floated the red and gold ban- ner. Van Lannep and Hofdijk, in their beautifully illustrated book on the noteworthy castles in Neder- land, give plan, picture, and arms. First upreared and encircled with water in 1307, often attacked, fired, and rebuilt, this castle was, during the Dutch and Spanish war, wholly destroyed. What we actually saw was no more than a mor- sel of the old burg. A bit of a corner, a fragment of brick wall eight or ten feet high and less in its other dimensions, stood in a dry field amid stubble. Yet this scanty token appealed to the imagination. I asked the driver to take me to the ruined abbey IX THE EGMONT COUNTRY 51 church where some of the counts of Holland lie in dust, and to point out the site of the cloisters where the Benedictine monks, a thousand years ago, began writing Netherland's annals. Our Dutch Jehu was neither interested nor informed. In the village I began questioning the natives, one of whom, a boer with intelligent face, immediately led me off the main street into a lane. Then, showing me a line of houses with gardens and stables inside a brick inclosure, he said, in very English-like Dutch, " Dat is de klooster waal." To such use had the historic remnant come ! Founded by Dirk I., Count of Holland, and first built of wood in A. D. 889, the abbey was fired by the pagan Frisians, but under Dirk II., it was re- erected in brick. Many a famous abbot ruled here. Terrific were the struggles of ambition and for power between counts and bishops, dukes and popes. The library of manuscripts and printed books gath- ered within its walls was very large for the age. When, in 1576, it became a centre of reaction and danger to the patriot cause in the war of independ- ence, the furious iconoclasts gave its precious trea- sures to the flames. Fortunately, the cloister annals had been copied and preserved elsewhere. Amid the grunt of pigs I pictured to myself the cowled brethren listening to crusader, knight, trav- eler, or survivor of some Norse massacre, shipwreck, or sea-flood, as these told their stories, and then writ- ing these out for posterity. Thanks to the old cell-brothers ! Our age no longer needs them, but how could the Middle Ages have done without them? 52 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Their literary equipment consisted of a goose-quill, an ink - horn, dressed pigskin, and an oak desk. Their Latin was not unexceptionable. Their Dutch was rude, but these cloister annalists were the first historiographers of the nation. From Egmond Binnen we rode seaward over to the Egmond-aan-Zee, or Egmond-on-Sea, where was a sort of embrasure in the mountainous sand walls that form the defenses of North Holland, the only gate or pass in the sand mountains between the Helder and Wijk-aan-Zee near Beverwijk. We found a little fishing village and a summer hotel where picnic folk from Alkmaar could obtain bread, steaks, cheese, and beer. An Englishman, in the crowd of men who stood around swathed in woolen and shod in wood, lamented the decay of the fish- eries here, telling us that instead of the seventy or eighty " bums " which the village owned within his time, not more than a dozen remained now. I had to ask him to define the term " bum," though I im- agined the word to be the same as in bumboat, or bumbarge, which we have borrowed from the Dutch. All will remember Carlyle's use of the word in his " Chartism." Egmond-aan-Zee had its glorious age in the four- teenth century, when the abbey, tower, port, and lordship were all blooming like the tulips of later time, and riches came from soil and sea. Here, within sound of the waves, were founded not a few famous families. Their names fill the Dutch annals of valor and learning, and, though in much altered forms, may be read on American doorplates. To IN THE EGMONT COUNTRY 53 this seaside village, from Germany, came and labored Domine van Mekelenburg, whose learned son Hellen- ized his name into Megapolensis, and came to Amer- ica in 1642. He preached the gospel to the Mohawk Indians as well as to the Dutch emigrants. He watched over the infancy of the colony of New Netherland, and saw its surrender. His literary friend, Domine Selyns, wrote his epitaph. Both were among our first American men of letters. We rode down near the lighthouse to see the colossal lion, ever looking seaward and sentinel-like, symbolizing the bravery of the young hero, Van Speyk, who at Antwerp, in 1831, blew up his ship rather than surrender. In temperament wonder- fully like our own Gushing of Albemarle fame, Jan Carel Josephus van Speyk, born in Amsterdam in 1802, was educated in the orphan house. He began to follow the sea at eighteen, voyaging to the West Indies. Entering the navy and serving five years as a lieutenant, he was decorated for his bravery in the Belgian war of 1830, and given command of a gunboat. Driven ashore in a storm in 1831, and surrounded by a crowd of Belgians in boats, he fired his pistol into the magazine, blowing himself, his friends and foes, and his unlowered flag high into the air. A fragment of his corpse was laid to rest under his monument in the New Church in Amsterdam near the dust of De Ruyter and other admirals. I have seen his sword and relics rever- ently preserved in his orphan childhood's home. It was the frigate Van Speyk that was sent to join in the Columbian quadri-centennial in New York city and bay in 1893. 54 Before returning to Alkmaar we visited something more ancient than the Egmont name. The story of Frisian Christianity is inseparably connected with the name of Wilfrid, who, educated at York, sailed for Rome, and was driven by contrary winds on this coast. He preached here the gospel in the seventh century, when no interpreters were needed. After ward a synod was held at Austerfield, in A. D. 702, which deposed and excommunicated him, but he re- gained the favor of his superiors. It was in the little Norman church of St. Wilfrid that William Bradford, the future Pilgrim Father and Governor of New Plymouth, was baptized in 1590. He also on crossing the sea, had stormy experiences. After Wilfrid came Wilbrord and Boniface, making a trio of " Apostles of the Frisians " and pioneers of Dutch Christianity. Wilbrord enjoys most fame in popular tradition. He is commemorated in art all over the kingdom, from Flushing to Dokkum, where his successor was martyred. We meet Wilbrord's statue or picture in every Catholic church, and hail him on bas-reliefs over the doors. November 6 is his great festal day. The cloister carvings in stone, at Utrecht, represent him busily engaged in cutting down the trees sacred to pagan deities. Many-tongued legend recounts his wonderful works. Evidently he was more fond of pure cold water than the Egmonts or Brederodes. W T e find Saint Wilbrord's wells in Walcheren, but here at Heilo is the most famous put, or well, of all. It lies back of the village church, protected by hand- some open iron-work. We taste the water. It is IN THE EGMOXT COUNTRY 56 not equal to Cochituate, Croton, or Schuylkill ; but, after a millennium, who expects nectar ? The golden afternoon sunlight bathed the land- scape and helped imagination to summon, out of the oblivion of a thousand years, the work of this good servant of that Christ who first announced his personality and mission to a woman, while sitting at the well-curb in Samaria. Wilbrord, a Saxon, was born A. D. 657, in Xorthumbria, in England, and spent thirteen years in Ireland in study under those wonderful Irish missionaries who once filled Europe with gospel light. Two of them, Egbert and Wi- bert, had been in Frisia, preaching in vain during two years. Wilbrord not only learned Frisian, but went on his mission forearmed. He toiled for the bodies and souls of the Frisians, and grandly suc- ceeded. Not to know about Wilbrord is, when in Holland, at least, to argue one's self unknown, and thus lose much enjoyment when amid Dutch art and ecclesiastical history. Driving homeward with stimulated imagination and nerves tingling with the delicious coolness of the sweet air, we came suddenly to a standstill. Our own heavy two-horse chariot and a light and low team had come into collision. A big Dutch- man, whip in hand and mounted on a box set up on wheels and drawn by four dogs, was most rap- turously illustrating the glory of motion. Which Jehu was to blame, I should not be willing to de- cide, but within ten ticks of the watch the brick road was strewn with howling dogs and the debris of timber and harness. The two-legged creatures 56 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND immediately began swearing at each other in Dutch. Fortunately, the war ended in words only. The total losses were a shaft and portion of one dog's hair and cuticle, lacquer from one wheel-spoke of our carriage, and, on the part of both drivers, tem- per. Despite bits in their mouths, one cannot steer curs as safely as horses, and in this fact, probably, lies the philosophy of the collision. Certainly, the trouble could not have arisen be- cause of any misunderstanding of the law of the road. British folk turn to the left, Dutch and Americans to the right. In all the British colonies, except those founded on the Atlantic coast, the rule was and is " to the left." Because of misunder- standings and divers inheritances, there have been many collisions on land, and, as I remember, the sinking of the U. S. S. Oneida man-of-war by the mail steamer Bombay in the Bay of Yedo. Why the exception in America ? Numerous and long have been the controversies and theories put forward to account for the patent fact. The expla- nation nearest to hand seems to lie in this, that the Dutch rule has always been, " Turn to the right, as the law directs." For centuries that law has been written in municipal ordinances, as in those of Amsterdam dated April 7, 1663. In other places the custom is older than law in script. The Pil- grims who lived eleven years in Holland simply fol- lowed in New England what one of them, Bradford, calls " The Laudable custom of the Low Countries." In this, as in so many things, they set as the prece- dent to New England the law to which they had IN THE EGMONT COUNTRY 57 been already accustomed in Holland. In the Mid- dle States the people followed the ancestral prece- dent in Patria. In Virginia the custom came in when the code of " Lawes Divine, Morall, and Mar- tiall," based on that formed by the Dutch govern- ment for the republican army of Maurice, was intro- duced by Sir Thomas Dale. CHAPTER VII CHARMING LITTLE ZAANDIJK KENNEMER LAND stretches along the coast of North Holland from Haarlem to Alkmaar and be- yond. The name is a reminiscence of the ancient clays when the old Kin-helm meer, or the " sea " of Kinheim, filled much of this whole region. Just north and west of Amsterdam there is Zaan- land, a region wherein are many names ending or beginning with Zaan, which " lost to sight " in canals is " to memory dear " on mediaeval maps. Here is Zaandam, known all over the world as the place where the greatest of the Muscovites began to learn his trade as carpenter, or what ' the word carpenter originally meant shipwright. To the east is Oostzaan, further Tip is Koog-aan-de-Zaan, toward the North Sea is Westzaan. Still further north is Zaandijk, whither I wend my way. I was invited by a quondam ship-passenger, a physician, whose society at sea I had greatly enjoyed, to come into this region and ancient valley, rich in windmills. Once a wide natural stream, the Zaan River is now a settled-down old canal. Taking the Alkmaar packet, a trim little steamer, from the pier behind the great Central Station below the Bible Hotel, in Amsterdam, I started off on the cool CHARMING LITTLE ZAANDIJK 59 morning, in the loveliest of the months, June 28. The glistening tile roofs, gayly painted houses, fields full of mustard flowers, yellow enough for the Em- peror of China, and a lavish use of bright colors generally, seemed to show how necessary it is in this land of dull sky and chronic damp weather to offset the general grayness of nature with bright hues. I was- met on the landing-stage at Zaandijk by the doctor, who had corne to those " years which bring the philosophic mind," as well as to a general mellowness of spirit and judgment. He led me up the narrow little way to the main thoroughfare, which consisted of a canal with many bridges. There was a pavement for wagons on one side, with a diminutive sidewalk along the one-storied houses which seemed to have been dipped in paint-pots. Outside of the land of Colorado beetles, it seemed to me as if I never had seen so much Paris green on bridges, fences, doors, windows, and walls. The trees were clipped because, except heavenward, there is no room for them to grow. The doctor's house, by the canal, was large, handsome, and modern, with wide halls, high-ceiled rooms, and imposing stairways and furniture. The walls were lined with trophies of travel and proofs of both wealth and taste. Besides holding an offi- cial appointment, the doctor owned a cheese farm, and counted his cows by the score. There was a general atmosphere of plain but rich living and high thinking about his home, such as I have found among the Philadelphia Friends, those spiritual 60 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND cousins to the followers of Menno Simons, whom the world calls Quakers. After greetings and chat in the family circle, we sallied forth to see the sights of this miniature city. Zaandijk has its coat of arms, its town hall, and a long history. On September 21, 1894, the people celebrated the fourth centennial aniversary of the town. Some one, the doctor explained, had found an old perkament (parchment), which told how the first dam and house were built here in 1494. The Dutch delight in festivals, with fine dressing and good eating, nor do they ever neglect an oppor- tunity of celebrating something. So the Zaandijk- ers got out old costumes, and renewed, for the nonce, ancient customs. Two boats, modeled after the Venetian gondolas of the fifteenth century, were built for the occa- sion and put to use. In the doctor's youth these old gondolas, or trek-schuits, were still used for travel, transportation, love-making, and church-go- ing. Even now the canal, with its many high-arched bridges, suggests Venice itself. As a matter of fact, many details of life in the little confederacy behind the dikes were copied or imported from that south- ern republic which stood on piles in the lagoons. Both amphibious peoples were fond of republicanism and of bright hues, and from among them sprang artists who lead the world as colorists. As we were talking, a boat laden with garden produce and propelled by a truck farmer, who ped- dled his commodities along the way at the different houses by the water's edge, brought up a vision of CHARMING LITTLE ZAANDIJK 61 the manner in which one of the greatest of Ameri- can fortunes was initiated in the hills on and off Staten Island. We walked to the tiny museum founded in this town long ago by Mynheer Jacob Honig. His name suggests sweets, and his coat of arms very appropri- ately is embroidered with bees. From his youth he enjoyed collecting things old, curious, and obsolete. Whatever had been stranded by fashion and left, as " dead fact ... on the shores of the oblivious years," was his delight and quest. He made a curi- osity shop which illustrates local and social history in epitome. Here is a model of the first windmill erected in Zaandam. It stood in the water, and had to be towed round and round by a boat in order to make the sails face the wind. Later on, the mill was set 011 a post, and the whole structure turned upon this as an axis, as in a revolving library. Still later the edifice was made to revolve from the bot- tom, like a monitor's turret. Finally, the compara- tively modern Dutch invention of a cap, holding the axle and sails with cog-wheel and spindle inside and easily moved from below by a hand wheel and wind- lass, secured the proper frontage at will. As for the modern windmills, they say there are twelve thousand in Netherland, even though one can still see battalions of them deployed along the canals and over against the horizon, their days are numbered. Already they are much less numer- ous than fifty years ago. A new one is rarely if ever built, since steam is more to be depended upon than wind. No more as of yore will there be law- 62 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND suits, as between the Lord of Woerst and the Over- Ijssel monastery, as to who owns the wind and has a right to use it. The old feudal master claimed that he owned Boreas, and all his breath that blew over his fields, as well as Neptune and all his puddles. The suit was referred to the Bishop of Utrecht, who decided in favor of the lord. Even the hundred proverbs that stick to the subject, as barnacles to a ship, will soon bear the flavor of mythology. In the old days of inundation and heavy rains, the water lay upon the land so long that malaria and sickness were often epidemic and continuous. Since the use of steam power, which can raise water and saw wood, even when Boreas refuses to blow, the flooded areas have been quickly pumped dry. Improved health is everywhere the result. The museum shows a schoolmaster's implement of correction, the Idap, with which, during a century or two, small boys were spanked ; also the little stoves once used to warm the feet of wives and maidens in church, almost exactly like the same contrivances still used for hands in Japan. Zaandijk once derived great wealth from its fish- eries. The whale also brought comfort to many homes and prosperity to the city. Its oil filled the lamps and cheered the soap-maker. Its "bone" gave steadiness to unstable busts. Here are pictures of the oil refineries, and of ships and boats home from the Arctic Sea. The whale has had a mighty influence upon the civilization of Hollaad, of the United States, and upon Japan. First the English CHARMING LITTLE ZAANDIJK 63 and then the Yankee borrowed the idea of whale- hunting from the Dutch. The whale was our pilot into the Pacific. The skeleton of one of these great mammals hangs from the museum's ceiling. The crockery of Zaandijk shown is ancient, won- derful, and abundant. In its decoration one local subject is constantly repeated. A furious bull tossed a woman, and while she was some twelve feet up in the air, she was delivered of a child, who was thus actually born between heaven and earth. Both parent and babe survived for a number of days, and the husband and father, who had been gored, even longer. In the eyes of the realistic Zaandijk keramists, judging from their various art products, Mahomet's coffin was a circumstance hardly to be compared with this event. The fireplace in Holland is the centre not only of comfort and social life, but also of domestic art and education. Beside its warmth and light were the tiles with Scripture story, and above it was the mantelpiece rich in ornament and artistic sugges- tion. The hearth was the focus of council, medita- tion, aesthetics, instruction, and comfort. Everything relating to the nursery is well illus- trated in this little museum. Pins are plenty in Dutch proverbs and idioms, and so they are in the home. Here is a pin-cushion. On one side the name of a girl is tricked out in the little silvery disks, and on the other is the name of a boy, provision being thus made for nature's uncertain- ties. Whether for Hannah or for William, every- thing is ready. One cushion provides for a possible 64 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND pair of twins. Then, there are cradles and baptis- mal quilts, besides clothing of men, women, and children in all sorts of fashion, even to a set of mourning clothes, from scalp to sole. Not far apart are the cradle and the tomb. How inventors toiled to anticipate the steamship and the balloon is shown by the model of a boat warranted to go against wind and tide. The thing had no " go " in it, and was called " The Fool's Ship." Another machine was called the flying ship, but it would not fly. A table is spread with all the eating and drinking implements of the former days, including that very late comer, the fork. Here were tea trays decorated with pictures of whales and whalers. Bowls and plates made at Delft have names of the owners and pictures of their ships, or legends in old Dutch celebrating their success, that is, " Goedt success na London." The Honig family, with more right than Napoleon in his ermined robe copied from Charlemagne's, has a table- cloth embroidered with bees. The smoker's outfit is remarkably rich. Here are pipe-cases, stoves to hold fire for lighting pipes, and tobacco boxes in all forms, one being a half -bound book with the motto, " Hu- man life is short." My cicerone chats, laughs, and delightfully ex- plains everything with wit and jokes ; meanwhile smoking his cigar until short as a chincapin, without any fear of burning his lips. He shows the carved wooden schoolbook bags, once daily carried by boys and girls ; a quill pen with a tassel on the end of a long feather ; all sorts of linen dresses, mangles and CHARMING LITTLE ZAANDIJK 65 bangles, and baby chairs, such as one sees in Jan Steen's pictures ; a Bible, hung on silver chains and carried to church by rosy-cheeked maidens ; bed- warmers, cake moulds, and a hundred other knick- knacks, suggesting the good old times, and tempting one to see and think out, if not to write, a story. Yet, rich as is this wonderful collection, I believe that almost everything in it, except the purely local and marine wonders, either actually was or could have been duplicated in 1880, when we held in Schenectady our Loan Exposition at the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Reformed Dutch Church. A " kermis," the latter might have been called, but was not. Besides home-made colonial and Iroquois relics was a mighty host of articles of use, beauty, and luxury brought over from Patria. Both Water-land and the Zaanland have been famous in the history of the Mennonites, my hostess being one of them. Wishing to see a modern Men- nonite meeting-house, we took carriage and rode down toward Zaandam. We called on the Domine, who lived next door to the edifice, and so had a good guide. The structure was reared in 1680, and restored in 1873. The floor, scrubbed as clean as a butter firkin, was covered with fine sand. Beside the organ were the usual psalm books, and the long poles with silver-rimmed bag and tassels hung up against the wall on hooks by the ring, which, like plumpers in sleeves, kept the bag open. At the bottom of each was a little bell. I noticed many quaint bas-reliefs on the house 66 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND fronts. Soon we came to the huisje, that is, the hut of Peter the Great. The workman's shanty, in which the Czar lived for only a week, is rather groggy looking, and leans over from age. Inside is the sleeping-room or bed-closet, made in the style of a bunk. Everything belonging to the original struc- ture suggests lowly life, but the chimney the typi- cal part of a Dutch domestic interior has been restored and decorated with tiles. On the walls are tablets of Russian monarchs. The window-panes are diamond-scratched by many fools, and some other people. Like the little worm-eaten meeting-house perhaps the oldest extant wooden church edifice in America at Salem, Mass., Peter's hut is inclosed by an outer wooden building of some pretensions. Close to the portraits of Peter and Catherine is inscribed a Russian proverb, meaning " Nothing too little for a great man." Some years ago a Muscovite general, who visited this place, gave money to insti- tute a prize fund, the interest of which goes yearly to some Zaandam boy in the higher public schools. The yard and site of the hut belong to the Rus- sian government, being the gift of the royal family of Holland. In the Russian navy to this day, many of the nautical terms are Dutch. Mighty was the influence which the great Czar took with him from the little country which then led the world in civil- ization. Our own William Penn, who anticipated disarmament and " the parliament of the world," once had. an interview with Peter, holding a long conversation in Dutch, which was spoken by both the founder of Pennsylvania and of New Russia. CHARMING LITTLE ZAANDIJK 67 Penn presented the Czar with Dutch translations of Friends' books. With all his potency to compel reform among his people, the Czar had little moral power to civilize himself. We rode back along the painted houses and bridges. I was constantly reminded of the old joke and picture " Do you see anything green ? " The various shades, when fresh, suggested peas, apples, olives, grass, malachite, or beryl; the older and more weather-worn, old bottles and verdigris. We discussed the Anabaptists and Mennonites as we rode, and then visited another house of wor- 'ship, where the sand on the floor was wrinkled and ribbed in patterns of decorative art imitative of the seashore. A broomstick had been the only tool used. The doctor declared that the disciples of Menno Simons were excellent people, but in modern days so rich, close, and thrifty, that "Jews cannot live in the same place with Mennonites." As to religion in Holland, the doctor thought that the burghers, city folk, and professionals were mostly " Mo- dernen," while the common country people and the aristocracy were " Orthodox." While waiting under the walnut and plum trees in the garden, expecting the Alkmaar packet back to Amsterdam, we branched off into some of the metaphysical aspects of religion. Just as we were getting warm and intense, the sound of the whistle announced the coming boat. Shaking hands, we agreed to resume the discussion when we next met. So ended a happy June day. FRIESLAND CHAPTER VIII THE LION CITY OF THE NORTH ONE who would study the origins of his far-off ancestry, when as yet there were no English-speak- ing people, must come to Friesland and spend hours in the Frisian Museum of Antiquities at Leeu- warden. It is a bright and beautiful city, which I thrice visited. In the Spaniard Strada's curious picture-map called " The Belgian Lion," Leeuwarden is the eye- ball of the geographical beast, whose scalp is the Frisian archipelago, the muzzle Groningen, the back Holland, Zealand, and Flanders, with all Belgium for his belly and Brabant for his breast. On this map nearly all the names are Latinized. Whether Leeuwarden means " the lion on guard," or " the lion's earth," or " the lion's eye," I care not. The city has always had for me the lion's share of delight. I saw it first with Lyra on the last day of July, after having come from Groningen towards the ris- ing sun. The lovely air was fresh and sweet with all the odors of hay-making time. Everything had " the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed." The city thoroughfares were crowded with busy peo- ple, for it was Friday and market day. Streets and 72 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND canals were bright with flowers and the fruits of the soil, with rosy-cheeked and handsome Frisian women, stout farmers, and healthy-looking animals. Our eyes were quite dazzled with flashes from the gold and silver helmets of the cherubim. Whether " because of the angels," or from fashion, every peasant woman covers her head with the metal of which money is made. After a ramble over the city I ascended to the top of the Great Church's tower. The vision was glorious. In the intensely bright and clear air I had a superb view of the plains that lay spread out below. There had been seen the march of the Teutonic tribes the Saxons, the Angles, and the Frisians with their faces set westward, to tarry in their second home, England, before reaching their third in America. There are fifty places in this kingdom named Engeland (Eng- land), or the Engle's (Angle's) burg, meer, or sluis. Like the powerful magnet, the museum of Frisian antiquity then and ever since attracted me within its walls, as often as I was near the edifice. I con- sider that in many respects this little museum is to an American the most edifying and interesting place in all Northern Europe. The later epochs, persons, and places most directly associated with American history and the development of liberty are also here finely represented in relics of art and nature. Geology is pictured to us by stones and bones. Evidences of the a?on-old war of wind and wave, of glacier and current, tell startling stories. How amazingly numerous must have been the wild swine ! THE LION CITY OF THE NORTH 73 What kings of the forest were these boars that roamed and rooted and tore with their terrific tusks ! Most of their razor-like picks and tusks show signs of battle and conquest. What iron-like snouts to plough up the soil ! How plentiful must have been the deer, the wolves, the bears ! How far from Norway, Sweden, and Germany must these boulders and pebbles have traveled ! Eloquent with human interest are the relics from the " terpen," or mounds. The life of our Teutonic ancestors was much nearer that of the brutes than ours. Their struggle for food and life was often intense, yet they loved to braid their hair and orna- ment their bodies. Here are stone combs. They enjoyed the beautiful, as the decorative art on im- plements, utensils, and objects of religion and per- sonal ornament prove. We can study the evolution of the Frisian helmet, with its pendant jewels and cunning work. Though now of the precious metal, they are still called " ear-irons." In the beginning, a little strap of iron, with a hook at the end to rest on the ear, bound back the streaming hair. Next, perforations at the ends hold near the face a flower or an ornament. In the course of centuries the band widens, becom- ing first copper or brass or bronze, and then in modern times silver and gold, meanwhile spreading by degrees till it covers the cranium. Nevertheless, we enjoy the Medemblik legend that the Frisian head-dress is the crown of thorns glorified in gold. The story of changeable fashions in dress is here admirably told, of table ware, and bodily decoration It THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND in silver, of the keramic art, of furniture, household adornment, and of coziness and comfort. One of the rooms, including walls, bed-closet, and furni- ture, has been transferred from quaint Hindeloopen. Here are portraits, more or less artistic, of both " celebrities and notorieties," as Mr. Barnum said to Matthew Arnold. We see the big sword of a local bandit hero, Japik Emmers. Many a legend tells how he robbed the wicked rich and helped the righteous poor. Franeker University stirs the American pulses to gratitude, as well as to admiration, but not alone because of the botanical science nurtured there. In the eighteenth century, as well as the sixteenth and seventeenth, Friesland was in close touch with Amer- ica. Here, then, are numerous relics of Franeker University in which began the sentiment against Great Britain, sympathy with the American colo- nies, and an outburst of enthusiasm which resulted in our recognition as a nation. The appearance of Paul Jones with his prize, the Serapis, in the Texel and the Zuyder Zee, caused the streets of Franeker and Leeuwarden to resound with patriotic songs celebrating American victory. Already the sober- minded thinking men had been moved by pamphlets and books written and circulated by Baron van der Capellen, Doctor Coelkens, and others. The pages of the "Leeuwarden Courant," during the later years of our Revolutionary War, as I can bear witness, make lively reading for an American. In this very city at the Burghers' club, composed of leading citizens, the matter was broached and a THE LION CITY OF THE NORTH 75 silver medal cast, and here in the cases before us is a copy of the medal. Three dies, commemorating Dutch sympathy with us in our struggle for inde- pendence, were cut and medals struck. The first was by the Burghers' club of Leeuwarden to the state legislature of Friesland on the 26th of Feb- ruary, 1782, the second by the States General or national congress, the third celebrated the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between the Dutch and the American republics, consummated on the 7th of October, 1782. As a long dweller on Manhattan Island and in New York State, often in Stuyvesant Place, and knowing the place of Stuyvesaut's grave, I ought to have visited Scherpenzeel, a village near the southern border and in the region of " stuivesand," or shift- ing, that is. wind-moved or blown-about, sand. Here o 7 * * was spent the boyhood of " Old Silver Leg," with whom Diedrich Knickerbocker has taken such liber- ties in print, and whose anti-tobacco war has been so finely put on canvas by George H. Boughton. Peter Stuyvesant was a domine's son, reared to high ideas and aspirations. He fought Spaniards and Portuguese in the West Indies, was governor of Cu- rar-oa, and lost a leg in failing to take the island of St. Thomas. Brave to rashness, honest, hot-headed, arbitrary, stumping about oil a silver-banded wooden limb, cane in hand to lend impressibly visible em- phasis to his orders, without any Frisian " fanaticism or freedom," or high respect for popular rights, Petrus Stuyvesant, like Anthony van Curler, has furnished humorist, romancer, artist, and caricatur- 76 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND 1st with a figure and personality of endless inter- est. Besides receiving honors of statuary on Broad- way, the Society of Colonial Dames of the State of New York has brightened his fame. They cele- brated the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his landing on Manhattan Island by opening the old Van Cortlandt manor in Van Cortlandt Park as a public museum. As the years pass, Stuyvesant, like his co-worker Arendt van Curler, will be more highly appreciated. Have not the myth -makers, fabulous and funny fellows, had him long enough? " Every flood has its ebb," says the Dutch proverb. Out of these modest domines' homes, the seats of high intellectual culture and moral training, have gone forth many of the world's best workers. A little to the northeast of Dokkum is Metslawier, where was born, March 25, 1634, Balthasar Bekker, of whom God made a hammer for the destruction of superstition. This man dealt witchcraft that arch- enemy of Christianity and pure religion its dead- liest blow. His book, " The Bewitched World," published in 1691, took witch-hunting out of the list of sports of theologians and made witch-killing un- popular. When Dr. Voet bolstered superstition and wrested the Scripture to prove comets the precursors of calamity, Bekker protested against the notion in a learned work on comets. He was one of those noble spirits who see no " conflict " between science and religion. He was grandly helped by his wife, who with him hunted down every witchcraft story to its lair of lies. Bekker, as Busken Huet sug- THE LION CITY OF THE NORTH 77 gests, chained the devil in his den and kept him growling there, angry at losing his domain. He showed that this was God's world, and that He was in it. Yet Domine Bekker only put in print what thousands of Dutchmen already believed. He con- tinued the work begun by Dr. Wier. It is surely no accident of history that while the Puritans of Massachusetts and Connecticut put scores of witches to death, the Pilgrims, who had been eleven years in Holland, were free of the taint, making no allega- tion and hunting no witch. With that true Erasmian temper for which Dutch laymen have been ever happily noted, and thus able to curb that clerical and anti-Christ spirit which so often, whether Protestant or Romanist, masquerades under the name of "orthodoxy," the magistrates paid Bekker's salary even after he had been deposed from the ministry. For a century longer, candidates for license to preach had to clear their skirts of " Bekkerism." The parsons could not apparently bear to have the devil shorn of his traditional glory ; and, besides, Bekker exploded the idea of endless, though not of eternal, punishment. CHAPTER IX QUAINT HINDELOOPEN I MUST visit Hindeloopen, or Hinlopen, of which I had heard much, and which had sentimental asso- ciations with Cape Henlopen, in the little State called "The Blue Hen's Chickens." Around the Delaware Bay cluster many names left by Dutch navigators. Cape May is named, not after the flowery month, but in honor of the first European shipbuilder in America, that enterprising Hollander who launched his yacht, the Onrust, or Restless, and explored the whole southern, as Blok had ex- amined and mapped the northern, coast of New Netherland. It was he also, probably, who called Cape Henlopen after this little Frisian town which nestles behind the dikes of the Zuyder Zee. " Henlopen " is but a contraction of " Hinde- loopen," which means the hind loping, or the stag walking, the reference being, as the town arms sug- gest, to that Scripture, " Thou makest my feet like hind's feet." The bos-loper, that is, the bush or wood ranger, forerunner of the modern commercial traveler, or "drummer," was a colonial character. With the meaning of the word in " interloper " we are all familiar. I was once asked in central New York by a friend fond of pedestrianism, if I wished QUAINT HINDELOOPEN 79 to " lope," rather than ride, drive, " bike,"or go by rail. So in our Southern States, they make a horse " lope," but not " gallop." Perhaps they who founded the village in Fries- land, ages ago, coined the name in devout depend- ence on God, and in the faith of having as sure a foundation against the flood as is that of a rock for a gazelle. Anciently, the village stood on one of the old " terpen," or mounds, not far away from what was the Rhine current, flowing up through Lake Flevo to its mouth between the Texel and Vlieland. The great inburst of the sea, which formed the Zuyder Zee, pushed the water closer and made the little place even more of a seaport. To-day Hindeloopen stands like a great fortress, with mighty bulwarks all around it, the grassy dikes forming roadway and approaches as well as defenses. One need only visit its rich and neatly arranged museum to see how diverse has been its commerce, and how closely its fortunes were linked with the far-off Orient. Pro- ducts of the loom, the anvil, and the kiln are here from India, the golden Chersonese, the Middle King- dom, and Dai Nippon. A decade before there was a permanent English colonist in America, grumbling Britons, jealous of the Dutch and their enriching trade with the far east, wrote of " Indian naviga- tion, which hath been principiated in Holland and muttered of in England." Especially rich are the costumes, the curious old Frisian hats, bonnets, jewelry, and variegated woman's gear, with the in- terminable blue and white dress patterns, which remind one of Delft tiles, for the Dutch are fond of blue, whether in fictile or textile art. 80 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND In Hindeloopen's modern poverty, as compared with its ancient prosperity, it is probable that unless local pride hasten to the rescue of the treasures in its museum, they will become spoil to the Hebrew or the American, and be scattered, as other Dutch collections have been. Without announcing our coming or foretelling the hour, we are met at the station by one whom we recognize at once as the " Old Grimes " of the song we used to sing when, as boys playing soldiers, we camped at Valley Forge ; for, here he is, " all but- toned down before." His name is Van Elsilo. We jog along in his " one-hoss shay " to his cosy little hotel, " Stad van Herberg," next door to his bakery. He puts on his famous old coat with its several dozen silver buttons down the front. He lights his pipe, as long as a Korean's, which by its yard of stem separates the smoke from the fire by at least thirty-six inches. Then his vrouw prepares for us what is to be a toothsome dinner, flavored by deli- cious whiffs of salt sea air. After seeing to suste- nance, we two, that is, Old Grimes and I, walk out to see the town which is to-day gay with flags in honor of the visit of an ambassador of state, the Water State. He is the inspector of the Friesland dikes, and all the bunting in Hinlopen is on the breeze to welcome him. We call within some of the houses, which are well worth seeing. They are the relics of the days when commerce made the town rich. The walls from floor to ceiling are covered with old Delft tiles. No paper or plaster is necessary here. The shining QUAINT HINDELOOPEN 81 smooth surface, hard with enamel, catches no dust or dirt except what may be easily wiped off. Bacilli or germs, we imagine, would have trouble in living on this mineral surface. Such tiled walls are com- mon in basements of Dutch houses all over the realm, and are admirably suited to stand the mois- ture. Here, moreover, are true chambers of imagery. We see depicted Adam and Eve in Eden and their expulsion ; the inventive propensities of their de- scendants ; the flood ; the Egyptian exile ; the epochs and incidents of Syrian border ruffianism ; the acts related in the books of Judges, Kings, Chronicles, and the prophets ; episodes of the Babylonian exile and the Apocrypha ; the New Testament scenes and characters. The whole Biblical story is here told in ultramarine and white. Whether the people " live up to their blue China " or not is a question for poets and aesthetes who write of " proverbs in porcelain." In these days of Hinlopen's lost com- merce and lack of business, plain living is the rule, and close economy is a necessity. A half guilder or dubbeltje comes not amiss from the visitor to the visited. Besides the walls of tile, there are still extant a number of the old painted rooms and closet-beds. Wood carving evidently was once a fine art in this village. Like the human cuticle in old Japan, everything is cut or colored. Here are chairs, tables, mangles, book-racks, schoolboys' wooden satch- els, chests, toilet boxes, tool-handles, clock-cases, and various articles of furniture carved in more or less tasteful figures. Everything of wood on which the 82 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND knife has not come has had its face covered under pigments. Tables, chairs, clothes-presses, brush handles, boxes, bedroom steps, and closet doors are gorgeously painted, the colors being mostly red and azure, intermingled with other tints. The general effect reminds me of a coarse cloisonne ; or the fash- ion prevalent some years ago in our own country of pasting all sorts of colored pictures on screens, tables, and chairs, and then varnishing them over ; or of the later decalcomania. What was a passing fad in " the States " has been for many generations a well-approved fashion here. In the Mohawk valley region I have often seen bedrooms built into the wall like these, but the American copies lack the gay decoration, carving, and colors of the Friesish originals. Here are wooden closets, into which those going to bed climb by means of a staircase of three or four steps, to swim for a moment in a sea of feathers, and then sink by inches toward the earth's centre. Once inside, the sleepers can either leave the doors open or close them, since the lattice work in the shutters allows for circulation of air. With open fireplaces and chimneys in this diked town, which on this breezy day reminded me, because of its vista over the blue plain of the sea and over the low land, of Homer's "windy heights of Troy," there would be ventilation enough. Who does not remember the closet-beds in Josef Israels's paintings so rich in pathos ? Back to the hotel, I took my dinner in a room that was an old curiosity shop of treasures. Over SCRIPTURE HISTORY CARVED IN WOOD, BOLSWARD QUAINT HINDELOOPEN 83 the delicious salad, steak, potatoes, and coffee, I could look upon the sea which Mesdag so loves to paint, and enjoy the breezes. Then followed in- spection of the curiosities of Old Grimes, mangles, cake moulds, and hand sleighs. On these last sit the fat-cheeked beauties of Friesland, while Jan, with his long curved skates, ribbed woolen clothes, warm cap, and hot pipe, pushes the steel runners over the glassy ice, to church, to market, or to those famous contests on skates in which women as well as men are champions. We visited also the church, within and without, surrounded as it was with fishermen's gear, saw the little town hall, and such funny little things as the funny little village could show, heard plenty of local gossip, and then, as the sun was in the low west, were off with Old Grimes to the station, after a most delightful visit. It was a sentimental journey which I made to Harlingen. In days of old Rutgers, the man in our class of '69 who, in local college slang, was the most indefatigable " grind " and " dig," who always made the best or next best recitation, eschewed " ponies " in " getting out " his Greek, had a homely and freckled face, but who, of course, married one of the prettiest and best girls in his village, came from Harlingen, in New Jersey. Even though we knew his full name given by parents, which, in two of its three components, was that of the Father of his Country, we called him " Harley." I rode by rail from Leeuwarden to Harlingen, reaching this haven and seaport early in the after- 84 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND noon, to find a kermis in full blast. Here was gin- gerbread for sale by the foot, yard, rod, pole, or perch. There were bushels and tons of Deventer honey cakes, while a line of fires, like a row of Jap- anese tea-drying pans, or keramic kilns, was send- ing off, whithersoever the wind blew it, whiffs of the effluvia from hot oil which kept the " poffertjes " from scorching. Hundreds of urban and bucolic folk were busy chatting, dancing, or gaping at the shows. Flocks of children were in a riot of de- light. The townspeople talked good Dutch, but among the rustic groups of roisterers, or those " tripping the light fantastic toe," the talk was mostly in genu- ine Friesish. Out on the quays, beside the usual " bums " and " tjalks," were fine steamers loading with butter, cheese, and cattle for London and Hull. On the outskirts of the roadside was a gypsy camp, for even Holland cannot get rid of these reputed sons and daughters of the land of Rahab. I thought I knew how to pronounce the name Har- lingen. For had I not been in New Jersey, where, forgetful of the old Frisian hard #, they pronounce the name Harlinjen ? Using this incorrect sound before an educated gentleman in Leeu warden, I was reminded of that " Anglo-Saxon rj " in " begin, be- get, boggy," instead of " gem, giant, gyves," of old grammar lessons of which we boast. So I immedi- ately hardened my guttural. Yet what speaker of English can satisfy a Dutchman in pronouncing a Dutch g ? CHAPTER X FRANEKER, SNEEK, AND AMERICAN PRECEDENTS To Franeker I must come perforce, because here lived Amesius, as the Dutch call him. Dr. William Ames was an Englishman, a Cambridge graduate, and long a professor in the University here, making Netherland his second fatherland. He was poten- tially one of the founders of Massachusetts. Seeking a change of climate from the raw air of Friesland, he planned to cross the Atlantic with his family, a wife, son, and daughter. While waiting in Rotter- dam to take ship, a sudden inundation rose during the night, and the flood covered the floor of his sleeping-room. He stepped from his bed into the water, and died of the chill, November 1, 1633, in his fifty-sixth year. His widow and children the fol- lowing year sailed to America with Hugh Peters, the successor of Roger Williams in the Bay Colony, and later Cromwell's chaplain. They took with them the fine library which Dr, Ames had collected. Thus the flood in Rotterdam robbed America of his presence, and caused his grave to be made by the Maas instead of by the Merrimac. In Franeker University "lived, taught, and died" several other Scottish and English scholars and lovers of free- dom who found homes in America. 86 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND In Franeker dwelt also that tuneful and poeti- cal Englishman who, instead of choosing affliction with the people of God, preferred the pleasures and riches of the Dutch Egypt. It was not for him to cross the ocean's wilderness to the promised land. Jan Starter was his name. Many are his songs, fluent was his pen, and broad is his humor. Well preserved are his fame and his verses. Edition after edition of his poems has been published. Only last year (1894) did Professor Jan Ten Brink, of Leyden, write a charming novelette entitled "Jan Starter and his Wife." Franeker University also began that political sen- timent and agitation which resulted in the recog- nition of the United States of America, first by the states particular of Friesland, and then by the States General of the United Netherlands. I came by rail from Leeuwarden to the little an- cient city, passing midway on the right the village of Dronrijp, the birthplace of Alma Tadema, son of a Mennonite, and a great painter, who has made life among the vanished Greeks and Romans so real to us. Franeker's pretty town hall is one of the neatest in Friesland or in the kingdom. In an open space now full of trees, air, and sunlight, formerly stood a great church, which was blown to atoms in an ex- plosion of gunpowder. Another spot, made famous in picture and story, now indicated by a tablet, is that where the famous stadholder came near being drowned. Like every one else who reads Baedeker, I went to see what the man of the red book calls " the FRANEKER AND SNEEK 87 greatest curiosity of the place," which shows all the motions of the planets, the sun and the moon, with the utmost scientific accuracy. It was constructed by Eise Eisinga, a simple burgher of Franeker, in 1774-81. In a word, this maker of a miniature of the universe began his seven years' work when the colonies of Great Britain were insisting upon main- taining their ancient heritage of freedom. When he had completed it, he and his fellow townsmen of Franeker described a new constellation of thir- teen stars rising above the world's political horizon. Then did the students of the University, with songs and Latin poetry and a torchlight procession, make demonstrations in honor of the republic of thirteen States beyond the sea, whose very history seemed but a transcript of their own. Their contagious enthu- siasm moved the legislature of Friesland to take initial action and pass a vote recognizing the United States as an independent nation and John Adams as our national envoy. The story is told not only in ink, in contemporary newspapers, in statesmen's diaries, in Dr. Slothouwer's pamphlet, but also in the medals struck to commemorate the event. But where was the University, or rather, where were its relics ? Napoleon suppressed this " High School " in 1811, as he did also that of Harderwijk. It was a little too democratic, and its democracy too much of the right sort, to please him. Founded in 1585, six years after the Dutch union of states and four after their declaration of independence, it welcomed to its faculty the Puritan Dr. Ames. Its name was Friesland's High School and the National Athenaeum at Franeker. 88 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Unable to find by inquiry of chance passers-by on the streets the true inwardness of the case con- cerning the defunct University, I went into the town hall, whose noble fa$ade and charming architecture had attracted me, and inquired of one of the polite clerks. With a smile he beckoned me into a large room beyond the office, and in one moment I was ushered into the presence of the shades of great men. I felt like Dante when conducted by Virgil. I was awed at this exhibition of faces looking at me from the past. Not " twenty centuries," as Napoleon told his soldiers at the foot of the pyramids, but at least three of them looked down upon newcomers. Here were the painted portraits of Vitringa, Cocce- jus, Venema, Hemsterhuis, Schultens, Valckenaer, and many another theologian, philosopher, scholar, and critic. Most fascinating to me was the picture of Amesius, whose theology is still read by boers in the Transvaal and by gentlemen and farmers in the Netherlands. I afterward met a Utrecht graduate, who had won his degree by writing a thesis on the theology of Amesius. It was a delightful afternoon that I spent in this academic city of seven thousand inhabitants, where Coccejus, the father of modern Biblical criticism, and his fellow men of learning had so ably taught and left those thoughts which still influence our generation. Out of their rooted ideas many a fair flower of intellect blossoms to-day. They hastened that day when it shall be literally true, " The word of God is not bound." Fair is the story of this Frisian High School, as FRANEKER AND SNEEK 89 told in the illustrated volumes of Mr. B. S. Boeles. To a luminous text he adds pictures of edifices and medals. The bookbinder's stamp shows the collected arms of the cities of Friesland and the costume of the students in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- tury. Franeker's own shield, topped with a crown, is held by two female figures who, like Ceres, bear each a bundle of grain. On the shield is a bell. Now for " the Frisian Hague." As in metaphysics a thing is both absolute and relative, so, of course, to every provincial Dutchman, there is a Hague other than that which is the capital of the kingdom. There is not only the Hague, which needs no qualification, but also many a one with an adjective prefixed. In traveling through the eleven provinces I found, as I am inclined to believe, some- what more than eleven of these Hagues spoken of with admiration and local pride. Certain it is that my rosy-cheeked young Frisian at Dokkum was very serious in insisting that Heerenveen (the gentlemen's turf or sward) was " the Frisian Hague ; " and, judging from the stately trees, majestic avenues, and elaborate landscapes, he was not wrong. Heerenveen is in rather a dry region compared with that network of " meers " or seas, lakes, ponds, and natural and artificial streams which lies along a wide strip run- ning diagonally from the Lauwers Zee on the north- east to the Vrouwenzand on the southwest. These lakes are locally called " meers," or seas ; just as the English people, in the time of our Bible translation, named even a little pond a " sea," so that Lake Tibe- rias is still in " sacred English speech " the Sea of 90 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Galilee. So also the pond back of Plymouth, Mass., is named after that scapegrace and first typically mischievous American small boy in the Pilgrim Company, " Billington's Sea." Leaving Heerenveen behind me, I moved eastward over the pond-dotted landscape, with many a village having a name ending in " ryp " (pronounced ripe). This term was borrowed from the Latin, and means river-side, though name and situation do not always agree, for watercourses change and water dries often when words do not. I spent the afternoon and night in Sneek. Its name is pronounced like that of the reptile abhorred by all women, from the time of our mother Eve. Yet, if we may trust old Frisian, Sneek is corrupted from " schnitt," which means cut, or division, just as Schneider, or Snider, means a cutter with knife or spade. Whether it refers to the delving and the digging which precedes and belongs to the life of all Dutch towns, as in the case of Delft and Grave, and which was still going on vigorously even while I was there, I do not know. The body of no other country on earth is so gashed and gored, delved into and scratched, so full of incisions and scars, as is that of Holland. Yet, on the other hand, there are, speaking broadly, no mines, tunnels, or caves. On mention by a native of the derivation, there rose to my mind something like the " indistinct visions " of meat-pie in the brain of Dickens's fat boy. Of Schnitz as the name of an article of food, every rural Pennsylvanian knows, for a dish of " dump noodles and schnitts " is not to be despised. FRANEKER AND SNEEK 91 How is it made? Boil your ham with well-raised light dough, made in balls or dumplings, and with dried apples. Your sliced ham with the dumplings and apples, eaten with molasses, makes a dish, as I remember well, fit for any god that may live on the Alleghany Mountains or any other Pennsylvania Olympus. Let no poor imitation of the savory and delicious combination deceive one. A failure here is as sad as that expressed in the four 5's in bad Boston brown bread. Since all the local wiseacres and antiquaries of Sneek do not agree as to the derivation of its name, I shall take neither the time nor the risk of being dogmatic, especially in this decade of heresy trials. Reaching the little city, which has nearly twelve thousand people, I put up at the hotel Wijnberg, near which was a lively market and neat weigh house, for Sneek is famous for its butter and cheese. In the region around, the cows in their natural blankets of white and black, and almost consciously proud of their genealogy, probably outnumber the human beings occupying the rural districts. A band of musicians was playing, and all the young Sneekers seemed to be out for flirtation, aesthetic culture, to see and to be seen, or for general amusement. To the visitor who comes in the time of the yacht races, and is so happy as to receive an invitation at the hands and lips of some of these handsome Dutchmen to go on board to eat, drink, and be merry, while swiftly scudding over the waters, Sneek has powerful summer attractions. Otherwise there is little to charm the general visitor, and in winter 92 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND the surrounding landscape is bleak and desolate. The general run not of weather probabilities, but of weather certainties is rain, clearing, and chill, in strict alternation. No wonder Dr. Ames wanted to make a change and try even the east winds of New England ; where, if Mark Twain is to be trusted, there are, on some days, one hundred and thirty-three kinds of weather within twenty-four hours. CHAPTER XI DOKKUM AND OUR PAGAN FORBEARS AMONG the thousand things in nature and man to tell us that Friesland is our ancestors' home-land are the many originals visible to the eye and dear to the ear in the names themselves. All around us are places ending in " um," or home. In England an li is put before the vowel and liquid that make the sweet word. Country folks still say " hum " instead of home. The discrimination between house, or dwelling, and home, the lot or landed area, blunted in our modern speech and diction, is very clear in Frisian, and survives in the phrase about " eating one out of house and home." The titles of the ancient officers, " heim-raad " and " huis-raad," have become family names, as Himrod, Hoysradt, and so on. Let us visit one of these ancient homes, Dokkum. Riding from Veenwoude northward past many places ending in " woude," or " wold," we reach Dokkum, the place of St. Boniface's martyrdom. The neat and handsome tram-car is well occupied with substantial looking farmer gentlemen and their wives. The women's dresses, fashionably trimmed and cut and of excellent quality, are of the nine- teenth century, while on their heads, between hair 94 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND and hat, is the golden skullcap with metal rosettes and pendants fronting- the ear. Inside the town, on making inquiry for the En- gelsche Ouderwyzer, I am led by a polite native to the school and house where he lives. A fine look- ing but slightly built young Frisian conies out, and therewith begins a pleasant acquaintance which lasts many days beyond that on which he served me so kindly as guide, philosopher, and friend. It is a lovely day in July. The weather is glo- rious, the landscape superb, and the air so clear that everything in the distance looks close at hand. I am reminded of Colorado sunshine, with its power to annihilate distance as measured by the eye. We are enjoying the third division of the regular order of weather in Friesland ; that is, we are in the third day of that series of three heat, thunderstorm, and cold which succeed each other as regularly as stripes in the national flag. Its complete har- mony with the tri-color helps to make the Dutch- man patriotic. A red day of heat is succeeded by a white day of lightning, and then comes a blue day of cold, when the heavens are as sapphire, the air pure, and the sunlight golden. Every one is swathed in woolen, even though it is July. At the town hall we call upon the burgomaster. This magnate turns out to be a most agreeable gen- tleman, as friendly as an American, as polite as a Frenchman, and as hospitable as an Englishman at home. Everything in the little Stadhuis is polished and shining. In the council room are fine alto-relief imitations and wall paintings by an unknown artist, DOKKUM AND OUR PAGAN FORBEARS 95 telling in miniature the fourfold story of Dok- kum. The first represents the rise from heathen- ism and the entrance of Christianity. The second tells of the uprising of the people and the crusades for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. The third depicts the intellectual victory of the Reformation, the breaking of the seals, and the victory of truth over error. The fourth recounts in symbol the boun- tiful blessings which come from agriculture and commerce. The three letters S. P. Q. are here, as in most of the Netherlandish cities, set forth in gold, meaning Senate and People (of Dokkum). The municipal shield has three stars under a crescent with a crown at the top. Another picture represents a Frisian burgomaster resisting gifts from the Duke of Sax- ony. With this nobleman the relations of Dokkum at certain epochs were very close. Once Dokkum had water connection with the sea, but now there are no fishing vessels in the town. The Admiralty House, built for the men who did business in great waters, still stands. The old edifice has been " re- stored," and is now used as an almshouse for the poor. The ancient bulwarks are leveled into grassy oblivion. There is no more any danger of Dokkum suffering a " Spanish fury," as it once did in 1569, when Robles de Billy let his war dogs loose to plun- der and to ravish. There are fewer gold and silver shops than of yore, for the peasants are not so rich as formerly, the trade of this northern province having greatly decayed. Nevertheless, I did my part to revive business by purchasing some of the pretty 96 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND silver spoons with carnelian handles, and other trin- kets in filigree, or of peculiar Frisian fashion, for children and friends at home. We three then sauntered through the little city to the suburb of Murmerwoude to see the well of Boniface, or Winifred. Dokkum has but four thou- sand people, but it is clean and pleasant, with shin- ing tile roofs, immaculate window-panes, a club- house, and civilization in miniature. I saw many pretty girls and children with plump hands and feet. There seemed to be a mania for brass pol- ishing. Everything that was metal was made to shine as gold or silver. This may have been be- cause it was Saturday, but the maids seemed to be scouring the brass as if the secrets of alchemy lay in friction, and they would turn base metal into gold. The water in the grachts appeared to be unusually clear. There are two legends as to the origin of Boni- face's fountain, or well. One is that water rose from the earth at the stroke of his rod. The other avers that it sprung up under his horse's hoof. In the olden time, and even down to about 1880, people came from great distances to wash their feet in the holy water as it ran from the pool. During one pe- riod the guild of beer brewers possessed it. Now both the pool and the land adjoining it are the pro- perty of the city. The water, which is at present about fifteen metres in diameter and two deep, never fails. In times past, attempts have been made while cleaning the hollow to dry the bottom, but fed by the springs which have their reservoirs in the dis- DOKKUM AND OUR PAGAN FORBEARS 97 tant hills over on yonder horizon, the water ever bursts up afresh. Like a great bright eye on the face of the land- scape is this pool, open to the sky, where flows " the river of God which is full of water," which keeps it brimming. The overflow runs by a trench to a great filter under a pump, a quarter of a mile nearer the main road, where is the traditional market- place and site of martyrdom of the holy missionary. Here, on the 9th of June, A. D. 755, Boniface was slain in the pagan reaction against a Christianity which was too Roman to suit the spirit of the free and always fiercely patriotic Frisians. Dokkum was not the only town that suffered in the alternate ebb and flow of paganism. To the east and northeast of the pool are some remains of old dikes, now covered with waving grass. These were built long ago by the Duke of Saxony to keep out the sea water. On the old city bastions the axes of the windmills gyrated hilariously and their sails cast merry moving shadows over the sward, but the lively breezes failed to stir anything in the graveyards beneath. The fields around were richly covered with tall wheat in the ear, areas of mustard yellow as gold. Long lines of trees, with branches wind-blown all one way, seemed on the march like troops. Apparently sailing over the landscape were sloops, red-sailed and turf-laden. Processions of carts, full of black earth from the " terpen," helped to give an animated picture to the eye. In sheltered fields rye was growing, and here and there were patches of chicory with tall stems 98 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND and blue flowers. One of the windmills had red sails, and under it a dimple-cheeked Frisian sailor and his sweetheart were walking together, "waist- ing their time " in a manner mutually delightful. Further down the road toward Veenwoude were great round stacks of air-dried peat. Many houses had the bricks in the edges of their front gables wrought into curious zigzag patterns, as may be seen yet in old Schenectady. White-tailed birds were bobbing around. I saw companies of German farm laborers from East Friesland, who had crossed the frontier to work during hay and barley harvest. Both man and scythe seemed wonderfully primitive. The snath was not modern and American-like, but ancient and picturesque, reminding me of Hoi man Hunt's pictures of old England. In front of one farmhouse was a stork's nest on a platform twelve feet high, built by the human inhabitants for this feathered St. Simeon Stylites. Whether the stork's visits had been made metaphorically and with fre- quency to the nursery, as well as actually in the yard, and this post for the nest had been erected out of gratitude, I did not know ; but, certainly; babies and cradles are very common in Frisian homes. This province furnishes a noble contingent of civilizers to our own great Northwest, to the colo- nies in South Africa, and to the East Indies. In the distance the acres were dotted with hay- cocks and barley sheaves. Elsewhere men were spreading the rich clay, laboriously hauled for miles from the " terpen," or mounds, to spread over the sandy soil and thus make fertility. DOKKUM AND OUR PAGAN FORBEARS 99 Indeed, throughout Netherland, the difference be- tween barrenness and verdure, habitation and deso- lation, village and heath, is that between sand and clay. On the clay all life thrives. On the sand only heather, furze, or scrub-pine can exist. A patch of sea-clay in a heath, or a bank of alluvium near a river, means green fields, brick houses and red-tile roofs, and plenty of cows and men. In Friesland clay is actually bought for cash as a fertilizer of the sand. In our day, as I see with my own eyes, history is yielding to science and antiquity to agriculture. Nearly all the villages in " Free Frisia " are built on " terpen," or mounds. In this birthplace of the Teutonic town-meeting, the town, or "tuin," was of necessity built on a hillock, either natural or artificial. As matter of fact, these ele- vations were usually " half-and-half," as the Dutch say of a certain preprandial drink. In the days before dikes, when the sea or river stream was at any stormy moment liable to flood the country, the " terp," though but a mound, was a high place of refuge. Equipped with a ditch and palings, or hedge ("tuin" or town), the "terp" also served as a fortification in the dry-weather time of war, and foiled also the assaults of the wild beasts of prey, once so common in this region. Often the " terp," which is but cousin to the word " dorp," became in time the foundation of the Groote Kerk, and anon a permanent village, town, or city. In some cases, however, it remained a solitary and forgotten land- mark, not unfrequently rich in trees, the delight of picnickers, of shade-loving cows, the centre of local 100 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND folk-lore, the resort of the delving antiquary. Rich are the spoils in the museums of Leeuwarden and Groningen unearthed from the " terpen." Now, however, the unsentimental chemist has dis- covered in these mounds potential mines of gold. The deposits and remains of animals, their ordure and their bones, accumulating during many centu- ries, and the quality of the clay have produced just the sort of compost which the cultivator of ungener- ous sand-fields requires. The clay of the " terp " lards well the lean sand. Hence, despite sentiment, an army of men with pick and shovel have leveled many a Frisian mound, as I see them doing to-day. The committee of antiquarians from the museums stands by with rakes to secure the skulls, bones, stone combs, masses of rust, once weapons, and relics of all sorts and of many ages. On the top are buttons, horseshoes, bits of modern crockery, and other trifles of our century. Lower down are me- diaeval amulets, saints' gear of several sorts. Further toward the profound are images of Mercury, Apollo, Venus, or fragments of the Roman man in war or peace. Last of all are the bone needles, stone tools, and pottery of our primitive ancestors. In short, one sees a series of strata in these mounds which recalls Dr. Schliemann's revelations at Ilium. The carts carry away the fattening clay to spread over the potato, rye, and wheat fields, while the happy owner gains not only a new and rich level field, but also guilders by the ten thousand. One "terp," long neglected, except for timber, as a nearly useless bit of " bosch " (woodland), which I saw being dug DOKKUM AND OUR PAGAN FORBEARS 101 into as eagerly as bridesmaids cut into a wedding cake, netted $25,000. The small mountain of clay was sold on the spot for so much a ton, the pur- chasers carting off the new fertilizer at their own expense. Hard as it is for the Frisian boer to com- pete with the American farmer, the " terpen " clay has come to his door as opportunely as did the marl of New Jersey, or the phosphate beds of South Caro- lina, to their farmers. I persuaded my Frisian friend to supplement his occasional halting English with Dutch or Frisian words. I was interested in finding many of them exactly like those used in the region of the Hudson and Mohawk, as the "fuyk" (net), "aal" (eel), "boght" (bend), "morgen" (half acre), "wyf" (wife). Frisian is still spoken by the country people, who think the dialect mighty and melodious, and who refuse to give it up, though every effort is made in the schools and towns to compel the use of Dutch in conversation and trade, as well as in the schools, courts, and churches. The ancient Frisians did not like to live in towns, and the peasants are much like their ancestors to this day. Those Frisians who do live in cities and cling to their ancestral speech use an execrable mixture of both languages, which is often the occasion of jesting and mockery by either rivals or critics who hold to the one and despise the other. As a rule, in language, as in politics or trade, no man can serve two masters. In reality, the " city Frisian " is mainly seventeenth century Dutch. Before railways and steamers invaded this region, 102 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND before Holland, the most commercial of all the eleven provinces, covered the fields and streets of Friesland with an army of business agents, before judges and royal officers settled in large numbers in this northern province, while the local nobility en- tered the army or went to live at the Hague, the speech of all, high and low, poor and burgher, was Friesish. " In those halcyon days," writes my cice- rone, now become correspondent, " every one, noble and peasant, spoke pure Frisian ; now, alas, Dutch is the more civilized language, and a great many Frisians, that is the townspeople, do not know the beauties of their own native tongue." In the good old days of seclusion, the people of this province formed a nation within a nation. Then Frisia was a happy land and " a garden sealed." Then it was quite easy to believe the old chroniclers, who told of Frisians who had gone all over the world to found cities and dynasties. These stories read like the marvels in Lempriere's Classical Diction- ary, and, alas, like these, are manifestly but fungus growths of myth upon dead words. The modern Frisian who masters philology and reads critical his- tories can no longer accept the popular etymolo- gies. Of many of the golden fables which in Frisian 44 terp " and " dorp," in farmhouse and castle, long passed for actual facts, the only basis has been in a disease of language. Let us glance at some of these colossal mushroom growths of mythology. One chronicler avers that Frisians founded Athens, which is called Friends, and also Marseilles, which is named Masselia, that is, a bad bargain, in old DOKKUM AND OUR PAGAN FORBEARS 103 Frisian. It is written that Frisians first visited the tin mines of England, that they named them Scilly, and banished thither their criminals ; that Frisians were on Nearchus's fleet in India, and that even the Greeks, who, in the time of Cadmus and Cecrops, had colonies planted among them, owe Friesland a debt of gratitude for their civilization ; that the burning lamps of the Vestals of Rome had their origin in the rites of Frisian worship. Even our old friend Neptune was nothing more than a Frisian pirate who frequented the Mediterranean Sea, for is not his name in Frisian " Nef Tunis," that is, Cousin Tunis ? May not, then, American Dutchmen named Teunis be inclined to trace their genealogy back into the myths of Frisco-Roman antiquity ? These golden-haired and blue-eyed people even argue that their ancestors gave the Himalaya Mountains their name, " wher ja de Himmel laya hinne," where you can reach the sky. Indeed, not more wonderful in color, form, and power than the sublimed products of coal tar are the iridian films that float on the stream of legend and fancy, beneath which lie the words that are almost worshiped. No Chinese or Welshman clings to his ancestral speech more tena- ciously than does the Frisian boer. After comparing the Frisian vocabulary and sen- tences either with the Scotch or with the English of over a thousand years ago, one wonders no longer that both the Englishmen, Wilfrid in the eighth and Winifred in the ninth century, were able to come over from England and talk to these people without an interpreter. How and why the latter, 104 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Boniface, came to die the martyr's death, will doubt- less be told in one way by the Roman Catholic his- torians, who wish to confirm the approved theories and version of their history, and in an entirely dif- ferent way by ultra-Protestant and radical German historians, who aim to glorify their race, ancestry, theology, and church polity. GRONINGEN CHAPTER XII GRONINGEN: PROVINCE AND CITY GRONINGEN, or the green province, is the most northeastern of the eleven divisions of the kingdom. It stretches between the heaths and morasses of Drenthe and the salt-water shallows of the North Sea. Lying next to Prussia as it does, it holds the gateway into Germany through which, from the dawn of history, Teutonic invaders have entered, and through which, in reverse order, Roman armies have marched. The great Bourtange morass defends it from the entrance of armies, and only in the north- ern part can an invasion be made. Here, therefore, where the railway enters, is one of the strong mod- ern fortresses of the kingdom, guarding what is as important as a mountain pass. Three centuries ago much of this region was swamp land, a terror in winter, a festering mass in summer. By unremitting toil, continued during many generations, the soil has been rescued to fer- tility, canals have been cut, drains everywhere made, and dikes built. Steadily the dragon of malaria and the ghosts of sterility have been driven back. Now the golden fleece spread over the landscape invites the children of men not only to work, but to play and to happiness. Eight centuries ago only 108 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND six hundred square miles in Nederland were beyond the reach of the tides. Twenty times this amount, or twelve thousand square miles, have been won from river, sea, and lake by dikes and drainage. With such a record, the Dutchman may drain the Zuyder Zee and add eight hundred square miles to his national domain. From Winschoten of pleasant memory I started westward again for the city of Groningen, passing on the way one of those places called Hoogezand, or high sand, which always remind me of the Japanese Takasago, of exactly similar meaning and the theme of one of their classic operas, where live the old yet perpetually young genii who preside over marriage and that wedded love which in fairy tale and often in reality is never outworn. The ancient lore of Japan locates the place in Formosa. As to the history of the city of Groningen, some writers find its beginnings in a camp or fortification of the Roman general Corbulo. Others derive its name from one Gruno. The Northmen ravaged the place in A. D. 837. In 1110 it was walled round and defended with moats. A Christian church was here A. D. 1040. The city was then called Gruoninga. It had its share of wars and sieges in the frequent contentions between bishop, count, and emperor. The University was founded in 1614, as a memo- rial of the deliverance of the city and province from Spanish rule. When Prince Maurice liberated the city and province in 1594, plans for a " High School " were at once formed, but because of war and poverty twenty years elapsed before the plan was consummated. GRONINGEN : PROVINCE AND CITY 109 Among many literary treasures which I enjoyed seeing in the University Library were the manu- scripts of Maerlant bound in parchment. These parchments, when yellow or dark with age, like the teeth of Judah, may be made " white with milk," for nothing, I am told, cleanses old " perkament " like the fresh product of the cow. As handsome as print seemed much of this early Dutch poet's writ- ing. Having already a copy of Ubbo Emmius's History, I was glad to see this critical historian's letters and papers. Another thick book of manu- scripts of Gerhardus Groote, from which the printed accounts have since been made, was a fine specimen of the scholar's work, done before the printing-press or the typewriter came into vogue. The Latin School at Groningen was one of several founded by Groote and the Brethren of the Common Life. Greatest of all the treasures I saw here was Luther's copy of the New Testament of Erasmus, containing the received text of " King James's Ver- sion" of the English Bible. Along with the Greek text were notes and comments in Latin by the great scholar of Rotterdam. On its stout leaves also were annotations, underscorings, and remarks, not always complimentary, by Martin Luther, who had read it evidently with eagerness and critical judg- ment. The great German father of modern Bibli- cal criticism shows himself here in a very free mood. In one place it is " Ya ! Ya ! ; " in another " nihil " (nothing) ; again, " recht " (right) ; again, a sen- tence which we translate, " You are not religious ; " again, " non " (not) ; again, " I '11 have you, you 110 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND rogue ! " One feels very near the fathers of the Reformation as he looks on this treasure containing truth which no fire can reduce to ashes. In the senate chamber were the portraits of the great teachers, among which I was glad to see that of Ubbo Emmius, whose works our own Madison, Father of the Constitution, read carefully. The history of the University, whose motto is a Bible, verba Dei, a light to the feet, was written and published in 1864 on its quarter-centennial anniver- sary, by W. J.*A. Jonckbloet, then Hector Magni- ficus. This gentleman, a natural son of a king of the Netherlands, and traveler in the United States, is well known as the historian of Dutch literature (Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letterkunde). He compiled the " Gedenk Boek," or memorial volume, with his usual conscientiousness and literary grace. In 1894 the three hundredth anniversary of the deliverance of the city by Maurice was celebrated with an imposing procession in costume, which re- produced the dress, habits, and incidents of the event of three centuries before. In its spirit Groningen has always allied itself to that meditating school of theology which we might name the Ethico-Irenical. It lays emphasis upon the supreme necessity of a pure moral life, seeking to harmonize the various tendencies and aspects of thought, and to unite even those which seem to be in a hostile position to each other. The archives of the city of Groningen show that the province of this name began its evolution into modern life through the growth of the city republic, GRONINGEN : PROVINCE AND CITY 111 which absorbed the Ommelanden, or surrounding districts. Of our old Friesland home the western >part is Dutch, the eastern part is German. The city, by gradually dominating the eastern part of Frisia, made the province of Groningen. This, like that of Utrecht, takes its name from its chief city. It was in 1428 that these political arrangements were consummated. Municipal development was largely influenced by popular religious life. There were forty-three cloisters within the city's bounds. Then, as now, the great church of St. Martin was the most imposing edifice for worship. The ar- chives, stored in their handsome new depository, are rich in records of the old brotherhoods and sister- hoods. Political, religious, and industrial prosper- ity went on apace. One set of symbols seen fre- quently in Groningen is the crossed sword and file, with the rising sun in the background. These tools of the soldier and the workman, with the motto, " Vindicat atque pollit " (he defends and then im- proves), refer to valiant guardianship and the peace and civilization which followed with toil. Standing on a great plain, Groningen is easily visible from afar because the splendid tower of St. Martin rises up against the horizon. In 1891 and 1892 I was unable to appreciate its charm, for it was then covered with a scaffolding. But in 1895 I found stone and timber divorced from each other, a happy emblem of the separation of church and state. The tower, cleansed and restored, had recov- ered its youth and beauty, and on the bright new stone was a tablet telling the story of the renovation. 112 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND On the new sun-dial placed on the south front I read the time 1.30 p. M., and the sweet chimes I remember yet. The edifice suffered even in times before the Spanish occupation, when the great " image-storm " of the Iconoclasts burst in a fury which swept out of it its images, emblems, and a hideous relic, the arm of John the Baptist. There are other fine churches in this city. One stands at the end of a long square west of the fish- market ; and a splendid new Roman Catholic church is also noticeable. Most of the elegant new church buildings in the Netherlands belong to the Roman form of the faith. It is unfortunate, as it is un- christian, that the various sectarians boycott one another, each helping his own. From the tremendous amount of whitewashing done by the Dutch in their sacred edifices, covering up ancient pictures on wall and column and obliter- ating mediaeval monuments of art, a stranger might imagine that the Protestants worshiped whitewash, or that at least a cultus in honor of some old heathen god named Calx, or goddess Alba, still survived. Of the islands, Texel, Vlieland, and Terschelling belong to North Holland ; Schiermonnikoog, Bosch, and Rottum to Groningen. They are not over-popu- lated, and in them it is always afternoon. Asking about the condition of things there, I was informed that it was one of still life ; that a cannon planted in the centre, loaded with grape, and fired in many directions would not be likely to hit anybody. CHAPTER XIII STORIES TOLD BY RELICS AND ARMS PROBABLY no people pay closer attention to their archives, or keep them in better order, than do the Dutch. One of my most pleasing experiences in Groningen was a visit in 1895 to the splendid new fireproof building in which the archives of the pro- vince are preserved. It is built of stone, with brick floors and fittings of iron, and is well lighted and ventilated. Everything is in perfect order, and the contents are well indexed. The " archivist " is Mr. Feith, a worthy scion of an old and illustrious family in the pi*ovince. With unfailing courtesy he showed me the treasures which time has spared. One docu- ment gives on its parchment pages the provincial laws from 1200 A. D. A great line of demarcation in Dutch history was drawn A. D. 1795 between mediaeval feudalism and modern democracy. In this year, through the in- fluence of the French Republic, all guilds, privileged orders, and companies ceased by law. Here, also, are the interminable annals of the cloisters, with thousands of lives of abbots. One may see also the silver-lidded, begemmed, and gorgeously bound re- cord-books of the trade guilds. These were all broken up by the French Revolution, which in spirit and 114 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND form overflowed into the Netherlands, abolishing monopoly, privilege, and the inheritances from feu- dal society. Noticeable in these archives, as well as in the city, is the abundance of Scottish names. These show how much closer three centuries ago than now were the interests which bound the men of rock and heather to their brethren of the swamp and sand, whose languages, descended from the same common ancestors, are so much alike. The new and elegant museum stands at the end of Gansevoort Singel, fronting the Zuyder haven. Here are gathered up the relics of the past. An old wooden book -box shows that the schoolboy's bag was first made of timber before it evolved into a leather satchel. It carried the horn book, which it was made to sheathe, before it bore stitched and printed volumes. The old schoolmaster was a lictor and judge. More indispensable than the sailor's spanker boom was the " Map," consisting of a wooden handle and disk, which fitted to and warmed up the small boy's seat. In an old edition of the Mennon- ite Van Braght's " Martyrs," or " Bloody Theatre," I have seen the picture of a Roman schoolmaster and Christian condemned to be tortured to death by his pagan pupils. He holds in one hand his " klap," while the lads stick quill pens in his flesh, and boat him with their wooden satchels and horn books. The emblems and treasures of the old guilds were delightful to look at. I could imagine myself back in Japan, where I used to see the potters, bronze- smiths, and jewelers, " putting their brains into their STORIES TOLD BY RELICS AND ARMS 115 work," and showing individual taste and humor in their handicraft. Here are finely carved boxes, once the property of the bakers', coopers' and shoe- makers' guilds, used for records or to receive the gifts of the benevolent. The alms-box of the book- sellers' guild is shaped like an acorn, but since " book " is from beech, one would think this might have been in the form of a beechnut. The butchers have a tablet. On a hotel-keeper's sign is a picture of Christ at Emmaus breaking bread, a favorite subject with Rembrandt. I am glad to salute a brother craftsman, dust or turf though now he may be as to his body, one Hendrik Muntinghe, who made a silver coffee-pot as a proof piece for ad- mittance into the silversmiths' guild. The rattan handle, non-conductor of heat, showed that he had some regard for the nerves of the lady who was to pour out the steaming liquid. Here, as elsewhere in this country of heavy drink- ers, one is impressed with the vastness and variety of the horns, beakers, goblets, and mugs. These are older than tea and coffee pots and cups and saucers, even as alcohol is, in Europe at least, older than theine. I admire a prize design for the Heiligerlee monu- ment. It was well worthy of a prize. Certainly, the one in place is not beyond criticism as a work of art. In old Groningen, it seems, the country folk were mostly of Frisian, and the townspeople largely of Saxon origin. This province is not so rich in heral- dic devices, and town arms are not so numerous as 116 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND in the two Hollands, or in North Brabant, though here are not a few seals in steel and silver. Note on the shield of the metropolis a double-necked and two-headed eagle, and above it a crown. On either side stands another bird of like breed on one foot, propping up the blazonry with wing and claw. Ap- pingadam has the favorite Dutch symbol, the same which William of Orange inscribed on his banners, of the young pelicans feeding on blood from the mother's breast. Middelstum has a knight on foot in full armor girt with sword, holding an upright lance ready for horse or joust ; Bredewold, a warrior on horseback, about to transfix a dragon through his throat ; Adawart (Gijlvest), an equestrian un- armed. Oudepekela boasts a ship of mediaeval build floating on the waves, with six turf bricks on its shield ; Winschoten has the figure of a monk, student, or clerk, with an open book in his hand. Others show two tiger lilies thriving handsomely; a rampant eagle above the railing of a sluice gate ; a great church with four spires, on all of which are crosses, and on one is the crowing cock. Among emblems new to my acquaintance, at least, is the highly fantastic long-tongued lion of Finster- wolde, with a triple tail, like a Japanese goldfish, a very Dolly Varden among lions. Beerta shows us the martyred St. Lawrence, with a gridiron in his hand and an aureole encircling his head. Lopper- zaan has the sword and key. Sappemeer informs us, by a plough above the waves, how Dutch farm- ers subdue the ocean. Uithuizermeeden has a mer- maid caught within the paling of a polder. Sheaves ARMS OF THE TOWNS IN GRONINGEN STORIES TOLD BY RELICS AND ARMS 117 of wheat and a clover leaf over the motto " Ex undis " tell of Uithuizen. A winged Mercury and two modern and effeminate-looking Vulcaus stand on opposite sides of the shield of Delfzijl, while a fouled anchor and the hammer and the caduceus are added. Wiusum has the winsome picture of a knight with pen and spear. He is riding a black horse, with his lady on a pillion behind him ; and a star is in the rear. This device reminds one of an early American colonist going to church. Bierum shows a house rising above the waves ; Ulrum, the old home of the Frisian pagan's ice god, on the lower half of the shield, two fishes, and on the upper half, a six-pointed star inside of a cres- cent ; Midwolda, a large church with five stars over it ; Bellingwolde, a massive basilica ; Beedum, the two tables of the law laid upon the spade and cross. The American might, for his town arms, cross the rifle and the axe on the Ten Commandments, de- spite the Kansas politicians' suggestion that the lat- ter have no place in practical politics. Baflo has a lone star. Old Stedum boasts a knight with drawn sword. New Wildervank displays an honest heap of turf, with a modern-looking man in rolled-up trousers, one hand resting on the shield and the other on a turf spade. Upon the arms of the older communities are wrought various relics in every style of graphic symbol. The maps and charts show how glorious Gro- ningen appeared in the old days of war. Then, with her mighty moats, imposing gates, and sixteen bas- tions, she defied her enemy. History here moves in 118 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND procession from the unlettered knight of the dim past to the present well-educated private soldier. Prehistoric life on the " terpen " (here called " wier- den ") is illustrated by relics bearing on them marks of human workmanship, the great stag horns and bear's teeth ; flutes, combs, styluses and awls, pick- axes and hammers, fashioned from bone ; chisels, arrow and spear heads, scrapers, burnishers, and coffins made of stone. Then follows the age of bronze. Here are scissors and bracelets, shield bosses and scales, weapons to thrust, cut, and shoot with, or to hurl. In imagina- tion we tramp with the Romans, as they inarch with Drusus or Corbulo, look out from the tumuli over the North Sea, or move eastward to their destruc- tion at Teutoberg. In the days of the legions, the landscape must have been vastly different from our time, only alternate hard land and morass. Here are coins, copper and silver, the soldier's honor- medals, mantle holders, safety pins, and knick- knacks of all sorts, once made in Italy, and dug up from the soil of this city. The Christian emblems are next in order of time. A great baptismal font of stone from Eenrum is big enough for Radbod to have stood in knee deep. On this very day we find that the janitor's child, in his play, has hidden his toy horse and wagon in it. An- other font from Dorkweerd is literally a great tub, in which people were immersed. Amber ornaments are abundant. The old copper church basins are quaintly engraved. Indeed, the number of basins is wonderful. In the days before forks, and eveu STORIES TOLD BY RELICS AND ARMS 119 down to the seventeenth century, finger bowls after eating were a thrice daily necessity, and such are most of these copper vessels for cleansing hands after meals. Many relics are survivals of the Span- ish time, such as a hooped cannon or bombardier of the fifteenth century, which tumbled into the canal, slept in the ooze for three centuries, to wake up, like some Rip Van Winkle, beside the Krupp can- non of to-day. Certain iron helmets with their vi- zors are from a church, which might almost be called Ting-a-ling, for it has the tintinnabulous name, Kerk Te Tinallinge. Near the headgear are old fossil gauntlets. The age of tobacco is well illustrated. Beside the ancient pipes is a package of the weed prepared during the French rule, when the product of Vir- ginia was the monopoly of the state. An old iron fireplace back shows the Annunciation, and another, Mercury sitting at a bellows. In the rear of the University a bit of old fortifi- cation still recalls the siege of Groningen by the Bishop of Miinster, ally of the French Louis XIV. Then it was that the phrase " chevaux de Frise " came into military language. The wooden abatis, which looked like creatures with heads and legs, were dubbed " horses of Frisia." In one form or another, they have been the hobby of defenders ever since. I saw miles of them in front of Lee's intrenchments. Our boys remember them well be- fore Petersburg. Such war horses must be fought with fire and axes. In much later time the Groningen students formed 120 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND a company under the banner of the kingdom. Here is a figure of a Flankeur of 1830, with flint- lock musket, on whose cap front is the orange button, the crossed sword and file, and the motto " True to King and Fatherland," the crown bearing the letter W for King William. Many of the lads, leaving the class-room, fought in the war of 1830. Near by is the banner of the Metal Cross Union. A reader of Hawthorne is interested in seeing a picture of the Kaak, or Schandaal, which once stood in the great marketplace of the city. The words mean " pillory " or " scandal-post." This was nothing less than the judgment seat, and the Teutonic origi- nal of the same which Hawthorne, in his " Scarlet Letter," has made so vivid to us. Above the seat, with its steps and railing, was a pole rising from the centre, with the figure of Justice on its top. In the old Dutch cities the market square almost al- ways an open green or common was the centre of popular gatherings as well as for public display and official advertisement of both honor and shame. The Saxo-Frisians introduced this feature of town life into England, and thence their descendants brought it into America. Looking from my hotel window into the market square, I called back in imagination the half-naked Teutons in skins, the Romans in shining brass, the first Christian missionaries with the cross, the Span- iards in their steel, the Dutch liberators and their English allies. Each of these, in his turn, was a representative of his day. Now at last come the Salvation Army and the great host of physicians to STORIES TOLD BY RELICS AND ARMS 121 usher in the day when the preservation of life and the saving of the soul shall be deemed more im- portant than the warrior's craft and the trade of war. So may the Netherlands ever love the vic- tories of peace, and our country ever be " The Great Pacific Power." DRENTHE CHAPTER XIV DRENTHE HEATHS AND GIANTS' GRAVES DREXTIIE is the most thinly inhabited of the eleven divisions of the kingdom. It is set like a wedge between the three other northern provinces, is entirely inland, having no seacoast, borders on Germany, and is the poorest of all the provinces. But one railway traverses it, and that from north to south, though in the southwestern corner another line runs for a few miles from Meppel. No large rivers flow within its boundaries, though a number of small streams act as drains. Most of these go by the name of Aa, a word which means water. Various artificial highways, canals, or " vaarten," help to keep Drenthe from being a stagnant morass. In the western parts there is a line of sandhills, but we miss here the term " berg," so freely used in other provinces, meaning hills, or even what natives fondly consider to be mountains. For compensation, the terminations " veen," or turf, and " wold," heath or prairie, are abundant. No very small villages or communities having less than eight hundred people are found in Drenthe, and its cities number but four, Assen, the capital, in the north and centre, Meppel, Hoogeveen, and Coevorden, along the south- ern border. Its total area is 1032 square miles, and its population 135,000. 126 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Yet Drenthe has advantages all its own. It is not likely, as are the other provinces which touch the sea, to be drowned out in case of flood or tidal wave, for the greater part of its area is many metres above the ocean's highest water. Hence Drenthe spends no money upon sea dikes or walls, and there is not a custom house in the province. Though traversing this least-peopled province three different times on the iron rail, it was not until July, 1895, that I could take leisure on foot to examine its two especial peculiarities. These are its wonderful heaths, so rich in all that pleases an artist's eye, and the " hunnebedden," or " giants' graves," relics of the prehistoric days. A young lady friend in Groningen pictured to me the splendors of color and the wonderful changes of light on the heaths at sunrise and sunset. In glow and shadow, in dry and moist weather, there was variety enough to charm a poet. So I resolved to see these marvel- ous moors, to which painters come from all parts of Europe. Taking a very early morning train, I rode between chicory gardens, acres of fluffy, cotton-like wild flowers, crossed the Drentsche Aa, or water, and was soon over the border of this furzy land of turf. Getting off at Assen, the pretty little capital city, I set my face toward Germany, walking for an hour, from 8.30 A. M., over the clean brick road, which in places was being repaired. On either side groups of men were in the underbrush cutting the saplings into pieces about two feet long. These fagots they tied into bundles, of about a dozen pieces, with DRENTHE HEATHS AND GIANTS' GRAVES 127 withes, the leaves of which were left on, as a neat decoration. These were to be fuel for heating waf- fle-irons, and for baking the " poffertjes," regarded by the people during Kermis as a great delicacy. During summer heats men couie from Over-Ijssel, and farther south, in large numbers to cut this fes- tive fuel. I reached Rolde and admired its overarching trees, which seemed to form a cathedral aisle. Pass- ing through the village and the churchyard, after inquiring of two delving Dutchmen, I saw the so- called giants' graves. There was a pair of them, each consisting of several stones, and having the general shape of a colossal turtle. The covered top- stone rested on smaller boulders or pillars beneath. Each cromlech was two or three times bigger than the Plymouth Rock, not of rhetoric, but of reality. An old oak-tree and a young one had been planted alongside. Neat paths a yard or so wide, macad- amized and sod-bordered, had recently been made. Along these were placed wooden sign-boards, with the letters R. E. (Rijks Eigendom) 1 ; that is, national property. Further afield were other less perfect dol- mens, or cromlechs, locally called " hunnebedden." I counted the top-stones, which were six, and the smaller ones on the ground, which were seventeen. These masses of granite, well grown over with lichen, showed the result of ages of weathering. They were probably boulders brought down by gla- ciers from Norway and stranded here, possibly be- fore man came upon the earth. They came down from the North and crossed state boundaries free of 128 THE -AMERICAN IN HOLLAND duty, before tariffs were invented, as did Plymouth Rock from Canada. They belong, geologically and sentimentally, with those famous pebbles, like the Stone of Scone, the St. Petersburg base of great Czar Peter's monument, the Rhode Island memorial to the Narragansett chief Canonicus. Before human hands touched them, they had an inscription of stria3, now easily read by the devout man of science, " Deus fecit." Yet as they stand, they betoken human industry. They are edifices of some sort. Man made them, but why, and for what? Imagination is touched and kindled. We picture the builders, half clad in skins, with their rude tools, vehicles, and levers. Most probably they were Kelts ; after them followed the Teutons. The Romans looked on these dolmens with wonder, and, returning to Italy, told Tacitus their story, who tells his to us. The first Christian missionaries, the mediaeval monks, knights, and war- riors, the Spanish invaders, and the modern folk of all kinds, have made visits to this place to wonder and go away ignorant. One would like to know whether local folk-lore has clustered around these phenomena of human history, even as the heraldry of the lichen decorates them. All around are the wolds, coaxed into fertility by man's incessant labor, the fields white with buckwheat and potato blossoms, the clouds wandering in the sky, and the breezes making the wild oaks whisper tales which imagina- tion interprets. A few yards off to the northeast was another of these mysterious groups. The great stones had some- DRENTHE HEATHS AND GIANTS' GRAVES 129 what fallen, and were more disorderly. An old oak, which had overshadowed both monument and visitors, was but a rotten stump. Another tree was flourishing and had grown around some of the stones, which numbered thirty-two in all. More than the first, this group reminded me of the bar- rows or skull heaps on old battlefields in Japan. Of course the Dutch John Smith had numerously carved his name her*e. These rude structures, of Kelto-Cimbrian origin, were probably the monuments of some ancient and forgotten religion. Christian legend recognizes in them the work of demons, or of the Huns. Yet even after Christianity had shed its light over these lonely wolds, pilgrims came with awe to visit these bones and skeletons of a dead faith. Being regarded as fetiches, they were secretly made objects of rever- ence. Is it not a law that the handsome image is admired while the ugly idol is adored ? It is need- less to go into local legends, which connect the work with Hercules and other heroes of mythology. It was the weakness of the medieval Dutch to suppose that the classical heroes were their immediate or remote patrons, ancestors, or culture-heroes. Like the Scottish folk who, when Christianized, believed the Stone of Scone to be Jacob's pillow, so local theories of the Syrian origin of these erratic boulders are rife. The word " hunnebedden," at first sight, would mean the beds of tne Huns, but a Dutch scholar declares that the old word " hun " means dead, the " hunnebedden " being the resting-places of the dead. 130 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND The term " giants' graves " came into vogue after the learned Jean Picardt, pastor of Coevorden, not only attributed them to the work of giants, but even described the manners and customs of the builders. Learned scholars have written voluminously about them, but no certain light has yet fallen upon the anonymous architecture. Hofdijk's pictures are fas- cinating but fanciful. The monuments, and especially the earth around them, have suffered from the same tendency dis- played in men who have honeycombed New Jersey's sandy soil in search of Captain Kidd's imaginary treasure. In " the French time," that is, early in this century, a band of marauders dug up the ground under the " hunnebedden." Imagining that they contained treasure, the diggers ruthlessly de- stroyed the urns, pottery, and other relics which they found, without disclosing whether anything of value in their eyes had been unearthed. Despite the vandalism of centuries, there are still over fifty of these prehistoric structures on the soil of Drenthe, besides considerable numbers of tumuli and " graf- kelders," or mortuary chambers. One may see the stone coffins and the relics taken from them in the museums of the province. Near Borger there are eleven "hunnebedden ; " at Emnen, nine ; at Odoorn, eight ; and near Anloo, seven. Most of these have become the property of the national government, and are carefully protected and preserved. Amor- phous as they are, without inscription or sculpture except striae, untouched by the graving tool, they are yet of the highest interest. It is possible, as at DRENTHE HEATHS AND GIANTS' GRAVES 131 Zuicllaren, to catch glimpses of them from the win- dows of the railway car. Out on these vast heaths or prairies, through which oue passes from Assen to Hoogeveen, and thence to Coevorden, we realize how the word " hea- then " came to mean what it does. Christianity grew up first in the cities, the centres of light, know- ledge, culture, and refinement. The religion of Jesus was early associated with the bloom and joy of things social, while among the " pagani," or villagers, of the Roman world, the new doctrines were slower in com- ing ; and so in the old seats of culture, the rustic folk were Pagans. In the north and west of Europe Christianity followed the lines of trade and com- merce. It was in the wooden cities that the rude church, or chapel, was first built. In the strong castle of the noble the harp of the minstrel first resounded. The people dwelling within towns and villages became Christians long before those scat- tered on the heaths heard of or would accept the gospel, and so the heath-men remained heathen. To-day the term " heathen " lingers long after its meaning has been forgotten. It is tinged with con- tempt, has a sense of remoteness, is popular rather than scientific. It is that of the uncultured and of those whose historical sense is not keen, for the word is absurdly used when applied to refined Japanese, educated Chinamen, and to our intellectual kinsmen, distant in time but really near in language and thought, the polished Hindoos. The scholar, knows better. In the Revised Version of the Bible the term " heathen " is expunged, the term and the 132 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND idea being absent from the originals which speak of nations. In my childhood I read with fascination Fenimore Cooper's romance, "The Heidenmauer, or Heath Wall." To-day as I ride over the vast "heiden," passing on the right a village called Huis Ter Heide, I think also of the song I once heard sung in German by a sweet maiden years ago, of the flower " Auf der Heide." I find these desolate moors exercising a powerful spell over the imagination. I am glad I have seen the heath in its morning dew, glistening in the sunshine, rich in prismatic tints, and varying in all the hues that come from the changes of light, influenced as they are by the density or thinness of the mist. As with beaten gold the color varies according as the vegetation is looked at through reflected or transmitted light. On these moors, many miles away from city or town, the life of the peasant is exceedingly simple. Here is a turf house reminding us of the sod " shacks," forked together by the new immigrant in Dakota. A tiny frame with four small panes of glass lets in the light. Out from the chimney comes the not unpleasant odor from fuel which is of the same material as the walls. Back of the house are banks of sod built strong and high to keep off the winds, which in winter must be as terrific in force as on our western prairies. With no luxury of food, indeed often with not enough, the people here lived in poverty of mind as well as body, content with what they called home. Only within the present century have they been furnished with the benefits DRENTHE HEATHS AND GIANTS' GRAVES 133 of school and newspaper. Even yet it is hard for them to get the privileges of social religion. I rode back from Rolde on a springless farmer's cart set high up on its axle. The horse was geared as if within the shafts of a chariot. On the front seat was a healthy young farmer, and beside him his wife, young, bright-eyed, and with bulging red cheeks. The only other cargo, beside the Ameri- can traveler, consisted of an empty beer keg and a bag of grass for the horse's lunch. I had choice of a seat between the hard oak of the keg and the soft mattress-like bag. Reluctant to pose as King Gam- brinus, I sat on the fodder. The golden skull-cap of the farmer's bride was so dazzlingly bright that it furnished me with a mirror in which I could see reflected the whole landscape. The trees, the birds, the patches of blue sky, and the moving clouds were all visible as in a camera, and I could tell what was behind me without turning my head. It occurred to me that it would be well to introduce this fashion of headgear into the country churches of America, so that the preacher would not have to gaze upon the back hair of his congregation whenever a newcomer entered. Along the road were wagons well loaded for the swine market in Assen, in which were many other heads clad with metal. Some of these gold helms enveloped the whole skull. Others were slit open widely enough for a Japanese top-knot to rise through. Did not the name William, or " gild-helm," arise in this region of Willems and Wilheliniuas? CHAPTER XV THE TURF-YARD OF THE KINGDOM ASSEN is the Hoofdstad, that is, the head city or capital of Drenthe. Long ago it spread beyond the old limits of a fortress. To-day some of the widest streets are outside the "singel," or outer moat. Like the American Ithaca, it is a " forest city," for Assen is almost hidden at first among the magnificent trees which grow in and around it. Beeches, pines, and oaks delight the eye that loves these " trees of God " which are " fat and flourishing." Large areas of the municipality are but gardens and carefully kept forests. The great open square is called the Brink. Besides other old families famous in Dutch history, that of Ten Brink, which may have originated here, is gratefully known to all students of literature both Dutch and English. Great is the family of the Brinks and Brinkers. The word " brink " suggests to us the edges of cliffs, precipices, the high places from which one looks down into danger below. The word is of Scandina- vian origin, and itself makes a mind-picture of the hilly landscapes where from heights there are rocks and ravines below. Yet properly the idea is that of a slope, as Wiclif rendered John xxi. 6, " Jesus stood on the brink of the lake ; " and, radically, a THE TURF-YARD OF THE KINGDOM 135 rounded hillock, a swell of the bosom of mother earth. So in Assen. Here is the Brink, but no steeps or abysses are now visible. Yet there may once have been a rise of the ground at this point. There are at least fifteen Dutch towns and villages with this word " brink " in their names. As to families, who does not know good fellows named Ten (at the) Brink, Briukerhof, garden or court of the dweller at or near the brink ? The term is united to " hurst," "house," "hof," "stein," "ma," or "man," in Ger- man, Dutch, and Frisian. Most of those with the name Brink whom we have known, with additions in front or rear, were good fellows, both male and female. Among our American boys and girls, young Hans of fiction and of the " Silver Skates " is best known. The tender love of the Dutch, who dwell in so flat a country, for brink or berg, slope or height, illus- trates the law of compensation. They build and admire lofty churches, they make artificial mounds in their gardens to give themselves view, breadth of vision, and picturesqueness. In all the various pro- vinces I have noticed this tendency to break mono- tony. It is as intense in the Dutchmen as was the protest of the Egyptian against the desert level, for the dwellers by the Nile built obelisk, pyramid, pylon, and sphinx, to cut the sky line and diversify their view. Fronting the Brink, or very near by it, are the chief shops, public edifices, and cafes. One loves to linger in this pretty neighborhood. The shop win- 136 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND dows are gay with red, white, and blue stuff of all sorts and qualities, and with orange ribbons, in preparation for the Queen's visit, fixed for the 10th of September. The house of the provincial legislature is a new edifice, with superb carvings over the windows and on the beams representing the various industrial trades. On the walls of the chamber are spirited paintings. They represent the evolution of civiliza- tion in Drenthe, from the builders of the rude gran- ite enigmas at Rolde to the present time. Especially engaging is the artist's portrayal of female life, for he attempts to represent the mothers as well as the fathers, the round-limbed women who cheered and fed the muscular workmen in the dim unrecorded era of the Celtic Cimbrians. On the coat of arms of Drenthe appears a church altar, before which sits the Virgin with child, a star shining over her forehead. On the shield of Assen are skinny-looking heraldic lions, with long tongues like pump handles. They guard a gateway, inside which is the holy mother and babe. After the usual visit, with chat under the shady trees, at the shop of the vender of books and photographs, rambles along the Brink and through the Kruis (cross) and the Markt (market) and the Toren (tower) streets, in various lanes, by the Singel, and in the market where the pigs squeal and palms are clapped together for bargains, I visit the museum. The catalogues and a pleasant custodian help to a delightful hour full of vision. Here are the relics of peace and war from Coevorden and other places. THE TURF-YARD OF THE KINGDOM 137 As the negroes in Virginia after the war subsisted for a while by selling the old iron and lead, hurled at gold prices by Lee and Grant at each other, so after sieges, some compensation came to the poor people of Drenthe in exhuming old metal. Here, however, were no bombs to explode twenty years after they had left the cannon's mouth, but old bows, arquebuses, and arrows, footgear of all sorts, pulpit hour-glass, utensils from the stone, the bronze, and the iron age, rock coffins in which men were laid for their last sleep, and urns brim full of proofs of cremation, "ashes to ashes." Among all these fossils of history were two that riveted attention and set the imagination spinning. One was an old boat dug up recently out of the fens. It was high at the stern and prow, three feet wide and thirty feet long. Was it engaged in peace or war ? Was it rowed by Norsemen, with a raven as pilot, land-seeking sentinel at the prow and steers- man at the rear, its gunwale lined outside with shields, and within hardy pirates who recked not of sun heat or freezing spray ? Who can tell ? What a race the imagination runs, as one tries to fill up the story which this boat might tell were its oak to grow again the leaves that could whisper what the sun saw a thousand years ago ! The other object, even more human in its sugges- tions, was an old leather money bag from the time of Charlemagne. It was found ill some dry place. It contained one hundred and forty-three pieces of money of the era of the great Charles. There on the leather is a perfectly clear impression of one of 138 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND the coins. Was the owner a miser, a generous man, a thrifty father and home provider, or a gay youth seeking pleasure ? Was he robbed, or did he die in his bed ? Very homelike, to one who has lived on the native soil of the Iroquois, the Mohawk valley, seemed certain Indian relics sent by a Dutchman in Amei-- ica. Throughout Drenthe are many " terpen," or tumuli, but the choicest trovers have been taken to museums in other provinces. From Assen to Hoogeveen the ride was over a level heath full of varied colors, the rosy red heather being especially conspicuous. Above the stacks of turf and over the superb trees rose the church spires on the horizon. In many places there was but a mere furze of vegetation. The iron highway ran over an old sea bottom. New varieties of lace caps were visible on the women's heads. Most of the boats on the canals were loaded, fathoms high above the gunwale, with the dried fuel dug from the ground. Everywhere the earth seemed scarred and gashed by the spade, for in Drenthe the Dutchman has a jealous eye for any part of his native soil that can be turned into fuel. One reads a new meaning into Professor Tyndall's " heat as a mode of motion." The turf is, after all, but condensed sunbeams. The great orb first gives life to the sterile earth in heather, which stores up the celestial caloric, and in the course of centuries turns into peat or turf. Out of the most barren of the Dutch provinces move the boats laden with potential summer and carrying new climates into wintry homes. THE TURF-YARD OF THE KINGDOM 139 I had arrived at Hoogeveen, or high turf (shall I so translate its name?), on my way south from the " giants' graves " of Rolde, intending to ride across the heaths to see the old frontier town, famous for its many battles and sieges, and having much the same meaning as Bosphorus or Oxford, that is, Coevorden, or the cow's fords. In our days of declaration of war by telegraph, when armies are quickly transported over railways, the true gateways of frontiers are where iron roads cross the boundaries of a state. In modern Holland, scores of forts com- mand railways or canals, and steel cupolas are built facing channels, over which point the long arms of steel to warn off invaders ; but in the old days a \vell-fortified town was the key to a large region of country. Even yet in eastern Netherlands, the chief defense of " the menaced frontier " is the long stretch of the Bourtange morass between the Dollart and the river Lippe, with Coevorden standing on a piece of solid ground amid scores of miles of shaky bogs extending southward and eastward. What is true in our days was more impressively so in 1592, for then the morass extended over much of what is now dry ground stretching toward the Zuyder Zee. A strip of hard, dry sand which led through Coevorden offered a causeway and the only path of approach to an enemy from the east. The Bostonian is reminded of the old road which at high tide narrowed to scarce more than a wagon's width between the South Bay and the Back Bay. This strip of land joined old Boston to Roxbury very much as a pond-lily stem holds the golden-hearted 140 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND white petals to the ooze beneath. So, like a great wall of defense, on Netherlands was this mighty morass crossed by one natural causeway between water and ooze, and pierced with a gateway at Coe- vorden. Here, as elsewhere, geology dictated the course of history. How to get to such an out-of-the-way place was a question. Even the canal journey thither could be taken only on certain days. However, from a friend at Sneek, aided by scrutiny of the " Reisgid," or " Traveler's Guide," I learned that a " one - hoss shay " plied between Hoogeveen and Coevorden, go- ing from the latter place late in the afternoon and returning the next day. So to Hoogeveen I hied. This city of ten thousand people is rich in roses and flower gardens, and seems free from much con- tamination of modern notions. I found many things to amuse me while waiting from midday to after- noon. The schools were out, and the children were happy. I read the shop sign of a photographer whose name seemed to be " van America/' Some of the bakers sold bread for man and horse, made from rye. To feed a horse on loaves seems odd, but I have often seen it done. Other bakers, though I read the signs in July, made a specialty of New Year's cake. What memories were recalled of old Schenectady, when, on the year's opening morning, the white sugar cookies, duly stamped and moulded in Dutch decorations of knights, birds, flowers, and senti- mental symbols, were bestowed freely on the chil- dren who called at the doors ! The good old custom imported from Holland, like that of New Year's THE TURF-YARD OF THE KINGDOM 141 calling, died from cosmopolitanism. The Irish, and " the mixed multitude that came out of Egypt " and other countries, first abused and then killed the pretty benevolence. When greedy young ruffians, armed with bushel bags, rang a score of doorbells for mere spoil, householders defended themselves by abolish- ing this inherited custom, finding other channels for their generosity. In the country round Hoogeveen I saw enough soot-colored sheep in the flocks to reverse the old riddle, " Why do white sheep eat more grass than black ones ? " Answer, " Because there are more of them." Here the darkies were in the majority. This is the black belt of the sheep's world. The bridge-keepers of the canal, I note, are mostly women. There is an affluence of frills in the rear of their lace caps, which are shaped like the gold helms, though few metal skull-covers are here worn. There is little here of " woman's Ionic form," of which De Quincey writes in his " Dream Fugue." There is a repulsive flatness, where roundness and beauty ought to be. Instead of Irving's exaggerated description of the " vrouwer," one is rather painfully impressed with a similarity to their native country, which is afflicted with flatness. Literally, they seem to be Amazons. The boats' hulls, visible only when unheaped with turf bricks, are shaped like turtles. Sometimes it is hard to tell which is the business end, for the prows have no suggestion of swiftness. They seem to be double-enders, yet they are admirably adapted for slow movement in sluggish canals, being for the 142 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND most part pushed, poled, or pulled. Many of them are named after the "vrouw," or wife. In the little Stadhuis of this cross-shaped town I read, in the municipal arms, the history and situ- ation of Hoogeveen. In the centre of its plain shield lies a great tower, or Babel-looking structure, made of bricks of turf, while on either side is a beehive, above which hover the industrious insects which, like the silkworms, serve men so well. CHAPTER XVI ALONE TO COEVORDEN WHEN all was ready, after several hours' waiting at Hoogeveen, I found the equipage to Coevordeii to be one-mared. She being duly hitched up, I had the honor of a seat with the driver. The roads here are so level that draught animals are geared without crupper or backing-strap, there being no descents to endanger or overturn the vehicle. Beyond Hoogeveen and the masses of peat bricks in the suburbs, we rode westward along the Drentsche canal. This is a modern artificial waterway, which has helped vastly to dry up the country, while serv- ing as a thoroughfare of commerce. The numerous gangs of laborers busy in their scows, using long- poled shovels set at right angles with the handle to hoist up the white, infertile ooze, showed what con- stant industry was necessary to keep this water- course in order. After we had left behind the acres of potatoes, rye, and oats, with many fine trees, the transition from fertility to barrenness was rather sudden. The rye and buckwheat grew only in patches. Cattle vanished from sight. No windmills gestured with their arms. Fringing the frequent pools, and glori- fying patches of land not worth the ploughing and 144 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND yet not hopelessly sterile, were beds of flaming pink blossoms. We entered the great expanse of heath, and for hours rode in a world that was so lonely that one familiar object, the sun, actually seemed almost per- sonal and sociable. There were indeed the evidences of the presence of human beings and their labor in the well-laid brick road. Occasionally a house was seen, around which, by dint of persistent toil, the ground had been sweetened and fertilized, so that a few potatoes could be coaxed to grow. How char- acteristic of the Dutch that out on the heath by the canal side, away from the scattered, solitary dwellings, there was a comfortable and substantial schoolhouse, in which the sparse youthful popula- tion of the barren region could assemble for light and knowledge ! Flat as is this region, we were riding on high places of the Dutch earth, for most of Drenthe lies above the level of the ocean. These great prairies, if I may call them such, are from ten to twenty- five metres above the sea plain. Occasionally on the horizon would appear what seemed to be the structures denoting a village, though one missed the characteristic mark of a Dutch hamlet, the church spire. When I asked of our driver the name of this or that " dorp," he smiled faintly ; then I found I was suffering from mirage. These lofty structures, seen in enchantment-lending distance, were not the homes of villagers, they were only great stacks of turf. Then I thought of the adobe houses and " sod shacks " on our own prairies. ALONE TO COEVORDEN 145 We stopped at one place where the brick road left the canal. Here Jehu pulled out a loaf of rye bread, and, cutting it in slices, fed not himself but the horse. Only one oasis was found .on the route during the drive of five hours. This was in the neat village of Dalen. Here, under magnificent trees, were comfortable homes showing both age and pro- sperity, and abundance of cattle in the pastures, for the village is broadly belted with great fields. The blue corn-flower was very abundant in the rye. That Dalen is the finest village in the province, that it is " the Drentsche Hague," I am not inclined to doubt. It owes its existence to the fact that here is clay. Indeed, along the whole ride, wherever there was clay, I noticed there was fertility in the barrens, or " wolds." Where there was no clay, but only sand, in which even heather could scarce live, no settlement of man, but only a camp, with provi- sions imported as for a garrison, could thrive. The difference between clay and sand in the Netherlands is the difference between life and death. As we approached Coevorden I could see the star points and long lines of the old bastions. Some of the counterscarps looked as clearly defined as if made last year. Our vehicle moved over a bridge crossing the stream of water which drains this part of the country, and meanders as " the Vecht " down through Over-Ijssel and near Zwolle to the Zuyder Zee. Riding past houses with their steps coming down to the water, we reached the hotel, on the front of which we saw the usual enameled blue and white sign announcing that they gave special terms 146 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND to bicyclers. But my wheel was, like " the Dutch- man's anchor," of English anecdote, at home, far away. The arrival of a stranger in Coevorclen, among its three thousand people, is an event. The city has few or no brick sidewalks, and the streets are crooked. No relics dating from Spanish times were visible, though there are some from the days of the French siege. A Catholic church, a Jewish syna- gogue, and the Groote Kerk, the tower of which was burned some years ago, are noticeable. The place wears an air of remoteness from railways and the world in general. After a walk across the town, over the bridge, and a little way into the country at the further end, musing among the old bastion lines, calling up the ghosts of the past, I returned to the hotel. Arranging for an early morning stroll, I climbed up the ladder-like stairway, and slept soundly till five o'clock A. M. In the sweet morning air and clear light, I walked with my host, a young man of intelligence and en- ergy, almost over the entire line of fortifications. Many of these are still works of art that call forth admiration of the genius of the great engineer, Coe- horn, who laid them out. ^hey are indeed worthy of preservation. The water is mostly supplied by a branch of the stream called the Vecht, and from one of the great canals which drains Over-Ijssel, and connects the city with Ahnelo to the south. On one side of the city the walls are all leveled and the moat has disappeared. Cabbage gardens and grain- fields now occupy the space over which bullets and ALOXE TO COEVORDEN 147 cannon-balls once flew. In other angles are to be seen a farmhouse, ploughed land, grain-fields, or a chicken range. These all tell of peace, of quiet- ness, and of the prosperity which has come to the commonwealth because of the victory of brave men. I looked with greatest interest at those points where Maurice, then scarcely a bearded hero and called a youthful pedant, showed both his own coun- trymen and the Spaniards how well the spade could reinforce cavalry and cannon. From these walls, August 16, 1592, Count Van den Berg, with his thousand veterans behind him, sneered at the sum- mons from Maurice to surrender. He defied the boy general and jeered at his digging boers. u Tell him," said he, " first to beat down my walls as flat as the ditch, and then to bring five or six storms. Six months after that, I will think whether I will send a trumpet." Out on the flats was fought one of those night battles in shirts for which the Spaniards so often contrived to make themselves famous ; that is, the Spaniards, putting on their white shirts outside their armor, made a tremendous onset upon the Dutch camp. Yet despite this attack from without, which was beaten off, Maurice, who had something of the same mind as our own Grant, whom no General Early or Shenandoah raid could disturb, keeping his eyes fixed on Coevorden as a prize, maintained his grip. Important as this place was for the Republic, Queen Elizabeth, instead of congratulations, sent 148 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND reproaches to the Dutch Congress because they had used all their forces and her own auxiliaries against what she thought was a mere earthwork and a town of no importance. Forthwith she ordered off from Coevorden and out of Holland into France part of her forces serving in Dutch pay. On the 12th day of September the Spaniards marched out, and the soldiers of the Republic marched in. Instead of the fire, rape, pillage, and indiscriminate butchery so often indulged in by the Spaniards, Maurice and the young Republic gave the world an exhibition of the new spirit which had dawned in war. The brave garrison, reduced in number one half, were allowed to go out in honor with their arms and personal effects. It was from this point of time, 1592, and indeed we may say from this place, Coevorden, that those lines of difference became more marked which showed with increasing clearness of contrast the democratic spirit of the federal republic and the armies of the monarchy oversea. The Dutch were justly indignant that the English government should hold three of their towns, like a pawn- broker clutching his securities, while, right in the face of dangers, the English repeatedly drew off their forces in the pay of the States General and sent them to fight in France or Ireland. It was this half-hearted spirit in their allies which showed the Dutch how little the English aristocratic classes cared for a republic, which led them gradually but surely to give up all idea of having a princely fig- ure-head to their government, and which made them ALONE TO COEVORDEN 149 satisfied to have a stadholder, or even a plain citizen pensionary, for their chief executive. Neither the age nor the circumstances were yet ready for a democratic republic, but upon monarchy the Dutch had turned their faces, and now looked forward toward complete freedom from Spain and to a true federal republic. Coevorden maj r be con- sidered as one of the turning-points and places, de- cisive both for the future of the young Republic and potent in the making of the fame and character of Maurice, the real founder of New Netherland, which afterward became the Empire State of the American Union. The Dutch republicans stood for freedom against oppressors who represented what has brought Spain to her degradation of to-day. Our inheritance of freedom is through Dutch as well as English channels. Time did not allow me a visit to the New Am- sterdam which lies a few miles northeast of Coe- vorden. Less than forty years ago, all this region in southeastern Drenthe was a great bog, impassa- ble in winter and pestilential in summer. Now, it is drained, dried, surveyed, and laid out in prosper- ous villages. Two enterprising citizens of the pro- vince set themselves to the work of reclaiming this morass. A canal was dug through the centre, into which ran lateral drains. Then the great turf-pit was entered by thousands of diggers, men and women, who charged with shov- els at the enemy under their feet and won vast spoil. They piled up the combustible sods into lofty heaps. Nearly thirty-five hundred acres of land were made 150 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND habitable and valuable. The capitalists of Amster- dam, roused by this example of courage, sent money and emigrants to complete the work. Now the vil- lage of New Amsterdam, but forty-five years old, with churches, schools, and several thousand inhab- itants, occupies what was once a stagnant swamp. To the northeast is another settlement, called New Dordrecht, with other villages and hamlets. Coevorden's history, even from the Roman occu- pation, is wholly military. Here on the only terra firma, amid a vast region of bog and swamp, the Roman citadel stood guarding the gateway from Germany. Bizot, the man who has written history from metallic tokens, describes an old medal which bears the inscription in Latin, " Covordia Capta Drentha a Romanis constructa anno Domini X, " which would show that the city was in existence when Jesus was probably six years old. Another author, Picardt, insists that here stood the villa Cruptoricis, of which Tacitus speaks. In modern writing there is no mention of Coe- vorden until the ninth century. In A. D. 1024 the Count of Drenthe lived here. Afterward his terri- tory was transferred by the Emperor Henry II. to the bishops of Utrecht. Thereafter its story is one of alternate obedience to and rebellion against its Episcopal superiors in Utrecht. In 1552 the sol- diers of Charles V. occupied Coevorden, but it was still an open city without walls. Everard Ens, its last Spanish governor, strengthened the ramparts of the citadel and surrounded the city with an earthen wall. Nevertheless, its reputation as a fortified ALONE TO COEVORDEN 151 place was so fresh and so slight that thrifty Queen Elizabeth failed, as we have seen, to appreciate the genius of the Dutch in taking it. After the siege by Maurice, who still further strengthened the old fortifications, Coehorn incased this, as he did so many other Dutch cities, with earthworks that seemed impregnable. Nevertheless, in 1672 the warrior bishop of Miinster, with eighteen thousand raw troops from his own cathedral city and from Cologne, took Coevorden by surprise. Once again, in 1813, the French troops occupied the place, holding it until May 13, 1814. Remounting the one-horse conveyance, I rode through fields of rye, buckwheat, and potatoes, and over moor and heath. Drenthe, where it is not a turf field, seems to be a potato patch, the tubers being raised as much for the purpose of making starch as for satisfying human hunger. The Dutch peasant's way of making a whole meal of " earth apples " is to set into the top of a heap of peeled and boiled ones a bowl of gravy. Then, holding each on the end of a fork and dipping it into the savory fat, he eats with gusto. Taking the train from Hoogeveen and riding westward through the heather-tufted sand, I alighted at Meppel. It was market day, July 11, and the open space for traffic was full of interested peasants, the men with affluence of buttons, and the women with silver head - bands which came down over their ears and terminated in funnel-shaped wires reaching nearly to the chin. Big silver buckles ornamented the shoes. Besides many gold skull- 152 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND caps, with bonnets perched on top of them, there were light-colored hats amazingly decorated with flowers, on the women's heads. Not a few of the faces were pretty, with cheeks that were not merely scarified by the sun or excess of health, but deli- cately rosy. In the eating-houses a mob of customers kept pro- prietors and waiters busy, furnishing beer and sand- wiches and the little half-gill glasses of that national beverage which the English call "gin," the Dutch " genevre," and the Germans " schnapps." The nar- row streets were so full of push-carts that pedestrian- ism was not convenient, the risk to one's toes being too great. One could see here, as at other " beast markets," the archaic custom of striking hands to complete a bargain. Frequently piggy declined to change owners and, when led away by a stranger, would set up a squeal almost as pitiful as it was comical. When the seller pulled out a pair of scis- sors and cut off from the back an inch or two of bristles, it meant that the animal was marked "sold." OVER-IJSSEL CHAPTER XVH OVER-IJSSEL: STEENWIJK AND KAMPEN THE province over the Ijssel, that is, beyond the river of this name, must have received its title from men living south of it. It stretches from the Zuyder Zee to Germany. . It touches Gelderland on the south and Friesland and Drenthe on the north. Though traversed with railways and well drained by rivers, large portions of it consist of swamps and heath. Down the centre runs a mass of sandhills, which are dignified each with the name of " berg." It is rather thinly populated, having only about three hundred thousand inhabitants. Its annual budget, as we once heard a former burgomaster of Rotterdam say, with a sigh, is vastly less than that of Holland's second municipality. Deventer, Zwolle, and Kampen are its chief cities, though Steenwijk, Ootmarsum, Oldenzaal, Enschede, and Hengelo, fa- mous historically in siege and war, are now seats of industry. Above all other machinery, the spade is the char- acteristic implement of this province, both in agri- culture for the digging and shaping of turf, and in the making of canals which are numerous and fa- mous for their length. The province arms show a standing lion before a shield, on which is a wave 156 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND line of water, the Ijssel River. Long under the ecclesiastical influence of the Bishop of Minister, the various town arms have many crosses in various shapes, with saints, angels, and ecclesiastics. Blokziyl shows the meaning of its name in a block-sluice; Dieperheim, three bears' claws on a shield beneath the ducal crown ; Rijssen, its heather sprig ; Oldemark, its open hand ; Staphorst, its flowers ; Wierden, its wheat. On the centre one of Wilsum's three towers is a pelican's nest ; between Hengel's wheat-sheaf, scythe, and flail, beehive and swarm, flows waving water ; on Gist's arms is a hay-stack, well roofed ; under Avereests's are clover leaves. Markelo has a bishop's mitre, an encircled grove of trees, and a range of sandhills ; Avereest shows a rye-sheaf, with a clover leaf on each side, above a flowing stream, beneath which is a pair of waffle-irons. The Dutch of this province have made the desert blossom as the rose. Up in the northern corner of Ovei'-Ijssel is the town of Steenwijk, or Stony Cove. It received its name long ago, because in and around the place that which is lacking elsewhere in the province is fairly abundant, stone. The Scandinavian glaciers left abundant debris in this region, and from the boul- ders and pebbles, the wijk probably resting in an old moraine, the town took its name. As " kirk " becomes " church," so " wijk " be- comes " wich " in English, as in Norwich. The town itself is in the centre of the Steenwijk- wold, or forest, and further to the west is a great heath partially drained by canals, while quite near OVER-IJSSEL : STEENWIJK AND KAMPEN 157 the city are hills. The old bastions of the sixteenth century, imposing in size, still remain, and here are found parks, flowers, and lovely paths lined with trees. Looking over the plain, one feels an unusual sense of altitude, and the hills of the rolling country to the south heighten an effect rather unusual in a Dutch landscape. My rambles over, I sought out the Onderwizer, or English teacher, Mr. Du Croix. and chatted with him concerning the history of the town, as well as on matters of education. The schools are graded A, B, C. The scholars in the first grade pay forty, and in the second thirty, guilders a year, the third grade being free for the poor. The town to-day is neat and dull. Very little of the modern pulse beats in Steenwijk, and without picture galleries or muse- ums it could not attract or detain long the hasty tourist. On the town arms is the Pope, with a triple tiara and a three-crossed staff, holding a crowned shield on which is an anchor. The historic imagination loves to call up the times when English and Dutchmen fought here in free- dom's war. Those meadows out there far beneath us seem good for batteries, trenches, and mining operations. It was early in May, 1592, when the young Prince Maurice brought here his fifty guns by water and began that siege of Steenwijk in which the spade played even a more important role than the cannon. The Spaniards within, with a wild- Indian-like hatred of any work but that of war with slaughter- weapons, detested the shovel. They jeered at the soldier boers, who kept digging away. The 158 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND besiegers built a strong tower of heavy timber, and from up in the air, like sailors who from the tops sweep the enemy's decks, poured their effective fire into the streets, while digging went on in the trenches and mining beneath the ground. The 23d day of June was fixed as the date for making a crater. Then the mines were fired. Towers, walls, ram- parts, ditches, and counterscarps were all sent flying towards the blue, falling backward into chaos. The Dutch victory was decisive. The Spaniards marched out on the 5th of July. From that time forth the dons and their mercenaries had profound respect both for the Dutch diggers and their digging. On the medals, struck so often to commemorate victory for the Republic, no implement of war has had more honored prominence than the spade. As I looked on this old site of Maurice's triumph, I thought of Grant's Petersburg crater, which I saw in 1866, mined and fired by the Pennsylvania miners. The marks of the Romans are not absent in Over- Ijssel. Not many miles southward from the mouth of the river so often bridged by them, and pontooned in later times for the movements of armies, is the Kampen, or town of the camps, while to the north- west is Kampen Island. I wanted to see the pretty little town, because of its superb church, charming town hall, and theological school, but not particularly because it is the capital of the tobacco interest in the Netherlands. The American who is in Holland for trade comes to sell the weed and to buy diamonds. He must needs visit Kampen. Most of the cigars smoked in the kingdom are made here. It seems OVER-IJSSEL : STEENWIJK AND KAMPEN 159 almost proper, while among the Dutch, to include the love of smoke among the four or five elemental human passions. Arriving on the hither side of the river at the railway terminal, before crossing the beautiful long iron bridge over the imposing flood, I found refresh- ment at the restaurant with beefsteak, potatoes, and one of those salads in the making of which the Dutch excel. Crossing over, I called on one of the professors, presenting a letter of introduction and receiving a warm welcome. The divinity halls were not abodes of luxury. I peeped into the lecture- rooms and the faculty's chamber, thoroughly satu- rated with the stratified odors of tobacco, dating apparently from the prehistoric era, and then started on a walk around the town with two young men. One was a son of a theological professor, and the other was from the Transvaal Republic, not then invaded by British filibusters. Young men from South Africa come largely to Kampen for their theological education, especially those who are to enter the ministry of the Christian Reformed Church. Both my companions spoke English admirably, and enjoyed a joke, especially that local Dutch plea- santry which bids one " tell a story " (not to the marines, but) " in Kampen," to the people there. Pretty streets, fine houses, and great tobacco store- houses are in Kampen ; so is the large church of St. Nicholas, or Boven Kerk, which, with that of the twin edifice of St. Mary, had its foundations laid in the fourteenth century. Though one of the largest and finest of the mediaeval Netherlandish edifices, 160 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND its rich ornamentation and splendid furnishings have given way to bare stone and whitewash. The change within, after the Puritans got hold of the mediaeval meeting-house, was like that from the splendid pageant of Roderick Dhu's brilliantly plaided warriors, " along Benledi's living side," to " Bracken green and cold gray stone." Although making their churches look like barns, the Dutch have always preserved in their civic archi- tecture not only beauty, but much of fancy and human interest. The town hall in Kampen is of unusual architecture. Built in the sixteenth century, it was enlarged in the eighteenth, and restored in the nineteenth. The imposing facade is beautified with statues. The paneling on the walls is of un- usual beauty. The chief place of honor and art in the Dutch house being the fireplace, one must not fail to notice the lofty chimney-piece, built in 1543, with statues in the niches. On the walls stad holders look out of their frames from the darkened canvases. So stern seemed some of these doughty worthies that it is no wonder that Jan Steen relieved the sit- uation by painting roysterers. Puritanism always needs an antidote in the form of healthy fun. Kampen does not lack links in the world's chain of fame. Here, and not at the German Kampen, it is believed, the great Thomas a Kempis was born. Kampen was of old a Hanseatic city, and once had a national mint. Now, great chimney factories tell of the modern age of industry, and add their volume to augment that from the human furnaces which daily make themselves the middle term between leaves and ashes. OVER-IJSSEL : STEENWIJK AND KAMPEN 161 Though besieged in 1578, Kampen escaped any serious injury during the Eighty Years' War. Ill 1672 it suffe; 3d severely, when Louis XIV. and the Bishop of Miinster struck hands to stamp out the Protestant Republic. In 1813 the corps of Von Billow, of the allied armies against Napoleon, paid Kampen a visit. Fortified by nature with a wide river in front, and by art with a broad ditch having five bastions, and a great fort guarding the imposing wooden bridge thrown across the Ijssel, the city kept up its defensive armor until the present century. Then, like Aaron's wonder-working rod which blos- somed, the works of war were thrown down and became lovely parks and flowery paths. Other places in Netherland, which, whether spelled with initial K or C, carry in their tell-tale names those of Roman or other camps, may be counted by scores. Katnperduin, in North Holland, near the dunes along the seashore, where the British Ad- miral Duncan won his famous victory, is best known to Englishmen. The British navy preserves a per- manent memorial of the triumph in the ship named Camperdown. The other term, " Castra," so fre- quent in England in the modern form of Chester, is not so much known on Dutch territory, though eight or ten places contain the syllables, which, in Castri- cum and several places named Casteren, are easily recognized. The greatest of Roman fortifications north of the Scheldt was probably the Huis te Brit- ten, or fortress looking toward Britain. Once a massive stronghold, and eastward and inside the dunes, near Leyden, it is now west and far beyond 162 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND them down under the seaway, and visible below water only at very low tide. To the American there are other points of historic touch at Kampen, for here, in 1593, some of the founders of New England sought refuge and re- ceived aid and comfort. Harried out of their home land after Barrowe, Greenwood, and Penry had been put to death by the political churchmen, who under forms of law masked their hatred of democracy in religion, a few of the Separatists fled to the Dutch land of freedom. In those days, before a canal had cut through North Holland, either lengthwise northwardly, or laterally from Amsterdam westward to the sea, all ships from the west had to go up north around the strait between the Texel and the Helder, and down through the Zuyder Zee. Like weary birds of passage, these exiles for conscience' sake found shelter at Kampen on their way to the crescent city on the Y. It is possible, however, that having reached Amsterdam first, they retreated to Kampen as well as to Naarden for temporary refuge. This was before their Leyden and Mayflower expe- riences. To-day, after so long a time, Kampen still fur- nishes spiritual leaders and advisers to the colonists from Netherlands, the modern Pilgrim Fathers, who, since 1844, have left their Vaderland to help settle Iowa, Michigan, Dakota, and our great North- west. CHAPTER XVIII 7WOLLE AND THOMAS A KEMPI8 FROM the reputed birthplace of Thomas a Kempis to Zwolle, the city in which he spent most of his long life, and wrote his immortal book, the distance is but a few miles. Twice I saw the fascinating place. How it received its name no two archa3olo- gists are agreed, though many think that the idea is represented in our word " swell," Zwolle lying near the lapsing waves of the Zwarte, or black water. A learned archivist told me the name might come from the Salix family of trees, which comprises the wil- lows, osiers, and other swamp growths, or from the " Salische " Franks, with whom we associate the Salic law ; though not impossibly from the " swell." Even to-day, so saturated with moisture is the ground that the cemetery must be, as in most Dutch towns, above the level of the surrounding country, reminding an American of New Orleans, where the same necessity arises. Hence one sees the grave- yards lifted high in air a sort of hanging gardens for the dead upon old bastions, and on the slopes of what were " terpen," or ancient tumuli, and now either artificially or naturally made dry for the safety of the living. In Zwolle the fashionable cemetery of the wealthy, 164 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND where the dead can have a comparatively water- proof resting-place, is the Agneteberg. This his- toric mound, once covered with monasteries, is now dotted over with little white stones, each " the inn of a traveler on his way to Jerusalem." On this trifling swell of land, which to an American has almost a comic flavor as of Lilliput, in being called a " berg," or hill, stood the brick cloisters, full of cell-brothers, among whom Thomas a Kempis lived until his ninety-first year. On my first visit to Zwolle, after a ramble in the marketplace, I accosted a clerical-looking individual, robed in black from his low-crowned hat to his buckled shoes, whom I knew at once to be a " Pas- toor," or Catholic priest. In the Netherlands nearly all clergymen dress in the hue of the crow, but by their uniform one may know their sect, this one of the Reformed being a " Domine," the other of the Catholic being a " Pastoor." The Protestant may or may not be recognized by his dress, the Pastoor may and must be, though he advertises his church by his clothes less than in southern Europe. Besides his comfortable low- crowned hat, the Pastoor's black uniform is relieved at the neck by white linen, and there is a peculiar clerical notch in his coat and waistcoat. His breeches are bound at the knee, and he wears black stockings and low-cut shoes. He is pretty sure to have an umbrella in his hands, and almost certainly has a cigar. In capacity to produce smoke and convert cigars into ashes, Protestant and Catholic are equal. On points of theology and church government, or as ZWOLLE AND THOMAS A KEMPIS 165 to validity of " orders," they may differ, but on the contention that tobacco is not a luxury but a neces- sity, the Reformed and the irreformable will face the world in unity. My chance acquaintance, the Pastoor, was very good natured, as I fired my imperfect Dutch at him, making inquiry as to the whereabouts of the grave of the great saint, which I wished to visit. Suppos- ing that the tomb of A Kempis was known, preserved, and not only marked, but as much visited, perhaps, as Shakespeare's slab, or Burns's temple at Ayr, I was hardly prepared for the sly humor that twinkled in his eye, and for the hilarious laugh with which he prefaced his explanation in good English that nothing remained of the former burial appurte- nances of the mighty Thomas, excepting perhaps an uncertain fragment of his tombstone. Thereupon, thanking my clerical friend, I paid the usual honors of a sight-seer to Zwolle, but put off my visit to Agneteberg, where the dust of A Kempis may repose, until a happier time. Three years later I was the guest of the royal Commissaris, or governor of the province, a pilgrim tarrying for a night under the same roof which was a fortnight later to shelter the two queens, Emma and Wilhelmina, during, their visit to Over-Ijssel. After a ride in city and suburbs and through Agne- teberg, dinner followed, and then we enjoyed vocal music at the Bethlehem Church, in which the fashion and culture of Zwolle were gathered to hear a con- cert given by twelve or fifteen singers from the Dom Kirche at Berlin. The singing was superb. 166 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND After the concert and another ramble under the starlight, the Commissaris, having informed me that he had especially requested the archivist to show me everything I desired to see in the archives of the province, bade me good-night at my hotel door. I lay down in happy anticipation of a day among the old parchments and records. Next morning all was bright and glistening, as if with lacquer-varnish. It was semi-sunshiny, with occasional dashes of fine moisture that could hardly be called rain. In front of the hotel, in the great square, the market traffic was going on at its liveliest rate. Many a one-horsed, hooked, and chariot-like high Dutch wagon stood there " unstained with hos- tile blood." Some had their shafts set to the left or right, like single-horse sleighs, so that the animal could be comfortable when jogging in ruts. The peasant costumes were varied and the faces rosy. Down by the river I stopped at the fish market to see the water and the sea-food, which was sold by auction in lots to suit purchasers. People come with nets or trays to secure their Friday dinners. In the " beast market " were magnificent bulls, lowing cattle, and .men and women whose talk was of bargains. They carried enough timber on their feet to suggest the ease with which a good fire could be kindled, should they be caught out in the cold. Elisha could have saved his ox-yokes and made a farewell feast out of his shoes, had he been a Dutch- man. The cast-off klomps of Holland must, in the course of a year, form a considerable addition to the stock of fuel. Traversing the fine canals and streets, ZWOLLE AND THOMAS A KEMPIS 16? one sees that very much of Zwolle is new, fresh, and modern, and this effect was heightened by the dashes of alternate rain and sunshine. Like Scotland, peb- bles, and Indian arrowheads on ploughed ground, this country shows all the better for being wet. The newer " wijks " and " pleins " of the city were named after members of the House of Orange, especially AVillem III., Emma, and Wilhelmina. I spent a profitable morning in the House of Archives, exam- ining with the archivarins the landmarks of Over- Ijssel's history. CHAPTER XIX THE GLORIES OF DEVENTER NEXT after Zwolle, the best-known city in Over- [jssel is De venter, famed in the annals of education, and having for me a special sentimental interest. Among the student friends in college days, a member of the same fraternity of Delta Upsilon, in the Uni- versity of the City of New York, was my friend Van Deventer. Sunny, jolly, and generous, I knew him for years. Coming to the city from which his ancestors took their name and origin, his face was in my mind. We, that is, Lyra and I, coming north from Arnhem and Zutphen, July 1, 1891, reached the city of Zerbolt and Groote when the western sun was gilding with its rays the great square tower of the church of St. Lebuinus. Within the hotel called De Engel, in front of which was a golden angel, we were given what was evidently the chief family room. Upon the table were fine books, not directories, photograph-adver- tisers, or bound comic newspapers, as in American hotels, but a collection representing a considerable range of Dutch literature. On the mantelpiece and on the top of the dressing-case were domestic orna- ments and souvenirs. At one side a glass case con- tained numerous curiosities, with things of fancy and THE GLORIES OF DEVENTER 169 beauty. Our host's daughter, a bright and pretty girl, neat as a new pin, knew enough English to make our wants immediately known and satisfied, so that the prospect of comfort during parts of two days was highly encouraging. In its situation our hostelry reminded me of that angel in the Apocalypse who stood with one foot upon the land and one upon the sea, and, lifting up his trumpet to his lips, swore by Him that liveth for ever and ever that "Time should be no longer," that is, that there should be no delay. For in front of us was land, solid and unshakable, with the mighty minster church standing thereon, whose tower had witnessed the sunsets of six hundred years, and whose architecture seemed as immovable as the Eternal Throne ; while beyond us was the symbol of all that was changeable and uncertain, the great flowing river, swollen by the rain and surging past the great long bridge of boats that danced like bub- bles on its surface, or as but beads of perspiration upon its agitated body. Though most ready and willing to construe the Greek of the angel's oath into a proverb of " no de- lay," even chafing because of the shortness of time to see the historic city, I yet had to wait an hour or more during the blare of the thunder trumpets, while the heavy artillery of Heaven played from the batteries of the skies, and the great lightning flashed like tongues of flame from celestial cannon. The storm raged with such fiercely cleansing power that I could forgive Milton for arming his pre-mundane angel host with culverins and sulphurous gunpowder, 170 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND even while wondering whether he were A plagiarist and had borrowed his plot and imagery from the Dutchman Vondel, whose Lucifer is so much like the Satan of the later written " Paradise Lost." By the time I reached the conclusion that perhaps both Hollander and Anglican had transfused from the more ancient Latin Christian poet, the storm had cleared. The sun again came out, gilding but a few inches of the top of the great minster spire before setting behind the sandhills of Over-Ijssel, enabling me to read the letters of gold. Then came that splendid noon of twilight, when (borrowing the Hebrew expression) the "double glory" of commingled night and day flooded the earth; when, as it were, into the strata of luminosity, there seemed to fall out of the great upper reservoir of the air a fresh flood from the light that was still transmitted there. In this hour of mystic glow suddenly came out on the square fronting the great church a dozen little girls, who, taking hold of each other's dresses, went round in a circle, singing a pretty air that set Lyra's heart dancing over the tight-rope of memory stretched, from the mother's heart across seas and oceans to Philadelphia. Backward and forward, between the little playing Dutch girls in the square by the Ijssel and the little boy and girl then in the city by the Delaware, the mother's thoughts moved. The little maids kept up the play for a half hour. Then they disappeared in the gloaming of the long bright night, which in summer is the charm of high altitudes. DEVENTER SQUARE AND CHURCH OF ST. LEBUINUS THE GLORIES OF DEVENTER 171 I crossed the great river over the bridge of boats, which reminded me of inore than one similar struc- ture moored between banks of Holland-like rivers in Japan. Over the bricks and under the trees in Dutch-land the brick and the tree are almost as philosophically and practically in association of ideas as are spoon and teacup I continued my walk out to the home of the archivist of Deventer. I returned in the starlight, and then again moved around in the historic city, while the ghosts of the past seemed to flit by. Foremost among the scenes conjured up were those of the time that tried longest and hardest Dutchmen's souls, when, amid mighty enemies and ruthless traitors, they persevered in freedom's cause. Situated on the very line of demarcation between two provinces, and facing a wide, rushing river, Deventer from the morning of its early life has had stirring experiences. This first day of my seeing it was typical of its historic page, which tells of alter- nate storm and calm. Yet to pass over its many previous sieges, the American naturaDy thinks most of those which in the time of the war for freedom wrought results that have been transfused into his own national life, even as the red stream from the healthy body revives the weak one under the sur- geon's care. The register-book of ground-plans and the folios of the seventeenth century show old Deventer to have been a finely laid-out city. Besides the superb open square called the Brink, there were the usual massive gateways and imposing churches ; the tre- mendous bastions and wide moats, over which the 172 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND long iron cannon showed their black mouths, and the bridge of boats, even then replacing the great wooden structure which fire had repeatedly made its prey. Especially well defended by the turbulent river flowing out of the heart of Germany and from the Alps, with unusual amplitude of ground for the movement of military forces in the spaces beyond the city proper, with handsome walls, high, strong, and adorned with many a gallant tower and gate- way, such was Deventer. It is no wonder that in 1586, when the United States of the Netherlands were seven years old from the union and the display of their orange, white, and blue flag of 1579, and but five years old from their July Declaration of Independence in 1581, the States General considered Deventer as their West Point. With confidence as generous as was that of Washington in Arnold, even while the Spaniards were menacing the borders of the Ijssel, the Dutch allowed the Englishman Leicester to garrison De- venter with twelve hundred troops of the British contingent, under command of one Stanley. The rank and file were not Englishmen, either regulars or volunteers. They were, in the language of a his- torian, "wild Irish," half -naked men, of tremen- dous physical vigor. It is difficult to-day to realize how backward in civilization interior Ireland then was. The Dutch had long been in the forefront of European culture and comfort, and the entrance of these warriors, who were supposed to be their friends, was a startling surprise to the people of a city which THE GLORIES OF DEVENTER 173 had been for centuries one of the great beacon lights of culture to Europe. The Brethren of the Common Life had had here their schools, their authors' guilds, and their scriptoriums, which were the wonder of the age, while art and luxury had long been known in the place where St. Libuinus had, as early as the eighth century, brought the natives of these heaths and fens under the sweet influences of Christianity. Into such a place the English traitor Edward Stanley, a soldier of fortune, a man without the least sympathy with the cause in which the Dutch were fighting, a mercenary who fought only for pay and was ready to serve either the good Lord or the good Devil, was put in command. At the siege of Zutphen he had made himself famous by an act of courage which won the admiration of the Earl of Leicester. When scaling the rampart, a pikeman made a lunge at him to kill him. Stanley seized the pole with both hands, and was drawn over the walls among the enemies ; but when inside, he drew his sword and laid about him with such force that he saved his own life, and kept the Spaniards at bay until reinforced by his comrades. Immediately knighted and pensioned, and afterwards growing in favor with Leicester, he obtained the command of this frontier city. Here, unfortunately for the cause of the patriots, he came into secret friendly relations with the Spanish Colonel Taxis, and the Duke of Parma, whose golden arguments his weak principles were unable to combat. On January 29, 1587, he demanded of the burgomaster that the gates should be opened for a sortie. The city officer, either 174 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND because he did not suspect treachery, or because he thought the Spaniards were preferable to wild Irishmen, yielded. Stanley reentered the gates with Colonel Taxis and six companies of Spanish in- fantry, who immediately took possession of the city. Like the traitorous American Arnold, Stanley took refuge in the land of his tempters, and died, as all Judases die, in misery and obscurity. For four years the Spaniards held the city, until Maurice and his English allies invested it. After a siege marked by numerous romantic incidents, the Dutch United States once more repossessed it. The fortifications were reconstructed, the wounds of war were healed, and the city went on with flourishing prosperity until, in 1672, under the frowning cannon of the Bishop of Miinster, it again fell, and was held for a time by the aliens. Out from the night shadows I entered the Angel Hotel once more. I could look out again, as the star-gleams fell upon the golden legend set upon the lofty tower of the minster of St. Lebuinus, two sides of which were visible. I could read words which suggested the Master's command, " Watch and pray," and "Have faith in God," the whole four-sided inscription being, " Vigilia ; Fide Deo ; Concilia ; Fortis Acte." Then on the capacious Dutch pillow, as big as Jacob's stone, but possibly not quite so hard, we lay down to sleep. We woke in the morn- ing to see the whole city and sky, river and land- scape beyond, in the freshness of new life, after the rainstorm of the day before. Then began a forenoon of acquaintance with the THE GLORIES OF DEVENTER 175 glories of Deventer, its quaint houses, its splendid Brink, its wide and clean streets, its imposing churches, its curious Renaissance house named Pen- ninck's Hoek, all covered with quaint statues and alto-relievos, the curious Lands Huis, now the bureau of police, and the other edifices of which the Deventer people are justly proud. In the colossal church of St. Lebuinus we enjoyed its vast spaces. Out of the heart of the Middle Ages rose this stately edifice. It was built in the days when religion was a show, a spectacle, with its centre in the Mass, dramatized to be sung and acted in costume, with all accessories as of the stage, in colors, odors, lights, movement, and shining insignia, to impress the senses. Here was room for the movement of battalions and regi- ments of worshipers, as of an army with banners, with emblematic weapons of the faith, amid clouds of incense and splendor of decoration and embroi- dery ; in short, a service for the eye rather than for the reason, and which, to describe properly, one must use the poetic and dramatic language of the Song of Songs and of the Apocalypse, rather than the prose of historic narration. Within the city hall I enjoyed seeing the wooden tablets of the old-time guilds, which so long ran their career of mingled labor and recreation in this rich and busy manufacturing city. The gem of municipal heirlooms is the splendid picture by the artist Terburg, who during his later years was burgo- master of the municipality (while William Penn was in this region gathering his Friends as colonists), and who died here in 1681, the year Philadelphia was 176 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND founded. His picture superbly represents the grav- ity and dignity of city magistracy in session. Deventer, though perhaps not, at least since the pre-Reformation days, illustrious in the musical an- nals of the Netherlands, was to me the most musical of all Dutch cities. The singing of the little chil- dren in the square, the sweetly solemn chimes of the night, the whistling of the contented people moving in their sabots across the great square, so clean and fresh in early morning, and the periodical carillon from the towers, together with the splendor and beauty of the bright day, which seemed to have been born out of the storm, made unceasing " music in the air." From morn to sunset hour, and from even- ing glow to morning rose, these two Deventer days are remembered as "songs without words." Cross- ing the river once more, to see the beautiful city from the opposite shore, a picture of adventurous cows moving out into the swollen stream, yet finding foothold in the shallower edge and standing con- tentedly in the cool flood, stands to-day in memory. Reluctant to leave the City of the Brethren of the Common Lot, I lingered to the last moment, enjoying every breath of air in the spot where Gerhard Groote in the fourteenth century lifted that beacon light of education which was the harbinger of the Reforma- tion, as surely as the morning star is the herald of the dawn. Here the Fraternity of the Common Life began its school. Here the Brethren made their text- books and kindled that torch of learning which makes Deventer, to the student of pedagogics, what the City of the Violet Crown is to the lover of Greek THE GLORIES OF DEVENTER 177 letters. Well may the would-be graduate, like one whom I know, take as his thesis for the doctorate " The School at De venter." That movement of learn- ing, which began in the consecrated mind and heart of Groote, not only enriched Deventer, but by poten- tial induction caused the Dutch towns and cities to start public schools sustained by taxation of the people, drawing education not only out of the mon- astery and from private ownership into wider chan- nels, but furnishing it free for the children of the poor. Indeed, one may look here for the matrix of that great system which, in the United States of America, and thence by direct influence upon other countries, has given the modern world a plan of public instruction in which all classes share. No historian of American or New England education, however he may write of the leaf, the blossom, the fruit, can ignore the roots which go back to Deventer. Delprat has with fine critical ability told the grand story of the Brethren in an eloquent volume. Yet Deventer is noted for cookery as well as for bookery. Besides keeping in view its illustrious history, its thriving iron foundries, its manufactories, which take their lessons from God's flower-spangled meadows, and turn out carpets excelling in color and permanence earth's natural coverings, let us not forget that which gives Deventer modern local fame and renown among all the children of the Dutch world, whether in Africa, Asia, America, or Europe. To allude, meanwhile, to two gypsy camps, with families living in wagons, which we saw by theljssel river-side, is only to call up the contrast between their 178 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND poverty and black bread, and the heaps of white- frosted and gilded Deventer " koekjes." Tons upon tons of sweet cake, in which are joined the products of bees and of hens and of grains, honey, eggs, and wheat flour, are made annually and sent all over the kingdom. The smaller cakes are of course called " koekjes," which we call " cookies." This lit- tle diminutive tail or annex, Dutch "je," English " ey," Scottish " ie," is the means by which thousands of Dutch nouns and names become darlings in speech. The " koekje " has survived as " cooky " even when transplanted in America. Now if we can say "cooky," why not also " booky," even as do still the Dutch and Scotch? GELDERLAND CHAPTER XX GLORIOUS ARNHEM OUR first sight of fair Gelderland was enjoyed in company with Lyra. We had left the illuminated city of Utrecht with its bunting, its vast crowds, and its costume procession. On the railway we sped eastward over the Kromme Rhine, passing at the frontier of the province the fort Bursteeg, and a place, one of several so-called, the Klomp. Then across heaths, on which, in the distance beyond the levels, were sandy and wooded hills, we gradually came into a region called " the Swiss Netherlands." Our goal was Arnhem. Here, our Dutch friends in Amsterdam had told us, we should see scenery like that in our own country and "quite high mountains." So to Arnhem we came. At Nijmegen the American remembers how Schenk, most famous ancestor of the great American family of that name, lost his life in the river after his fruitless attack on that city. Other glances at the map reveal in the western border the town of Barneveld, a name which, with that of Maurice, in the history of federal government, will always be as interesting as are those of John C. Calhoun or Daniel Webster, and Jefferson Davis or Abraham Lincoln. Further west, near the border, he sees the 182 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND village called Engelsche Stad (English Town), one of the score or more Dutch reminders of the Angles who helped to make the Angle-land or England across the sea. One of the first things to purchase was a local guide-book, issued by an association with a charm- ingly frank name, the Society wishing to Attract Visitors to Arnhem. The city is old, and has fifty thousand people. It was once, probably, the Roman Arenacum, and in mediaeval times the residence of Dukes of Gelre. It is still the capital of fair Gel- derland. A ride in a comfortable carriage, drawn by two spirited horses in charge of an unusually in- telligent driver, enabled us to see the promenades which now occupy the old fortifications on which Coehorn exercised his genius. Everything ancient seems to be rapidly disappearing. One almost ex- pects to find mould or .mildew on the few remaining relics of antiquity. It seems as appropriate as the paten on a classic bronze dug tip yesterday. Yet all dust of time is brushed off from Arnhem. Every- thing is so fresh, modern, bright, almost as smart and fashionable-looking as the yonng women who brighten the streets with their last new spring bon- nets from Paris. This, the day of first impressions, was fortunately beautiful, warm, slightly misty, rich in sweet odors and fair sights. Yet we did not remain long in the city ; for, as Boston is as much noted for its suburbs as for itself, so also is Arnhem. We bade our charioteer drive to Klarenbeek, and soon we were in a perfect "dream" of color. Both sides of the way were GLORIOUS ARNHEM 183 lined with flower-beds, rich in those gorgeous tints in which the Dutch revel to compensate them for their leaden skies and a sunlight too often and too much moderated by moisture. AVe rode past the lovely gardens, which often reminded us of Japan and oriental lands, by the strange plants and trees brought from the spicy ends of the earth. The sub-tropical and far-eastern flavor and illusion were still further kept up for us by the Malay nurses and Javanese servants with the Dutch children. Arnhem and its environs form the second of the seven heavens which the Dutch- man who has lived among the spice islands hopes to reach. The Dutch East Indies are so well gov- erned that, happily for them, they have no history. Anything like a skirmish, in the supposedly inter- minable Atcheen war, is a godsend to the news- papers. Cuba has drawn a larger angle before the world's eye within fifty years than Java has during her whole history. The Dutch nabobs, as they are called, that is, the successful merchants and officers who have served their country in the East, come back to the lovely flower-beds and mountain air of Arnhem to spend the afternoon of their days. At Bronbeek the veterans of the wars retire to rest and to die. Here is a model soldiers' home, where everything is under iron discipline, and the lives of the men made very enjoyable by the order, neatness, and beauty prevailing. There are no idle moments and no discontented spirits, for every one has much to do and plenty to enjoy. Besides the vegetable gardens, butchery, kitchen, and tailoring 184 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND rooms, in which the men prepare what they need fov food and clothing, there are also library and chapel, wherein Protestant and Catholic worship alternately. The museum is full of curious weapons, which reflect the Malay mind and temperament as surely as a Springfield rifle or a United States battleship tell of American genius and feeling. Here are krisses that look like lightning flashes of revenge darting unexpectedly from the dark clouds of hate. Here are cannon that in shape and decoration represent well their names of " dragon," " centipede," " scor- pion," and show mythology in metal. Wonderful are the stories which both the private sentinel and the learned university professor tell of the fascina- tion which the butts of the artillery exercise upon the Orientals. To the Malays the cannon is a phal- lic emblem. Often, as such, symbol of nature's continuity of life, it is worshiped. The wheatfields are nearly ready for the harvest, for it is the first of July. Down under the gold, the red poppies fling out their scarlet splendors and the blue corn-flower moves lightly in the wind, tho white blossoms of the humble potato, less orna- mental than poppy or corn-flower, but more useful, completing the Dutch and American tri-color. We ride on through the " daals " (dales) and past the " bergs," blue and undulating, alongside castles and churches, see the fleecy white clouds and blue hea- vens mirrored in the " vijvers," or fishponds, and reach at last the hill where is the Steenentafel, or table of stone, from which there bursts suddenly and unexpectedly upon our view the magnificent GLORIOUS ARNHEM 185 panorama of the Rhine valley. We can almost imagine we are amid the natural splendors of our own native Pennsylvania. The mountains swell and dimple and wrinkle in misty freshness. The Rhine, in silver glow and in darkening gloom, winds in and out of sunshine and shadow. The view is one for a lifetime. Soon we ride down into a great cathedral aisle of magnificent beeches and limes. Standing mirrored in the stream by the roadside are three cows, superb in form and glossy in hide, lifting up their frontlets like stately creatures that are conscious of the care and love which man, the master of the earth, be- stows upon them. We exclaim at once, " There is the original of Jan Steen's picture which we saw at the Hague." Yet, where are the small boys swim- ming ? Our long ride takes us over and through the Bosch, the Heide, and past more watercourses. Then, out of the green glory of Arnhem environs, we come again under the red-brick roofs of the city. Arnhem has had close touch with England and Scotland. Not a few of the names we read on shop and house door are English or Scottish, for here our American ancestors were numerous during that Dutch war of independence which made ours possi- ble. As early as 1638, ten or twelve English fami- lies, numbering about a hundred persons, established themselves in this town. They obtained permission from the magistrates to use for their public worship the Brothers' Church. For two years the famous Dr. Thomas Goodwin, afterwards Cromwell's friend and the president of Magdalen College in Oxford, 186 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND was pastor here. Then for a time the Rev. Philip Nye, afterwards of the Independent Chapel in Sil- ver Street, London, was the teacher. But, like the ten " lost " tribes, who were never lost in any way except in their language and peculiar nationality, that which would have befallen the Leyden Pilgrims had they remained in Holland happened to the Englishmen in Arnhem ; that is, they gradually gave up their native speech and distinct organiza- tion, and became Dutch people. To-day in Arnhem we see on the doorplates such family names as Bev- erly, Brown, Hereford, and others which I forgot to copy. There are other magnets to draw the American to Arnhem. One naturally thinks of Sir Philip Sidney ; for here, after receiving his wound, he was brought, waiting long and patiently while bravely fighting death. How touching is that passage in his biography which tells us how one morning, after being long accustomed to the smells of the sick-bed, its ointments and applications, he discerned a new odor, and this he knew meant death. Then his soul marched on as bravely as he had dashed to the charge. His body was actually seized for debt and held by his creditors, for Sidney, neglected by his fickle sovereign and unappreciative superiors, died in poverty. Nevertheless, his funeral was one of sur- passing gorgeousness, a spectacle which has drawn forth the happy efforts of brilliant artists to repre- sent it. Another magnet to the American pilgrim in Arn- hem was the oil painting of President George Wash- GLORIOUS ARNHEM 187 ington, for which he himself had sat to the artist, Charles Peale Polke, and which he had given to Claas Taan, the ancestor of the owner, Mr. Peter de Vries. At least two of Washington's personal gifts to Dutchmen exist in Holland, one, his camp-stool used during the Revolutionary War, which he sent with an autograph letter to Professor Luzac, of Ley- den, and this oil portrait. Having letters of intro- duction, we called on Mr. Peter de Vries. While we waited a few minutes in a lovely room overlook- ing a garden, we saw in clear light on the walls the picture of him whom the Pennsylvania Dutchmen first named the Father of his Country, and then we enjoyed a chat with the venerable owner. It is a capital, imidealized portrait, by an artist who spent but two years in America. Claas Taan, a Dutch shipowner of Zaandijk, whose business had been ruined by the British de- claration of war in 1781. broke the British blockade of the Chesapeake Bay during our war, and brought a cargo of flour and bread stuffs at a critical time, and this won the gratitude of the Baltimoreans, of Congress, and of Washington. Afterward settling in the Monumental City, Taan became a wealthy property owner. His name, like that of the Van Bibbers, descendants of Lord Baltimore's Dutch admiral, belongs among those of the many Dutch- men who could say " Maryland, my Maryland." Mr. de Vries died in 1893, and the painting was bought by Mr. van Scheltema, of the firm of Fred. Muller & Co., of Amsterdam. CHAPTER XXI THE AMERICAN ARTIST IN HOLLAND FROM Arnhem Lyra and I went northwestward by rail to Zutphen on the Ijssel. This name, as well as that of the family of Sutphens, is nothing more than a form of South Fen. A vast change has come over the landscape. To-day it is as orderly and cul- tivated almost as a city garden. Ages ago, when the Romans' helmets glittered here, and until even the days when the Spanish sword and Dutchman's pike clashed together, Zutphen was a town lying amid far-stretching morasses. Stepping out into the neat streets and making our way to the great landmark and centre of every Dutch town, as well as its magnet, the Groote Kerk, we passed a school, out of which the lads were just issuing. I asked one of a group whether he could show us the spot where Sir Philip Sidney lost his life. Thoroughly understanding our question, but in honor preferring one another, the youth who first heard us called forward one of their number, to whom I repeated the question. Very politely taking our hand-map, or " platte-grond," he showed the road toward Warnsveld, to the east. On the misty morning of September 22, 1586, as the Spanish convoy approached over the moorland THE AMERICAN ARTIST IN HOLLAND 189 road to Warnsveld Church, the English cavalry, led by Sir William Russell, was hastily called out to charge. Waiting in the fog, which was so dense that a man could scarcely make out ten paces off, until the air was clear was a company of English knights. The names of almost all of these are fa- miliar to reading Americans as historical figures, and have been given to our counties and streets, Lords Willoughby, Vere, Essex, North, Audley, Pelham, and Wingfield. Suddenly the fog lifted, and the Spaniards were seen to be in overwhelming majority. Nevertheless, the English knights charged on their foe. Some of them had only partially dressed, and Sidney had mounted with his cuisses or leg-guards off, hav- ing lent them to Sir William Pelham. W r ith his breastplate as his only defensive armor, his legs and thighs exposed, he fought desperately for two hours. Then, neither conquering nor conquered, the Eng- lishmen were obliged to fall back. The convoy with provisions got safely into the city, even though losing eight times as many as the English, the proportions being two hundred and fifty to thirty- four. With a bullet wound in the left thigh, Sidney was able to keep horse and get back to camp. While suffering the tortures of thirst which quickly come to all wounded men whose life's current is draining away, he yielded generously to the necessity of a " common soldier." Then upon a boat he was borne down the river to Arnhem, where he died September 17, in the arms of his friend, William Temple. 190 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Three of his fellow knights who had charged with him before Zutphen acted as his pall-beai-ers. Though failing to stop the Spaniards' actions, the English allies captured the forts on the other side of the river. They thus drew the Duke of Parma away from Rheinberg and saved the latter place. Leicester had opened his campaign with glory, hav- ing given the English volunteers splendid exercise and opportunity of service. Here and thus began, with the loss of the immortal brave, that experience of nearly fifty years in the Low Countries, wherein, and by which, the modern British army, not then clad in red, was created and began its long career. Among these republican Dutchmen the British sol- diers had their Anglo-Saxon inheritance of popular rights and of individual liberty powerfully rein- forced, so that they not only took up arms against a traitor king at home, founded a commonwealth in place of monarchy, but also insisted that the term " common " soldier should be abolished, and that of " private " should take its place. We went into the great church of St. Walburgis, which began to rest on its piles in the twelfth cen- tury. Interesting as were its auditorium, sculptures, font, and monuments, these were eclipsed to us in interest by the chapter-house with its columns and capitals worthy of study, and its scriptorium full of old books, chained to their desks as in the days before free public libraries. We who came from Massachusetts, where there are over three hundred of these popular blessings, and from Boston, where stands the handsomest and richest public library in THE AMERICAN ARTIST IN HOLLAND 191 the world, " free to all," even to small boys and girls, who can come recommended by anybody whose name is in the directory, enjoyed seeing these books. Most of them, when new, cost the wages of a laboring man for a whole year. Others were worth a farm, with all its crops, for a decade. In this scriptorium the old Brothers wrought with the pen, prepared their parchments, and lived and died in making literary treasures. In this place one can see at once and again how stupid and silly are bigotries of all kinds. The staple of Protestant agitators is that in Luther's time the Bible was " chained " to a desk, which isolated fact is left to the imagination and logic of all haters of the old Church. Either from ignorance or malice, the full truth is unstated that nearly all books were chained to the desk, because of their great value. There are yet in Great Britain scores of places where the old rods or fixtures, which kept books from thieves, as well as from circulation, still remain. Here, too, are the " incunabula," or cradle-books, born and nourished in the first days of printing. They are little more than three centuries old, though they seem very ancient to us, as does the early morn- ing of the " art preservative " in Europe. Yet a Korean scholar might smile, as did my friend Ming Yong Ik, of Seoul, at such antiquity, when he thinks of his country's books printed from movable or " living " types eight or nine centuries ago. To step once more out into the bright streets was like coming from the Middle Ages into this century 192 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND of steam and electricity. We looked again on the great rushing river full of rafts of timber, floated down the Rhine and the I jssel, which make business in the town lively. Had I been rich in time, I should have visited the agricultural colony, founded in 1851, for the education of poor boys and foundlings, and ridden through Warnsfield, which is now a smart suburb. I should have visited, also, both the castle of Nieuwenbeck and the village of Voorst, which reminded us of the many Van Vorsts, some of them pleasant neighbors and friends, whose names adorn the annals of the mother country and of central New York. The poet Horace sings of Pallida Mors knocking without partiality at the palace and the hut. This day, July 12, like pale Death, I, too, go from the abode of royalty to the peasant's cottage. The train bears southwesterly, crossing the Ijssel, thundering down over the heaths, passing sand mountains on the left and " the house in the dell," and still another line of yellowish dunes and hills, until we stop at the station of Nunspeet. This region is the Veluwe, or Bad Lands, as distinguished from the Betuwe, or Good Meadows. From the " vel " of the first name we get our word vile, from " bet " in the second, better and Batavia. Here, breaking the monotony of dull heath and old sea bottom, are masses of woodland, one lying on the map like a long green board, and the other, in which is situated the village, stretching out in a sort of a gap in the sand, which swells up toward Lies- berg. Near by is a village called De Zoom, reminding THE AMERICAN ARTIST IN HOLLAND 193 us of Bergen-op-Zoom. In the neighborhood are several places ending in the same " speet," which means something flat, like spatula, butter-pat, trowel, or spit. Over brick roads I reached the hotel, almost lost in a crowd of arboreal giants, where an American lady painter is spending the summer. The American in Holland outside of the cities is usually an artist, and there are many of her and of him, and whole colonies of them in villages like Laren and Baren- drecht. Even so small a place as Nunspeet has its guide- book, which tells of historic interests, paths, woods, and ponds. It is delightful here to meet two of my own countrywomen, who are from Milwaukee, though with a very good acquaintance in Boston. I spend a delightful afternoon in the study. This has been made by fitting up an old storehouse. Now, with its large windows admitting abundant light, with cosy furniture and an artist's belongings and surroundings, it makes a haven of desire. For this is a day when Boreas is busy. It is one of Holland's dry storms. One does indeed need an umbrella occasionally, but the chief elemental force at work is that of wind. This causes a chilliness which makes the little stove a welcome friend. An occasional dash of rain is followed by brilliant sun- shine, with great sweeping clouds that now curl into white fleece, and anon spread out, tighten, and blacken into rain. All the time the noise without shows that there is "a sound of a going," not to say a gong, " spiritual " or otherwise, in the trees. 194 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND The artist is adding to her repertoire of paintings and sketches of Dutch life and character an ambi- tious canvas four by three feet, in which she depicts life among the lowly. Inviting me to visit with some of her humble friends, I gladly don hat and coat, with umbrella for alternate walking-stick and can- opy. Over the footpaths, through the potato and rye fields and beyond a hedge, we come to the hum- ble home. The very poor cottager is a widow. She has two children to rear, with little possibilities of income, except from the sandy soil and the dumb creatures which make their home under the same roof with herself. The human beings live within brick, and the cattle within wooden walls, but the one ridgepole is over all. The living-room is probably twelve feet square. In one corner, where the mother sits, her face pre- maturely wrinkled, and every wrinkle a furrow of ex- perience telling of a sorrow, is the spinning-wheel, on which she is at work even while she talks, making yarn and getting it ready for hose. Back of her, against the wall, is a little wooden case, in which are a few spoons and other eating utensils. In the middle of one wall and against it is a fireplace, where are crackling a few embers over which hangs the kettle, and, farther up, a hole rather than a chimney. The table on which the humble meals are set is in the middle of the room. There are two wooden chairs and a settee, and on the walls a couple of very ancient framed pictures. The lamp is of American make, and the oil which the one little wise virgin of the home puts into it is petroleum. THE AMERICAN ARTIST IN HOLLAND 195 On the shelf is a Bible. The old-fashioned hand coffee-mill is near by to furnish cheer during the two daily meals. The uncarpeted floor is of brick and stone. The bed is in the closet. Stepping outside into the rear room on the left, we find the cow and the sheep, that poke out their noses and look up at us with their bright eyes, as though they knew that we were friends. Near by is a pile of cut grass, and overhead some dry fodder. On our right is a kind of rough loft or closet. In this the son, a boy of ten or twelve and the hope of the family, sleeps. I was glad to have seen first the original, so as to enjoy fully the copy im oil painting. The artist has represented with truth and pathos the home of strug- gling but unquerulous poverty. No lack of this world's goods seems able to chill the spirits or check the flow of happy feeling in the sunny little maid whom we meet at the door as we go back. The de- tails of the little home reappear in the picture. The moment chosen is when, since the cottagers have no oven in which to bake their bread, the loaf has come home from the baker's. With eager eye the boy, having been trusted to weigh the ultimate product of yeast, flour, and caloric, scrutinizes the scales, with an earnestness that seems unfair to youth. Why should bread be so scarce and food so hard to win ? We know now why so many Dutchmen emi- grate to America, where fertile soil awaits the tiller, and abundance the eater. Outdoors the surroundings of poverty were like those within. A few chickens scratched vigorously 196 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND for a living, but the fine-feathered cock seemed to be as proud of his speckled harem as Solomon was, perhaps, of his princesses. The little children of this Dutch village, which is a great resort for paint- ers, contrive to earn a few dubbeltjes by posing to artists. Political economy rules even in the domain of art. Even artists learn to take advantage of competition and cut down prices, until the visit of a foreigner with a palette is not necessarily a god- send. Nevertheless, this source of revenue could not be ignored by people who live at no remote distance from the starvation line. On the window-sill of the cottage lay a cast-off wooden shoe which the widow's son had roofed over, leaving in the centre of the covering a slit large enough for any coin, from a dubbeltje to a thaler. We enjoyed the jingling which our money made, while meditating upon the fearful and wonderful uses to which the Dutch klompen are put. It is probably only in nursery wonder tales that an old woman lives in a house made of leather, but in Holland one sees that the sabot, after serv- ing its varied uses as a combination shoe, in which sole, heel, welt, uppers, counters, and sewing are all in one piece, enters into many other utilities. It is made an instrument of correction for training up disobedient children in the way they should go, a projectile for angry fellows to hurl at each other's heads. It serves a" a money-box, a flower-pot, a spoonholder. In time of flood, it becomes a lifeboat for little chickens. Santa Claus, in lieu of a stock- THE AMERICAN ARTIST IN HOLLAND 197 ing, stuffs it with toys, cookies, and with all the good things for the model children, and with miser- able straws for bad boys and disobedient girls. Again, as one often sees, it is a drinking-cup. At the pump the thirsty small boy has only to pull off one klomp, rinse it out a little, take a drink, and pass the loving-cup around. Finally, as firewood, in cre- mation, the klomp returns to its original elements in the air. From Lazarus to Dives was but a step. Leaving the widow, thankful for the mites left her, we walked over to another house not far away where was a cottage, indeed, and yet the home of the rich. The walls and roof were more substantial. On the out- side were flower-beds, beehives, garden truck, and the evidences of thrift and prosperity. Inside was no fire, for the busy wife was out, and at first it seemed doubtful whether the good man of the house, with his pipe in his mouth and well armored in woolen, would admit us into his castle of three rooms. At length, persuading him to do so, we passed through the kitchen, which was almost pain- fully neat. In the sitting-room we found solid fur- niture, silver, and old keramic ware. In the bed- room, which was also the parlor, we saw among other wonders a great Dutch Bible, reminding one more of a block of wood than of anything to be used or enjoyed. It was shielded with leather, and guarded with metal clasps. By this time the host was getting communicative. Opening the ponderous tome, he showed us the mar- velously Dutchy pictures, and especially the plan of 198 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND the city of Jerusalem, going into some dogmatic de- tail about the temple of Sol-o'mon. Exactly like a " platte-grond " of Harlingen or Rotterdam in the seventeenth century was the plan and appearance of the Holy City, and this Dutchman evidently knew all about it. Certainly we could tell him nothing. Out in the garden he turned upside down for us his hives packed full of bees. They were too busy to use their stings upon our cuticle, or even to notice us. In the hour or so before dinner, while the ladies napped, I enjoyed looking over and reading the new Dutch magazine, " Elsevier's Maandschrift," which pictures finely with print and illustration the modern life and the artistic and literary glories of the Neth- erlands. At dinner I could see that this was a fa- vorite summer resort for families. My American friends have spent five or six years in Holland, liv- ing in the Hague during the winter, and spending the summer at Nunspeet, or some other rural para- dise like it. Familiar with the language, recognizing even the slang and dialect not down in the books, the daughter proposed, and I encouraged her, to translate Hildebrand's " Camera Obscura," which Dutchmen think cannot be translated. The mother is in love with Dutch civilization. It is delightful to her eyes to find no spoiling of scenery by advertisements. The approaches to the towns and villages and the immediate surroundings of the railway station are made beautiful and pleasant. The study by the people of beauty as a permanent force to life is commendable. The country in gen- THE AMERICAN ARTIST IN HOLLAND 199 eral induces a spirit of quiet restfulness, so grateful to the overwrought American. It is undoubtedly true that there are in Dutch civilization many points of superiority over ours, and we have yet to learn many excellent things from the quiet Hollanders. They can certainly criticise us wisely, as I have seen, in Dr. Cohen Stuart's book, " Door Amerika." From Nunspeet male laborers go annually up into Drenthe to cut and strip off the bark from young timber. Here also in this village is a highly suc- cessful Bonte, or profit-sharing labor colony, well worthy of study. Netherland is rich in experience, and many are the social experiments nobly tried on this soil enriched not by nature, but by man's patience, tenacity, and faith. Agneta Park, near Delft, transformed, by Mr. and Mrs. J. C. van Marken and their helpers, from a black and marshy plot into a paradise of industry and plenty, is a good "modern instance." Yeast, glue, gelatin, spirits, are the commercial products of this ideal village, in which, with homes and halls of recreation for mind and body, two hundred families dwell. Verily the Dutch mines of wealth are not below, but above the soil. The Dutch, no more than Americans, are not afraid to try experiments, even in various tolerations. "Toekomst" (the future) is a great word in this land of experience, but also of hope. I remember a passage in Lowell's essay " On a Certain Condescen- sion in Foreigners : " "For more than a century the Dutch were the 200 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND laughing-stock of polite Europe. ... In the natural course of things we succeeded to this unenviable position of general butt." Yet year by year, even Europeans understand us. The facts of the nobler progress are patent. Grad- ually they are learning the secrets. We have not been afraid to profit by what Holland and mother England taught. CHAPTER XXII FROM HARDERWIJK TO HET LOO FROM the groves of Nunspeet I rode to Harder- wijk over the Veluwe, or vile heaths, of Gelderland, where the sand is so unstable and the wind is so for- cible that great wattles have to be set up along the railway for miles, to keep the sand from blowing * over the tracks. Harderwijk, in its derivation, may mean perhaps Mulletville, after the fish of that name, but one must not be dogmatic in the matter of Dutch ety- mology, not having, as in Chinese, the advantage of ancient ideographs that speak to the eye as well as to the ear. Possibly the name may also mean Shepherd's Cove. The unwelcome bear of research often knocks over the honey of tradition as rudely as in the fable, while again the antiquarian Bruin is stung and driven away by the clouds of bees in the form of industrious controvertists. Once a fair inland town, Harderwijk became a seaport by the great inundation of the thirteenth century, when Lake Flevo, borrowing the ocean's mass, became the Zuyder Zee. Later, it joined the Hanseatic League, and was a place of mighty com- merce. It has had a varied history of siege and capture by the Spaniards and the Bishop of Miin- 202 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND ster. It is the birthplace of not a few illustrious men, and of several more whose family name was Van Harderwijk. In honor of the great peace which ended the Eighty Years' War of independence, a university was established here in 1648. As Gel- derland's High School, it flourished with many an illustrious teacher in its faculty, until 1811. Then Napoleon closed its doors. We put up at the Hotel Du Croix, over against the great church. Though the wind was blowing most uncomfortably, I sailed out to see what was left of Harderwijk's ancient glory, for at present almost the only interest which Dutchmen at large have in the town is as a depot for East Indian re- cruits, not a few of whom I saw along the quiet streets. I observed in the house windows the little sign "geeri groente," a notice to peddlers that " no greens " or table vegetables were wanted that day. Salutes from old fellows who touched or took off their caps to me were frequent. Perhaps they supposed me an officer in citizen's dress. I remem- ber that in rural Japan, riding men would dismount from their horses in my honor as I went by, they supposing me to be a Samurai. The strong west wind had made the water of the Zuyder Zee overstream the meadows and fields. The green sward had again become the place where the fish reveled, finding new and fresh food. To me it looked dangerous, as I bethought myself that the town was but a few inches above the level of the sea ; but the natives did not seem to mind it. The seagulls were at the height of enjoyment. Moving FROM HARDERWIJK TO HEX LOO 203 in clouds over the new feeding-grounds thus sud- denly provided, they flashed white sheets of light against the gray sky as they swooped into the shal- low water, bringing up scaly tidbits which palely glittered in the fitful sun rays. Here was history's allegory, the story of Neder- land in an object lesson. Furnishing a home alter- nately for fish and for cattle, for fin and for hoof, with the swallow and the gull, the sunshine and the" wave, the salt and the fresh water, this pre-ancient no-man's-land, once the sea bottom, has finally be- come a place of homes. The half thousand square miles in the Roman age have become the twelve thousand of our time. A fine breakwater built out beyond the shallows makes a good haven. The fishing-boats owned here are marked HK, the initial and final letters in the town's name. When the Zuyder Zee shall have been pumped out, Harderwijk will again become an inland town, many miles away from that Ijssel Meer which science is to delimit. There were plenty of ancient mariners in their picturesque costumes, and many other things to see along the water fronts, though vision was difficult. To have one's eyeglasses nearly blown awry, knocked away, or off the nose-bridge, and every five minutes dimmed by the moisture, or in danger of being ground opaque by the driving sand, was not a pleasant experience. Harderwijk is rich in those benevolent institu- tions without which a Dutch town scarcely exists. Here was even a home for aged couples, which I 204 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND once heard spoken of in Boston, where they had one such, as " a Boston idea," though the Nether- landers have hundreds, and have had them for cen- turies. Following custom, I left my card with the Dutch teacher of English. He was out, but called later upon me at my hotel, and courteously answered my questions. When the Netherlanders won their freedom from allied Spain and Rome, they safeguarded their prize by education based on the Bible, that sledge which breaks the mind's chains and that anvil which wears out all hammers. Five of these " High Schools " were started, at Leyden in 1575, at Frane- ker in 1585, at Groningen in 1612, at Utrecht in 1636, and at Harderwijk in 1648, the latter sur- viving until 1818. Amsterdam later founded a university, now as famed for its medical faculty as Leyden is for law and the physical sciences, and Utrecht and Groningen are for theology. No traces of the Harderwijk University remain in the city, and the old books and apparatus have been scat- tered in Arnhem, Zwolle, and Leeuwarden. Next morning I was awakened by the thunder- roar of the Zuyder Zee, which had been lashed into wrath by the west wind. It was a grand spectacle, this shallow sea wrestling with the gale, its water furrowed and twisted into billows of every shape. Far out, the ships seemed tossed as if between the horns of wind and wave. One stranded boat had its skin of gunwale torn off, exposing its oaken ribs. As I walked around the town again, I passed a white marble bust of Linna3us set in a tower. The FROM HARDERWIJK TO HET LOO 205 great botanist took his degree in 1735 at the Har- denvijk University, and beautified this city by lay- ing out a garden. The young Swede came to Hol- land because this little country was then the leader of science. He met Boerhave and the savants at Leyden, where he wrote and published his immortal books. Returning to my hotel, I found in the chief room a farmers' meeting for a Verkoop, or sale of the rye crop. There, as well as out in the bustling market, I enjoyed as good an opportunity as ever Rembrandt had, to study Dutch faces in repose. The array of bucolic noses reminded me of what Hamel tells of his adventures in Korea. There the Orientals were impressed with the vastness and prominence of this facial ornament. The common Korean rumor was that the Dutchmen had to tuck up their noses whenever they took a drink. Cer- tainly, the Xetherlanders are a nation with noses. They have character. Silver buckles and thick woolen clothes were conspicuous on this very windy day. In hearing the talk of the peasants in the marketplace, I was impressed with the fact that theirs was purer Dutch and more like English than was the polished conversation of scholars and gen- tlemen. Leaving Harderwijk, I asked the conductor at the station to put me in a car marked " Niet Rooken " (no smoking). He did so, and I took my seat. Im- mediately four men, all smokers, with lighted cigars between their lips, got in with me. The government taxes all the fireplaces in the kingdom, except a 20G THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Dutchman's mouth, the busiest of all. Human flues and chimneys are exempted, and tobacco is free. They say a Hollander cannot see after four p. M., because of smoke. Nevertheless, the floor of the Dutch smoking-car is not usually like a pigpen, as in America. After a day's use, the grayish boards resemble rather a prairie after a fire. The debris, consisting of ashes in plenty, of burned and un- burned tobacco and old match-tips, is dry. There is little spitting. The cuspidor is not so truly a national utensil as it is under the stars and stripes. Gelderland is rich in graphic symbols. Glancing over the list of town arms, I note that of Barneveld, which perhaps means the burned or the warm field, and has for its blazon a moth basking in the sun. Doesburg bears a castle (of Drusus), and over it two crescents. Eibergen, or Egg Hills, keeps on its shield three products of the hen. This reminds one of Easter Hill in old Philadelphia, on which the old Dutch people used to come out on Easter Mon- day and, by rolling eggs down the slope, play games of forfeits. Long ago the hill was leveled, its val- ley filled up, and, since piles were not used, house- owners have had to pay many a bill to mason and bricklayer because of the sinking of foundations. Harderwijk boasts a lion with bricks of turf. Hat- tern's king of beasts wears a star inside of its curled tail. In the arms of Warnsveld an angel is stran- gling a serpent. Wageningen shows a wagon-wheel. Zutphen has a two-tailed lion on a shield held by two of his fellows, all crowned. These are in no danger of gossiping, for they have no tongues. FROM HARDERWIJK TO HEX LOO 207 Having twice traversed Gelderland, in directions from north to south and south to north, I set out 011 July 18, 1895, to cross it from west to east. Leav- ing Amsterdam at 7 P. M., I took the train which bore the signs of the two frontier towns, Nieuwschanz and Winterswijk. The frontiers of North Holland and Utrecht were passed shortly after leaving Amersfoort, and over the " velds," " bergs," " loos,' T and "daals" (fields, hills, groves, and dales) of the Veluwe, we sped to Apeldoorn, a name meaning apple thorn, and reminding us of the jingle of th# children's games, " Intra, niiutra," etc. We passed through many deep cuts between the sandhills. The great yellowish heaths were turned into green here and there, with tobacco fields, where fuel and foulness for the mouth is raised. In the main the Veluwe is a vile wilderness. The railway territory is divided into blocks, named after the let- ters of the alphabet, at each of which is a little house with railroad signals conspicuous. Here stands a woman, flag in hand, with a red-lined and red-collared blue coat and hat of black enameled stuff. The Netherland railway companies find that these signal- women are less apt to get drunk than men. Here is a fine specimen of woman's work faithfully done. Of 727 apothecaries in Holland, 313 are women. As oyster-dredgers, brickmakers, turf-diggers, as well as embroiderers, engravers, housemaids, or authors and artists, the Dutch women do well. All the servants of the railway corporation wear a distinguishing badge, cap, or uniform, adopted a half century or more ago. The station-master has- 208 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND a scarlet cap, the conductor a crimson belt of enam- eled leather over the left shoulder and breast, and the porter a metal disk with a number. Occasionally on the horizon line we saw a wind- mill, a church spire, or a wooded hill, but most of the landscape consisted of level heath. This is not a turf but a sod heath, with embroideries of color or tufts of grass. Among the many tinted crusts of sand were fertile spots or strips near the railway houses, where nature and art combining had tickled the sterile earth to smile flowers. Occasionally we took on a passenger, who would politely say " Mor- gen," or good-morning. Some of the sandhills seemed almost like moun- tains. The Aardmanberg measures 107, the Water- berg and the Philipsberg, 107, the Essop 100, and the Imbosch 110 metres in height, while the Veluwe Zoom, a range of hills just north of the Rhine and the Ijssel, give to that region and to Arnhem an almost mountainous character. It was indeed an unwonted experience in the Netherlands to ride in deep cuts, shut out from much of the sunlight, with banks of sand on either side. There was a strange feeling in having the view of the horizon broken, and only here and there emerging into open spaces with vistas. Along the route were piles of cut brush, and masses of yellow heath flowers. Often the sand was heaped or divided like the embrasures in forti- fications, with towers and crenelations. Occasionally we saw dots of dried sod stacked up for winter fuel. Then we rode over billowy furzy land swelling up to GATEWAY OF THE OLD MINT, DORDRECHT FROM HARDERWIJK TO HEX LOO 209 the horizon, and again passed a brick railway house. The " bosch," or forests, along the way were mostly of slender pine-trees, which I perforce contrasted with the giant pines of Maine or Niskayuna, N. Y., in home regions, or the fat monarchs of Zwolle. I wondered whether in olden times there were not many robberies on this lonely heath, to which the modern railway and telegraph have given an artery and nerves. Before reaching Apeldoorn, which is a flourishing city of nearly twenty thousand people, we passed one of the several great groves which adorn and beautify this region. This is a land, not of "bosh" but of genuine " bosch." Holt land, or Holland, the country of many woods, has its capital appro- priately at The Hedge, while the Queen's summer palace is at the Het Loo, The Grove. On this swell of high ground lives the young Queen Wil- helmina, whose face on paper and metal is rubbed daily on a million coins, and stamped and pounded in ten thousand post-offices. Apeldoorn is one of the loveliest towns in the Netherlands. It is a perfect maze of charming streets and brick paths winding in and out among sylvan shades, with pretty churches, hotels, dwell- ings, and cottages. Pebbly paths allure one to me- morial seats of stone, before " vijvers," or fishponds. Great avenues of lichen-embossed beech-trees attract the rambler to move at his own sweet will. In the sunny hours, the golden-haired, blue-eyed, and pink- cheeked babies are out with their nurses. Mother- hood is honorable in this country until the quiver is full. 210 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Even the royal palace is a homelike structure that makes you feel that this is a land of homes. There is an imposing gateway painted white, and capped with symbols of Roman legend and foster- motherhood. There are also sphinxes, with mighty bosoms. These four figures have been so often clothed in white paint that they are like some of the pictures of the old masters, nearly ruined by age-stratified varnishings. The abode of royalty seems almost too cosy and comfortable for any poor unfortunate condemned to wear a crown. But then, this bauble is but slightly affected in this free land. The " palace " befits finely a land where " home " is an aboriginal word. There are no hinged or barred iron gates forbidding entrance. Instead of military force, only one very gentlemanly officer-guard walks in the clear cool air. Against the facade of the home is a clock that seems friendly and serviceable. The railway runs up to a brick platform to the right of the gateway, and the tri-color floats from the top of the pediment. It seems as simple and dignified as the imperial residence in old Japan. The fence, also, which goes around the Loo park is wonderfully like that in Kyoto surrounding the Mikado's palace. Within the royal inclosure are parks, vijvers, flower-beds, and everything to suggest a happy marriage of nature and art. This is indeed the land of bosch and vijver, hout and hedge^ of ivy and creeper vine. The lanes around Apeldoorn seem Englishlike, with their walls both high and low, well-clipped hedges fur- FROM HARDERWIJK TO HET LOO 211 nishing privacy and reserve. There is not an abun- dance of water, but there are some canals, else this would not be Holland. The Reformed Church is a great structure, looking quite smart and new in its rich red brick. It is rare that one sees a newly built brick Reformed Church of imposing size. The large fresh edifices are mostly Roman Catho- lic. There are indeed many new houses of worship, but they are for the most part small and erected by congregations of the Christian Reformed Church, who receive no state or inherited aid, but make free-will offerings out of their own purses. It was a good season to see a Dutch summer city. Tulip time was over, and cherry and strawberry days had come. I can say from experience that the Apeldoorn cherries are good. UTRECHT CHAPTER XXIII UTRECHT: PROVINCE AND CITY IN the very heart of the kingdom, Utrecht is the only province which bears what is probably a Latin name. Five of the provinces have names ending in " land." One is the namesake of a river. Drenthe and Groningen, Brabant and Limburg, are nomi- nated from Celtic or Germanic elements on the soil. Smallest of the eleven divisions, Utrecht's name is but a synonym for a river-crossing, like Bosphorus, Oxford, or Coevorden. The Romans, to whom the Rhine was the great landmark of the Germanic world, knew well the fords, each of which they called " trajectum," or crossing. The Inferior Trecht, or Lower Ford, was at Maastricht, but the Ultra or Distant Ford was where Utrecht city now stands. " Ultra Trajectum " became " Utrecht," though between, in point of time, was the Oude-trecht, that is, the Old Ford. Even so, the Dutch in New Netherland gave the name Little Falls to the place between Utica and Amster- dam where the Mohawk waters burst through their rocky barriers, and Great Falls to the large cascade at Cohoes near the end of the valley. On Long Island they founded New Utrecht. Though oldest in history and largest in religious 216 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND and civilizing influences during the Middle Ages, Utrecht, like many states both famous and potent, is not great in area, being but half the size of Rhode Island. Touching her boundaries are Gelderland, Brabant, North and South Holland, and the Zuy- der Zee. Brabant, Limburg, and Drenthe are the three inland states which have no seacoast. Ancient Utrecht lay far inland. The ocean inundation, which turned Lake Flevo into the Zuyder Zee, gave Utrecht a little strip of water frontier, not much more than five miles long, but sufficient for the emp- tying of the Eem River. My first introduction to province and city was in the closing days of June, 1891. The city was gayly decorated with greenery, flowers, floral designs, and countless flags in honor of the Lustrum Feast. It was the two hundred and fifty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the University, the dear " Acade- mia," which is the pride of the place. Even the cheese, milk, and grocery shops had their wares artistically arranged, with flowers set or devices made to read " Vivat academia." The outraying sun, the golden letters V. A., and the dates 1636- 1891 were everywhere. The old Romans used to hold a great sacrifice with rites of purification every five years, called a lustrum. The Dutch students apply this term to their semi- decennial festivals. The eve of the lustrum feast, in this year of 1891, was cool, starry, and fragrant with the perfume of many flowers, while the streets were ablaze with globes of light and uncounted col- ored lanterns of glass and paper. A happy throng UTRECHT: PROVINCE AND CITY 217 from town and country, not yet boisterous in their joy, filled the thoroughfares. The next day, June 30, was bright and fair. The great occasion which brought probably one hundred thousand people into Utrecht was the celebration by the students of the battle of St. Quentin, in which the Netherlander defeated the French and Counts Egmont and Hoorn won glory, the former becoming the idol of the army. This little town of France, in Aisne on the Somme, stands to-day with a population of nearly forty thousand, a noble ca- thedral, a town hall, court house and hospital, canal and railway. Here are made those charming striped and spotted muslins, laces, and dry goods of many names, known best by their feminine purchasers. In a word, the place is now wholly given up to peaceful manufactures for the clothing of women and of dinner-tables, but on August 10, 1557, to carnage. Here English and Spaniards were allies and comrades. The Dutchmen owned Philip II. as their sovereign, Egmont won fame and glory, and the constable of Moutmorency was defeated. The Dutch youth seem never happier than when in costume reproducing exactly old dresses and wea- pons. So rich and magnificent are the uniforms that one sees nothing modern, except the eyeglasses perched upon the wearers' noses. First in the grand procession in this celebration is the army of the Netherlands, led by the colonel, Alfonso Casera, a Spaniard, on horseback, the vanguard of the Span- ish infantry being on foot. Next follow the English "help-troops," or auxiliaries. Here we recognize 218 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND the Earl of Pembroke, William Herbert ; Clinton, Count of Lincoln ; Arthur Grey, Lord of Wilton ; Anton Browne, the castle-lord Montague ; Queen Elizabeth's lover and friend, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester ; and Ambrose Dudley, Count of War- wick ; all with a brave following of English foot- soldiers, who, in our Dutch hand-book, which is very full and accurate in detail, are marked anon- ymi. Next in all the splendor of color and feathers, with dazzling gear for man and horse, comes the commander-in-chief with his staff. Two gorgeously attired pages are in advance ; then rides the Duke of Savoy, Emanuel Filibert, who is Captain-General of the Netherlanders. He is one of those splendid mercenaries who, like his brethren of Italy, was ready to fight in all causes and take his pay from any sovereign. Most interesting in our eyes is Filips van Mont- morency, Count of Hoorn, Lord of Altena and Weert, and Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece. More handsome, probably, than the ori- ginal of two centuries ago, the modern masquerader rides a superb horse, decorated with straps and bells, himself in velvet coat, beef-eater's hat, and long buff leggings. Bright are the eyes which from balcony and window rain influence, and fair are the hands that cast sweet flowers in his path. In reality the rider is one of that charming family in whose homes we have been at Amsterdam and Zeist. Next in splendor of horse -gear and personal adornment comes Lodewijk of Brederode, of whom UTRECHT: PROVINCE AND CITY 219 history tells, whose ancestral castle was near Bloe- mendaal, and his own stronghold at Vianen. The modern personator is a great-grandson of Luzac of Leyden, Washington's friend. He is followed by a Dutchman, one of many of the Scotch name Mc- Kay, who takes the part of Count Egmont. William, Prince of Orange, whose titles and honors are nu- merous, rides in velvets of gorgeous colors upon a lively horse. Time fails to tell the names and titles of the historic figures here represented by rosy- cheeked young Dutchmen. Some have a close touch with American history. Many are of Knights of the Golden Fleece. The horsemen of Count Egmont are also marked in the guide-book, anonymi. The fourth division consists of the German auxil- iaries, cavalry, and footmen. Peacefully to-day march with them French troops, the advance consisting of pipers and drummers. After them on horseback come the Bourbons, the Stuarts, knights and officers, followed by the Swiss soldiers. These are succeeded by the French commander and his staff. The Duke of Montmorency has a string of titles only some- what less numerous than the barbules of his ostrich feathers. Two pages are in his train. More of the knights and lords of Bourbon, Orleans, Savoy, and La Tour follow, after whom step the French infan- try, who are anonymi. A rear-guard of knights, officers, and infantry finishes the procession. The long line is headed by the corps of mounted musi- cians from the third regiment of hussars stationed at the Hague. It is finished by the band of the fifth regiment of infantry from Amersfoort. 220 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND The handbook gives a rich programme of con- certs, balls, matinees, popular festivals, athletic con- tests, excursions, and so on. We are also informed as to the makers of the costumes, the footgear, and the weapons borne in the procession, and concerning extra trains run from the various cities in the king- dom to accommodate the crowds of sightseers coming to the great Optocht. The procession passed twice during the day through the chief streets of the city. In marching, in accuracy of costume, in reproduc- tion of the historic spirit and enthusiasm of the paraders, it was highly creditable. It was good to see the University alumni enjoy themselves. In the United States one does not necessarily associate malt or spirituous liquors with the festivities of a college Commencement, but in Utrecht beer flowed by the hogshead, gin by the tierce, and wine by the thousands of bottles. Never- theless, literary and intellectual exercises were much in the order of the day, and there were hilarity and gayety, but I saw no drunkenness among the students. At night it was almost impossible to get through the illuminated streets. The fun in the restaurants and among the groups of buxom women and jolly men, who roped themselves together hand in hand, and went swinging and singing through the streets, was rather boisterous. I have known Americans to reason, from this excess of female merriment, even as Eli the priest did concerning the future mother of Samuel, and with equal error of judgment. These happy girls are not drunk, neither are they lacking in virtue. It is simply UTRECHT: PROVINCE AND CITY 221 their way in Kermis time. Individual lapses there may be, but the fun is not vicious, though very con- tagious. On occasion of revel allowed by long cus- tom, the foreigner, especially, must "pull gently on a weak rope," and not too harshly judge or swiftly condemn. CHAPTER XXIV BY THE STORIED RHINE MY further rambles in Utrecht province may be grouped under three heads. In the south, Woerden, Oudewater, Ijselstein, Vreeswijk, Wijk-bei-Duur- stede, and Rhenen make up the places most enjoyed along the Rhine border. In the west, I made a journey to Amersfoort. In the north, I acquainted myself with Breukelen and Nieuwersluis. Of these last two places let me tell first. I must needs visit Breukelen, for this is the origi- nal after which the great city in Greater New York, on Long Island and opposite the borough of Man- hattan, takes its name. Notwithstanding its modern spelling, altered, like hundreds of Dutch-American names, to look like an English word, Brooklyn is the namesake of the Dutch Breukelen. From this village in Utrecht came the men and women who on June 16, 1637, settled the American " city of churches." As in New Netherland the village of Brooklyn lay between New Amsterdam and New Utrecht, so in the older country Breukelen may be found about half way between old Amsterdam and old Utrecht, being nearer to the latter city. As Brooklyn lies on "the Rhine of America," so is Breukelen on at least one of the Dutch Rhines, the Vecht. BY THE STORIED RHINE 223 In Amsterdam, I knew from the repetition of the word " door " (through) in the time-tables, that Breukelen was a place at which important trains rarely stopped, so I prepared myself to see a village. Of communities of this name there are no fewer than seven in the Netherlands, more than half being in Utrecht, and two in North Brabant. The literal meaning of the word, if not exhausted in that of " marsh," or " morass," concerns itself with " what has broken forth," for originally the term referred to a stream of water that breaks out. Broek is the older form of Brook. It was Saturday afternoon, June 29, 1895, the time when the roses were in full bloom, that I stepped from the cars to the brick platform. I walked up the clinker road to the tree -embowered village, which seemed to be everywhere smiling with flowers. Off the Vecht Breukelen's East River the canals were clean and wide, and the swimming fish glittered in the sunshine. The people seemed very polite, and there were many tips of caps to the passing Mynheer from America. In the new Roman Catholic edifice, amid clouds of incense, I saw the elevation of the Host. There are a few old-time structures, as some of their inscriptions show. In the pretty town hall I noticed the arms, which consisted of a shield capped with a crown and quartered with lines denoting both ordinary and polder land, with two sets of St. An- drew's crosses ranged in three lines. Perhaps these emblems tell the story of the town. Near the village is an old-fashioned sixteenth-century mansion, sur- 224 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND rounded by a moat. It is the former dwelling of the great Barneveldt. House and home were sold with his estate. My next visit on the same road was to Nieuwer- sluis, or the New Sluice, which enjoys the honor, strange as it may seem, of being the only place of this name in the Netherlands. It has a fort built in modern style, a military headquarters, and many pleasant summer residences that face the Vecht. The great and honored tribe of the Van Vechtens, not unknown in American history, may have taken their names from the " vechts" of geography, one in Over-Ijssel and the other in Utrecht, or, with equal probability, from belligerent ancestry. Other places in the province of Utrecht are Amersfoort, where Barneveldt was born, and Werk- hoven, whence sprang the Van Braams, famous in Dutch history, one of whom was the military in- structor and comrade-in-war of George Washington. Some towns worth visiting lie chiefly along the Rhine ; one of these is Vreeswijk, where the great ship canal from Amsterdam to the chief river of western Europe joins the waters of the Zuyder Zee. The superb works of engineering, the piers, docks, enormous sluices, and gates recall those of Katwijk. The town, like most of those modern Dutch commu- nities which have been called into being by new iron or water ways, has no crown upon its shield to tell of imperial favors, ducal glories, privileges of coin- age, or like relics of the past. It suggests rather modern achievement, and man's mastery of the earth with pick and spade, which is usually symbolized in BY THE STORIED RHINE 225 Dutch heraldry by alternate bands of lines and dots. There are four other places of the name of Vrees- wijk. Across the rushing river one sees the town of Vianen, to which I crossed by means of a floating bridge of boats. One need not be an architect to enjoy architec- ture. This nurse and mother of many arts tells to the attentive tales more alluring than those of the fairies. To study some edifices is not only to read sermons in stones, but to see the thoughts, the aspi- rations, the genius, the abilities of an age expressed in stone. Ages and nations flower in structures for divine worship or civic glory. I remember with what delight my friend, Edward A. Freeman, the historian, used to dwell upon architecture as a means of expressing and recording history, which he called " past politics." What is true of those nations and countries which had quarries beneath their soil is eloquently so of these Low Countries, which have had either to import their building material, economize glacial debris, or dig, bake, and burn the earth into brick, the image of stone. Around the towers, especially, whether dwarf, torso, or cloud-touching, cluster ro- mance and legend. Upon their uprearing there hangs many a story of toil and aspiration. To such a tower I was attracted by hearing of its wonderful beauty. On the banks of the Rhine, in the extreme southeast corner of Utrecht, are the town and commune of Rhenen, which takes its name from the river. Jan van Arkel in 1346 gave Rhenen municipal rights, and provided it with moats and 226 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND walls. Ruled by various feudal lords, it was for a while the dwelling-place of the exiled king of Bohemia, Friedrich of Pfalz, who here built a pal- ace. Even into the nineteenth century the lordship belonged to the bishopric of Utrecht. Its town arms, a crowned shield guarded by lions, has three towers, each with a dome and flag, a key lying across the central flagstaff. Prettily situated 011 the bluff, Rhenen contains on the Heeren Straat a number of handsome modern houses, for here is a lovely sum- mer resort for people from the Dutch cities. The famed church tower, built of brick and stone, has in portions been freshly faced, and there are new and old statues in the niches. Its particular name is the Kunera tower, after the daughter of the king of the Orkney Islands off Scotland, who, with Ursula and her eleven thousand maidens, made a pilgrimage to Rome. At Cologne, on their return, the virgins, while disembarking, were attacked by hordes of Hunnish barbarians, and all were mur- dered. Only Kunera was spared, through the plead- ings of a King Hymo, after whom Himenberg is named, and was taken to his castle. There, after certain remarkable adventures, she threw herself down from the Himenberg and was killed, like the Winona of our Indian story. Her relics, carefully preserved at her last resting-place, are shown on the 28th of October. This river before me was the water pathway along which Ursula sailed. Amid the beauty of the Rhine valley the imagination breeds legends as prodigally and naturally as the earth produces flowers. I feel BY THE STORIED RHINE 227 this summer afternoon like summoning forth the vanished presences, and hearing again the story of Ursula and her virgins. Yet as time devours his own darlings, so mathe- matics, anatomy, and criticism feed on legend. The favorite diet of dragons in all aeons and climes con- sists of plump virgins fair and lovely, but usually the beast of mythology enjoyed but one of them at a time. The modern critic swallows thousands at a gulp, as the whale a whole school of herring. At Cologne, in St. Ursula Church, they preserve the bones of this myriad plus a thousand more of pilgrim virgins slain by Huns. Their bones were dug up, during the nine years from A. D. 1155 to 1162, out of a field which had been revealed in dreams as the scene of massacre. Alas for the legend and dream ! Professor Owen recognized among these bones those of men, horses, monkeys, and other animals. Archaeologists declare the alleged field of the buried virgins to have been the ancient burying-grouud of the Roman colony. Critical readers of old texts declare that the legend arose from a misreading of record in the calendar of martyrs, " Ursula et Undecmilla W." Instead of " Ursula and Undecmilla, Virgins," the myth-makers read " Ursula et Undecim millia W.," Ursula and eleven thousand virgins. Thus the two became more than a myriad. The improba- bilities and anachronisms of the story were early pointed out. Evidently a mustard seed of real historical inci- dent, sprouting out of soil enriched with Teutonic 228 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND mythology, has become a mighty tree, in whose branches all the birds of fancy in Christianized plumage have lodged and sung. Among an unlet- tered people, whose minds were saturated with the conceits of Freya, Hulda, and Berchta, such a legend as that of Ursula was pretty sure to grow up. Have we not, in our own land, the legend of Lake " Hori- con " and an imaginary tribe of the " Horicons " growing, at the touch of Cooper's imagination, out of a misprint on a map, of Horicou for Iroquois ? Of the five or six, possibly a dozen babies slaughtered at Bethlehem by Herod, have not art and rhetoric made thousands? Have not the twenty or thirty cubic feet of Plymouth Rock already become in poem and oration a " beetling cliff," a " rock-bound shore," a mountain-like mass under which the Pilgrims could rest or " nestle " ? Let Rhenen's soaring shaft keep its garland of story. I saw the grand old tower in the sunlight and late afternoon, when one can watch the line between the shadow and the glory, as the golden light moves up from the earth level to the tip of the spire. Hun- dreds of birds had made their nests in the crotches of the pointed arches and on the sides of project- ing points, under which they were sheltered from wind and rain. These homes of our little brothers of the ' air were, like the bricks, made of mud, but baked only in the sun. Well woven and mortared together, they had apparently a roof on, with a hole in the top for exit. Here and there one of the poor old weather-pitted saints or angels had a hump on his shoulder. Was it an epaulette of honor, or the BY THE STORIED RHINE 229 swelling of disease ? No, only a little bird's home. In one case, a nest formed a crown on the statue. The evening chimes of the bells rang out at inter- vals that were none too short. They seemed to translate to my ears Faber's beautiful hymn of wel- come to " the pilgrims of the night." " Hark, hark, my soul, angelic notes are swelling 1 O'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore." The river Rhine was gay with rowboats and mov- ing craft of all kinds. As I rode back from Rhenen to Arnhem, over the fertile plains of the Betuwe, or " the better land," I saw few or no peasant costumes. Cattle were plentiful in the meadow. The river dikes seem competent to guarantee protection against dangers by water, however much the snow may melt on the mountains of Switzerland or Germany. It is a rare sight in the Netherlands to see church towers in silhouette against ranges of hills, but this I saw on my approach to Arnhem. The scene was grandly impressive, appearing in the twilight like a colossal etching. NORTH BRABANT CHAPTER XXV IN THE OLD GENERALITY: NORTH BRABANT NORTH BRABANT, like Limburg, is one of a pair of twins. In each case one sister lives on the Dutch, and the other on the Belgian side of the frontier. Old Brabant was a little country by itself, about the size of Connecticut. It consisted of a great plain, with forests, hills, and fens, lying between the Maas, Waal, and Lower Scheldt rivers. Here the Celts and Teutons met and partially mixed together, and here dwelt the Franks. The state began in the year 1106, when the Em- peror Henry V. divided the ancient Kingdom or Duchy of Lorraine into two parts, the upper and the lower. Godfrey the Bearded was given lower Lorraine, and took the title of Duke of Brabant and Lorraine. Henry III. shortened his title, and called himself Duke of Brabant, only. In the Middle Ages the duchy was a blooming garden of industry, not- withstanding that so much of it was then, as it is now, but turf or heath. The Brabant standard had three horizontal stripes, red, yellow, and black, which the southern Nether- lands, when they became the Kingdom of Belgium in 1830, took for their national or Belgian flag. Now, old or southern Brabant, divided, like ancient 234 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Gaul or modern Poland, has become, as to languages, Dutch, Flemish, and Walloon ; and as to political divisions, the provinces of North Brabant, Antwerp, and Brabant. On the duke's arms was the lion of Brabant, a bushy creature, with its hair apparently rubbed the wrong way, and in a chronic state of rampancy, with puffed tail, especially at the middle and end, and with tongue hanging out as though he had been running hard, or had been chased by a hunter. Between the dukes and the Dutch, one thinks of our own Dutchess County, and the long war of words over its orthography. Within Brabant's ancient boundaries were the rich cities of Brussels and Louvain, as well as the group of towns lying near the Maas on the north. For centuries this was the marching-ground of armies. During the troubles between Spain and Nether- lands, it was the storm-centre. When the Spanish Inquisition was " re-introduced," as the Pope's vicar said, into other provinces, -it was shown that in Brabant this form of church discipline had never existed. While other cities and provinces possessed their charters, edicts, and " hand-fasts," by which they guarded themselves against the encroachment of their sovereigns, Brabant boasted of its unique constitution, the " Joyous Entrance." In this magna charta it was provided " that the prince of the land should not elevate the clerical state higher than of old has been customary and by former princes set- tled ; unless by consent of the other estates, the no- bility of the city." Other articles were even more protective to freedom, while one clause absolved the THE GENERALITY: NORTH BRABANT 235 people from obedience to the prince who violated the provisions of this charter. So happily did the Brabanters live under this " blithe incoming " that mothers in spe came from a distance into Brabant in order to have their children born on the soil and thus inherit as a birthright all the privileges be- stowed under the flag of red, gold, and black. Though Philip II. of Spain twice swore to be faithful to the constitution of Brabant, he was not a man to care for his plighted word. Pens and ink, seals and wax, parchment and ribbon, were for him only implements or material for deception and per- jury. In 1560 he multiplied the clericals and intro- duced the inquisition, with all its peculiarly Spanish atrocities done in the name of God. Amid the horror and dismay of the people, and while the nobles vacillated according to the smile or frown of the king, William of Orange began stout and continued resistance. After vainly trying to base a solid edifice of order and freedom, first upon the nobles and then the burghers, he built immovably upon the people. Although a Catholic, he hated the idea of persecution, and denounced bishops who served as inquisitors, tyrants of conscience, and burners of bodies. Gradually the ancient character of the provin- cials, with all its weaknesses, asserted itself. Of Keltic stock, the Brabanters were noted for their ardor rather than their endurance, for their emo- tional rather than their intellectual life. Disgrace- fully soon they were in line with the " obedient provinces." In the first years of " the troubles," 233 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Brabant was held almost wholly by the Spaniards, and on it were fought many battles. There are those who picture the great William as a snow-white, unsullied, guileless patriot and martyr, of Alpine purity and freedom from common passions. Indeed, one gets this idea from Motley's clear-cut portrait, which seems to have no shading, but stands out in white light ; but Motley, colorist in words, took his model from Eubens, the roman- cist, rather than Rembrandt, the realist. On the contrary, William was not without guile. He fought fire with fire. In the eyes of the unpreju- diced historian, he showed decided subtlety and even the craft of the politician in combating his enemies among the Belgian nobles and the Span- iards. It is certain that his partisans tumultuously invaded the hall of the States of Brabant and forced them to elect him Ruward, or special gov- ernor of the province ; and this high office, which had always been the stepping-stone to sovereignty, he accepted so soon as it was evident that the popu- lar feeling demanded it. Nor did he ever deny what was charged upon him, in the ban of Philip, that he had secured his election by force and tu- mult. He justified himself in accepting the office in order to nullify the plots of his enemies. Wil- liam's hostile critics, in our century, even hint at his subtle agency in this popular uprising. They also find his hand to be the principal one in the seizure of the Duke of Aerschot, the head of the conspirators against him, and other Catholic lead- ers, an action which excited the greatest indigna- THE GENERALITY: NORTH BRABANT 237 tion among the Roman Catholics, and powerfully influenced, more for evil probably than for good, the cause of Netherland's unity. In the formation of the Dutch union of states, which made a new Protestant nation, Brabant, as a whole, did not join, being out in what is called " the generality." Though treated as people living in conquered territory, the Brabanters enjoyed their ancient local rights given them under the dukes. After the independent nation had unfurled the flag of open revolt and had issued its declaration of independence, in 15S1 Brabant became the battle- ground between the Spaniards and their mercena- ries and the Dutch patriots and their allies. Dur- ing the Eighty Years' War Brabant contained the first or southern line as defense of the Republic against the Spaniards. The events of the sieges of Grave, Ravenstein, Hertogenbosch, Geertruidenberg, Bergen-op-Zoom, Breda, and Tilburg took place on Brabant's soil. These filled the minds of the peo- ple in both Holland and England, caused the writ- ing of many books, the shedding of rivulets of ink, besides rivers of blood, and gave the world new lessons in the art of war. As the English called the whole federal Repub- lic, made up of the United States of Netherlands, " Holland," so they usually spoke and wrote of the Belgian provinces or Spanish Netherlands as " Flan- ders." Here in Brabant (" Flanders ") marched, camped, and fought those military Englishmen who afterwards settled in America or led the army of Parliament against King Charles the Traitor. To 238 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND the Spaniards the Maas River was a great circle of protection against the militant United States, a great natural moat guarding their domain. Never- theless, despite the magnificent advantages which the Spaniards possessed at the beginning, in money, in the quality and numbers of their soldiers, in the advantage of long preparation and the initiative of offense, Brabant was finally won to the patriot cause. Science and valor decided the long struggle, and the strategic points were occupied by republican gar- risons. Yet North Brabant remained part of the Spanish and Austrian Netherlands until 1722. Then it came under control of the Elector Palatine, not reverting to Holland until 1801. Under the soldering-irons of diplomacy at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the two alien king- doms, one controlled by the school and the other by the priest, were conjoined. Dutch and Belgian Brabant became once more a unity. In 1830 tho Belgians drew the sword of separation, and Brabant was once more divided. The southern boundary of Dutch or North Brabant was drawn from the Scheldt River westward, in a most irregular and meandering manner. So indeed it seems upon the map, though in reality it follows the natural lines of demarcation as furnished by the convenient features of land and water, until at a point on the western frontier of Limburg it ceases. The province is thus bounded by the Maas River, with Gelderland and South Holland on the north, Limburg on the east, Belgium on the south, and Zealand on the west. Its broad plains are well traversed by iron roads, and THE GENERALITY : NORTH BRABANT 239 the great steam highway from Germany and the northern states passes through it. In area North Brabant is exactly the size of Dela- ware, covering 1960 square miles, and containing half a million people. Politically, it reminds one of a sentimental astronomer's map, with all sorts of picturesque animals and mythical heroes and their belongings interlaced and coiled up upon its face ; or a palimpsest, on which are the writings of many generations in various strata. There are all sorts of old marquisates, baronies, lordships, markgraaf- schaps, beside all kinds of subdivisions and dis- tricts, whose names linger in the old law books and on the peasants' lips, though unknown to the tour- ists and possibly to many lawyers of to-day. These glacier scratches of history, visible only to the archaeologist, delight the student rambler who looks with clear vision upon the past, as it moves in pro- cession with all its varied figures over the landscape. At first view Brabant seems dry as well as flat. The unclean spirit that delighted in " waterless places " might enjoy touring here. In reality, how- ever, the province is well swept and garnished by flowing streams. To say nothing of the natural streams which the Dutch call " riviertjes," or little rivers, the Aa, Dommel, Dieze, Dintel, Mark, etc., one sees also plenty of water-channels made by the spade. On the northeast and north is the ever-flow- ing Maas, which on nearing the sea becomes the Hollandish Deep and the Volkrak. On the west, dividing Brabant from Zealand Archipelago, are the Scheldt waters. 240 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND It is within the limits of Brabant that the vast collection of islands and streams, resembling a mass of intestines, called the Biesbosch, or forest of reeds, is found. Down in hopeless and unfathomed ooze lie the wrecks of over seventy villages and towns, which with their one hundred thousand in- habitants were overwhelmed in the great flood of 1421. Despite its vast areas of heath and fen, one of these, the Peel, being twenty miles long, there is many a tuft of fertility, and the Brabanters are abundantly fed from their own fields and pastures. Personally, I made the acquaintance of Brabant soil by entering from three different points of the compass, at three different times, separated years apart. Of my adventures I now proceed to tell. Bergen-op-Zoom is at the western edge. It is the gateway facing Zealand. I found the old city, on both of my visits, to be more interesting in the past than in the present, and in history than in fact. During the Dutch Revolutionary War, when it was garrisoned by a strong English and Dutch force, this town was the military key, not only to eastern Brabant, but also to Tholen and South Beveland, two of the best islands of Zealand. Then it was handsomely fortified with strong walls and mighty towers and gateways. One of the latter, called the old gate, still stands with its massive round and pointed roofs. It opens on the Haven, where of old were extra fortifications. The moats round the city are supplied by water from the Scheldt, for the name Bergen-op-Zoom refers to something dry, and not to the Zoom " River " of the orator's imagination. THE GENERALITY : NORTH BRABANT 241 Zoom meant a border or bank. To-day it signifies a hem, or the overlapping of ship's boards or shin- gles. The rising ground, hardly more than a swell amid morasses, gave its name to the city, which means the hill on the edge or border. Many a Dutchman's summer home has for its motto " Lust in rust " (Pleasure in repose), or vice versa. Here at Bergen-op-Zooin we see a Zoomlust, a Zoomrust, and a Zoomvelt. Where the Scheldt let its flood into the Haven was a Watergate, regulating the supply, with a strong fort on either side of it, while all around was and is the " drowned land," which had become so in a great storm and inundation in the sixteenth century. With twenty thousand men, the Duke of Parma, aided by the English traitor Stanley, laid siege to the town in the autumn of 1588. After two months of toil and loss the siege was raised, and Parma returned to Brussels. Later, the great Spanish engineer, Spi- nola, came here to try the fortune of war, but had to leave in chagrin when Maurice made that trium- phant entrance into the town which has been repeat- edly celebrated in prose, in poetry, on the stage, and by the students' costume processions at Leyden and elsewhere. The event made a deep impression upon the Dutch mind. Maurice was their young war- eagle. In later days Coehorn reconstructed the for- tifications, which, however, could not keep back the French in 1672, when they overran most of the coun- try. The walls were leveled in 1867. Now all is so changed that one could hardly re- cognize the town through which Leicester strutted, 242 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND and beyond the portcullis of which Sir Francis Vere waited to entrap the Spaniards. Superbly built dikes keep out the water. The one remaining city gate stands like a pelican in the wilderness. The bastions, which once so delighted the engineer's eye and were so often reproduced by diagram in the old histories, are as furrows in the sea. The monastic- looking old Hof, or palace of the Marquis, still looms up with its courtyard and its great archway, carved pillars, and flower gardens. These Sir Philip Sid- ney wished to occupy, though he resigned the de- sired governorship to Lord Willoughby. Here and in the great monastery of the Minim, on the north side of the town, were probably the quarters of the English officers. An English Presbyterian church existed a long while in this town. Where are its records ? To-day, as I walk down streets named " English," " Dear Lady," " High," and " Forest," I find this town of ten thousand people insufferably dull. Even the great market square, with its colossal but still unfin- ished church of St. Lambert and its massive towers, whence of old the watchers could look into the be- leaguering camps, fails to interest me ; neither do the fish and the corn markets, which with their open spaces are as lungs to the body municipal. Rambling round the town's edges, I find the old bastions still keep their curves and angles on the water front. In front of the city, along the banks of the Scheldt, are those enormous oyster-beds which are expected to yield luscious bivalves enough to supply all Great Britain, as well as the Netherlands. THE GENERALITY : NORTH BRABANT 243 I read the glowing advertisements in the English papers concerning the rosy prospects of these breed- ing-grounds. The company formed for the multipli- cation of the Dutch " Saddle Rocks " was under the presidency of a Dutch gentleman, Dr. Pompe van Meerdervoort. Whether he will make his fortune, or lose all his guilders, it is not for me to prophesy. Yet even should failure come, he has already won honorable fame in Japan as the trainer of scores of Japanese physicians and surgeons. As the Vesalius of Japan, who laid the foundation of medical science in the Mikado's empire by the introduction of scien- tific surgery and the dissection of cadavers, he will ever deserve lasting honor. I have found his book, " Five Years in Japan, 1857-1863," a modest story interestingly told. In North Brabant, as elsewhere in the Netherlands, much heath means much turf. In other provinces, like Drenthe and Over-Ijssel, though fertile soil be lacking, the Dutchman cuts his fuel off the face of the land. In the land where the stove was invented, you may be sure that these folk who wear wool all the year round keep warm in winter, yet not by " stove coal." The English and Belgians sell the Dutchman their anthracite to supply his gas, engines, machine- shops, and electric lights. In the cities coke is much employed, but in village and metropolis turf is the standard fuel. In the enormous inland commerce and navigation so noticeable to the traveler, this fuel plays a prominent part as freight. It is heaped up on decks to the height of ten or fifteen feet above the gunwale. It is stacked on the heaths house high. 244 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND From along the river fronts in the distributing cen- tres, it is, by means of the omnipresent pushcart, supplied to hearth, furnace, foot-stove, porcelain heater, and cooking-range. One can scarcely get an idea of the fascinations of the turf moors to artists and lovers of color until he has seen them in all lights. These dried-up bogs, these seas of sand, embroidered with all tints of the heather-flowers of to-day and dyed with the mould of aeons, reveal fresh wonders to the eye that revels in the splendors of nature's spectrum. It is no won- der that both the wild flower of the moor and the " briquettes " of turf as cut by the spade reappear liberally and with loving appreciation in Dutch art, heraldry, poetry, and folk-lore. Whole colonies of American, French, and German artists traverse or dwell in rural Netherland during the summer months to study the scenery of this flat land. They live face to face with nature and the common folk. In winter the fascinations of the rich galleries draw the art students to the cities, and keep them busy in mastering the secrets of the lords of art. Then the heaths, wolds, and cottages are deserted by the alien. It is pleasant for the student traveler to meet in unexpected places in Holland his fellow countrymen and women. Barendrecht, near Rotterdam, and Laren, near Amsterdam, are the popular centres of art work. LTMBURG CHAPTER XXVI THE VALLEY OF THE UPPER MAAS HAVING been at the extreme north of the Dutch kingdom and made tangent of its farthest points on its frontiers facing sunrise and sunset, I pur- posed also to touch and cross its southern boundary. Leaving the canals, dikes, curious headgear, and windmills of Batavia and entering Limburg, one at first hardly believes himself still in Nederland. Both landscape, costumes, customs, and religion are dif- ferent. One wonders almost why Limburg is a part of the Netherlands. On the other hand, the student realizes all the more keenly the thoroughness of the union between the provinces which compose that Dutch Kingdom which fulfills the hopes of the Republic. In the old days of federal government, of the union and " Lands of the Generality," there was often weak federalism, with dangerous and divisive differences. One state in the union was ultra - democratic, like Friesland ; another aristocratic, like Holland ; one maritime and ultra-protestant, like Zeeland ; another inland and ultra-catholic, like Groningen ; one very poor, like Drenthe ; another rich, like Utrecht. In- deed, it is remarkable that they held and had held together so well, both under the Republic and in this 248 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND century under the monarchy, when the states became provinces. Limburg is only politically Dutch. The people are of mixed blood. A large number talk French, and the money used is mostly German. Despite the fact that Maastricht was as bravely defended against the Spaniards as was Haarlem or Alkmaar, one does not usually account the Limburgers inheritors of the glorious traditions of the old Eighty Years' War for freedom. One portion of the province cast in its lot with the Spanish Netherlands, and even to this day there is a Dutch and a Belgian Limburg. The an- cient name is honored and kept, even when the land is parted in the middle like Brabant, or our own Carolina, Virginia, and Dakota. In the war of 1830 between Holland and Belgium, which sundered once more the artificially united Netherlands of Spanish and of Teutonic traditions, the Dutch were able to hold the valley of the Maas. That is what Dutch Limburg is to-day, the re- gion of the valley of the Maas. For strategic pur- poses it is as indispensable for the Dutch to say " I will maintain " as it is for the American Union to hold the Mississippi from source to mouth. Since the Maas has had so much to do with the making of their country, the Dutch felt it to be a necessity of both geography and of politics to keep Limburg within their two famous states, that of the water and of the sceptre, and they have done it. Limburg is a curiously shaped province, long and irregularly narrow. Looked at on the map from the south, it resembles that curious creature, the THE VALLEY OF THE UPPER MAAS 249 sea-horse, its tail wagging into Gelderland, its head lying between Maastricht and Aken. From the north it begins at a point a little above where the Waal makes its great bend eastward to pour its waters into the North Sea and form the liquid boundary between Zealand, which is the delta of the Scheldt, and the South Holland islands, which are the deltas of the Maas and the Waal. The tip of the northern boundary touches the railway line south of Nijmegen and a little east of Broesbeek. By the iron road, on July 20, 1895, I entered the province which begins its line of northern villages with a name of sinister memory to a Dutchman. The railway passes through a deep cut amid sand and gravel banks. The heaths, scarcely more than stained with vegetation, spread out on either side. It is the Mookerheide of black memory. When a Dutchman would utter a malediction, with the intent of landing his devoted object into some vile limbo, he mentally dumps him into the Mookerheide (" Ik won dat hij op de Mookerhei zat "). Here on this barren prairie is a spot as sad to the Hollander as is the desolate moor of Culloden to a Jacobite High- lander, or Bull Run to a loyal American. On the 14th of April, 1574, Count Lodewijk (Louis), the brother of the great William and the mirror of knightly chivalry, with his horsemen and infantry faced the Spanish cavalry, pikeinen, and musketeers. The battle soon raged around the trenches of the village of Mook, where to-day the railway train stops for a few minutes. The Span- ish infantry, according to custom, dropped on their 250 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND knees before the assault, said a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria, and then rushed in mass to the attack. The Dutch patriots were beaten back into retreat. Count Louis, whom tradition represents as a handsome person, arrayed in black cloth and armor banded with gold, sought to retrieve the day. Gallantly he charged with his squadrons. The ranks of the Spanish cavalry were broken, and they fled in all directions ; but while the patriot shot-men were loading their carbines in retirement, they were attacked when still unready, and the battle was lost. Before all hope had fled, the brothers, Counts Louis and Henry, rallied a little band of horsemen and charged again. " Into the jaws of hell " they rode. Nothing more was ever seen of the two heroes. As completely as if they had leaped into a volcano crater, did they disappear. Whether drowned in the river, burned in the fire, or trampled in the moor-sand under the horse-hoofs, nobody knows. This calamity, following so soon after the awful slaughter at Jemmingen in the north, brought dis- couragement to the patriots, grief to the great-souled William, and abiding sorrow to the noble mother, Juliana of Stolberg, then the loser of three sons on Netherlands' bloody soil. No wonder that for two centuries the very name of this death-heath served as a malediction. To send a man to Mookerheide meant to be rid of him in oblivion. Unmarked by monument or by celebration, like desolate Culloden, the moor remained until over three centuries had passed by, when on April 14, 1891, the patriotic and learned scholars and histori- ans from afar and people of the region gathered to hear an oration by the accomplished historian, Professor Doctor P. J. Blok, whose monograph on Lodewijk van Nassau (of 1889) I have before me as I write. The national interest awakened by> the tercentenary celebrations at Briel and Heiligerlee, and by the studies of Dr. Blok, culminated in the erection, in the Reformed church at Heumen, near the historic heath, of a memorial to the two princely brothers. Of Caen stone, in the Renaissance style, is this appropriate monument ; the inscriptions being, as was Count Louis's armor, gold on black (marble). The main figure in the centre is that of History, with Courage, Truth, and Loyalty on the sides. Flanking the arms of Nassau are lions. The motto, directly under the angelic figure on the top, reads " Plutot mort que vaincu, genereux sang de Nassau." At the base is an inscription telling that Lodewijk and Hendrik van Nassau died " for the freedom of the Fatherland." Riding through the field, which is in modern times cut by the railway, we are deeply impressed with the awful contrast between the worthlessness of the soil here and the richness of the precious blood (" genereux sang de Nassau ") which for a little while fertilized it, " deepening," not " pansies " but only heather, " for a year or two." As we shoot past the station into more level and fertile land, the smil- ing grain-fields on the right give further contrast to the heath which rolls away to the left. Soon we cross on the noble bridge, a triumph of science and 262 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND engineering skill, over the Maas River. Through al- ternating fertility and barrenness, amid purple heaths and drifted sand, rye harvests and wild flowers, through pine barrens and great heaps of stripped pine poles, which show by their slender ness the pov- erty of the soil, we here and there discern villages with church spires on which the cross flashes with frequency, some of them seen from across vast sheets of purple heather. We are reaching the lands of the crucifix. The picturesque costumes are no more. The women have bare heads, or lace caps with long flaps. Instead of pyramid of gold wire, ball, or mirror, with pendants fronting the ears, are plenty of gold chains and neck- laces, with the Roman symbols of religion. Occa- sionally we see a fat shaveling, roped around the middle, looking as if he had just stepped out of the Middle Ages. Most of the language we hear spo- ken, as we stop at the stations, is Dutch. Indeed, Dutch is the vernacular in four of the Belgian pro- vinces, and the burgomaster of Antwerp speaks Platt Deutsch, the language of Erasmus, Vondel, Rem- brant, Bilderdijk, Boerhave, and Kuenen. This province is remarkable for the large number of small village communities, so common in Nether- land. In 1883 there were more than thirty-two which had less than eight hundred souls. Though Utrecht stands next to Limburg, she has but six- teen villages so small. In Drenthe and Groningen there are, strictly speaking, none, all the settlements being large towns. This land is the highest in the kingdom, and be- THE VALLEY OF THE UPPER MAAS 253 tween its hills the Maas, flowing out from the Haute Marne district in France, slides down to the sea. The river takes its name from the village Meuse. In the two hundred leagues of its flow, it drains nineteen thousand square miles, furnishing life-blood more to Holland than to France, a fact which pro- vided Napoleon, who pocketed kingdoms as easily as pictures or statues, with his plea that Holland ought to belong to France because so largely a pro- duct of the French rivers. We stop off first at Venlo, which, like the far bet- ter-known Waterloo, or Het Loo, has a name whose final syllable means a grove or wood. There are two southern places having in their name Ven, which is only the southern form of the Dutch " veen," or turf. On the map we find Hohe-Venn, it would be Hoogeveen in the far north, not very far from which is Stolberg, whence Juliana, the mother of William the Silent, took her family name. Lou- vain (Loo-veen) is the place of the famous univer- sity in which the spiteful enemies of Erasmus dwelt, and where the great William's son was partly edu- cated and thence spirited off to Spain and made a Jesuit. Venlo lies between the railway and the river. Its story of inclosures and defense is that of so many other cities on this soil, so long the cock-pit of Europe. The Indians would have called it Ken- tucky, " the dark and bloody ground." Many are the sieges which Venlo has sustained from the times of the gladius and the catapult to those of smooth- bore and flint-lock. The walls have been repeatedly raised and razed. In modern Europe the locomo- 254: THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND tive is the chief battering-ram, and railway neces- sities are the levelers of old mediaeval masonry. Venlo is now stripped of her old armor. Walking down to the river-side and on the Maas Kade, I find considerable portions of the old walls still embanking the river and serving on their tops for promenades. From portions of the ancient gate and bastions the grass waves, with here and there a pretty flower blooming, the crocus of peace edg- ing the glaciers of war. The marketplace is full of buying, selling, and chaffering people, but the dull clothing of the peasantry is unrelieved by pic- turesque costumes. I notice no bright variety as in the northern Dutch towns. The dogs seem to be worked harder than in Rhineland. This is a region of rye and potatoes. In a shop window I find a Dutch cook-book one among many, showing the popularity of this kind of literature which gives three hundred receipts for making these apples of the earth palatable. On the balustrade of the town hall and weigh house, which we make our coign of vantage to look down on the scene, are the city arms, the upper half of a lion, and below him an anchor. Fine rain sifts down through the air, but no one minds it, and the hum goes on. In the busy market scene are dresses both dark and light, with plenty of jewelry in the form of crosses and gorgets of gold. There are many quaint old houses dating from the Spanish time, clamped together with iron bands and gayly painted. The shops exhibit plentifully the pictures of Wilhelmina, who has but recently visited this province, much to the joy of her loyal subjects. THE VALLEY OF THE UPPER MAAS 255 From the realistic posters on the walls, I find what was the chief attraction of the Kermis, which took place on Sunday, June 23. This was none other than " Uncle Tom's Cabin " (De Negerhut van oom Tom). The drama was in seven acts. Besides the black man and little Eva, there were the old slave-block, the auction, the whip, the overseer, the bloodhounds, and the cotton-fields. All this is ancient history in America, but the young Limburgers doubtless im- agine that slavery still exists. Are true types in literature as persistent as those of the imagination ? It will take a long time for Cooper's Indians and Harriet Beecher Stowe's negroes and hounds to die out of the European mind. In our day and genera- tion, slavery smells no sweeter in our nostrils than does the cheese of this Belgian province of Limburg, so soft and so strong. CHAPTER XXVH MAASTRICHT AND ROERMOND I RIDE west to Maastricht, or the ford of the Maas. Look on the map of the Netherlands and you will see many names ending in " trecht " or " tricht," which is the local corruption of the old Latin " tra- jectum," or ford. The river valley is walled in on either side with limestone hills. The scenery here contrasts sharply with that north of the Maas. The French call this river the Meuse, after the village of its cradle. I pass by Koermond, that is, the mouth of the Roer River, to which city I shall return for a Sunday's stay. The car in which I ride has the sign " Niet rooken" (No smoking), but the prohibition is defied by four nations and neutralized in French, German, English, and Dutch. Personally, I enjoy cigars best when they are smoked by others. Man was early in the valley of the Maas. Here he chipped his flints and hollowed out or dwelt in the already formed limestone caves. Ths Roman came, saw, conquered, dwelt long, and left many a noble token of his presence. It was he who named this town at the "upper" ford, the " lower" ford being at Utrecht. This Christian missionary appeared betimes, and a bishopric was established at Tongres. MAASTRICHT AND ROERMOND 257 Three hours in Maastricht gave me time to revive the military memories of the centuries when our English ancestors stood shoulder to shoulder against the Spaniards, and the soldier-fathers of the United States were here trained for service in America. Of Maastricht's many sieges, the story of that of 1576 is most interesting. The people had risen up against the Spanish garrison and driven them out of the city, but the triumph was short. At Wijk, at the other end of the stone bridge over the river, the commander, D'Ayala, made a stand and soon summoned rein- forcements, who came quickly under Alva's son, Don Ferdinand de Toledo. To rush across the bridge, in the face of the cannon mounted to defend the city, made even Spanish courage waver, but unscrupulous ferocity supplied a ready expedient. Seizing the women at Wijk, each soldier placed one before his own body, and thus "bucklered with female bosoms " the men moved forward, leveling their muskets over the shoulders, took the silent bat- tery, and began in a true Spanish fashion a massa- cre. During " Bacon's Rebellion " in Virginia the same strategem was resorted to in the attack on Jamestown. The story of the " white aprons " is well known, without, however, a massacre. Evi- dently, Nathaniel Bacon, like a true lawyer, was familiar with precedents. I enjoyed seeing the fine stone bridges, one five hundred feet long, with nine arches, the well-kept streets of the city, and the splendid great church of St. Servas, the oldest in the Netherlands. It was he 258 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND who first preached the gospel in this valley, dying A. D. 384. The centre of the crypt is the place where it is said his bones were laid. The city was gay with all colors of bunting, with flags and emblems both national, provincial, municipal, and ecclesiastical, for the festival in the saint's honor, which was to last a week. In the brilliant church, already overloaded with costly ornaments and sym- bols, was a remarkable exhibition of holy relics, consisting chiefly of bones of various saints, some of them mounted in gold and set in boxes of crystal banded with precious metal and richly begemmed. These were arranged back of the chancel and in the choir, and one must pay to see the uncanny curiosities. Out in the street the sights, sounds, and smells compel contrast with the other Dutch provinces. One sees here what he rarely meets in either of the Hollands, a plenty of beggars. In place of the hard and fragrant cheeses of the north, that called Limburger is too visible to the eye and oppressive to the nose. Sitting down at one of the little round tables outside a restaurant, I called for cof- fee ; the taste was of chicory. Personally, I prefer honest Java, no mendicants, and no bits of skeletons in churches. A local exhibition of art and industry in an old house of worship interests me for a half hour. Mounting the train for a ride into Belgium, the southern frontier is crossed at 4.10 p. M. Rain is falling heavily. The valley of the Maas winds and curves like that of the Mohawk, which it recalls. MAASTRICHT AND ROERMOND 259 There are likewise islands, dams, and locks. At the Douane, or custom house, all are talking French. The formalities are slight. For the passenger they consist chiefly in walking through one room which is Dutch into another room which is Belgian. The falls of the river here remind me of those of the Schuylkill at Philadelphia, or of the Genesee at Rochester. The Maas is crossed by iron bridges. The rocky cliffs of limestone are mostly dark blue, lime kilns being abundant. One station is named Argenteau (silver water). Passing another dam and falls at Barclay, we change cars. Those which we take are smaller, but with more glass and light. The smokers' cars are called " f umeurs." Near the frontier is that *ed clay which recalls the great red earth-bands I have lived upon in New Jersey, and crossed in Japan. Soon the tall chimneys and smoky towers of Liege are in sight. In this triangular country, as in Korea, the traveler is expected to know the name of each place in three languages. This manufacturing city, rich and dirty as it is, must be remembered in Dutch, German, and French as Luik, Luttich, and Liege. I spent three hours in it, and then took the night train back in the rain to Roer- mond, where I planned to spend Sunday and have a good chat with a " Catholic " acquaintance in the " Episcopal " college. After breakfast I walk out over the clean cobblestone pavements, and pass the episcopal residence, for Roermond is the seat of the Bishop's See. I enter, for a half-hour's worship, the great church of St. Christopher, which seems to contain 260 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND a small forest of wood carving. The congregation occupies every seat, crowds fill the space among the decorations and furniture. The service is solemn and beautiful, though I cannot see the priest. It is one of the handsomest churches in the Nether- lands. Among the audience are the several hundred students from the Bishop's college. July 21, 1895. It is Sunday morning at Roer- mond. I am awakened by the cathedral chimes, which sound sweetly on the morning air. From my room in " The Golden Lion," I find myself almost under the eaves of a double-towered stone church, which rises imposingly upon the hill. After wor- ship in an edifice gorgeous in all the externals of religion, my thoughts run on the difference between the story of the Christ in the gospel as history, and the Christ of Renaissance art and legend. I make a call upon the professor of English, finding a very agreeable gentleman in clerical skull- cap and long black gown. He invites me to come to his room in the evening. Two of his brothers, proprietors of a wood-carving establishment which supplies works of art and use for the Catholic churches of the Netherlands and other parts of Eu- rope, join us. We make a quartette, all speaking English. How often this instructor of the lads in the Bishop's college meets heretics and Protestants, I do not know ; but while I am anxious to find out all about Limburg and its people, he insists on knowing my opinions about the Pope. The brothers seem equally anxious to know my views upon points of exegesis and doctrine. The age-old questions, MAASTRICHT AND ROERMOND 261 stereotyped before one of us was born, are discussed with good humor and a mutual regard that seems quite brotherly. It is very evident, however, that a free frank talk with a Christian who counts neither "the church" nor tradition, nor "the fa- thers " nor councils, nor bodies of divinity, nor even accepted customs or institutions, as necessary to a knowledge of Christ, is not an every-day affair with those three brothers. The long hours of the night are reached before we know it. People in Limburg speak a patois made up of Dutch and German, and use mostly German money. The wages, however, are made out in French money, which is in general use also. The people of the city are intensely Roman Catholic, there being but five hundred Protestants with one " Chapel " in the town. No socialists or radical political orators can get a hearing in Roermond. When recently the fa- mous socialistic orator, an ex-domine, came to the place, he was not allowed to speak. Indeed, he came near being mobbed and murdered. This is told me with warmth and zeal, and not with shame. The business men complain that the government at the Hague will do nothing for the development of trade, or for the improvement of the river or of pub- lic works. Even to speak of the subject roused their wrath. Ecclesiastically, this region was an- ciently under the Bishop of Miinster, and the pro- vince was once part of Germany. Intrinsically, it is largely so yet. I was quite reluctant to leave the cosy room of the good brother in cap and gown, surrounded by 262 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND his books and student comforts. Down the corri- dors into the court and through the gate, which was bolted behind me, I passed out into the streets, where one could find effigies of saints on top of the pumps and in niches. Within the shrines to the Virgin were lamps which but dimly lighted the way, while revealing the various emblems characteristic of the Roman tradition of the Christ. My Roer- mond friends always used the terms " Catholic " and " Protestant " instead of " Roman Catholic " and " Reformed," but having been so long among Greek Catholics, I felt it necessary to be more exact. Schaepman is the great hero of the Limburgers and North Brabanters. Beside being a legislator and " politicus," he is a fine poet, a superb writer of the most elegant Dutch, and an impassioned and convincing orator. He is a Roman Catholic of the Roman Catholics. Whenever and wherever he speaks to popular audiences, the halls are crowded and the enthusiasm is intense. My friend was warm in his praises, believing him to be one of the greatest men in Europe. As the head of the cleri- cal or Catholic party he joined his forces with those of Dr. Abraham Kuyper, who is the head of the Calvinist or ultra-Protestant contingent in the Sec- ond Chamber of the States General. By combining their votes, the two parties have been more than once able to rout the Radicals, and secure a divi- sion of the school funds. This is the story of Dutch politics for over a quarter of a century. Next day gave me an opportunity to make the MAASTRICHT AND ROERMOND 263 circuit of the town and call up the ghosts of the centuries gone. Anciently this place was called " Godswaard op de Maas," God's (river) bank on the Maas. Again and again besieged, it has often paid the penalty of its situation. In 1632 the Spaniards were forced out by the advancing hosts of Orange, who marched with the English allies under Lord Vere. Roermond surrendered to the well-fed and well-paid army of the Republic, June 4. To-day, as one sees only a fragment of the bastions remaining, he realizes that the railroad has been the great leveler of old town walls, giving the living more air and light, and in the nineteenth century filling up old angles with graveyards, gas " fabrics," windmills, railroad stations, and edifices of utility. Cities are not now used as forts so much as in former days. A Philadelphian is interested in noticing that a little to the west, amid the marshes, lies Crefeld, ancient place of looms, whence came so many of the first settlers of William Penn's capital and of its suburb, Germantown, which has for its coat of arms a clover leaf. On each lobe is an emblem of indus- try, the cluster of grapes, distaff of flax and reel of silk, and over all the words " Vinum, linum, et textrinum." Ah ! delicious was the " Dutch cake," and many are the well-remembered " Dutch " things, of a Philadelphia boyhood ! We young folks of English descent made little discrimination between the things of Holland and Germany then, as indeed few but educated speakers of English do now. Did not a Dutch bank officer in 1891 complain to me of 264 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND often getting letters from England directed to him at " Rotterdam, Germany " ? From Roermond I rode again to Brussels through a buckwheat country. The fields seemed to be masses of white blossoms, except where the turf and patches of heather made polychrome, but all was flat, showing how admirably the Netherlands were fitted to be battlefields, and why this country was so long the cock-pit of Europe. ZEALAND CHAPTER XXVIII MIDDELBURG, THE HOME OF FREEDOM ZEALAND, or sea-land, the delta of the Scheldt River, is made up of seven islands, which have often changed their outlines. Here we see the grandest dikes in the kingdom, built of necessity for defense of life and property. The restless river floods and ocean waves are continually tearing away and cast- ing up. The shifting seashore of the Netherlands teems with witnesses of the past. Almost every storm which scours and ploughs and undermines the unstable material brings to resurrection things of the past. Now, a marble face is washed clean. Anon, some image from a classic chisel peeps up out of the grave. Again, the keel of some Norseman's pirate boat rises into view. Within this present year (1892), a great Spanish ship with her moul- dering guns, anchors, and chains rose almost entirely out of the sand off the coast. Extremely low water and strong westerty winds now and then reveal structures of masonry from Roman days and the vertebra and ribs of ships which foundered in forgotten centuries. One thinks of that vision of the Hebrew prophet, borrowed by a thousand poets since, of Sheol moved from beneath to meet a newcomer, all the graves stirred to wel- 268 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND come one who is to take his place with those van- ished, that have had their day of glory or of iniquity upon the earth. The soil is yet teeming. Nederland is a land of buried cities and villages. Chronos does not devour more of his children, nor is he a greater cannibal, than Pluvius, who lets loose his floods upon the land, burying man and his structures from sight. Yet they do not stay buried. They are like unquiet ghosts. Besides those vast spaces in eastern Zea- land which were called " drowned lands," there are many square miles elsewhere in the country, like the Biesbosch, or forest of reeds, and the Zuyder Zee, to mention but two, which are but " vast and wan- dering graves." There is a pathos in the relics of the Dutch museums. One of the richest of these to the student of science and history is that at Mid- delburg. With memories of " our Middelburg " of Schoha- rie County in the Empire State, with desire to see the ancient place of political freedom through a charter the oldest written specimen of the Dutch language and the home of a religious toleration antedating by a century that of Roger Williams, and not least, the witnesses of history in relics, I have been " early and often " to the other islands of Zealand, but first and last with delight to Mid- delburg. Having traversed South Beveland, we cross a long bridge over the Ouse and the Sloe, and are upon that island of Walcheren, called in Tudor days "Queen Elizabeth's kitchen garden," and early in this century made the graveyard for that disastrous MIDDELBURG, THE HOME OF FREEDOM 269 British expedition, designed to humble Napoleon, over which Lord Castlereagh and Canning (one of the ancestors of the Monroe Doctrine) fought a duel. Westward we move over more polders, and skirt the Walcheren Canal, which, like a sword, cuts the island in two. We alight in the city of eighteen thousand people, nine thousand being bare- armed girls and women, for in this municipality the evolution of the female sleeve has been arrested. I meet a guide who is worthy of his name and hire. He talks my native tongue well, and neither stares blankly nor tells lies while floundering in ignorance over the kind of questions I ask. He takes me where / want to go, and this is, first, not to the best hotel or the world-renowned town hall or the superb museum, but to the Fish Market, and this not to see either costumes or people. Though neither Friday nor early morning, he at once leads me thither. Except for the twitter of birds, the little square is quiet enough. Neither vender nor sea-food is near. The roofed but open structure has in itself no charm to the eye. Further- more, it is swept, scrubbed, and scraped, and so clean is it that even the flies cannot get a living here. No ancient and fish-like smell abides. The American must call this neighborhood holy ground. For here was the birthplace of influences which have taken form on Plymouth Rock and in the Constitution of the United States. Here dwelt those people called in contempt " Anabaptists," the true spiritual ancestors of the Americans, and of all who believe in keeping Pilate and Caiaphas 270 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND apart. In this city the great doctrine of freedom of conscience and soul-liberty was proclaimed. At the command of William the Silent, mighty, but mod- erate, it became the law of the land. In 1577 he laid the cornerstone of the Dutch Republic in these words to the magistrates of Middelburg : " We de- clare to you that you have no right to interfere with the conscience of any one, so long as he has done nothing that works injury to another person or a public scandal." Here, too, knowing well the place, its congenial mental climate and the Anabaptists dwelling in the city, fled Robert Brown from the persecuting and bigoted England of Tudor days, to print his Scrip- tural arguments for Christian democracy. It would not be difficult to show the evolution of the " Ana- baptist" into the " Brownist," the Independent, the Pilgrim and his progeny, with their Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, Hale, and the starry line of poets and writers, Harvard and Yale, and their long and brilliant following of thirty-five American colleges, with much that is best in American life and litera- ture. In the " Anabaptist " fraternity of churches lay the seed-bed of modern progress. As from a safely anchored bomb-ketch, Brown made the Fish Market in Middelburg, or some room overlooking this square, a masked battery, whence he shot into England tracts, books, broadsides, and ser- mons. These, smuggled among his countrymen by Dutch Anabaptists, terrified bloody-minded prelates and fired the souls of men whom truth made free. Those caught selling, distributing, or reading the MIDDELBURG, THE HOME OF FREEDOM 271 incendiary literature were imprisoned, hanged, or burned. But what of that ? The truth marched on. From this Fish Market printing-press, books without place or date, printer's or publisher's name, multi- plied. Without doubt Brown came to Middelburg because his fellow believers in Christian democracy were already here and tolerated by the federal Re- public. Thus began with type and ink that long campaign which was waged against prelacy and mo- nopoly in religion for over a century, until, after Milton's seraphic plea, printing was free in England, and the ban which classed unlicensed publication with the counterfeiting of coin was removed. Leaving the spot sacred to the American student of his country's origins, we turn to the shrine of Zealand's magna charta, the splendid town hall. This gem of architecture was built about 1512, by Kelderman, one of that brilliant family, rich in men of genius, under whose master eyes and hands rose the walls and spires of many a city in the Nether- lands. How lovely to the eye is this pointed style of civic architecture, imposing with its forest-like richness of pinnacle, in which the Netherlands excel ! Each edifice seems to breathe aspiration after liberty, as surely as the Gothic minster seems to yearn after the infinite. In the abundant niches are statues of the counts and countesses of Zealand and Holland. As from the Dutch we borrowed the expression " stadhuis," calling it " state house," so also have we transferred the office of " schout " and prosecuting officer, while transforming the name to that of dis- trict attorney. 272 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND I am interested in studying the Vierschaar, or court-room, on the first floor, lined with its fine wooden paneling of the sixteenth century, with foot- stoves for the judges and assessors. The Dutch did not believe in big wigs for judges, but in having cool heads and warm feet. We remember that when, in 1609, our William Bradford reached Flushing, sur- viving the storm and two weeks' buffeting by the sea, some malicious hint was given to the " sellouts " that he was a fugitive from English justice. The Dutch magistrate, or district attorney, examined him, and finding that he was a refugee for conscience' sake only, at once released him, for the Republic had no ban against private religion. Thus was justice cheap and swift. It is not an accident that the Empire State, which in its jurisprudence has influ- enced the whole nation, as New England has moulded it educationally, took its spirit and procedure so largely from the Dutch. Neither is it an accident that American diplomacy leads the world in the principles of righteousness arid humanity. I gaze reverently on this charter, granted to Mid- delburg, in the year 1253, by King William of Hol- land. It is the oldest existing deed in the Dutch language, and is so plainly written that I can under- stand much of it. The Dutch language in literature is fully as old as that of England, for here is a docu- ment which is not in Anglo-Saxon or in Latin, but in pure Dutch. Here is a proof, also, one law being granted for all, that feudalism was being undermined. Volumes have been written and oratory has gushed in floods over the Runny mede incident, an episode of MIDDELBURG, THE HOME OF FREEDOM 273 feudalism, and the Magna Charta, which was a Latin document. Yet here is one of the old charters, wherein the Netherlands are so rich, through which tyrants were curbed and emperors bridled by this nation that has done so much for liberty and the world. Still in the lead of my fluent and sensible guide, I traversed the streets of the city so rich in its Span- ish, English, and French associations, yet so thor- oughly characteristic and full of costume and color. The black velvet coats of the peasants had buttons bigger than Christy's minstrels ever wore. The jaunty cap, outrigger jewelry, and lobster-red arms of the women were in constant evidence. The tall chimney-pot hats of the sons of the soil had rims but an inch wide, on which a frisky mouse could not wisely dance. They vividly suggested the Emerald Isle and the Irishman. One looks almost instinc- tively to see a shamrock or a pipe stuck in the hat-band and a shillelah in hand. Yet there is no " wearing of the green " here. One may talk freely about Irishmen, even in the Erse dialect, and in the very face of these bucolic natives, without fear of being understood. These are the men of the Heidel- berg Catechism. In Middelburg there is much to see for the man who borrows eyes from history, for while Flushing has been the landing-place of natives and invaders from times unrecorded, Middelburg has been the prize for resistance. The town arms show a burg, or castle, on a shield borne by an eagle. The Eng- lishman thinks first of Leicester, and indeed that 274 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND earl's headquarters in Southern Netherlands are about as numerous as those of Washington in the Middle States. His house, which he occupied as Queen Elizabeth's representative, is now in the Langedelft among the curiosity shops. One walks along the Burg to peep at what is in our tongue called an abbey, but which in good Dutch is still known as the Abdij. Of the once innumerable dormitories of the monks of the Middle Ages, this alone is left in the kingdom. The Middelburgers are justly proud of their museum. Learned, indeed, are the trustees and curators of the society which presides over this rich and unique collection. It illustrates the various civilizations that have flourished on Walcheren, under the Roman eagle, the Norse raven, the orange, white, and blue flag, and the banners of France and England. Here history is told in steel, on the die, and marvelous is the richness of Dutch coinage and medallic history. The Roman occupation seems to have been very thorough. All sorts of carved marbles, stone relics, bronze weapons, and articles of domestic use have been thrown up by the plough or spade. They ap- pear even more real, more eloquent here than when brought to us across the Atlantic. The mysterious Teutonic goddess, Nehalennia, patron of commerce and seamanship, has here her shrines and altars. Was she Selene the moon, the bright god in the night sky, and the queen of the underworld, like the Japanese Benten, beloved of sailors ? Or was hers the local name of Nerthus, goddess of the warm sum- MIDDELBURG, THE HOME OF FREEDOM 275 mer ? How the tell-tale traces of ancestral paganism still remain in modern names is seen in Hel-voetsluis and Bree-hell or Briel. The images were found in 1647 beneath a Chris- tian church in Domburg. A votive stone to the unknown god Burorina was also discovered in this same Domburg, the Scheveningen of Zealand. AVar and science, the conquests of alien enemies and of hostile nature, are the pride of the Middel- burgers. In the chamber hangs a great map of Zea- land, showing the places where were dug up weapons and other relics. Here is the metal helmet of Vice- Admiral Joos de Moor, who died February 18, 1618. Beside it is another one of iron, damascened with gold, of the Spanish engineer, Pacheco, who was hanged in Flushing, 1572. Cannon-balls from the British bombarding fleet which lay off Flushing in 1809 lie beside the fuse which failed to fire the in- fernal machine which was expected to demolish the fortifications. The days of exact science in subma- rine explosives had not yet arrived. Most fascinating is the rude handwheel belonging to a ropewalk in which the Dutch Nelson, De Ruy- ter, when a boy, worked at Flushing, where he was born. The most splendid memorials of him are in Amsterdam. Oversea, in central New York, amid the thickly-sprinkled classical reminders bestowed by Simeon De Witt, is a group of naval names among which, like a tulip among acanthus flowers, is that of De Ruyter. The boy in the ropewalk and son of the ropemaker took his name from his mother, traditionally of noble origin, and who belonged to the 276 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND great family of riders or knights. Their descendants or name-bearers to-day call themselves Ruyter, Rit- ter, Ryder, showing variety in spelling as great as the names of the steeds which their forefathers rode. Less warlike and utilitarian curiosities are the water carafe used by the Zealandish.poet Bellamy when he was a student ; a bough from the mulberry- tree planted over the grave of Jacqueline of Bavaria, from Goes, whence also we see two ancient chairs, or, as the Dutch call them, " stools ;" with various molten relics of a famous conflagration in Zealand. Veer is well represented, Dutch names mingling with those from Scotland, like Chalmers and Landseer. All kinds of domestic utensils are massed together to show the development of Dutch decorative art in things useful for eating, drinking, smoking, and warming. One furnished room of the eighteenth century contains a painted farmer's table, on which coffee and tea service, with their " trimmings " of cream, milk, and sugar are conspicuous. In this country, earliest of any in Europe, the hot drinks of the Orient became popular. Hence also was the tea herb of China smuggled to America, before the Boston Tea Party of 1773. One set of " old Delft " pictures shows beauti- fully the evolution of the rifle : how the firelock, by successive steps of invention, changed as to its out- ward form from a clumsy log of iron, needing a support in the middle, with a bloated muzzle at the end and a long rope with a firetip at the lock, and MIDDELBURG, THE HOME OF FREEDOM 277 became first a snaphance, or snapcock, then a flint- lock, passing through the nipple and percussion cap period, and thence issuing into the magazine breech- loader. From flint chip to the copper cartridge with fulminate powder and leaden bolt of to-day, what a story of evolution ! Inwardly, the history of the barrel was scarcely less wonderful. Rifling, first done by the Swiss and German hunters, gave amaz- ing accuracy and made war a science. In the eigh- teenth century rifles were used in war in only two parts of the world, central Europe and the mid- dle colonies in America. The national troops, ordered and called out by the Continental Congress, and thus the actual beginning of our regular army, were Colonel Morgan's Riflemen, raised almost wholly in Pennsylvania and Virginia among the men of Swiss, German, and Scotch-Irish descent. These Pennsylvania *' Dutchmen " laid the founda- tion of the reputation of the American marksman in peace and war. CHAPTER XXIX FLUSHING AND MANHATTAN Now we shall go and look at Vlissengen. From ages unrecorded, Flushing has been the great gate- way into Zealand. It is now the chief terminus of the national and continental iron roads and steam- ers. Its importance in the national system of de- fense is seen in that it stands as the keystone in an arch of seven forts, from the ancient Rammeken< to the modern De Nolle. Its imposing docks and engine houses, which have of late almost revived a once nearly dead city, interest us less than its an- cient and august historical associations and its old relations to Caledonia. The Scottish touch is mani- fest at once. For centuries this was a bustling place of trade with Edinburgh and Dundee. Then there were Scottish factories and churches at Veer, Middelburg, and Flushing, and these cities, redo- lent of the thistle and heather, resounded with Lowland speech. Even yet two of the churches remain, though one Domine from Aberdeen serves both. A Scotsman can learn Dutch quickly because Batavian and Scotian are at many points more alike than is unlatinized Lowland English, commonly called " Scotch," and that very composite language which is Saxon made turbid or sparkling by Nor. FLUSHING AND MANHATTAN 279 man French, and called English. The symbol of the Scottish church is the burning bush, with the motto " Tamen nee consumebantuiy ' and its light is still bright in the Netherlands. Have you a Sunday in Flushing 9 Then pass up the little narrow street near the Scottish "hook," or corner. There you will find the place of the Pres- byterian church, with its Scottish minister and its female pew-opener, and they will be glad to see you. No less fertilizing is the touch from Flushing upon the American church. As the light from the burning bush shone from Midian into Egypt, so from Vlissingen into Manhattan. It was Scotsmen, or men of Scottish descent, who, like Ezra between the pre-e^ilic Hebrews and the later Aramaic folk of Syria, mediated between the Dutch and English language, in our Middle States. When New Am- sterdam became New York, the new language, lit- urgy, and fashions swept the American-born Dutch young folk from their ecclesiastical moorings. Out from the Reformed Church and away from the Heidelberg Catechism and the canons of the Synod of Dort, they drifted into the church that had rec- tors and prayer-books and thirty-nine articles. The Episcopal churches on Manhattan Island and in the Hudson River cities of New York seem, even now, as one reads the names of officers and mem- bers, built as to skull and vertebrae out of Dutch families. The Dutch Reformed Church threatened to go the way of its language and liturgy. How to arrest the transfusion of blood was a question. The wiser 280 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND of the younger Dutch-American churchmen, doubt- less taking counsel with Dr. Livingston, the grad- uate of IJtrecht University, gave a call to the Rev. Archibald Laidlie, then settled here. From Flushing this young Scotch-Dutchman sailed, like Pa*ul, over the western sea, to the American Mace- donia. He wrought mightily with those who, read- ing the signs of the times, believed that orthodoxy could exist and even flourish outside of its Dutch swaddling bands. With a winning personality he overcame the bitter prejudices of the Manhattan Dutchmen and the jealousy of the rectors, who were hoping to swallow and digest the whole Dutch Church. He made a translation of that liturgy of the Reformed Church, in the originals, of which Calvin and A'Lasco had had a hand, and which Cranmer had before him transfused largely into the English Book of Common Prayer. Laidlie's soul, surcharged with the spirit of Scottish demo- cracy, reinforced nobly the Dutch traditions of safe- guarded liberty, in New York, as against usurping British governors. He gradually won many, " who feared, as they entered the cloud " of novelty, to trust God and the people and the English language. His portrait shows the traits of energy, firmness, power in seeing both sides, and suggests the gifts of winsome conciliation for which he was noted. Dutch conservatism, especially the provincial and un progressive sort, which later and properly called forth the sarcasm and caricature of Washington Irving, for the Knickerbockers of later jest and fiction were not yet invented, was well illustrated FLUSHING AND MANHATTAN 281 by a singular fact. Though bitterly opposed at first, Laidlie's translation of the Dutch liturgy be- came so deeply revered a sort of King James version that it took fifteen years of agitation to correct a glaring mistranslation. In that sublime and tender "form for the administration of the Lord's Supper," from the pen of John Calvin, and still used in the American Reformed churches, Laid- lie had made this slip, as we read it in the edi- tion of 1805, " That we are confidently persuaded in our heart that our Lord Jesus Christ . . . was innocently condemned to death," etc. Now this form of English meant that Pilate was free from all blame, and that by implication, Jesus, besides being a convict, was a criminal. The ill savor of this dead fly in the ointment was early noted, but not until after fifteen years of appeal and discussion in classes and synods was the text made to read, as it does now, " He, although innocent, was con- demned," etc. Laidlie's coming helped powerfully to American- ize, or, perhaps we should say, continentalize the New York Dutchman. Soon followed in orderly evolution on American soil, Rutgers and Union col- leges, a theological school at New Brunswick, N. J., which claims to be the oldest in the country, and that noble document, the constitution of the Re- formed Protestant Dutch Church, which in its general features is a remarkable prototype of the Constitution of the United States. Now, on the soil of Walcheren, it stirs the pulse to go up and down these quiet streets and refresh 282 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND historic memory. Here, when the Spanish persecu- tions were raging, in a cellar at the head of the great market, the Christians who would take no sac- ramental emblems from priests' hands met to remem- ber their Lord in holy communion. Two centuries afterward, this event was celebrated, and the old sil- ver chalice used, a precious relic, was shown. As early as 1586 the various Netherland states gave eight thousand guilders to build a chapel for the English and Scottish " help-troops; " for of these auxiliaries there were nine hundred in Flushing and Ramme- kens. When King James in 1616, beaten in a bad bargain by Barneveldt, withdrew the military, the British merchants, mechanics, and sailors were ad- ministered to by a Scottish chaplain, who married for his second wife the daughter of the great Admiral de Ruyter, whose bronze statue stands to-day on those high dikes over which, in the storm, the waves fling their spray. Later on, Thomas Young, preceptor of John Milton, was pastor here. As might be expected, there were some curious episodes when the Dutch and English were at war with each other, especially when De Ruyter's can- non were thundering in the Thames. All through this church's history, also, the officers found great cause for scandal in 'the fact that the British resi- dents were given more to the double devotion of smuggling and the delights of " Old King Cole," than to the ecstasies of prayer and praise. Alas ! only too common is still the sign of "Tapperij en sluiterij," which means drinking from the tap and from the bottle. It was a usual custom for the FLUSHING AND MANHATTAN 283 church officers, just before the time of service, to visit the tap houses and literally sound the tattoo or retreat. As everybody who reads Skeat knows, the word " tattoo " is " tap-toe," that is, the tap is closed, the tattoo being the signal for closing the taps of the public houses, and the last syllable being the same as in our phrase, " Shut to the door." Flushing has never quite recovered from the bom- bardment which it received in 1809, when, in British eyes and in French too, the Netherlands were a part of the French empire. Since Antwerp and its fortifi- cations had excited the fears and jealousy of the slow-minded British ministry, a much belated expe- dition of nearly two hundred men-of-war and trans- ports, carrying forty thousand men, was sent in command of Lord Chatham up the Scheldt. Instead of going at once to Antwerp, he stopped to bombard Flushing, landing his troops among Walcheren's quagmires in August. One half of the army died of marsh fever. Antwerp was not taken. The British taxpayers had to settle to the extent of one hundred million dollars, and a duel was fought between the quarreling officers of the crown. In the bombardment Flushing's handsome city hall, with all its precious records, was burned. Even the holy relic, revered for centuries, from which the town takes its name, was destroyed. On the town arias you will see on the shield a flask with chains for handle, and with the decoration of some animal's head upon the side-swell, the whole looking like Roman or mediaeval work. This was the bottle, or flask, of St. Wilbrord, the great 284 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND apostle of the Netherlands, who landed there and went northward, preaching and teaching. Now the Dutch word for flask is " flasch," and the still older form " vlasche," and from this some derive the pro- per name Vlissingen, which has been Englished as Flushing. Other recollections of Flushing are of the dikes, here so imposing and magnificent. Westward from the centre of the town they are formed into a su- perb broad, brick-paved esplanade, which has seats, where one may rest and look forth over the vast blue sea and air flecked with the snowy plumage of flocks of birds, as restless as the wind in a winter's storm. In such a storm old ocean's pulse races to fever madness, and the foam of the waves is tossed high over the iron railing, and the water ripples in salt waves over the esplanade. Better this, we thought, than to have the streets flooded, as they were in old times, as when Brewer of Leyden, the Puritan arrested by mistake for the Pilgrim Elder Brewster, waited here six weeks for a change of winds which should allow him to get to England and the fleet of the Republic to go after the pirates of Dunkirk. When I peeped over the railing, how- ever, there was nothing but the play of harmless waves at low tide. Here stands the monument of De Ruyter. His father was so named, either because he married a lady of noble birth, or because he eloped with her upon ahorse and was nicknamed " the rider." What odds? This we know, that in the world's naval annals, De Ruyter stands in the forefront with Nel- THE MAID OF THE DIKES FLUSHING AND MANHATTAN 285 son and Farragut and Dewey. In character he has even a higher honor, for he was one of the modest and true followers of the Divine Master. Here also are monuments to the two Dutch poets, Elizabeth Wolfe and Agnes Bekker, showing that woman's genius is appreciated in Zealand. One may muse long upon the great procession of historical arrivals and departures which Flushing has witnessed, and which Dutch painters have trans- ferred to the illuminated canvas. From this point, in 1559, Philip of Spain left the Netherlands for- ever. In answer to the royal reproaches that Wil- liam of Orange was a marplot, he replied that he had acted only as the States had wished him to do. Philip's angry answer was, " Not the States, but you ! you ! " Whether this be true history or le- gend, it is certain that Philip thus early recognized the powerful personality of the silent one. That part of Zealand, the southern tip of the king- dom, which lies south of the Scheldt and between the drowned lands of Saaftingen and the Inside Horse Market Shoals, is called Zeeuwsch Flanders. It is vastly easier for speakers of English to pro- nounce the noun than the adjective in the first syl- lable of Zee-land, or sea-land. Though both noun and adjective are monosyllables, the latter is a hope- less quagmire of vowels and consonants in which the tongue is submerged as in quicksands. Hulst and Axel are the chief towns, the latter being very pro- perly in the centre of a region once mostly under water, but now green, bright polder land. The Dutch nation has always held tenaciously to this 286 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND part of their country south of the Scheldt, and natu- rally, as one would suppose, belonging to Belgium. It was the capture of Antwerp by the Duke of Parma, in 1585, which decided the fate of the south- ern Netherlands and made them " obedient " pro- vinces, cut them off from the glorious life of the Protestant north, and doomed them to be the private property of Spain and Austria for two centuries. Strategically, this Dutch grip on the south land en- abled the northern Netherlands, in centuries past, to control the navigation of that river which holds the lifeblood of Belgium and is the chief artery of commerce. When, in 1648, the triumphant Republic compelled humbled Spain to make peace, one of the conditions was that the navigation of the Scheldt should be closed. This meant that Antwerp should be left to paralysis and obscurity. For two centuries the grandest seaport in Europe remained an in hind town. Since navigation was once more opened, the lifeblood of commerce has brought back her ancient prosperity. Against this right of government to shut off a people from the enjoyment of natural highways and outlets, the United States in her di- plomacy has always protested. Largely influenced by our statesmen and the American doctrine, the Dutch finally took off the unnatural and selfish in- terdict. Large parts of Zeeuwsch Flanders are low and flat, just like a man's shaved face, though here and there the face seems to have grown a beard over- night, for we can detect a stubble of hilly land, where the wind may have blown the sand, a few inches FLUSHING AND MANHATTAN 27 higher than the monotonous dead level. Polders abound. The usual place names, Vliet, Zand, Dijk, and Burg tell their history in their names, which are further illustrated with suggestions of labor, lore, or poetry in the town arms. What a picture of the agonies and the triumphs of the whole human race is that typified by the lion of Zealand, strenuously exert- ing and happily victorious, with the motto, " Luctor et emergo," - I struggle, but I emerge. CHAPTER XXX THE LITTLE CITY OF GOES HAIL to the goose ! bird of history, proverb, myth, and fairy lore, treasure of the barnyard, and delight of the gourmand ! Honored in heraldry, material for wise saws and modern instances, ever at hand for pointing morals and adorning tales, for feathering shafts and making soft the bed whereon mankind rests and finds warmth, its breast-bone a weather prophet and its quill an implement of liter- .ature, its very name has but slight variation of form in the languages sprung from the one far-off parent, of which Sanskrit and English are daughters. Hail to the gaping and yawning, the chattering and the hissing bird ! We have seen it made a shop sign as the symbol of fortune, and emblem of the uphol- sterer. We have heard its name used as a term of endearment, especially of wives to their husbands, but whoever heard of it as the name of a city ? Yet here in Zealand is a pretty little municipality whose name, Goes, sounds exactly like the English name of this very bird. Situated in the heart of South Beveland, at the head of a canal running in from the Scheldt, it has had an interesting history. Gusaha is known as early as A. D. 776. To-day it is a charming little city, worthy of all visitation. To THE LITTLE CITY OF GOES 289 the foreigner who knows Holland by book rather than by sight, it is perhaps better known as Ter- goes. Goes was the home of that wonderful woman in the Middle Ages who lived, metaphorically, in hot water most of her days, and had husbands enough to keep her from being happy, withal being herself a mischief-maker as well as a beauty. Very fitly was it that she lived upon an island tempest-born, for her own life was stormy and much like the month of March. To this town, then, renowned for its archives and for its fragment of the ancient castle of the Countess Jacqueline of Bavaria, whom the Dutch call Jakoba Van Beiren, and for the famous men of the Van der Goes family, I came with curi- osity and great expectations. My host, a young gentleman, at this auspicious hour a newly made bridegroom, was son of the cos- ter, or sexton, of the great church in Amsterdam which was the foster-mother of churches all over the world, and the helper of the needy in many lands. As custodian of these records which he had read and largely translated, despite their archaic oddi- ties, Mr. K. was one whom I wished to meet. Seek- ing him in Amsterdam, I found him at Goes. Met and welcomed at the station on a Saturday afternoon by a young Dutchman who had seen not only America, but even Chicago, I was convoyed first to the Koren Burs Hotel, which, as one can see, is named Corn Bourse, or Exchange. It had for me a vast room, with the usual furnishing of antique and imposing furniture. Thence I hied to the neat little 290 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND home on the quay. The house was small enough for a toy, but large enough for comfort. A little sidewalk fronting it, bald of all grass, shone like an octogenarian's skull, and between the curb and the kade the paved street glistened with Saturday's cleanliness. Every part of the woodwork of the house, within and without, was bright with unflecked paint. My host, having finished his last business letter by the time I reached his house, joined me. I was in season to enjoy four o'clock coffee in his little home, where I found, besides the plump and rosy bride, the old father and mother, who had come down from Amsterdam to stay over Sunday with their son and new daughter. In English the word of honor, as well as commonplace fact, in speaking of the young bride, would be " wife," but in Dutch " huis- vrouw." How strange are the mutations of words! It is from old Frisian " wyf " that our word " wife " comes. Some would have it mean " weaver," though the root-idea seems to be that of trembler, as one who trembles before her husband. The ancient term has fallen out of honor in its old home, as surely as has Christianity in its cradle land. In Frisian, no one compliments a woman by calling her " wife," any more than we should by calling her a " wench," which in ancient days, as of Chaucer, was also a term of tenderness or pitying endearment. Now, in Frisian, " wife " has no more savor of honor than " fish-wife " with us. How true it is that, all over the world, those words which are exponents of feet ings, and index both possible honor and shame, rarely THE LITTLE CITY OF GOES 291 remain stationary in value. They tend to rise or fall in moral and literary value. The speech of Japan, the Princess Country, and of Korea and China tells the same story. Reveries and wool-gathering among the brambly paths of linguistics are quickly over, when that " soft low voice which is an excellent thing in wo- man" says, "Kopje?" The little cup is handed me, accompanied by bright eyes and a smile. Thereupon I boldly employ the Dutch affirmative "Ya" and " Ik dank u." The cup of steaming hot Java lubri- cates all the joints of conversation. With my young host as interpreter, there are many questions from the venerable coster, who in bulk and dignity re- minds me of the one long famed in New York ; for the great fashionable Nieuwe Kerk on the Dam is as important in matrimony and religion in Amster- dam as is Grace Church on Broadway. He inquires after several ecclesiastical dignitaries in America who are mutually known to us. By and by, with the pride of a new bridegroom and a housekeeper, I am invited to see their home. We wander over the place, seeing everything from garden to garret, but not seeing the cellar. Rare is the house in this soggy, spongy land that can boast of this vacuum under it. Nature here has a special abhorrence of such a thing. The cubic space which with us is allotted to the excavation air and storage under the domicile is in Dutch land given up to piles, with usually only a small space for what ven- tilation and dryness are attainable under the circum- stances. I found all the traditions of Dutch clean- 292 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND liness severely maintained. Everything metallic had lustre, from the doorbell to the kitchen tins. Even the iron of the padlock outside was silver-white with fresh scouring. Now for a walk through the city of Jacqueline, and of the bird that makes beds and Christmas din- ners. It is an afternoon of sunshine, cool and clear after the rain. Everything is shining. Artificial cleanliness is reinforced by that which is natural. Heaven has sent its purifying moisture. Even the stars in their courses have fought against the demon of dirt. The Dutch Jael has with her hammer and nail smitten to death every hiding refugee of filth. Even the little fish market, well columned and roofed, has been scoured bright. Up the canal the tide is coming in, for there are here daily ebb and flow. The old city hall is attractive both within and without. The paintings are by Geeraerts, one of the eighteenth-century artists, and the general furnish- ing is in the style of Louis XV. The shield on the arms of Goes shows four quarters, two with lions and two with lozenges white and blue. In the low- est of the three sections is a goose. We pass by remnants of the old city walls, calling up in imagination the days of 1572 and the heroic march of the Spaniards led by Mondragon, the fighter, who lived to be ninety. Slipping in from Brabant, between fleet and army, and over the hid- den oozy path that was neither land nor water, with men that seemed web-footed like swans, he captured the goose city. How during the night these three THE LITTLE CITY OF GOES 293 thousand men passed over the "drowned lands," without being drowned themselves, has been told brilliantly by Bor and Motley. I felt even more of a romantic interest in what remains of the old chateau of Jacqueline, now turned into a hotel and called the East End. The grand old church, consecrated seventy years before Colum- bus made landfall at Cat Island, loomed up grandly. We anticipated with delight the morning's worship within, for my guide, philosopher, and friend pro- mised to call for me as he and his went to worship God in Dutch. We pass by a neat little club house, with the name meaning " Society for the Banishment of Things Disagreeable." Wonderful is this muni- cipality of but six thousand five hundred people. No element of comfort or of high civic life seems to be lacking. Six churches, a bank, an orphanage, an old people's home, auction, market, prison, courts, post-office, all the cosy luxuries of civilization are here for the terror of evil-doers and for the praise of them that do well. Evening is spent with mine host. I get some idea of civic economy. He pays a national, a provincial, and a municipal tax. The fiscal year begins in May. Of the eighty -five guilders in taxes ($34), twenty are for the state, eighteen for the province, and thirty for the city, the remainder being for matters purely local. The taxes are assessed on house and ground, on doors and windows, fireplaces and stoves, on furniture, on servants and workmen, on horses, etc. During the evening we walk out to call upon a neighbor who talks English well, and who is 294 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND proud of his garden with its manifold flowers. Sit- ting in the arbor, we find it as true as Baedeker that Dutch women, like their sisters all over the world, do not like things that crawl, especially spiders. Whether the repulsion to these arachnidae be on account of their unsightliness, alleged ven- omousness, or as symbols of unhousewifely neglect, the Dutch woman abhors them. They may take hold in kings' palaces, but never in her house, or even in her garden, if she can help it. In Japanese folk-lore, the case is different. To the maiden in the sunny isles, the spider may be a many-footed post- man, welcomed as the messenger of good news, but neither like the Greek nor the Japanese virgin is the Dutch bride. Let but a spider try to act the rhyme of nursery legend, and our Trintje becomes a veritable Miss Muffet. The stars glittered brightly as I looked out of my hinged casement, over across the shadows of the open marketplace opposite, before I lay down on my goose-feather bed and colossal pillows. I seemed to live for the nonce amid a vast procession of bodi- less and shadowy creatures, silhouettes of history, in skins and thongs, in togas and helmets, in embla- zonry of codfish and fishhooks, in feathered caps and slashed velvet doublets, in iron morion and damas- cened breastplates, in republican cockades and well- buttoned red coats, all of whom had moved over the stage of history in that little city with its droll name. Rich and fat, well fed and proud, but constantly plucked, was this web-footed city standing on land but ever surrounded by water. THE LITTLE CITY OF GOES 295 Happily, in my case, history slept also for eight hours. With surcease from the ghosts of the past, I woke out of the happy death of consciousness to the glorious resurrection of a new day, the glad- some day of the Lord. I felt as vast and hilarious as a goose under a barn door, which bends its neck as it enters, as I stepped into the dining-room, large and wide, for my break- fast. In a Dutch hotel they bring you the hot coffee made in such proportions of strength as seems wise to the presiding genius of the kitchen, with loose sugar in myriads of very small crystals, and milk instead of cream. There is a ridiculous little silver spoon with which to sip the hot liquid. Another of bone or ivory is for eggs, to remove the danger of contamination between silver and sulphur. In the tray will be several kinds of bread, if you are in a large city ; but there are marked limitations as to variety, if you are in a small place. Cheese of more than one kind, suggesting geography by the very names, and wafer-like slices of sausage, either cream- colored or red, well dotted with white fat or gristle, form part of the regular breakfast. Anything else is extra, and prepared only on order. Those who prefer tea will find the hot water boiling over a gas stove, which is fed from the fixtures above by a rub- ber tube. He can drink his Bohea as strong as Samson, or " weaker than a woman's tear." Refreshments have become memory and letters to Lyra written and sealed, when my host calls for me to go to the meeting-house, the Groote Kerk. The little city is very quiet. We walk under great 296 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND rows of trees arching overhead. The service begins at half-past nine. As we are there at 9.15, we have time to walk in the vast and airy spaces of ih.3 great minster. Only the north side of an edifice which could hold all the inhabitants of Goes is now used for service. This superb cathedral, named in honor of Mary Magdalene, was built in an age when the Christian ritual was so largely spectacular and pro- cessional, when high banners, resplendent emblems, and gorgeously robed worshipers, with incense and lights and high-borne candles, required vast spaces, long and broad, and when all the dimensions were those suggestive of aerial altitudes, of forest vistas, of the grandeur and immensity of space. Before the Reformation, it sheltered under its brooding wings vast congregations, which included all who dwelt within the city moats and walls, with many from the regions adjacent. Now, however, when the external unity of the faith is broken, the little city of the goose has, besides its Catholic church, four edifices consecrated to the worship of God through the Christ. The province of Zealand, one of the boldest and toughest in the Eighty Years' War, and the most radically Protestant state in Europe, has but slightly changed. Probably a larger portion of the people adhere to the Reformed faith than in any other of the eleven provinces. Zealand is to the Protestant what Limburg is to the Catholic branch of the Church Universal. During the day I looked into the Christian Reformed church, a plain edifice built in modern style, and into the Gereformeerde Kerk THE LITTLE CITY OF GOES 297 edifice ; and further, although it seemed to shock my orthodox and respectable host, I persisted in wishing to see also the little Congregational meeting-house, which was up a side street in an humble section of the town, in part of a secular edifice of some sort. Here was the Vrije Gemeente, or Free Christian (Evangelical) Community, one of the fifty or more congregations unattached to any ecclesiastical cor- poration in the Netherlands. It seemed strange to think of Dutch Congregation- alists, and, instead of New Englanders dressed in the latest fashions, to find farmer-looking men in black corduroy velvet, with enormous silver buttons and hats small of rim. The female Congregationalists were somewhat short of skirt, but economy around the ankles meant numerous thicknesses of skirt. In- stead of Paris dresses of yesterday's cut, they wore the Zealand basque, with neck chains of coral, em- broidery, and velvet, and sleeves that were but a germ, for they ended after four inches of growth had been attained, disclosing the usual scarified bare arms. As swarthy as the tents of Kedar, yet also as crimson as the curtains of Solomon, seem the sun- burned country faces. On their heads was nothing but nature's covering of luxuriant hair, crowned by the Zealand lace cap. Beside each eye, on the right and on the left, was the usual substitute for a jew- elry store, balls, mirrors, pendants, corkscrews, and what-not. Their faces were apparently as hon- est as the blue sky that seemed borrowed in their eyes. Here was no sign of wealth or worldliness, or routine orthodoxy, but here were devout, reverent people, true to their convictions. 298 Sunday afternoon made me ask Lowell's question. It was the day of the summer solstice, and rarely beautiful was the sunshine and calm. I sat awhile, with " love in a cottage," looking out on the tide then coming in, and at the gently rising and falling sloops and schooners. Every one passing the open window at which I sat bowed, the men taking off their hats. Noticing that some of the peasant girls wore their starched lace caps cut square at the top, while others were rounded, I asked why it was so. My host informed me that by this way the Reformed and the Catholics showed their spiritual possessions and preferences. We went out for a walk, calling for a few moments on the Domine, who that morning had preached in the great church. He seemed as fine a specimen of physical as of spiritual manhood. We discussed the movements of theology in the Netherlands. In- quiring further about local church life, I learned that a great tree was set up in the church at Christ- mas time, with lights and gifts for the children. The Goes Kermis lasts a week. Then there are great drinking and jollity. Pretty much the whole country around moves to town in a body to enjoy the fun. Temperance and morality suffer somewhat in the change of environment. Not a few of the men become as limp as batter-cakes on the griddle. Early the next morning, after heavy carousal, there are headaches and stupidity. The roses of pleasure have fallen, but the thorns remain. Wives seek their husbands on the pavements, rolling them over for recognition and back again, if not the sought-for, as if they were human flapjacks. THE LITTLE CITY OF GOES 299 Housekeepers employ either the servant of ordi- nary dress and of town origin, or the country girls who adhere inflexibly to the Zealand costume, of which there are twenty or thirty local varieties in this island prdvince. Servants change places and mistresses on the second Tuesday in May, which is a great time of local bustle. The third day of Christ- mas week and Pinkster are also likely to be times of change in domestic service. On November 3 is the Tooneel, or the great show-day, the grandest of all the year for the country folk, who then flock almost in a body into the Goose city. Walking over to the village of Kloetinge, we pass through the rich fields already in flower, full of wav- ing grain for the hastening harvest. The fertility of Zealand is extraordinary. Every acre seems well cultivated. The clover-fields are magnificent. I wondered if Claverack, N. Y., which means Clover Nook, had been named by a Zealander. An immense amount of buckwheat and barley is cultivated. I noticed many tobacco-fields. With their faces set churchwards, the lace-capped women, and solemn- looking men dressed in velvet and buttons, were walking through the paths. The little folk, boys and girls, in garb exactly like their elders, were also moving to the great church, where instruction is given in the Heidelberg Catechism. Some of the roads were through lines of clipped trees, which looked as if they had just stepped out of a barber shop. Apparently, the Sabbath day is remarkably well kept in the villages. SOUTH HOLLAND CHAPTER XXXI SOUTH HOLLAND HE who studies a large map of the Dutch king- dom is not long in finding out the reason why for- eigners, and especially English people, persist in calling the Netherlands " Holland ; " yet this is as though men were to call the United States " New England." There are eleven provinces, and there are but two Hollands. During the Middle Ages and in the era of the Republic, there were seven united provinces, of which Holland was but one. Yet since that one province of Holland was in wealth and population nearly equal to all the others, it is no wonder that it overshadowed all. Holland contributed nearly fifty per cent, of the taxes, had within her limits the national capital, the largest cities, and the chief seats of trade, faced and com- pletely occupied the only unbroken line of sea- coast. Moreover, since through it flow the Rhine and the Waal, which furnish the water that gives the whole realm its life and power, it is no wonder that Holland, facing Albion, stood in England's eyes as the country itself. It is a case where the name is at least half of the reality. South Holland, with its million of inhabitants and its prosperous cities of Leyden, Hague, Delft, 304 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Rotterdam, Gouda, and Dordrecht, its mighty water- ways, rich soil, and flourishing manufactories, is able to hold its own as a rival of its sister province, North Holland, even though it has not Amster- dam. Here are the old " lands," - - Rijnland, Delft- land, Schieland, the lands of Voorn and Putten, and others which are islands. There are also four " waarden," Hoeksche, Zwindrecht, Krimpen, Al- blassen, etc. Formerly, these were isolated districts. Now, they are more or less obliterated for the tour- ist by the railway, though their names are still in use among the people and known to the engineer, magistrate, and political economist. Superficially, South Holland is a great bowl, or series of hollows, like a honeycomb, the various cells having for their walls the coast dunes, the river, sea, or partition dikes. The province is doubly rich in "treasures of the deep which lieth under." The depth of the land next the ocean is generally at least two and a half to five metres below sea level, but toward the west there is a rise to the sand heaths. Fertility is greatly increased by the many streams which distrib- ute the water brought from the heart of the conti- nent. South Hollanders count up in their stock of rivers the old Rhine, Hollandish Ijssel, Lek, Linge, Alblas, Merwede, Maas, Rotte, and Gouwe, besides several canals which once were rivers. Almost every one of the larger cities has a pecul- iar renown. The Hague, for centuries the national capital, is the uncommercial show-city, where reside the nobility, people of fashion, and retired profes- sional men. Here society, art, and culture have 1 SOUTH HOLLAND 305 their homes. Leyden glories in its university, and considers itself the brain of the nation. Delft has for centuries been the seat of the Polytechnic School, one of the first in modern times, and still unsurpassed, perhaps, in Europe. Gouda, besides furnishing clay pipes to the smokers of the world, was one of the earliest seats of printing in the king- dom. Dordrecht, the oldest of truly Dutch cities, held the only Protestant Ecumenical Council ever gathered. Its name in modern, though not in very recent times, stood for a certain type of theology. In mediaeval days it was linked with associations of mint, coinage, and " staple." Rotterdam, the sec- ond city in size, is the leading commercial emporium of the kingdom. Of Schiedam, what drinker of its gin, called "genever " in one country, " Hollands " in another, and " schnapps " in a third, does not know ? The southern part of the province is a network of islands made by the ever-shifting rivers. Vastly different are their ancient from their modern out- lines. The central and northern parts of South Holland, though not without " rivers," are watered mainly by canals which get their supply from the Rhine waters. There are still left a few undrained lakes, the survivors and relics of the scores which once covered the country. Even in ancient days South Holland had the best area of soil rich in that ever-fertile sea-clay. Up to the millennial year, and even later, there were four " lands," two of which took their names from the rivers which flowed through them. Then there were, near the modern Amsterdam, Niftar and, 306 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND just east of it, Nardine (Naarden) land. Southward lay Germepi, and south of this again " the lake et Isla " (the lake and island), while Houtland, that is Woodland, or Holland, lay between the Maas River and the Rhine, a long, rich, oval island divided in the centre by the Waal. This was the original of Holland. To the insular part of southwestern Holland nearest the sea was given the name of Forne, or Voorn. On the mediaeval maps, there are in Rhine and Maas lands, as compared with the Waterland to the north, few ponds or lakes, and fewer cities with a reputation and a name known in writings. Yet we recognize Amuthon (Muiden), Wirjida (Woerden), Leithen (Leiden), Flardinga (Vlaardingen), and Thuredrecht (the tower at the ford, Dordrecht). In four of these places named, there were Christian churches before the twelfth century, and in one or two, as early as the ninth. Now, as for centuries past, the church spire domi- nates the landscape, the wild rivers have been tamed, man and beast thrive in fatness, and rich cities cover, this garden province. To-day the names tell eloquent stories. Dutch cities have grown around fords, castles, dams, and havens. In these terminal names we have perhaps the correct order of succession. Men waded before they built bridges. Feudal castles came before dams. Sea- commerce on a large scale was a late enterprise. Look along the Waal, and note the places ending in " drecht," as tell-tale of the growth of the town around a ford as is a glacier scratch of ice work. " Ambacht " has its own story to tell, and so has SOUTH HOLLAND 307 " burg." The village names ending in " kerk " show that the edifice for worship was the chief thought and landmark in the neighborhood. " Berg," or " bergen," pictures to the mind hills or mounds, as does " bosch," groves or woods ; " hout," timber ; "heiden," the heath; and the "ports" and " ha- vens," the various places arrived at by water. Of dams there are many, but all of these are since the twelfth century, for they were born since the days of engineering. Dordrecht tells by its name of the tower of the ford, built probably first by the Romans, yet possibly on the foundation of some old Keltic stronghold. Leyden takes its name from the Keltic word " lug," or as we spell it, " look," it being a looking-place or signal station among the dunes. There were two Lugdunums in the Keltic world and later in the Roman empire, and both so named because they were situated at the confluence of two rivers. The cities, Leyden in Holland and Lyons in France, were once called by the same name. The modern difference of pronunciation shows how words change by differing process, according as they issue from Dutch or French mouths. Both were forts of observation looking up and over, and down, that is, commanding in the one case the two Rhine streams, and in the other the Rhone and the Saone. The Romans used the same name, Lug- dunum, distinguishing them by adding Batavoruin or Galliae. There has been not a little error, by the way, pro- pagated and kept alive even by Dutch schoolbooks, 308 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND concerning the true Rhine River and its waters. This wonderful river keeps its name from the German frontier to Wijk-bij-Duurstede. The so-called Rhine in Utrecht and at Leyden " is probably no dead branch of that river," - - I quote, from his letter to me, the words of the secretary of the Royal Institute of Engineers, one of the ablest in his profession in the Netherlands, " it is a canal in the large water- schap of Rhynland. Not a drop of Rhine water flows in that canal. So the legend that the Rhine dies of stagnation and has to be assisted to die by locks is really untrue. . . . Our Dutch geographical school- books have contributed greatly to spread this awful error, which was so popular in Holland and other countries." Since Beekman published his classic work " Nederland als Polderland," making clear the dif- ference between " rivers," or streaming waters, and " canals," or dead waters shut up by sluices, science and the popular ideas have more closely harmonized. One sees why the country is called Holland, or Woodland. To the average American, whose range in this, one of the first of America's many father- lands, is usually along the strip between the two dams on the Rotte and the Amstel, this statement may seem strange, that is, untraditional. Neverthe- less, the amount of natural forest land, of cultivated timber, of planted heaths, and of shade trees by the roadside, not only in Holland proper, but in the whole kingdom, is enormous. Looking from the top of a tower as in Utrecht, Groningen, or Rhenen, one is im- pressed with the generous space occupied by "bosch " and " boom." The herbaria of the four living and SOUTH HOLLAND 309 two dead universities (Franeker and Harderwijk) are wonderfully rich. Bark, sections of timber, seed, leaf, and all the belongings and parasites of the trees native to the Netherlands, set and inclosed in the form of books, make wonderful libraries. The Dutch are mighty lovers of trees as well as of flowers. Besides planting them by the houses for themselves, they rear them in the meadows for their cattle. The brick-paved roads, threading the kingdom in every direction, are pleasant to all by cycle or on foot, even on the hottest days, by reason of the long line of protecting shade. The approaches to nearly all rail- way stations, instead of being vulgarized by adver- tisements and board fences, are made attractive with foliage, shrubbery, and the tall sentinels transplanted from the forest. We do not forget that there are other possible derivations of Holland's name. Least plausible of all is that which associates the word with what is hollow ; for the term Holland is much older than the dikes and dams. No town name ending in "dam" goes beyond the twelfth century. The Netherlands, of many levels, hollows, and diked land, or cells containing drained lowlands, is a modern creation. It may be possible that Holland means Hay-land, from " hool " (hay), but this is not likely, despite the fact that this country, in which the modern plough was invented, consists less of arable than of pasture land. There is a striking variety of soil, landscape, scenery, crops, dialect, and costumes in these lower provinces, far more than most through-train pas- 310 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND sengers dream of. Between the Amstel and the Maas are the Holland cities, the art galleries, and the pastures rich in cows. The two Hollands, North and South, are the wealthiest of the eleven pro- vinces, not only because they are nearest the ocean and have commerce and manufactures, but because their soil consists for the most part of the fertile sea-clay. CHAPTER XXXII ROTTERDAM MOST Americans, and indeed nearly all English- speaking people, fail to do Rotterdam justice. They make of it a mere terminal facility. Indeed, the way in which so many of them go farther and fare worse reminds me of a certain rustic party at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Paying each one his half-dollar and passing the stile, the group was thus addressed by their sapient leader, " Now, let us be sure that we see everything. First, there 's ' The Exit." Let 's go see that.' And so, before they knew it, they had passed out, and lost their money with their opportunity. Hardly less wise are some who would find more enjoyment if they took the right course. Rotterdam improves on acquaintance. It is a city of delightful homes, of lovely gardens, of means of recreation and culture. There is a great reward in studying and comparing the old and the new parts of the city, and in using this comfortable municipality as a centre for excursions up and down the river and to the towns, " lands," and historic spots, within easy reach. One may go by tram to Delfshaven, now part of Rotterdam. No market is livelier than the great one which has the statue of Erasmus for its centre. 312 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Directly opposite the bronze man with the book, on whose head the birds perch fearlessly, is the site of the House of a Thousand Fears. Near the Cheese Market is the City Hall. Not far from the New Market is the handsome fountain with statuary, reared in 1872, when the Dutch celebrated their three hundredth anniversary. Then they recalled the glories of the Beggars of the Sea and their cap- ture of Briel, whose great church tower one sees as he comes up the Maas. The historical and symboli- cal figures around the fountain are very fine. The shotmen who carried firearms stand with bandoliers, arquebus, and dagger, in their caps and ruffs, and those knickerbocker breeches which modern taste declares to be the correct garment for the lower limbs. Here also is Kenau van Hasselaer, who with her trained woman soldiers fought on the walls of Haarlem, more than once driving back the whiskered Spaniards. Fascinating also is the study of the old streets Kip, Hoog, Hang, Raam and the life in them. In their very names they tell of the evolution of the great city from a village of fishermen on a dike, where they hung their nets to dry, while the weavers rotted their stalks of flax in the water, and then made their webs and spread out their products to dry or to bleach. Rotterdam, whose " new dike " was built in A. D. 1000, and which received its charter in 1340, is not without its memories of " the troubles " and of Philip II. of Spain, while it is rich in memories of the Father of the Fatherland. The king's travels in the ROTTERDAM 313 Netherlands are described in detail in a Spanish book printed at Antwerp in 1552, and now in the Rotterdam City Library, where I have spent plea- sant hours. When twenty-two years old, with his Aunt Marie of Hungary and many elders, he went through Flanders and visited also Dordrecht, Bergen- op-Zoom, Delft, and the Hague. On September 27, 1549, all Rotterdam was festal and decorated. The people were out in their best clothes to see their sovereign. Amid the flags and flowers, classic em- blems, and mythological devices, the letters P. P. (Padre de la Patria, Father of his Country) were everywhere seen. At night were torches and illu- mination. The Burgomaster and Senate of Rotter- dam welcomed their prince through Erasmus and the Latin language. The ultra-Romanist of Spain and the first humanist the literary king of Christen- dom stood face to face. The next morning Philip attended mass in the cathedral, which had then seventeen altars, the grand one being in honor of Mary and the second of St. Lawrence, the tutelary saint of the city. He then left for Delft and the Hague. Swiftly sped the years, fraught with events of meaning. Erasmus died at Basle in 1536. The first of many " Anabaptists," Anneken Jans of Briel, was drowned here in 1539. In 1549 a wooden im- age of Erasmus was set up the first open-air statue in Holland. The Reformation moved swiftly. Alva marched into the Netherlands in 1567. On the 12th of November, 1572, mass was performed here for the last time. On the 13th the altars were removed, 314 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND and on the 14th Domine Kooltuin, exiled but now returned, preached. The wooden statue of the great humanist was replaced by one of blue stone. By this time Van der Marck and the Beggars of the Sea had seized Briel, and hoisted the flag of Orange. When the Spaniard, Count van Bossu, appeared at the gates of the walled city to march through and avenge Briel, he perjured himself. Instead of send- ing in, as he had promised, files of only ten men at a time, he let loose his soldiers, who began indis- criminate massacre, hanging men in their doorways, or chopping to pieces human beings of all sizes and sexes. Zwart Jan, or Black John, a blacksmith, re- sisted with bloody effect. To-day we read the name of this hero on the street signs and tram-cars. One clever woman smeared the blood of cats on the door- posts of a house, which stood until 1890. The Spaniards, seeing the red sign and thinking all within were slain, passed by. The inmates were saved, but the memory of their feelings before and during this passover survives in the name Huis in Duizend Vreezen, " House of a Thousand Fears." At No. 3 in the Hang a fisherman's street named from the drying nets of centuries ago we see the site, though now things only of personal and household comfort are sold in the smart new shop. Bossu's bullies peppered the stone statue of Eras- mus with arquebus balls and then tumbled it into the canal, where it lay for years. In 1622 the pre- sent bronze effigy, reproduced from a painting, was set up. There are inscriptions at each of the four points of the compass relating to this many sided ROTTERDAM 315 man, "the greatest of the Batavian name," and "the overthrower of barbarism," as the north side declares. The inscription on the sunny side may thus be Englished : " Here rose the great sun that set at Basle. Let the metropolis honor and celebrate this holy man in his tomb. The city which gave him his first gives him also his second life. Yet the luminary of lan- guages, the salt of morals, the illustrious paragon that shone in charity, peace, and theology is not to be honored by a sepulchre, or rewarded with a statue. The empyrean alone must overspread Erasmus. No other place is worthy to be his temple." That for a Dutchman is no exaggeration. Erasmus was indeed the world's citizen, yet the true type of the thinking Dutchman also. The in- tellectual temper of the Dutch nation, as the long centuries prove, is Erasmian, not Lutheran or Cal- vinistic. Those fruits of the Dutch mind in art and literature which the world most values conform more closely to the Erasmian than to any other type. " Three things wait not for man," says the Jap- anese proverb : " they are fading flowers, running rivers, and fleeting years." The envious flood of time has dimmed the glory of Philip. The Dutch people, unused to kings, and knowing them not in Holland, abjured Philip, tore off his crown of "P. P.," and saluted William of Orange as Pater Patria3. Here in this city, while Leyden was belea- guered, he lay desperately ill. Here also he cut the dikes which flooded the country and floated the Zea- 316 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND land boats to victory and rescue, " Batter a ruined than a lost land " were his words, now the proverb. Nor are old American touch and association lack- ing. From Rotterdam sailed the Dutch companions of Penn, whose mother, as before remai'ked, was born here. Down out of the Rhine moved the Ger- man Palatinates who fled from persecution, war, or poverty, making Pennsylvania their Holy Land. Myriads more have, since 1783, come down " the Rhine route " through Rotterdam from all Germany to freedom's land. Here Longfellow's wife died. Walking through the city, we find not only the house of Erasmus, but of Spinola, and of John of Barneveldt, who lived for several years in Lombard Street, while pensionary of Rotterdam. The Amer- ican notices that there is no monument to him in all the Netherlands, though here in his native city is one of Hogendorp, the statesman who promoted free trade, and, in the park, one of Hendrik Tollens, the popular patriotic poet. Besides the Museum, rich in art galleries, and the Zoological Garden, the Park, and the Boompjes, there is a fascinating interest in watching the harbor and the movements of the endlessly busy steamers and boats, and the bridges opening and shutting, while the church chimes make constant music. If one wishes to test the clearness of the air on a fine day and the power of his own vision, let him climb to the summit of the cathedral tower and look over this vast landscape. Threaded by silvery bands of water, rivers and canals, by rows of windmills and long lines of shade trees covering the brick roads, the great map of the flat country ROTTERDAM 317 lies before him. In this land of churches the towers of Briel and Schiedam to the east, of the Hagfue 7 O and Leyden on the north, of Gouda and Dordrecht on the west, and of the smaller towns and villages on the south, are grandly visible. I made several visits to Delfshaven, and met the officers of the little Dutch Reformed church facing the canal, past which the Pilgrims in their boats moved while on their way to the Speedwell, and where a beautiful but not trustworthy tradition de- clares that they held their last meeting before sailing away to America. Nevertheless, this church edifice, always neat, cool, clean, restful, is the centre of American tourists who come to Delfshaven to study Pilgrim origins, or to refresh ancestral or historic memories. Here is a book for signatures of visitors. The painting, possibly contemporary with the de- parture of the Pilgrims from Delfshaven, which Mr. George H. Boughton, the Royal Academician, has found, 1 is all the more truthful and authentic, be- cause so radically different from the fancies conjured up in later days, through the untempered eulogies and flamboyant rhetoric of Forefathers' Day. The long confusion, even in the American mind, between Puritan and Pilgrim has helped to deepen the abyss between notions and realities. Mr. Boughtou thinks this picture was made by one or both of the Cuyps, father and son. Along with other marks of genuine- ness is the fact that the river Maas shows a clear space of water unvexed by any island at this point ; whereas, since 1620, and mostly within the past cen- 1 See The Pilgrims in their Three, Jlouies. 318 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND tiny, there has formed the great long island called the Riuge Plaat, which is now cut in the centre by a sluice directly opposite the point whence the Speedwell sailed. Thus a passenger on the incom- ing or outgoing steamer of the Holland-America line can look up the historic canal and into the heart of Delfshaven. The tree-lined street running the whole length of the island, along the river front, is now called Pelgrim Kade, or Pilgrim's Quay. This name was given in 1892, under the magistracy of my friend Lycklama a Nyeholt, when he was burgomaster of Rotterdam. Better than all the letters of introduction with which I was supplied from political or commercial dignitaries, for getting acquainted with charming Dutch people, was my own companion in travel. Lyra's winsome ways opened many a door into the homes of this home-loving people. Often acquaint- ance came through a pleasant surprise. In 1891, while equipping in one of the Rotterdam shops for ten days' life on the deck of the steamer Veendam, Lyra's tongue ran to the end of her French and German, and mine of my Dutch. A cessation of business in that shop threatened, when a tastefully dressed and pretty young lady, also a purchaser, came with the right word to our relief. Besides help so pleasantly given and so gratefully received, there began with this fair Rotterdammer an ac- quaintance which not only opened one hospitable home in the quarter of Witte de With Straat, but also, on later visits, homes in other provinces and cities. ROTTERDAM 319 Other pleasant memories of various friends in Rotterdam include a scholarly Dutch family, attend- ant upon the Scottish church, under whose roof I lodged and boarded for a week, enjoying for several hours' daily reading, with father or son, Busken Huet's fascinating essays in his matchless " Littera- rische Fantasien en Kritieken." Of all modern Dutch writers, I enjoy most the style of the author of " Het Land Van Rembrand " and " Het Land Van Rubens." Though this is the first commercial city of the kingdom, and here are gathered the men of trade, yet in Rotterdam, even more than in some other Dutch cities, I get a true perspective of the history of the country. The street names and those of the quays and waterways are as windows, out of which one can look down the past. Even some of the old shop signs, like that of the Oude Graf (Old Count), help to make the past full of vividness and color. When settled government came to this region, after the welter and ooze of the Middle Ages, there were, in succession, six different dynasties, or " stamhui- zen," as the Dutch call them. The Counts of Holland (sixteen counts and one countess) ruled from the year 923 to 1299, or from Count Dirk First to Jan, who left no issue. Then followed the dynasty of Hainault, or of Henegouwen, who furnished three counts and one countess. When Margeritha, wife of Louis of Ba- varia, abdicated in favor of her son William V. of Bavaria, in 1349, there came upon the scene the dynasty of Bavaria. 320 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND In the Bavarian line were three counts and one countess, the latter being the unfortunate Jacque- line, who transferred her rights to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. The Burgundian dynasty ruled for fifty years. After two counts and the Countess Maria had died, the inheritance passed over to the dynasty of Austria. The Austrian house held power over the Nether- landers for eighty-six years. In this line were the Emperor Charles V. and Philip II., King of Spain. Against Philip II., led by William of Orange, the Dutch raised the flag of revolt. From 1568 the House of Orange-Nassau furnished rulers who were princes in their own right, but in the Dutch Re- public were stadholders or presidents. From 1579 until 1794, except during the twenty years when the stadholderate was abolished and John de Witt was grand pensionary, the Dutch rulers were of the House of Orange. The Republic fell in 1794, under the invasion of the French, who first under the form of the Batavian Republic, and then of the Kingdom of Holland, had control of the Nether- lands. In 1814 " the Dutch took Holland," drove out the invaders, and formed a national constitution. Then they invited the princes of Orange to be kings or constitutional executives. At the present day Queen Wilhelmina reigns, by the grace of God and the love of her people. In Rotterdam, too, I confess breathing in the at- mosphere of patriotism with the Dutch and feeling with them the glow of their patriotic songs, for in ROTTERDAM 32J. this city I have helped to celebrate, more than once, the Queen's birthday. In the grand cathedral, with its marble-pillared organ, its 5084 pipes and 73 stops and its trumpeting angel, in the churches and on the streets, I have been thrilled with the words and music of the national hymns, such as the *' Wil- helmus Lied," the " Flag Song," the " Song of the Beggars of the Sea," and others. These I have be- fore me in that handy collection, the " Nederlandsch Volksliederenboek," published, as so many other good things are, for the people, by the Dutch Soci- ety for the General Welfare. CHAPTER XXXIII GOUDA, OUDEWATER, AND WOERDEN IT was a hot, close, muggy day, June 29, when Lyra and I visited Gouda. The barometer, the clouds, and I am not certain but our spirits, were low. General humidity commanded everybody and everything. We came by the railway, but not to buy pipes. Many Dutch settlers in America, and also the Holland Society in New York, send to Gouda for both the baked clay and the twisted tobacco, which they use especially at their banquets. In winter the young Rotterdammers of frisky spirits skate on the ice from the larger to the smaller city. As their errand is to purchase a package of pipes, so is their ambition to reach home again without break- ing one of them. They proudly keep the long and straight " church warden " or the coiled-up snake- like style intact, as proofs of skill on steel. For many centuries Gouda has made its name famous for skill in plain keramics. Taking appro- priate material from the muddy bed of the river Ijssel, the Gouda artisans change it by the aid of fire into all sorts of earthenware, pots, pans, pitch- ers, cups, beakers, pipes by the million, and bricks by the billion. Although Gouda makes cheese, this is not, any more than that of Leyden, to be eaten GOUDA, OUDEWATER, AND WOERDEN 323 when the Edam product is at hand ; but for her pipes and bricks, Gouda shall be ever famous. The primeval clay brought from the continental moun- tains, ground, seasoned, and made tenacious by long rolling in the Rhine trough hundreds of miles long, is deposited ready for use in front of the town. When well burned, the product can resist ages of gnawing by the tooth of time. Centuries ago, Gouda, like Schiedam, won repu- tation for even a nobler task than that of transform- ing mud into things of use and beauty. Here " the art preservative of all arts " found one of its first homes in Europe. Rich and rare are the treasures which bear on their title-pages the names of the printers in this town, which had types before it had pipes. Oddly enough what first catches the eye, when we open an old Gouda " incunabulum," or cra- dle book, is the figure of an elephant. We wonder why the animal is there, and what association of ideas prompted the use of such a token. If we Were Hindoos, the elephant and his "howda" would have the same mental wedding as horse and saddle. AVhere is the American who ever pronounced cor- rectly the Dutch initial g ? Yet to pronounce the Indian word " howda " is to speak with very nearly local accuracy the name of the Dutch city. This sufficiently close resemblance in sound between " Gouda " and " howda " (especially as pronounced by Dutchmen) struck pleasantly upon the ears of the novelty-loving Dutch printers, in the first joy and exultation of their craft. As Dr. Campbell, the historian of early Netherlands printing, tells us, an 324 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND elephant was exhibited through Holland about the time that the first Gouda printing-presses were set up. What shall we say between the Dutch and the Germans, both of whom claim the invention of print- ing? Was Coster or Gutenberg the first maker and user of movable types ? Or, indeed, was either ? What if printing be proved an evolution ? It is certain that the Koreans made and used movable, or, as they say, " living " types centuries before the Europeans. The collection of their books thus printed and now in the British Museum shows this. It is quite probable, too, that the Mongols brought the art from the far East into Europe. The long controversy between Van der Linde, a Dutchman in Germany, who ridicules the Coster legend, and of Hessels, a Dutchman in England, who has proved Gutenberg an early user, but not the inventor, of the art, shows that the proof of European initiative has not been made out. Yet while the Koreans and Chinese employed iron, lead, or terra-cotta, the Europeans added antimony, and thus secured full faces and sharp lines. Whether inventors, improvers, or borrowers, the Dutch were among the first to make the art popu- lar. Their country became the printing-office of Europe, for they made printing free, whereas, in England the privilege was a government monopoly like coinage, and infraction a felony. In Holland no Milton was needed to utter a seraphic plea. The Anabaptists, the Bible translators, the Inde- pendents, the forerunners of the English Common- GOUDA, OUDEWATER, AND WOERDEN 325 wealth, in short the makers of the England we honor, had all to come to Holland and here found a free press, to provide light for darkness and ammu- nition for the bombardment of bigotry and tyranny. The printers dealt the death-blow to that mediaeval theology which had broken the continuity of ancient and modern life and thought. As terrible as were gunpowder and bullets to feudalism, so were the types to kings and prelates. Best of all, printing made the Christian acquainted with the sources of his own religion, and emptied the monastery and priestcraft of their meaning, leaving thrones a shadow. Having bridged the gulf between the mod- ern and the ancient, it is now helping gloriously in reconciling the West and the East, Europe and Asia. Many soldiers were marching in Gouda on the day of our visit, which was that of some Roman Catholic festival. Beautiful were the great fat trees, interesting was the town hall, sweet were the chimes of the great church. In the town museum the golden chalice and the paten, which the Countess Jacqueline presented to the Shooters' Guild in the fifteenth century, were worth seeing. Yet neither for pipes, printing, painters, nor relics did we come to Gouda ; none of these was a magnet. The " lions " we were hunting were translucent, for Gouda preserves such splendors of stained glass made by native artists as no other town in the king- dom can show. Here wrought the brothers, Wouter and Dirk Crabeth, during the twenty-two years from 1555 to 1577. Entering the great church, a superb specimen of 326 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND the architecture of the later Middle Ages, we note the round arches, held up by thirty -six circular col- umns. The ceiling is of wood stained dark with time. Many were the triumphs of glass staining in the Netherlands during the sixteenth century, but in the churches few of the grand windows were spared by the Iconoclasts. Here, however, are forty- two windows, the gifts of princes, municipalities, and private individuals. In the older windows the subjects are taken from the Bible. The figures of saints or of the donors are mixed in or are attached to armorial bearings or allegorical representations. Those representing Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Judith and Holofernes, the Last Supper, Punishment of Heliodorus the desecrator of the Temple, the Preaching of John the Baptist, and the Baptism of Christ, seemed to us the finest. Philip II. of Spain presented the " Last Supper " window, and among the faces one can discern his portrait. William of Orange made a gift of " Christ Driving the Money-changers out of the Temple." Gouda boasts of her two sons, Cornelius and Frederik Houtman, the former of whom in his tire- less energy founded the East Indian trade, which so enriched the kingdom during two centuries. The national gratitude is shown in two statues in bronze by Netherland's popular sculptor, Stracke*e, of Am- sterdam. I had much the same curiosity to visit two other towns near Gouda which the American-born Irish- man felt to see Ireland, and to find out for himself whether there were any snakes there, in order to GOUDA, OUDEWATER, AND WOERDEN 327 do sincere and personal homage to St. Patrick. When once at a dinner of Dutch gentlemen, I heard a certain town spoken of as being " as dull as Oude- water." Curiosity was strong to prove whether after all Oudewater deserved the booby prize of Dutch dullness. The question is still unanswered, for I did not mount the steam tram for Old Water town. Not far away is Bodegraven, the name of which one reads in advertisements of liquors all over the kingdom. It was in Oudewater that the great theologian Arminius was born, though he lived as professor in Leyden. He certainly made things lively enough in Holland and the theological world. He was a veritable Leyden jar for emitting shocks and sparks. His name was Henry Herman, which he, according to the fashion set by Tacitus over fourteen hundred years before, Latinized as Arminius. His followers in the Netherlands are called Remonstrants, though in England and America they are known as Armin- ians. When he was but fifteen years old, fortu- nately away at school in Marburg, the Spaniards took Oudewater and massacred all his relatives. Amsterdam was proud to call this precocious orphan her foster-child. As professor in the new Leyden University, Arminius broke the dogmatic bonds of Roman theology, as forged first by Augustine and then by Calvin, and gave the first impetus to those Christians who have since become by evolution the largest Protestant denomination in America, even as Herman, whom the Romans called Arminius, smote off the chains of Roman dominion and opened 328 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND to nobler development the Teutonic race and world. Great indeed are the figures of the early and the later Arminius, the one of Teutoberg and the other of Leyden. The series of events in both these places forms landmarks in the world's history. Lit- tle Oudewater has a picture in the Stadhuis showing the awful excesses committed by the Spaniards in 1575. After the siege of eighteen days, humanity of all ages and sexes was turned into carrion. The wives and maidens spared from the sword were sold by auction to the soldiers. At Woerden, in the little corner of South Holland on the old Rhine, I arrived in the dewy freshness of early morning. Butter, cheese, pigs, and things animate and inanimate were changing owners, for it was market day. The women in their costumes and head-dresses seemed as gayly colored as the flowers which they were selling. The town still keeps the outlines of its old walls and fortifications. Formerly it was a fortress. Voltaire has described, in his usual brilliant and incisive style, how it was " taken by Louis XIV." This mighty sham had a habit of making his commanders keep him informed as to when a besieged city was about to fall, so that he might appear on the spot in the nick of time and thus seem to be the actual conqueror. Before this awful devastator of Germany and Holland thou- sands of German peasants fled down the Rhine and took ship at Rotterdam to find refuge and peace in Pennsylvania, the German-American's Holy Land. What a contrast in character and purpose, as be- tween the tiger and the ox, is that between Louis GOUDA, OUDE WATER, AND WOERDEN 329 XIV. and William Penn, or between the French Grand Monarch and the Dutch Constitutional ruler of England ! Woerden, like many other towns in this little country on which the great powers have repeatedly tried to trample, has a long story of bad fortune. It was captured and plundered by the French, when the Dutch tried in 1813 to possess their own city and country. Over two hundred towns or communities in South Holland have " wapen," or arms. Those of Oude- water show lions, crown and shield, with tower and uplifted portcullis. Bodegraven's recalls its story and meaning of " earth-dug," by two spades crossed through a beehive on its shield under a crown and wreath. Woerden's shield bears three diamonds. Besides Gouda's stars and stripes are twisted branches of thorns, andj beneath, its motto, " Per aspera ad astra," and a lozenge. Many a pretty story lies hidden in these symbols of organized social life. From time to time in this old land the witnesses and object-lessons of history troop forth out of their graves to delight the student. In the days when the Spaniard and the Inquisition were in the land, " hedge-preaching " was the custom. Between Gouda and Alphen is the little village of Boskoop, which recently revealed some eloquent reminders. On taking down the old church tower, they found five small manuals of religion. One of the booklets was named " Some Psalms and Other Hymns in use in the Christian Community in these Netherlands." 330 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND The very title had disappeared from all known re- cords. Yet fourteen of the pieces, seven psalms and seven hymns, are the same as in a collection of twenty-five used by Dutch refugees in London, who at Austin Friars formed what is now the oldest, as it was the first regularly organized, Hefornied Protestant Dutch Church. CHAPTER XXXIV THE CITY OF GEOTIUS AND ORANGE FROM the Hague one can ride by rail to Delft in a quarter of an hour, but he can see more of the country by going on the tram, passing through Rijswijk. Delft, in name and in history, is one of the most ancient of Dutch cities. So far back as the eleventh century there was a flourishing town here named Delft, that is, the delved or dug-out place. It had dikes and canals. Further south, on the Maas River, was its water-port or haven ; that is, Delft's haven. The little stream of water which was after- ward made into a straight canal flowed through Schierland, and it was easy to reach Delft from the sea. While there are other places called Delf, or Delft, in the Netherlands, this is the Delft, oldest and most honorable of all. Its world-wide name and fame have been given it indirectly through Japan, which is the sun, while Delft is as the moon, a reflection. For, while earth- enware was made here back in the Middle Ages, and already had a reputation well established before the triumphant Republic began its career in 1579, yet it was not until the opening of the seventeenth century, when commercial relations were begun with the Japanese duarchy, that the blue porcelain of 332 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Seto, Japan, was copied here, giving "Delft ware'* its European fame. As in old Tycoon land the name of the village of Seto was in ordinary speech a common noun, meaning blue and white ware, " Se- tomono," so Delft soon came to mean that " blue china " up to which everybody was expected to live, and whose ballads, proverbs, and pictures have been famed in literature and art. Curiously enough, in Europe, " china " is porcelain and " japan " is var- nish. The Dutchman gave up the old glaze made of tin oxide, and put on the porous clay, or biscuit, a non-metallic mineral glaze imitated from the Jap- anese. Just as the early Dutch printers tried to make their print look as much like writing as possi- ble, so the Delft decorators for a long time labored with Chinese-like patience to plant the Nankin wil- low, paint perspectiveless landscapes, build bridges up in the air over invisible rivers, and grow apples that were always provokingly round. They even painted in the pagodas and mournful tombs, with the two love birds that incarnated the spirits of the Chinese Vilikins and his Dinah. Many specimens of this ware, in indigo blue and dazzling lustre, still exist. To-day " old Delft," genuine and authenti- cated, is worth its weight in silver. Yet the Dutch had too much common sense, and were too matter-of-fact people, or, we may say, were too original, to continue as slavish imitators. To them the landscapes of the Middle Kingdom were either impossible in fact or unintelligible to the mind. The Japanese drawings, though truer to na- ture, did not satisfy. So they gave up reproducing THE CITY OF GROTIUS AND ORANGE 333 daimios' crests, Buddhist symbolism, the oriental forms of vegetable and animal life, and the whole pagan repertoire. Forthwith they proceeded first to make Bibles in porcelain, and theu to use the silicated surfaces as canvas to preserve and make popular their own art. They wrought out in blue and white the whole story from Adam and Eve down to the Descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. They were not averse to retaining, as do the Ro- man and Anglican churches, the apocryphal stories. They transferred the most popular of all their books, "The Mirror of Human Salvation," from print to porcelain. All over Europe and in the old and New Netherland, Dutch tiles were famous, becoming at the fireplace the horn-book of art, literature, and theology to thousands. Then for a while the great industry fell into decay. In our time it has been revived most gloriously. The dainty and accurate reproductions in blue of the portraits and genre pictures of their own great artists now beautify the walls of homes all over the world. On the last of several visits, in 1895, I found Delft amazingly quiet, but this accorded with my mood. The canals were remarkably clean, the lime trees healthy and well clipped. There are fine old facades and one or two handsome old city gates left from the days of walls and towers, when both muni- cipalities and theological ideas were well fenced in. Like so many of its sister cities, Delft bears the scars of gunpowder explosions. Delft, or " Delleft," as the natives say, is at the present day noted for its distillation of the " Dutch 334 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Eau de Cologne," for its beer, and now, as for cen- turies past, for its hardware. Was not the May- flower saved by a bit of Delft iron ? When in mid- ocean, her timbers strained and her main beam sprung from its socket by the storm, did not some one on board produce " a great iron screw, the pas- sengers had brought out of Holland, which would raise the beam into his place " ? So says Bradford in his history. The timber was held together to the vessel's side and, with a post set under it, the danger avoided. This screw was most probably the " vyzel " or " domme-kracht," called by us the jack- screw, the forerunner of the monkey-wreuch. From the sixteenth century the famous Polytech- nic School has been established here. It is one of the very oldest in Europe, certainly one of the first to teach that the science of engineering belongs of right to the learned professions, and that mastery of the mechanical forces is among the noblest of acquisitions. Here studied Maurice, the engineer and master of war, who prepared the way for Vauban and Coe- horn, Bunker Hill, Grant, and Lee. The marketplace is large and open. One side is lined with shops for the sale of blue and white faience. Toward the west is the city hall, which contains some pictures by M. J. Mierevelt, one of the very first, in point of time, of the Dutch portrait painters. They are " corporation pictures," which, despite their faults, show how grandly the Dutch artists led Europe in delineating the human face. Mierevelt, though less fascinating a limner than THE CITY OF GROTIUS AND ORANGE 335 Frans Hals, is yet one of the best. Both father and son of this name were born in Delft. Among the pictures of stallholders and princes is one of Ernst Casimir of Nassau, after whom the fort built on the Delaware was named ; another, of the Bohemian king, Frederick V., about whom G. P. R. James the romancer has written ; and another, of Grotius. Out in the sunshine, in front of the church, mid- way between Church and State, so to speak, I saw the splendid bronze statue, by Strackee, of one who wished to keep both Church and State united. The writings of Hugo de Groot, or Grotius, both in juris- prudence and theology, have been amazingly influ- ential, especially upon American life. He w r as the awakener of the conscience of humanity. His book on the laws of nations is a classic believed to have done more good on this planet, in promoting national ethics and in fostering the growth of a world-con- science, than any other work, except the Holy Scrip- tures. Set in the white marble in the pavement, around the statue, are four Dutch words, meaning 44 Let each one walk with God." Who does not know his story, of the wonderful precociousness of this Leyden student, of his per- sonal influence in provincial and national councils, how he was arrested with Barneveldt and sent along with Hoogerbeets to that Dutch Bastile, the castle of Louvenstein, and how his devoted wife, daughter of the burgomaster of Veere, set him free, by the artifice of substituting him for Arminian books in a great box ? Then she occupied his place in the cell, while he was carried out of prison and beyond the 336 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND frontiers to freedom. Grotius exalted the human will and power, as did Arminius. He lent his polit- ical influence to the Arminian movement, as did Barneveldt. In Paris he was the centre of a court of learned men, and there wrote his world-influen- cing book, " The Laws of Nations." His " Defense of the Christian Religion " was read by all classes, from sailors and fishermen in their boats and farmers by their peat fires, to princes of learning and digni- taries in Church and State. Grotius, the lawyer, wrought out the lawyer-like "governmental" theory of the Atonement which has been the basis of New England theology. Not only did the founders of Massachusetts import from Holland grand ideas for the founding of states, but also theological dogmas elaborated by a Christian lawyer. By these the minds of the New England clergy have been moulded for generations. While Princeton has professedly been the seat of the old Genevan, Gomarist, or Dor- drecht theology, called " pure Calvinism," Andover is the centre of that modified, or " provincial," form of the system first formulated by Calvin, but which under Edwards, Bellamy, Edmunds, and Park be- came something " new and strange." Hence the intellectual sparks struck out in the collision of ideas taught in these rival schools. No danger of the fire of interest dying out, while such flint and steel exist. The curved lines of beauty are absent for the most part from the thoroughfares and moats of Delft, and as a rule the streets resemble the line of duty. We pass under balconies, flower and vine laden, and on the Oude Delft come to the Prinsen Hof, THE CITY OF GROTIUS AND ORANGE 337 that is, the Prince's Court. In Delft, and most of the time in this edifice, the Father of the Fatherland spent the greater part of his time after 1579, and here on the 10th of July, 1584, the pistol of the fanatic and assassin, Balthasar Gerard, took his life. Let no one suppose that the hole in the wall once made by the bullet represents the actual calibre of the weapon. From its size, enlarged by the finger- nails of the curious during many generations, it looks as though a grapeshot or ball from some rapid firing gun had pierced the plaster. Unlike Lincoln or Garfield, who were shot by cowardly scoundrels in the rear, the Father of the Fatherland was aimed at from the front. Long used as a military bar- racks, the house and room are now the repositories of every precious relic associated with the memory of " the Moderate Man of the Sixteenth Century," who believed that Catholics and Protestants could live together in peace, and that even Anabaptists should be tolerated. William was an American in spirit when the United States were not even in em- bryo. It has been reserved for a woman, a graduate of Cornell University, Miss Ruth Putnam, to give us, from his own letters, the best picture in print of William of Orange. The chimes peal out merrily as we leave the relics in oak, glass, steel, and paper, and move over to the Oude Kerk, inside of which are the memorials of mighty victors both in peace and war. Here lies in marble Maarten Tromp, who, though fighting in thirty -two battles, never lowered his flag. In the last struggle against the English, who were wresting 338 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND from the Dutch the carrying trade of the seas and command of the waves, Tromp lost his life, but not his prestige. The battle of seventy -nine Dutch ships against one hundred and twenty-five British ships was fought near the dunes. Because in the legend he is said to have nailed a broom to his masthead to signify that he had swept the channel clear of his enemies, the British have taken revenge by nailing a Van to his name, even as they still persist in keeping a u in Bonaparte's. Here also sleeps the man, the curtness of whose name gives point and flavor to the rhyme in. popular songs. In 1628 this "Piet Hein," whose name is " klein " (little), captured at Matanzas the Spanish Silver Fleet with its twelve million guilders' worth of " plate," which in English is still the old name of silver " borrowed " from the Spaniards. Even as late as 1812, when Commodore Rodgers crossed the Atlantic in the frigate President, hoping to cap- ture the English "plate fleet," as he called it, which had left the West Indies, he got only cocoanut shells and orange peel instead of the white metal which he was after. To this day " plate " in English means silver. Piet Hein, born in Delfshaven, was admiral of the West India Company. His monument here is a cenotaph. Another monument, with a medallion figure, stands over the dust of Anton Leeuwenhoek, born in Delft, October 24, 1632. He invented the micro- scope, and opened new volumes of revelation of the infinitely little, showing life below in ever deepening abysses, laying the foundations for new sciences, and THE CITY OF GROTIUS AND ORANGE 339 enlarging man's idea of the universe. Of a new world of facts he was the Columbus. He hunted down the animalculae and rotifers, and described them. He revealed the spider's foot and her spin- nerets, the insect's many faceted eye, and the scales on the butterfly's wings. Yet, though we speak of " microscope," let no one think of splendid fittings of brass and steel with verniers, screws, nice adjust- ments, lenses made of diamond or crystal ground to perfection. No ! Leeuwenhoek's apparatus by which he discovered even the bacilli, now so well known, consisted of little beads set in loops of wire or bits of brass ; yet with these he was able to work won- ders, yes, even over worlds of darkness, and to say like Him whom he honored and revered, " Let there be light." Industrious to the age of ninety-one, he added immensely to our knowledge. These things stimulate the brain, but here at the end of the choir is something to touch the heart. It is a monument to a daughter of the great and ever illustrious Philip van Marnix Aldegonde. He was the bosom friend of the Silent. He died in 1598, and his statue is at Souburg in Zealand. Let me add a postscript and send " regrets," as my 'script turns to type, to this invitation: "The Delegates of the United States of America to the International Peace Conference have the honor to invite the Rev. W. E. Griffis to be present at the ceremony of placing a wreath in the name of their government upon the tomb of Grotius, in the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft, on the morning of Tuesday, July 4, 1899, at 11 o'clock." CHAPTER XXXV THE COUNT'S HEDGE ALL the world calls this city the Hague, though there are several linguistic variations of the name ; but to the Dutch it is 's Graven Hage, that is, the Count's Hedge. In the bright and cheerful railway station we read Den Haag, or The Hague (that is, The Inclosure). It has never been a walled city. One therefore looks in vain for the great encircling canals which, elsewhere in these lowlands, have served as defenses. Nor are there promenades and gardens built on old ramparts, nor any imposing gateways or towers telling of the bravery of mediae- val city architecture, or of the willingness of burgh- ers to lavish money for purposes of inclusion and exclusion. There are indeed canals, but for a Dutch city they are so few that they do but serve to show how rich in dry land this city is. Let us go at once to the very heart of the place and stand at the edge of the Vijver. This is a fish- pond, but no one is allowed to catch fish here, and the swans and cygnets have the water and the tiny wooded island all to themselves. On the eastern side are groves of superb trees. The names of this lovely wooded space, with others immediately around the Vijver, are all redolent of the memories THE COUNT'S HEDGE 341 of feudal ages. To the north is the Tournooi Veld, or Tourney Field. A little to the west are the Voorhout, or Outer Forest, and the favorite hotel of Americans, the Vieux Doelen, wherein, from the time of John Adams to the last envoy plenipoten- tiary, our American representatives have spent more or less time. Long ago the building was occupied by target companies. Many oil paintings in the city museum show first the arrow ranges and then the arquebus, firelock, and rifle butts that used to be here. The wooded space is called the Vijverberg, and at one time, doubtless, it was a swell of land several feet high. Near by is the Plein, to which come the horse, tram, and electric cars which run, with the aid of storage batteries, to Scheveningen. Fronting the Plein is the building of the famous White Society, within which the men of wit and art, courage and wealth, gather. Outdoors, under the trees, in summer, one will see hundreds of politi- cians, military officers, and civilians chatting, smok- ing, and drinking. On one side is the Rijks, or national archives. On the opposite sides are the old buildings of the Ministry of the Colonies, and the superb edifice of the Ministry of Justice, one of the finest in modern Holland. Thickly clustering to the southward are other governmental and historic buildings. One row, with architecture of general medieval effect, stands between the Vijver and the Binnen Hof, which latter is an inclosed court cor- responding to, or rather contrasting with, the Buiten Hof, the two making the Inner and the Outer Court. Within the open space have taken place 342 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND some of the greatest events in the national history, yet the style of the buildings is unprepossessing and almost repulsively plain. The north and south wings are occupied by the national legislature or the States General. As the tourist in Italy so often notices, there may be, after crossing the threshold past plain brick fronts, great splendor. Inside one finds many a handsome hall with elegant ceilings and paintings. In the centre of the open space through which run the tram-cars, one sees a slight but handsome piece of bronze and iron work in honor of the Counts of Holland. This but partially redeems the general dullness of so much dingy brick. To the south rises the old Hall of the Knights, with a lofty gable and a turret on either side. In the time of Floras V. it was moated, but its ancient water gir- dle is now no more. When the States General oc- cupied the building for its sessions, the lofty ceil- ing was gorgeous with captured battle-flags and the proud emblems of dukes and kings, snatched in victory from the foe. There the rulers of the Re- public met to make laws, and order the course of state. In front of it, on a platform, Barneveldt was beheaded in 1619. In modern times it has been made the repository of archives, and alas ! the " power house " of lottery distribution. Another relic of the earlier centuries is the Hof Singel, to the east. To the southwest is the elegant Plaats, or Plaza, an open space with fine buildings on each side, while off to the east is the Gevangepoort, or Prison Gate. Alongside this famous old gate- THE COUNT'S HEDGE 343 way is the prison house, now a museum and for show only, wherein, from dungeon-cellar to the sick bay in the attic, are kept those obsolete engines of tor- ture which speak to us so eloquently of our progress from them. Only a few rods away the brothers De Witt were torn to pieces in that volcanic outburst of popular savagery in 1672. 1 In a word, it is around the Vijver, the old centre of mediaeval life, that the most important and inter- esting edifices, as well as the parades, pageants, and gatherings of people of note, are still to be seen. For both history and politics one comes to the feather-flecked swan -pond, the dull-looking Binnen Hof, and the Plein. It was about the year 1250 that Count William of Holland built a summer palace here amid the vast forests that stretched through this region. Game abounded, and there were room and material for hunting, with plenty of fish food and bracing cold air from the sea, only three or four miles dis- tant. Hence, the name of the place as the Count's Hedsre, or inclosure. This Count William after- o " ward became Emperor of Germany. When his son, Florus V., whose dust and tomb are at Alkmaar, came to power, he enlarged the summer palace and made the Hague his capital, ruling his dominions from this centre. In one of the numerous civil wars between Holland and Gelderland, the growing town and palace were plundered and burned to the ground by the doughty Maarten van Rossem, who led the Gelderlanders. In the days of the Republic, the town, 1 The Student's Motley, p. 844. 344 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND having been built up again, was made the central seat of the Dutch United States. Owing to the very natural fear that the people living in the capital, if represented in the national congress, would have too much influence, the other cities did not allow the Hague a vote ; and so for centuries it remained a Dutch District of Columbia, unrepresented in Con- gress. This is the chief reason why, in its general aspects, the Hague remained for a long time what the city of Washington used to be, " an overgrown village," and the " largest in Europe." When, however, Napoleon made his brother Louis King of Holland, this ruler, who cared more for the people of Netherlands than for the Bonapartes, conferred upon the Hague the privileges of a municipality, and from that time forth it became more like a European capital city. During the last fifty years the Hague has grown far beyond the ratio of most Dutch cities, and within the last ten years astonishingly so. The tram-cars enable us to reach the newer portions conquered from polders, vegetable gardens, and grain-fields. Here we find row upon row of elegant houses occu- pied by veterans retired from the service, and thou- sands of small but comfortable dwellings in which country people, with something laid up against a rainy day, make their homes. Some Dutchmen com- plain that this growth of the Hague is not normal, for there are no important manufactures nor any special resources. Yet general opinion and practice agree, almost tc an axiom, in declaring that there are only three great Dutch cities. In Rotterdam THE COUNT'S HEDGE 345 you make your fortune, in Amsterdam you consoli- date it, in the Hague you enjoy it. The bright, cheerful, and modern, to say nothing of the aristocratic and prosperous appearance of Den Haag comes simply from the presence of the Court, which naturally draws together the nobility, fashion, and leisure of the realm, and the diploma- tists from other countries. For the most part the streets are laid out between the points of the com- pass. The form of the city is oblong, and most of the avenues are wide. In naming the streets, Batavia has opened her jewel-box and adorned herself. The Dutch have drawn on their long and brilliant roll of famous names in history, art, exploration, scientific achieve- ments, statesmanship, and all that makes a nation's story glorious. Indeed, the nomenclature mirrors the natural history. The northeastern part, which is in- closed within the region occupied by the zoological garden, the Orange barracks, the great Willem's park, the Alexander's pleiu, and the Cavalry bar- racks, is called " The Archipelago." Here one reads the names of Surinam, Paramaribo, Sumatra, Cele- bes, Java, Cantaloup, and other possessions in the Far East. Another great block of streets west of Willem's Park glorifies the naval heroes De Ruyter and Tromp, with Anna Paulowna, name of the Russian princess who married King William II., between the two, like Una among the lions. Further west, with Prince Hendrik Park as the centre, is another quarter suggesting sea power and exploration. Ba- 346 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND rents, Heemskerk, Tasman, Van Diemen, Rogge- veen, though dead, yet speak to us of the romance of discovery. Among them the American recognizes with interest Van Brackel. In the same quarter are the names of Van Speyk and Hugo de Groot. Lying cast of the King's stables and the Princess' garden is a set of streets reminding one of steps on a flight of stairs, for here are the literary names of Helmers, Da Costa, and others mounting up to Tollens and Bilderdijk. In the older part of the city are the more ordinary Dutch street names, which tell the usual ancient story of turf, wood, vegetable, cattle, sheep, and general markets, while in the southwestern portion again, we have a row of elegant streets named after poets and painters, and the modern statesmen Van Hogendorp, Van Limburg Stirum, etc. Naturally, the American likes the Hague. It is bright, fresh, clean, and modern looking, like his own Washington. There is, in addition to the old mediaeval associations which cluster around the Vij- ver, much that interests in the close touch which many a house and place here have with English and American history. In the first place, the fathers of our Constitution took from the Dutch many good ideas in republican government, no doubt greatly improving upon them ; or they learned from the costly experience of the Netherlands what to avoid. The federal Union of the States was consummated at Utrecht in 1579, but the Declaration of Independ- ence from Spain was published at the Hague in 1531. THE COUNT'S HEDGE 347 The fathers of the American Constitution, meet- ing and debating in Philadelphia in 1787, inherited the resources of British experience and drew lib- erally from it, but they had the Dutch Republic as a living reality before their eyes. In the days of its decline, when the pro-British executive, or stad- holder, had the legislative department and the peo- ple against him, when he was for monarchy and against America, while the people were for liberty and believed in our cause, our fathers took warning and learned wisdom. They made their executive not a king but a stadholder, yet elective and im- peachable. Instead of saying, as even Patrick Henry would have wanted them to do, " We the States do ordain and establish this Constitution," they said, " We the people of the United States." Although they organized the Senate almost exactly upon the lines of the States General, they erected a second house upon even larger foundations than that great committee on the conduct of wai % , of the Dutch Re- public, which stood for the nation at large instead of the separate States. Thus, besides the States particular, representing sovereign states in a States General or Congress, we have a House of Repre- sentatives standing for the people and quickly re- sponsive to the national will. In their third great differentiation of political powers, our fathers fol- lowed the Dutch rather than the English precedent. They ordained a Supreme Court, which, in the last analysis of the United States government, holds the balance of power, just as in the old Dutch Republic the supreme judiciary at the Hague wielded the supremacy. 348 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND It is not especially creditable to the people of the Hague that one has to go to other cities in the Va- derland to find the statues of the nation's greatest sons. Why does not one see here the images of Ho- gerdorp and Thorbecke, to say nothing of the sons of genius in art, war, and exploration ? Indeed, the things missed in Holland are as noteworthy as things visible. Where are monuments to Prince Maurice and to Barneveldt ? Where are women's colleges ? There is one statue, however, in the Paviljoens Gracht, which, with the instructor in psychology at Wellesley College, I hastened to see, that of one of the world's greatest thinkers. Like most of his fraternity, he was better appreciated after his death than by his contemporaries. It is one of the penal- ties which the Almighty imposes on a world of com- mon folk that a great man cannot be at once appre- ciated. Spinoza helped to banish superstition and to identify faith with conscience*. He lived in the world of intellect, in the contemplation of divine ideas, and in the investigation of nature. He devoted his life to truth and knowledge. Cast out of the Amsterdam synagogue with maledictions, he resigned himself to the will of God and became dead to the world. This noble non-conformist refused pensions and favors and lived in honest poverty, securing his bread by grinding lenses for an optician. Without superstition, doubt, or fear, he strove to know God, and was never far from Him, or his kingdom, or the Christ. Intellectually, he set ethics on an im- mutable basis. Personally, he was without guile. He illustrated the truth that " God fulfills himself in THE COUNT'S HEDGE 349 many ways." Spinoza lived from 1671 to 1677 at house No. 32, on which is a small tablet, and near the pulpit in the Nieuwe Kerk which we visited is his tomb marked only with his name. The bronze statue by Hexamer was set up in 1880. Our hon- ored American ambassador to Germany, the intel- lectual founder of Cornell University, and the au- thor of a book on a " conflict," which in reality is as imaginary as between chemistry and science, or between logarithms and mathematics, once told me of a certain appearance of opposition by the clergy of the Hague, but I gathered from his own account that Spinoza's admirers and the subscribers to the monument were rather disappointed at there being so little " conflict," hardly enough for advertise- ment. CHAPTER XXXVI CLASSIC LEYDEN LEYDEN, by " the dead Rhine," is one of the old- est of Dutch towns. All the world knows of it because of its famous siege by the Spaniards and deliverance by the Zealanders, who broke the dikes and sailed over orchards and farmhouses, fought the Spaniards among the trees and causeways, and delivered the people from black famine by bringing herrings and loaves. In honor of the deliverance, William of Orange founded a university in the name of the King of Spain. Here flocked the Brit- ish woolen workers, driven out of their country by the folly of Laud and the Stuarts. Here the found- ers of Massachusetts found asylum, nourished their souls, mended their fortunes, mightily reinforced their English inheritance of freedom, and rocked the cradle of their ambition. Here were educated by thousands the men of non-conformist England, when state church bigotry took the universities of Oxford and Cambridge away from the nation to give them to one sect. Americans visit Leyden as, in a large sense, a holy city. Let us glance at its history and see how it was made. In ancient, that is, Roman times, when Corbulus came, saw, conquered, and improved the island, and CLASSIC LEYDEN 351 dug the Fossa Corbulonis, the ditch named after himself, he only enlarged and continued what had been the natural stronghold of Lugdunum. The Burg, which still stands in the centre of the town, with its brick walls and turrets, whence the besieged in 1574 went daily to look over the Spanish camp, and to watch for succor, stands on the site of a primitive stronghold of timber and earth, first built in the days of the Kelts and later of the Batavians. Excavations have revealed and proved this fact. Ancient maps show that the Burg once stood ex- actly at the junction of the two rivers, the old and the new Rhine. With their missiles and their boats, the garrison could command both the way down to the sea and the entrance into the country. Hence its tremendous strategic importance. The ditch dug by Corbulus became later the Old Fleet (Oude Vliet), and still later the Pilgrims' \vater path to freedom and the New World, just as the Fleet River in London, now a dry street, was once filled with ships carrying to America refugees for con- science' sake. The Burg, then, is a mound of artificial and grad- ual formation which rose during the Middle Ages. Excavation reveals three strata, or three distinct burgs, the first showing, in clay and wood, the Ro- man praetorium or camp ; the second of clay and brick ; the third of brick only. The Romans not only held Leyden, but down on the seashore at Kat- wijk, where to-day are the colossal gates and sluices for holding in and pumping out the accumulated waters of " the dead Rhine," stood once a splendid 352 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND Roman fort, laid out and perfected by the finest engineering skill. It was called the British House (Huis de Brittin), that is, the house guarding the path to the island and defending the Roman power from British marauders. It was large and well finished, and evidently occupied for many years by a permanent garrison. The antiquities recovered from it show the presence of families as well as sol- diers, luxury as well as camp life. When built, the dunes, or sand-masses, were much further to the west, and the camp guarding the river mouth was inside them. Now, the age-long action of the wind and sea have thrown the dunes many furlongs east- ward. The sandhills first covered the camp, then they moved over and beyond it, so that gradually the fortifications were broken up and submerged by the waves of the sea. In seasons of exceedingly low water, the ruins of the walls and outlines were clearly visible, and much precious spoil has been won for the museums. After the Romans had left and gone south, there began a movement of nations, Saxons, Frisians, Angles, which populated England, and which has left its mark on the map of Holland in the names Engel, Engeland, Engelen, Engelenberg, etc., by the score. There are records of raids by the Norse- men in A. D. 856. In 1100 the town of Leyden ap- pears walled and moated. The walls of St. Peter's Kerk were rising in 1151. Later, the castle of tho Count of Holland and the cloisters and monasteries were built. Outside of the city, on an island com- manding the stream, rose the Burg. The first city CLASSIC LEYDEN 353 of Leyden lay between what is called the Rhine and the New Rhine, and in it were included the Breede Straat, that is, the Broad or Main Street, with most of the present thoroughfares. St. Peter's Church, the Veiled Nun's cloister and garden, now belong- ing to the University, the library, the museum of natural history and of antiquities, the butter and vegetable market, the eel, flour, and wood markets, lie in what is still recognized as " the city." Then followed successively various " vergrooter- ingen," or enlargements, the first, in A. D. 1200, be- ing between the two arms of the Rhine from the Burg to the Heerengracht, in which also stands the Church of St. Pancras, built on a rise of ground. About 1294 another enlargement took place between the Rhine and what is now the Oude Vest. Again, in 1355, began a very considerable increase, embra- cing the whole southern side of the modern city be- tween its Singel, or outer moat, and the new Rhine and the Rapenburg. Here to-day are the large gar- dens and the Doelen, or archery grounds. At the dedication of each of the great walls, towers, gates, and " rivers " there were ceremonies, with spectacles and costume-processions. In 1420 Jan van Beijren besieged the city for nine weeks and took it. The fifth enlargement took place some years after the Spaniards' siege of 1574, and in fact in the very year, 1609, in which the Pilgrims arrived in Am- sterdam. This enlargement was on the north side, between the Oude Vest and the present Singel, or outer moat, which had on it five great bastions with walls, towers, and bulwarks. This new quarter was 354 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND quickly filled up with houses, for the city was then very prosperous. Not only had the Dutch Re- public been so far recognized as to compel a truce with mighty Spain, but the cloth manufactures, dye works, breweries, and general industries of Leyden were famous all over the continent and in England. The Pilgrims came at a good time, when work was plenty and so varied that, even though most of them were unskilled laborers, direct from the farm, they were able to obtain employment and wages with a fair promise of permanence. In 1610 John Robinson's party took up their quarters in the northwestern and newest part of the city, near the site of the later Laken-hal (cloth warehouse), now containing the municipal museum. There were already here many other English workers in woven goods, besides students and soldiers and their families. Ultimately, the congregation was able to buy a handsome lot in the very heart and most desirable quarter of the old city. Their leaders and probably one third of their number lived amid the fashionable and the learned, under the very shadow of St. Peter's Church and the University. About 1640 the tremendous increase of cloth- weaving and the making of woolen fabrics brought greater riches to Leyden, and then the great Cloth Hall was built. The bulwarks and walls were strengthened, new cattle markets added, the botani- cal gardens under the illustrious Boerhave created, new dikes made, the German added to the French and English churches. By this time the Separatist, or Pilgrim Company, had by emigration to America, CLASSIC LEYDEN 355 deaths, and removals, melted away, until there were left few who spoke English. A sixth quarter of the city was laid out between the new Rhine and the northern Singel, and between the Heeren Gracht and the bulwarks and Singel, which still hold their old lines. Thus the city, brave with its own walls and towers, and outer forts built on islands, or at the points of peninsulas commanding water ap- proaches, bade defiance to the weakened Spaniards, who in a few years sued for peace. What was its population at different times ? Even writers reputed critical talk of " Leyden's 100,000 people." On the contrary, from the very best data obtainable, it had, in the year of the siege, even when people from the villages adjacent pressed into it for safety, not over 12,000. In the later days of its greater prosperity, it was known to have had 40,000 souls. There is no proof from census, or tax lists, or other data, that Leyden at any time of its history ever contained over 50,000 people. Nor, indeed, was the war of independence fought w r ith over 800,000 people under the orange, white, and blue banner. Not till after the peace of 1648 could the Netherlands boast a population of over a million. I have visited Leyden repeatedly, the second time with Lyra. Then we tried to see everything beau- tiful in the way of gardens, museums, St. Peter's Church, and the streets and places made sacred to all Americans by the Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers. From the Church of St. Pancras, or " the Highland Church," near a buttress in which is an insignificant monument to Burgomaster Van der "Werff, we went 356 THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND up to the top of the Burg hard by. Being a fair day, we had a superb view of the town, the neighborhood, the river, and roads leading down to the sea. Here we could look over the points of vantage once covered by Spanish forts, above which waved the blue and white checkerboard flag of Alva. Then on the signal sta- tions stood Spanish sharpshooters with their arque- buses, to bring down the carrier pigeons from Delft, which brought messages of hope and promises of relief from Prince William, whose Orange standard waved above the beleaguered town. We crossed the New Rhine and Nobel Street, to the empty space where once stood the house of Pro- fessor Luzac, Washington's friend. This scholar was killed in the great gunpowder explosion of 1807. For two generations the place was called " the great ruin," and used as a drill-ground. Now there is a fair garden where rosy-cheeked and golden-haired babies and their mothers and nurses gather together in the mornings amid the glorious flowers. A su- perb bronze statue of Burgomaster Van der Werff, heroic leader of the defense against Spanish besie- gers, rises above bas-reliefs which tell eloquently the ever memorable story, of which, among a thousand narrators, Motley is chief. Of many walks afterward made with antiquarians and professors in Leyden, one that interested me most led us to the Vliet, one of the oldest parts of the city, possibly going back to Roman days, and to the "kade," or quay, named after Boisot, the intrepid admiral who commanded the rescue boats from Zealand. These unflinching patriots drove their CLASSIC LEYDEN 357 keels from Rotterdam over the waters filling the submerged fields, and brought food to the starving and victory to the republican cause. Portions of the old walls, gates, and sluiceways still exist. Stand- ing on them, imagination easily pictures the scene, despite the altered surroundings. AVhen, in 1891, I visited first the archives so rich and varied, they were kept in the old city hall on Broad Street. When I came again to Leyden, in 1895, there rose up a magnificent new fireproof building on Boisot Quay, where, with all modern comforts and conveniences, the records of priceless value were arranged in scrupulous order under the care of Mr. Charles Dozy. Few European cities have so rich a collection illustrating the manifold phases of life in an old city. One visit to Leyden was with a young woman, a graduate of Wellesley College. This time, besides seeing the historic monuments, streets, and places, we went up to the city hall spire, where the chimes were playing. The musician showed us some of the mysteries of campanology, while Mr. Dozy, antiqua- rian and archivist, pointed out from the bulb spire a very tulip of architectural beauty, blossoming high in air the main lines and prominent features of the ancient, the mediaeval, and the modern city. Leyden holds the wool-sack of the kingdom. The cloth-makers washed their fleeces in the first canals dug, and even at this end of the century the city excels in textile fabrics. Descending from spire to the street, we rambled in Bell Alley, and up and