THREE WEEKS 
 
 ^HOLLAND 
 ^BELGIUM
 
 s
 
 in Holland and Belgium
 
 Three Weeks in Europe 
 
 By 
 
 John U. Higinbotham 
 
 Invaluable to those about to make a first 
 trip to Europe. Full of just the necessary 
 information and pertinent suggestions all 
 presented in the form of a snappy, readable 
 narrative. Those who cannot take a trip 
 abroad will find ' ' Three Weeks in Europe ' ' 
 a delightful substitute. 
 
 12mo. (Uniform with this volume.) Deco- 
 rative cover ; 50 full-page balf-tone pictures. 
 Price $1.50.
 
 WELCOME TO HOLLAND
 
 THREE WEEKS 
 
 IN 
 
 HOLLAND 
 
 AND 
 
 BELGIUM 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN U. HIGINBOTHAM 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 THE REILLY & BRITTON CO. 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 FIRST EDITION, 
 SECOND EDITION, 
 THIRD EDITION, 
 
 AUGUST, 1908 
 
 SEPTEMBER, 1909 
 
 AUGUST, 1910 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1908, 
 ];Y 
 
 THE REILLY & BRITTON Co. 
 
 Three Weeks in Holland and Belgium
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. ROTTERDAM ..... 9 
 
 It. DELFT 22 
 
 III. THE HAGUE AND SCHEVENIXGEN . . 31 
 
 IV. LEIDEX ...... 43 
 
 V. HAARLEM . . . . . .54 
 
 VI. AMSTERDAM ..... 58 
 
 VII. A ZUIDER ZEE EXCURSION . . .72 
 
 VIII. ZAANDAM AND ZAANDYK ... 83 
 
 IX. HELDER 88 
 
 X ALKMAAR ..... 94 
 
 XT. HOORN AND ENKHUIZEN . . . 100 
 
 XII. IN FRIESLAND . . . .107 
 
 XIII. GRONINGEN AND ASSEN . . .113 
 
 XIV. ZWOLLE AND KAMPEN . . .121 
 
 XV. UTRECHT AND ARNHEM . . . 127 
 
 XVI. FAREWELL TO HOLLAND . . . 136 
 
 XVII. LIEGE 143 
 
 XVIII. THE MEUSE VALLEY . . . 153 
 
 XIX. THE GROTTO OF HAN ' . . .159 
 
 XX. DlXANT AND A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE 164 
 
 XXI. CHARLEROI AND Moxs . . .168 
 
 XXII. BRUSSELS . . . 174 
 
 XXIII. WATERLOO 183 
 
 XXIV. BRUSSELS AGAIX . . . . 191 
 XXV. TOURXAI AXD LILLE .... 203 
 
 XXVI. C'OURTRAI AXD OSTEXD . . .210 
 
 XXVTI. BRUGES 217 
 
 XX VIII. GHENT 224 
 
 XXTX. ANTWERP 230 
 
 XXX. THE ISLAND OF WALCHEREN . . 240 
 
 XXXI. FROM MIDDELBURG TO ROTTERDAM . 251 
 
 XXXTT. LITTLE JOURNEYS AROUND ROTTERDAM 258 
 
 2205079
 
 PREFACE 
 
 It would be remarkable had not the mild 
 success of my first book imbued me with the 
 idea that I have a "mission." 
 
 Briefly stated, that mission is to act as 
 spokesman for the humble and despised class 
 grouped in travel books under the name of 
 "tourists/' Tourists are condemned by the 
 universal law of human nature which judges 
 all grades of society by the noisy minority. To 
 the great majority of tourists a trip abroad 
 is the fruit plucked from a tree of slow 
 growth, the roots of which are sunk deep in 
 the soil of hard work and self-denial, and 
 whose blossoming branches represent years of 
 studious preparation intelligently to appreciate 
 the present beauty or past grandeur of the 
 things spread before them in foreign lands. 
 They do not talk in strident tones. They give 
 just compensation for services rendered and pay 
 due homage to genuine greatness, whether liv- 
 ing or dead. They glide quietly in and out 
 with wide open eyes and minds, seeing, en-
 
 Preface 
 
 joying and understanding. They bring home 
 to family, friends or pupils, all of the reflected 
 radiance of a trip abroad that can possibly be 
 transmitted. 
 
 They return to their firesides better Ameri- 
 cans than ever, ready to adopt some of the 
 superficial elegancies of the Continent, perhaps, 
 but convinced that beneath the surface there is 
 no country on the globe that can compare with 
 the United States in universal opportunity for 
 the accomplishment of every right ambition 
 and equitable and assured reward for every 
 right effort. 
 
 In once more trying to outline what was 
 actually done by an ordinary observer at 
 moderate expense, I sincerely trust that this 
 book will furnish to its readers the one thing 
 needful in many cases to make them globe- 
 trotters, viz., a little courage. 
 
 JOHN U. HIGINBOTHAM. 
 
 Chicago, March, 1908.
 
 ITINERARY 
 
 July 21. Arrived at Rotterdam 3 A.M. 
 
 " 21. Left Rotterdam 2:04 P.M. 
 
 " 21. Arrived at The Hague 2:34 P.M. 
 
 " 21. Left The Hague 3:00 P.M. 
 
 ". 21. Arrived at Delft 3:12 P.M. 
 
 " 21. Left Delft 5:45 P.M. 
 
 " 21. Arrived The Hague 5:57 P.M. 
 
 ' ' 22. In The Hague and Scheveningeu. 
 
 " 23. Left The Hague 12:06 P.M. 
 
 " 23. Arrived Leiden 12:24 P.M. 
 
 " 23. Left Leiden 3 P.M. 
 
 " 23. Arrived Haarlem 3:33 P.M. 
 
 " 23. Left Haarlem 5:48 P.M. 
 
 " 23. Arrived Amsterdam 6:10 P.M. 
 
 " 24. In Amsterdam. 
 
 " 25. Zuider Zee Excursion. 
 
 " 26. Left Amsterdam 7:50 A.M. 
 
 " 26. Arrived Zaandam 8:02 A.M. 
 
 " 26. Left Zaandam 10:01 A.M. 
 
 " 26. Arrived Helder 11:20 A.M. 
 
 " 26. Left Helder 4 P.M. 
 
 " 26. Arrived Alkmaar 5:02 P.M. 
 
 " 27. Left Alkmaar 8:25 A.M. 
 
 " -27. Arrived Hoorn 8:45 A.M. 
 
 " 27. Left Hoorn 9:56 A.M. 
 
 " 27. Arrived Enkhuisen 10:25 A.M. 
 
 " 27. Boat to Stavoren 1:39 P.M. 
 
 " 27. Arrived Stavoren 2:49 P.M. 
 
 " 27. Left Stavoren 2:57 P.M. 
 
 " 27. Arrived Sneek 3:24 P.M.
 
 Three Weeks in 
 Holland and Belgium 
 
 FTER ten days of ocean as flat as a 
 travel-book, attended by weather not 
 nearly so dry, we are warned that the 
 customs officers will invade our staterooms at 
 three o'clock in the morning. The early hour 
 proved to be the only disagreeable feature of 
 the ordeal, as nothing was disturbed and our 
 luggage was chalk-marked without even the 
 formality of opening it. The crafty Holland- 
 ers knew that there would be pleasanter ways 
 of obtaining our money after we landed and 
 that we could be safely entrusted to their 
 brethren on shore for the solution of our 
 surplus problem. 
 
 Being assured that the customs regulations 
 have all been complied with, our passengers 
 scramble sleepily on deck and view the canal- 
 ized Maas up which we 'are slowly passing. 
 Trees of uniform height and symmetrical 
 9
 
 io Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 shape line both banks. Buoys fastened to the 
 bottom of the river furnish anchorage for ship- 
 ping of all description. A Quaker Oats sign 
 on one side, and an American Petroleum Com- 
 pany tank on the other show that United States 
 enterprise attends to the first wants of the day 
 and furnishes the illumination for its close. 
 But what do we see peeping over yonder dike ? 
 A windmill ! The frontier picket of an immense 
 army that works night and day in the struggle 
 between the land and the sea for the possession 
 of Holland. It is half-past six when we leave 
 the boat, having partaken of a hearty break- 
 fast. Our room steward finds a carriage for 
 us, and with our baggage about us we start on 
 a jolty ride that makes us long more than once 
 for the decks of the "Statendam." 
 
 As we will spend several days at Rotter- 
 dam, after swinging around the circle, we go 
 at once to the depot, leave our impedimenta 
 in the parcel-room, clamber back into the car- 
 riage and drive through the city. At this hour 
 nothing is open but the Park, which is very 
 beautiful in the early morning. The roads are 
 smoother than the clinker-paved city streets;
 
 IN THE PARK ROTTERDAM
 
 Rotterdam 1 1 
 
 birds are singing, and grass and plants are 
 sparkling with dew. 
 
 The antics of a sparrow near the carriage 
 are amusing. It is poised in air like a 
 humming-bird, and evidently intent on some 
 object in the grass, probably an insect. One is 
 puzzled to know why it does not devour its 
 helpless victim at once, until you notice a 
 "Keep Off the Grass" sign just a few feet 
 away, and you recognize that you have met 
 your first but by no means your last example 
 of the absolute obedience to vested authority 
 which obtains throughout the Netherlands. 
 
 We drive on, and the last thing we see is 
 that English sparrow, personification of law- 
 lessness at home, still hovering hungrily in 
 the air. 
 
 It is Saturday scrubbing day. Later ob- 
 servation shows that there are five other 
 scrubbing days each week, but Saturday is the 
 day on which they become rabid on the subject. 
 
 Wooden-shod servants are splashing and 
 mopping and soaking and rubbing every exte- 
 rior surface, horizontal and perpendicular. 
 Not only windows and walks, but the walls of 
 the houses are given a dressing until they
 
 12 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 fairly shine. With pedestrians it is a case of 
 'Sauve qui pent; but safe in our carriage we 
 ride above the storm. Other maidens are 
 beating carpets, unrolling them over the tops 
 of stepladders, and rolling them up after every 
 particle of dust is out of them. As in Spain 
 children play at bull-fighting, so in Holland you 
 see the little ones with miniature implements 
 pounding away at small pieces of carpet, or 
 washing the sides of their playhouses. 
 
 While we are waiting for Cook's office to 
 open and cash an express order, we hear a 
 rattle as of some monster locust. It stops, and 
 a few minutes later it sounds again, this time 
 just around the corner. We await develop- 
 ments. Pretty soon a fifteen-year-old boy in 
 dusty clothing and wooden shoes makes his 
 appearance. In his hand he carries a watch- 
 man's rattle, and as he passes a nearby door 
 he gives it a terrific whirl. Almost instantly 
 a maid appears carrying an ash-can, which 
 she deposits on the sidewalk. A wagon follows 
 the boy with the rattle, the can is emptied into 
 the wagon by the man in charge and returned 
 to the maid, who takes it into the house. You 
 see no row of unsightly receptacles decorating
 
 Rotterdam 13 
 
 the curb, and anyone who leaves an ash-can 
 on the walk, except in obedience to the rattle, 
 or fails to remove it when empty, is subject 
 to a fine. 
 
 Another of the '"different" things that strikes 
 the eye of an American is the practice of 
 placing mirrors outside the windows of the 
 houses. These are circular or oblong in form, 
 about eight by ten inches in size, and hung 
 at such an angle as will enable the lady of the 
 house to observe the callers or passers-by with- 
 out being seen. "You have nothing like that 
 in America," our cabby remarks, as we stare 
 at the queer-looking contrivances. And we are 
 obliged to confess that our window ornament 
 which most nearly suggests them the rubber 
 plant is entirely dissimilar. 
 
 The first impression of Holland is pleasing, 
 and this impression is deepened with every day 
 of our stay. Thrift, cleanliness and a high 
 average of comfort seem to abound. Nor do 
 they lack a love of the beautiful. All of the 
 public utilities, such as lamp-posts, mail-boxes, 
 telephone-poles and viaducts, are made orna- 
 mental without detracting a particle from their 
 usefulness. Water is always the landscape
 
 14 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 gardener's best friend, and water is every- 
 where. Nor should one fail to mention, among 
 other first impressions, the perfectly natural 
 courtesy which you meet on every hand. 
 
 We drive along the Boompjes and past the 
 Sailors' Home, one of the many well-conducted 
 charities. We get another glimpse of the green, 
 white and green funnel of our steamer, and 
 then ask the driver to find a smoother street. 
 With all due respect to the etymologists, I 
 believe that the Boompjes were named by some 
 one who had ridden over them in an iron-tired 
 cab. 
 
 Erasmus was born in Rotterdam. His 
 statue stands at the head of the Groote Markt, 
 and looked benign approval when we purchased 
 a pound of beautiful black cherries from the 
 old peasant woman whose counter is erected 
 under its shadow. Erasmus was born in 1467.' 
 The House of Erasmus was built in 1896. That 
 seemed like a long time to keep him waiting, 
 but such a little thing would not worry a phi- 
 losopher, particularly a Dutch philosopher. 
 Later inquiry developed the fact that this was 
 a facsimile of the original house. It is cer- 
 tainly quaint and interesting, and almost as
 
 Rotterdam 1 5 
 
 satisfactory as the real thing. There are many 
 houses in Rotterdam that antedate the birth 
 of Erasmus, however, and at 3 Slepersvest we 
 saw one that bore the date 1400 and was still 
 habitable. . Erasmus saw the inconsistencies 
 and abuses of the Catholic Church, but lacked 
 the courage to come out boldly in support of 
 the Reformation. As a consequence of his 
 desire to effect reforms from within, he made 
 enemies in both camps. He wished to correct 
 the temporal abuses of the church without tam- 
 pering with its dogmas. His timidity was a 
 reflection of a weak physical embodiment 
 which manifested itself in many queer and 
 childish superstitions and aversions. Among 
 others may be mentioned the fact that the 
 sight of a herring would throw him into 
 spasms. He died in Basel in 1536, having 
 removed very few obstructions from the rough 
 channel of sixteenth century ecclesiasticism, 
 and was apparently content to have steered his 
 own frail bark safely among them. 
 
 Bicycles are as much in evidence all around 
 us as they were in America fifteen years ago. 
 Ladies, children, soldiers and artisans, go 
 wheeling past on thoroughly modern machines.
 
 1 6 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 We even saw a nun making her rounds on a 
 pneumatic-tired safety. 
 
 Flemish horses are the finest looking speci- 
 mens in the world, but to the casual observer 
 three-fourths of the hauling seems to be done 
 in carts propelled by men, women or dogs. 
 And the latter soon become the objects of your 
 sympathy, for, instead of going between shafts, 
 where they can bark at other dogs and enjoy 
 themselves, they are crouched under the body 
 of the cart, midway, and harnessed to the axle. 
 Life in a treadmill would be a summer picnic 
 in comparison. They cannot even pursue their 
 natural enemy, the flea, and a flea is a good deal 
 like a small boy who hitches on a street-car. 
 He does not enjoy it half as much when he is 
 not chased off. So the dogs are deserted for 
 the tourists at every opportunity. The export 
 flea statistics would be highly interesting if 
 they could ever be compiled. 
 
 We went to Boyman's Museum at nine- 
 fifteen. It does not open until ten ; but a 
 sign informs the public that strangers may 
 enter earlier. That is another example of their 
 never-failing courtesy. 
 
 Getting up at three in the morning does not
 
 Rotterdam 17 
 
 tend to produce enthusiasm in a gallery at 
 nine. We saw a Rubens, a Van Dyck, and a 
 Rembrandt. They were not brilliant examples 
 of the work of those masters. The guild pic- 
 tures and corporation pieces are characteristic 
 of Holland. Every face in the picture is a 
 portrait, and generally the portrait of a con- 
 tributor; so each stands out with startling 
 distinctness. 
 
 We returned to the streets, where the preva- 
 lence of push-carts again struck us. Every- 
 thing is sold from them from kerosene in 
 gallon cans to upholstered furniture. 
 
 After sampling most of the street-cars, we 
 finally land at a ferry which we hope will 
 take us over to the steamship offices. They 
 are on one of the two big islands in the Maas 
 River. At the landing, several ferry passen- 
 gers assisted a push-cart man with his over- 
 laden vehicle, and later in the day a laborer 
 walked a block with us to point out our car 
 line, and even searched his pockets for a coin 
 to show us how much fare we should pay. I 
 thought he wanted to pay our fare, but B. 
 says not. 
 
 These incidents are mentioned because they
 
 1 8 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 illustrate the universal courtesy that has been 
 spoken of before. There is no one thing which 
 impresses an American as being quite so un- 
 usual, so foreign, as politeness. 
 
 After registering our return steamer ticket, 
 we took no more chances on street-cars, but 
 hired a carriage and were driven to the Cafe 
 Stroomberg for lunch. After an excellent 
 repast, we found we had time to make a stop 
 or two between the restaurant and depot. 
 
 We dropped off the car at St. Lawrence 
 Church, a once beautiful building, with a tower 
 which it costs a dime and much labor to ascend ; 
 but the view is magnificent. The church was 
 begun eighty years before Columbus discovered 
 America, and the tower is not completed yet. 
 We both agreed, however, that it was plenty 
 high enough, and would not have had another 
 step added to it for worlds. Dozens of pigeons 
 whirred away as we stepped out onto the nar- 
 row platform and looked over the miles of 
 red-tiled roofs that stretched in every direction. 
 
 The interior of the church was ruined by 
 the Reformers, who whitewashed its walls 
 and placed wooden pews in the center, shorten- 
 ing the view from every side. It has a mag-
 
 A CANAL NEAR ST. LAWRENCE CHURCH ROTTER- 
 DAM
 
 Rotterdam 19 
 
 nificent organ, and its pavement forms the 
 roof of countless graves, with only here and 
 there a legible inscription. 
 
 Street-car fare in Holland is three cents a 
 trip, and for four cents you receive a return 
 ticket. The conductor carries more documents 
 than a congressman. For every fare he opens 
 an aluminum box about four by six, and hands 
 out a receipt or a return ticket, as the case 
 may be. When the passengers pay with 
 tickets, he places them the tickets, not the 
 passengers in a leather pouch hung by a strap 
 around his neck. It is important that you 
 retain the receipt given you, for at uncertain 
 intervals a "controlleur" gets on the car and 
 examines all the receipts, puts his O. K. on 
 them with a rubber stamp, and compares the 
 result with the manifest, or log, carried by the 
 conductor. It is quite the correct thing to 
 tip the conductor with a Dutch cent or two. 
 
 We reach the station at one-fifty "city time," 
 and there learned for the first time that the 
 trains are all run by Greenwich time, which is 
 twenty minutes slower than the sun time of 
 the various towns. Although we used four 
 "times" in the foregoing sentence, we still had
 
 2O Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 time to spare, and waited half an hour for our 
 train. This illogical horological arrangement 
 explains the presence of an extra minute hand 
 on most of the hotel clocks twenty minutes 
 behind the regular hand. 
 
 While B. is buying stamps for post-cards, 
 I sit in the waiting-room and listen to the man 
 who calls the trains. He makes me homesick, 
 for there is something about his inarticulate 
 utterance and general inutility that reminds 
 me of our own United States. 
 
 The Hollanders are the most patient and 
 courageous people on earth. Not only do they 
 live under the daily menace of the waters which 
 literally overshadow their land, but they learn 
 to speak Dutch ! Just think of putting 
 "Gevefrd" on a sign when they mean fresh 
 paint, or of labeling doors "Duwen" or "Trek- 
 ken" when it would be so much simpler to say 
 "Push" or "Pull." And how would you like 
 to have your hair cut by a "hair snijder" ? 
 
 We bought a Dutch-English lexicon because 
 we were unable to get an English-Dutch one. 
 We derived no practical benefit from our pur- 
 chase, but it afforded us a world of fun.
 
 Rotterdam 21 
 
 This is the way a Hollander is taught to pro- 
 nounce a few English phrases : 
 
 "I wish to be shaved" is clarified to the 
 Netherland student by being rendered "Y wisj 
 toe bie sjeevd." 
 
 "You overcharge" is "Joe o'ver tsjaardsj." 
 
 "He generally keeps good hours" looks like 
 this to Holland eyes : "Hie dsjen 'reuli kieps 
 goed ou'eus."
 
 22 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 II 
 
 UR run to The Hague is a short one, 
 but brief as it is, we make our first 
 mistake by riding through Delft 
 and losing part of a day. 
 
 Wooden shoes and thick woolen stockings 
 are as characteristic of one end of the Dutch 
 peasant woman as are gold or silver helmets 
 with gold pendants of the other. And over 
 these tight-fitting metal casques a lace hood is 
 worn, while on Sundays and holidays the eter- 
 nal feminine asserts herself by wearing a 
 modern bonnet or hat atop of the hood. 
 
 On the road to The Hague we pass many 
 picturesque windmills and canals. Ditches full 
 of water mark the boundaries between pastures, 
 and these ditches are crossed by foot-bridges 
 with gates in the middle to keep the pretty 
 black and white cows from invading a neigh- 
 bor's pasture. A cheaper way would be to
 
 Delft 23 
 
 put up a "Verboten" sign, for I am sure that 
 a Dutch cow is as law-abiding as a Dutch 
 sparrow. 
 
 We stop at Schiedam for a minute to take 
 on a load. Possibly Schiedam is the fountain- 
 head of more "loads" than any other town in 
 Holland, for here is manufactured the cele- 
 brated Schiedam Schnapps. Old inhabitants 
 say that the trade is declining, but there are 
 two hundred distilleries in operation now, and 
 countless pigs are being made into hogs from 
 the waste product, while hundreds of men are 
 undergoing the same transformation in con- 
 suming the regular output. 
 
 You next pass Briel, on an island in the 
 Maas. Its capture by the happy-go-lucky 
 "beggars of the sea" in 1572 was the first 
 blow struck by Holland in that glorious war 
 which ended Spanish supremacy on the Conti- 
 nent forever. 
 
 Twenty-five years later Martin Tromp 
 selected Briel as his birthplace, and in paddling 
 about the Maas, half river and half sea, he 
 developed the fighting abilities which made him 
 victor in thirty-two naval battles. It was he 
 who, with grim Dutch humor, nailed a broom
 
 24 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 to his masthead after he had swept the channel 
 clear of Holland's enemies. 
 
 Having rearranged the above from Baedeker, 
 I look up, only to discover that we passed 
 Briel while I was writing. 
 
 Now we are in the country again. There 
 goes a sailboat behind a hedge, and on the 
 other side of the track a three-mast schooner 
 is crossing a pasture. It looks so strange 
 this jumble of masts and windmills, canal- 
 boats and cows. We wonder if they have cow- 
 catchers on their canal-boats. 
 
 At The Hague, or La Haye, or Den Hague, 
 or s'Gravenhage, as you may elect, we take a 
 bus to our hotel and are well shaken while 
 taken over a clinker-brick pavement. After 
 securing a room, we return by trolley to the sta- 
 tion and catch the train back to Delft, with just 
 one minute to spare. They have the usual con- 
 tinental custom of taking up your ticket at the 
 end of your journey, but they complicate mat- 
 ters by requiring a punch at a turn-stile before 
 you get on the train, and another by the guard 
 before it pulls out. 
 
 Delft is a city of misfortune. In the middle
 
 Delft 25 
 
 of the sixteenth century she was destroyed by 
 fire. In 1584 she was the scene of the assas- 
 sination of William the Silent. In 1654 a pow- 
 der explosion ruined more than five hundred 
 houses. In 1742 a similar catastrophe occurred. 
 Do you wonder that Delft china was blue, amid 
 such jarring surroundings, and that its manu- 
 facture has ceased with the exception of one 
 factory ? 
 
 For a nation whose best known literary 
 work is the "Camera Obscura," the inhabitants 
 of Holland become wonderfully excited over a 
 kodak. In Delft we had to seek the refuge of 
 sanctuary and flee into the Prinsenhof to get 
 away from the children while changing films. 
 At least we thought it was the Prinsenhof, 
 and the smiling and sweet-voiced siren who 
 towed us through carefully nursed that delu- 
 sion by cleverly misunderstanding our English 
 on that one point. We were, in a measure, 
 compensated by an opportunity to try for a 
 time-exposure photograph of a large painting 
 of soldiers at dinner, with each head a portrait. 
 We also saw a very satisfying and human 
 picture of William the Silent in the Council 
 Chamber.
 
 26 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 On the opposite side of the square is the 
 Nieuwe Kerke. As it was finished in 1396, it 
 is only comparatively new. The old one was 
 built in the thirteenth century, but, except for 
 a slight tilt to the tower, it looks as youthful 
 as its juvenile competitor. 
 
 In the Nieuwe Kerke are the tombs of the 
 members of the Orange family, including the 
 mausoleum of William the Silent. His figure 
 is carved with the faithful dog whose barking 
 warned him of the approach of hired Spanish 
 assassins while he slept in his tent at Malines. 
 This was in 1572, and for twelve years a price 
 was on his head, offered by Phillip II. to any 
 one who would kill him. This price was 
 finally paid to the parents of Gerards in 1584. 
 
 A statue of Hugo Grotius adorns the center 
 of the square. He was born in Delft in 1583, 
 and is also buried in the Nieuwe Kerke. He 
 was a miracle of precocity. He extemporized 
 Latin verses when he was nine years old, and 
 at twelve entered the Leyden University. At 
 fifteen he was a member of an embassy which 
 endeavored to enlist the aid of France in the 
 war with Spain. At thirty-six, having served
 
 A QUIET SPOT IN DELFT
 
 Delft 27 
 
 his country in every other capacity, he was 
 thrown into jail under a life sentence. At 
 the same time, Barneveldt, one of the grandest 
 figures in Dutch history, was condemned to 
 death 
 
 In those days, not to have been a prisoner 
 or a fugitive from justice was a blot on your 
 record. Hugo's wife and maid-servant and 
 some relatives succeeded in extricating him 
 from prison in a box which had been used for 
 carrying books to his cell. After successfully 
 getting the box to its destination, they almost 
 let the man suffocate while they thumped on 
 the lid and listened and nearly had hysterics 
 because they heard no sound from within. 
 Then I suppose an idea struck them, or a man 
 came along, for they opened the box just in 
 the nick of time. Never since reading about 
 that transaction have I doubted the humorous 
 accounts of how a woman will fret and worry 
 over the post-mark on an envelope for minutes 
 before it will occur to her to solve the mystery 
 by opening it. 
 
 Well, that little screed eases me wonderfully, 
 because that artful little Dutch minx, when
 
 28 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 finally cornered and asked to point out the spot 
 on which William the Silent was shot, admitted 
 that we were in the Stadhuis and that the 
 Prinsenhof was half a mile away. 
 
 It lacked five minutes of five when we left 
 the Stadhuis, and our chances of seeing the 
 Prinsenhof seemed slim for that day, as it 
 closes at five. But, remembering former expe- 
 riences, we thought we would test Dutch cour- 
 tesy again, and so we walked over. Arriving 
 at ten minutes past five, we found everything 
 shut as tight as a drum. An inviting bell-pull 
 caught our eye, and we summoned the custo- 
 dian, who lives in the building, and were 
 shown through as cheerfully as though we were 
 the first visitors of the day. We went first to 
 the dining-room where William the Silent ate 
 his last meal. His wife had forebodings, and 
 did not like the appearance of the messenger, 
 Gerards, who had arrived that day, but William 
 did not share her fears. He had escaped 
 assassination so often since Phillip II. had de- 
 cided on that method of warfare, that he had 
 reason to believe in a certain degree of immu- 
 nity. So, surrounded by his family, he stepped
 
 Delft 29 
 
 from the dining-room into the hall. Behind 
 the column where we stood crouched Gerards, 
 and, as William reached the first step, two 
 poisoned bullets were discharged, passing 
 through his body and burying themselves in 
 the wall a short distance above the steps. 
 Draperies probably helped to conceal the assas- 
 sin, but with that exception everything is as 
 it was on July 10, 1584, the day of the crime. 
 The massive dining-table, built to carry a 
 Dutch dinner, is in its place with the chairs 
 about it, for William, like all true Hollanders, 
 was a good trencherman. The large fireplace 
 at either end makes it easy to picture a scene 
 of comfort which would have been one of good- 
 cheer but for Holland's unhappy lot. We 
 descended the little half-stairs down which the 
 assassin plunged in his futile efforts to escape. 
 We were glad that he did not get away, but 
 a little sorry that Holland expressed her horror 
 at his deed by subjecting him to most awful 
 torture as long as he had a breath left in his 
 body. 
 
 We feared that the bullet holes in the wall 
 would have needed "restoring," but found they
 
 30 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 had grown until they cover about three inches 
 of space and are covered by a netting. 
 
 Delft is connected by a canal with its port, 
 Delft-Haven, endeared to Americans as the 
 spot from which the Pilgrim Fathers embarked 
 for Southampton, July 22, 1620.
 
 The Hague and Scheveningen 31 
 
 III 
 
 The Hague and Scheveningen 
 
 E returned to The Hague by train, and 
 after dinner we forgot our early 
 closing resolutions and took a trolley 
 to Scheveningen, a half hour's ride. 
 
 In 1570, one-half of Scheveningen dis- 
 appeared into the North Sea and was never 
 seen again. On eyery pretty summer's day, 
 about half of it disappears into the sea again, 
 but it comes out smiling, shakes the water out 
 of its skirts, and dons its promenade apparel 
 for a walk on the beach. 
 
 The beach is magnificent, and the long pier 
 when lighted at night is beautiful. At its end 
 sits the little concert hall, sparkling over the 
 rolling waters like a gem at the tip of a mon- 
 arch's scepter. The Philharmonic Orchestra 
 from Berlin played, and the music was remark- 
 ably good ; but we only listened to two or three 
 numbers as we sipped our chocolate, and then
 
 32 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 explored the various devices for amusing the 
 populace. These did not differ greatly from 
 our own catch-penny arrangements, and we did 
 not patronize them. There were four in our 
 party, and we extracted some fun from the 
 exterior of a circus, the ticket-seller of which 
 overestimated our gullibility and tried to sell 
 us tickets at just quadruple the regular rates. 
 
 We went home rather early, patronizing the 
 trolley again. And that reminds me that they 
 do things better in Holland in connection with 
 their trolley systems than in most countries. 
 Instead of covering the exterior of the car with 
 a multiplicity of signs which only spell dis- 
 traction to the foreigner, each route is num- 
 bered, and the stranger who asks the way to 
 the depot is told to take car 5 or 1 1, as the case 
 may be. This number is carried on a board 
 at the roof of the car in front, and also on 
 the trolley pole. In London you cannot tell 
 whether a bus is going to Oxford Circus or 
 Alsopp's Ale. In Holland you cannot make a 
 mistake. 
 
 We ran up against an obstruction when we 
 reached our car, which we voted was an im- 
 provement after recovering our dignity.
 
 The Hague and Scheveningen 33 
 
 Having been taught that the race is quite often 
 to the swift, we naturally commenced to sprint 
 as soon as we saw our car waiting on the 
 tracks. Not a seat was taken, although a lot 
 of timid-looking natives were standing in line 
 at right angles to the track. "This is luck," 
 we said, and scrambled aboard. Almost imme- 
 diately we scrambled off, at the request of 
 uniformed authority, and lined up behind the 
 natives, who took the matter seriously and 
 were kind enough not to laugh at us. 
 
 Each car has a card inside stating how many 
 places there are, and on each platform is an- 
 other saying how many people may stand 
 thereon. When the seats and both platforms 
 are full, the sign "Vol" is put up, and no 
 more are permitted to get aboard. Our car 
 probably had thirty people in it and on the 
 platforms, and was turning business away at 
 every crossing. I told an English-speaking- 
 Hollander that we would get sixty people into 
 a car of that size in the United States. He 
 said, "But would that be so agreeable?" I 
 said, "No ; but it would be so profitable." And 
 he said, "So?" and was thoughtful for some 
 time. I am afraid he viewed the matter from
 
 34 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 the standpoint of a passenger instead of a 
 stockholder, an utterly impractical view, as we 
 all know. 
 
 The Dutch name of The Hague, s'Graven- 
 hage, means the Count's hedge. This hedge 
 surrounded the hunting-park of the Count of 
 Holland in the thirteenth century. Ever since, 
 its climatic advantages and proximity to the 
 beach have made it a favorite residence of 
 nobility and royalty. Since the accession of 
 the House of Orange to the throne of Holland, 
 in 1814, it has been the capital. 
 
 We arose early the next morning for a visit 
 to the House in the Woods, one of Wil- 
 helmina's dwelling-places. After investigating 
 various means of transportation, we concluded 
 to walk, and we were glad of our decision. 
 Unless the weather is bad, you cannot see the 
 Woods properly in any other way. It is only 
 a thirty minutes' stroll, and the path winds 
 along and across limpid brooks and through 
 virgin forests, centuries old, under a dense 
 shade that deepens noonday into twilight, and 
 between green, moss-covered trunks that 
 soften every tone until your step seems profana- 
 tron and you want to tiptoe and look for
 
 OX THE WAY TO THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS
 
 The Hague and Scheveningen 35 
 
 brownies and fairy rings. And as you look 
 upward at the gothic arches formed by the 
 interlaced branches, you realize how puny, how 
 evanescent, are the temples of stone which have 
 sought to copy man's first place of worship, 
 the forest. 
 
 The exterior of the House is a distinct dis- 
 appointment. But wait ! Once across the 
 threshold and delivered over to the stately 
 gray-haired dame who was our conductress, 
 you are in wonderland. Most of the furnish- 
 ings are gifts to Holland's beloved queen. In 
 the dining-room is a magnificent gold- 
 embroidered screen of Chinese workmanship. 
 Once there were blended with the gold in its 
 design, pearl-like beads. But alas ! these pearls 
 were placed before tourists, who turned and 
 rended that screen until there is scarcely one 
 left. And those that still remain are double- 
 stitched. I tried them. 
 
 The Orange Room, where the Peace Com- 
 mittee meets between wars, is in this House, 
 and is enchanting. The double doors opening 
 into it have figures of Hercules and Minerva 
 on the panels, typifying Strength and Wisdom 
 opening the door of Peace, or closing it, as the
 
 36 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 case may be. The room is octagonal, and every 
 square foot of wall and ceiling is covered with 
 allegorical pictures representing the life of 
 Frederick Henry, son of William the Silent. 
 The paintings were made by order of his 
 widow, Amalia of Solms, and executed by fifty 
 pupils of Rubens. The posthumous birth is 
 shown with the dark figure of his father 
 watching from the other shore. On the oppo- 
 site wall, the vices and dangers of youth are 
 graphically symbolized. The whole is an har- 
 monious arrangement and lighted beautifully. 
 There is a Chinese room furnished by that 
 government in oriental manner. The Japanese 
 have given the furnishings of a quaint apart- 
 ment. Its ceiling is in black and white plaster 
 with rice paper on the walls, and a unique 
 chandelier, each taper of which is formed by 
 an inverted saucer holding a dainty teacup. 
 Magnificent cloisonne vases decorate the sides, 
 and a beautifully carved cabinet stands against 
 one wall. The Hollanders won the confidence 
 and friendship of these oriental countries 
 centuries before they opened their ports to any 
 other nation. Americans rejoice to see an 
 excellent portrait of Motley given a prominent
 
 The Hague and Scheveningen 37 
 
 place in the room where he wrote of Holland 
 and her brave struggle for liberty. His picture 
 was painted especially for Wilhelmina, who 
 has a strong admiration for Holland's Ameri- 
 can historian. 
 
 Two delightful marbles are in this room. 
 They represent a sleeping and a playing infant. 
 Last but not least in its attractiveness is a 
 miracle in mosaic, a flower-piece which needs 
 microscopic examination to distinguish it from 
 the most delicate painting. 
 
 \Ye return home in a slight shower, which 
 hardly penetrates the foliage of the woods, 
 and again murmur, "Blessed is the country of 
 short distances." 
 
 The Mauritshuis does not open until 
 twelve-thirty, so our party orders a one-florin 
 luncheon at a cafe called "de Pool/' feeling 
 that at that price there is no danger of going 
 in over our heads. Nutmeg is prominent in 
 the cooking here, as it is all over Holland. 
 It is raised in their colonies and eaten as a 
 patriotic duty. It is fortunate that they do not 
 raise garlic. The Dutch have made successful 
 colonists everywhere, but the Belgians have
 
 38 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 been more noted for raising Cain than anything 
 else. 
 
 The two star attractions of the Mauritshuis 
 are Rembrandt's "Lesson in Anatomy" and 
 Potter's "Bull." The first is a vivid picture 
 of a clinic, splendidly done, but, except as a 
 means of showing admiration for his friend, 
 Surgeon Tulp, a most useless waste of paint. 
 
 Paul Potter's "Bull" is a good picture of a 
 scrubby eight-months-old bull calf that would 
 not be permitted to invade the Panhandle of 
 Texas. It is well done, of course, even to three 
 or four flies on its haunch and a green frog at 
 its feet; but Robbe has some better pictures 
 of better cattle in the Courtrai Gallery. 
 
 We again go to Scheveningen in the after- 
 noon, this time through another woods and 
 between the tiny houses of the old fishing 
 village, Scheveningen proper, whereas the 
 beach is not always so. We view quaint cos- 
 tumes out for their Sunday stroll, and are lured 
 into a Cabaret Artistique and locked in. We 
 expected to see a vaudeville, but instead we sat 
 and blinked at cinematograph pictures for half 
 an hour. 
 
 After our escape we took a stroll on the
 
 THE CHINESE ROOM IN THE HOUSE IX THE WOODS
 
 The Hague and Scheveningen 39 
 
 beach. All bathing is forbidden after two 
 Sunday afternoon, so we watched the breakers 
 for a while and returned for a walk through 
 the village. 
 
 My! what a stampede was created by our 
 camera ! Mothers grabbed their children, or 
 pushed them ahead of them in frantic efforts 
 to escape. Cajolery was futile, bribery was 
 spurned. In only one case did we succeed in 
 corrupting a group of urchins into posing. We 
 must have overpaid them, for they evidently 
 thought that we had given them a day's com- 
 pensation, and it was almost impossible to get 
 away from them. The women, with their queer 
 head-dresses, their shawls, and immense, 
 padded hips, kept out of sight when they saw 
 our camera. They are a very interesting type, 
 but difficult to get into print. 
 
 Horns are used for many purposes in Hol- 
 land. The street-car conductor uses one 
 instead of a whistle. Your hotel porter calls 
 a carriage by blowing a horn. We passed a 
 gang of pipe-layers, and in place of the usual 
 "Yeo heave oh," the foreman tooted a horn 
 at every tug of the men. 
 
 The Hague has fourteen churches of the
 
 4O Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 established order. The preachers wear low 
 shoes with big buckles, black stockings, 
 knickerbockers and long coats. They are all 
 smooth-shaven and wear a sort of truncated 
 plug hat of dull black cloth. As a rule, they 
 are wholesome, hearty-looking men who stand 
 the ordeal of knee-trousers very well. They 
 rotate from pulpit to pulpit, and each in turn 
 preaches in every one of the fourteen churches. 
 The sermons are fifty minutes in length. Two 
 collections are taken at each service, one for 
 the poor and the other for the running expenses 
 of the church. The deacons, or whoever 
 they are who pass the baskets, wear full dress 
 and white gloves. No choirs are employed in 
 any of the churches, but the singing is led by 
 a precentor. The men and women occupy 
 different parts of the church. 
 
 We visit the Gevangenpoort, an ancient 
 tower formerly used as a prison for political 
 offenders. From here, in 1672, brave Cor- 
 nelius De Witt and his brother John were 
 dragged by a maddened and mistaken populace 
 and murdered and hung head down for crimes 
 of which they were totally innocent. We were 
 shown the hospital of the prison where Cor-
 
 The Hague and Scheveningen 41 
 
 nelius was kept for some time after his arrest. 
 The walls bear pictures of his house and that 
 of his brother, carved by Cornelius with a pen- 
 knife. The people thought the De Witts had 
 plotted against the life of the Prince of Orange, 
 and Holland has never failed to rally to the 
 standard of that idolized house. All sorts of 
 instruments of torture are shown, branding 
 irons and a stretching apparatus for drawing 
 the facts out of unwilling witnesses. The 
 brand of the stork was burned into the hands 
 of a certain class of criminals, a form of small, 
 hot bird not at all popular. There is in the 
 basement a rock, hollowed out by the action of 
 water, on which prisoners were forced to stand 
 while cold water dripped on their heads. "One 
 day, crazy ; three days, dead," was the graphic 
 summary of our guide. 
 
 One cell is gruesomely decorated with fres- 
 coes done in the blood of the unfortunate 
 inmate. A mute and melancholy story is told 
 by a hole in the wall, laboriously made through 
 a foot of stone, only to encounter solid oak par- 
 titions backed by three feet of masonry. We 
 stood in the "large room" (about twenty by
 
 42 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 thirty) where the prisoners exercised. The 
 floor under us was six hundred years old. 
 
 A cigar has been defined by a Hollander as 
 his sixth finger. Evidence of their universal 
 use may be seen at the entrance of the 
 Gevangenpoort, where pigeon-holes are pro- 
 vided wherein unsmoked "remnants" can be 
 deposited and checked during the visit to the 
 prison. 
 
 Our driver to the station let us take our lug- 
 gage into the depot without paying him. Every 
 one is trustful and jolly. Grinning old Dutch- 
 men mimic our "alright" to the cabby, and 
 chuckle and lift their hats when they see that 
 we enjoy it.
 
 4*. !'_i 
 
 THE BEACH AT SCHEVSNINGEN.
 
 Leiden 
 
 43 
 
 IV 
 Leiden 
 
 E lunch at the depot in the room 
 of the Buffet Maatschappij. The 
 menu displays the familiar legend, 
 E pluribus iinum, probably referring to the 
 hash. We eat a good meal and watch 
 the scene as a Rotterdam train unloads. 
 Hollanders of every province and tourists 
 of every nation mingle amid a Babel of tongues 
 and a kaleidoscope of color and motion. 
 
 It takes eighteen minutes to go from The 
 Hague to Leiden. We are crowded into a 
 compartment. I have a suit-case on each foot 
 and the steamer rug in my lap. A fellow- 
 feeling for some of the victims of the Inquisi- 
 tion comes over me. A Hollander and his 
 wife share our "Niet Rooken" compartment. 
 
 At Leiden we hire a guide at forty cents 
 an hour to show us around. He proved to 
 be a good investment. He had lived in Yon-
 
 44 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 kers for several years, and spoke a mixture 
 of Holland and Yonkers that was intelligible 
 and at the same time quaint. He showed his 
 understanding of one of the objects of our trip 
 by stopping the carriage on a bridge spanning 
 the Rhine, from which place we had a beauti- 
 ful view of the river. The Rhine is not very 
 wide at this point, but it is quite thick. It 
 empties into the North Sea at Katwijk, eight 
 miles away. The word "empties" is used in 
 a Pickwickian sense. The Rhine is really 
 picked up bodily by a series of locks and thrown 
 over a dike into the sea. 
 
 We drove past a statue of Booerhaave, 
 Holland's most celebrated physician. It is 
 related that a Chinese mandarin of the 
 eighteenth century once addressed a letter to 
 "The most celebrated physician in Europe," 
 and the missive was safely delivered to Booer- 
 haave, and he admitted that he was the man. 
 
 We drive past the Morsch gate, a relic of the 
 old fortifications, along rows of booths in 
 preparation for the Kirmess, which starts to- 
 night and forms almost the sole summer amuse- 
 ment of provincial Holland. 
 
 Kirmess booths are built in panels and
 
 Leiden 45 
 
 hauled on wagons from place to place very 
 much as the buildings intended for "boom" 
 towns are made out West. They are frail- 
 looking, and the possibilities of "bringing down 
 the house" -are too apparent for the comfort of 
 nervous spectators. 
 
 The naval school, with its scores of middies 
 in embryo, is an interesting sight, and as we 
 rest our camera on the railing of the bridge 
 the boys line up with a whoop and stand, caps 
 in hand, until the button is pressed. Then we 
 wave them a farewell and receive in return 
 three hearty cheers. 
 
 A stable occupies the site of Rembrandt's 
 birthplace. One wall alone remains of the 
 house. Not a vestige of his father's mill is 
 left. Rembrandt was born in 1606, and all 
 Holland is celebrating the three hundredth 
 anniversary of that event. He is said to have 
 formed his first ideas of the beauty of light 
 and shade from watching the effects produced 
 by the single ray of light admitted into the 
 lofty chamber of his father's mill through a 
 small ventilator. This was the falling apple, 
 the boiling kettle, that gave the hint to the 
 latent genius that slumbered in the mind of the
 
 46 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 miller's son. And only in chiaroscuro was he 
 supreme. With a few notable exceptions, he 
 never rose above his lowly origin, and many 
 of his pictures show grossness of expression 
 and imperfection of drawing. But he was a 
 master of light and shadow. With few ex- 
 ceptions his associates were of the lower classes 
 and his favorite place of recreation the ale- 
 house. 
 
 An interesting house, built in 1612, is 
 pointed out, and looks as though it would be 
 good for several more centuries. It was for- 
 merly occupied by municipal offices, but is now 
 a museum of antiquities. 
 
 The old market is flanked by a weigh-house 
 on which is carved some excellent reliefs repre- 
 senting weights and measures, grain and butter, 
 etc. 
 
 The Stadhuis bears an inscription in which 
 is concealed a chronogram recording the date 
 of Leiden's celebrated siege, 1^4, and con- 
 taining one hundred and thirty-one letters, one 
 for each day that it continued. The siege was 
 lifted October third, and that day is celebrated 
 annually by a thanksgiving feast. In place of 
 our turkey, the Leideners eat a sort of Irish
 
 AN OLD HOUSE ON THE RHINE LEIDEN
 
 Leiden 47 
 
 stew, much thickened. Judging from their 
 appearance, the citizens are in a state of physi- 
 cal fortification for' a siege at any moment. 
 
 After contemplating the chronogram, which 
 would take the brain of an Ignatius Donnelly to 
 decipher were the key ever lost, we were 
 naturally anxious to see something more inti- 
 mately connected with this, the most marvelous 
 siege of history. So we climbed the highest 
 natural hill in the province. There may have 
 been higher hills temporarily constructed dur- 
 ing the erection of buildings, but our guide 
 impressed on us the fact that this was a 
 "natural"' hill. With only one guide and he 
 a cripple without axes, ropes or alpenstocks, 
 we clambered up the rugged sides of this emi- 
 nence, until, from the dizzy height of eighty 
 feet, we stood within the walls of the fortress 
 which crowns its summit. An old well is in 
 the center of the enclosure, and sleeping apart- 
 ments were formed by leaving recesses in the 
 walls. The dikes of Katwijk are visible to the 
 northeast. These were the dikes that were 
 broken down by William the Silent in his last 
 desperate and successful effort to drive away 
 the Spaniards, who for over four months had
 
 48 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 tightly invested the starving city. Every day 
 of that siege furnished an immortal page to 
 history, but its final desperate solution showed 
 the deep spirit of patriotism that made the 
 sea preferable to the Spaniard if Holland must 
 be lost. 
 
 With the memory of Haarlem's betrayal 
 fresh in their minds, the citizens of Leiden 
 knew that no oath was binding with their foe, 
 and thus Spain, by her treachery of one year 
 before at Haarlem's gates, solidified the natural 
 patriotism of the Hollander into a granite bar- 
 rier. And as we strained our eyes toward 
 Katwijk we could picture the eager faces that 
 watched and prayed for favorable winds as the 
 ships of the relieving party advanced, stopped, 
 and were sometimes even turned back by the 
 shifting currents of air from the North Sea. 
 Finally the right breeze came, and came in 
 abundance, and the bewildered Spaniards were 
 panic-stricken at the temporary enlistment of 
 Holland's old enemy, the ocean, on the side of 
 freedom, and fled. 
 
 St. Pancras Church is worthy of a visit from 
 every lover of liberty, if only for the purpose 
 of standing, hat in hand, before the monument
 
 Leiden 49 
 
 of Burgomaster Van der Werf, who offered 
 the starving people his own body in preference 
 to surrendering the city. 
 
 As a reward of merit and a stimulus to 
 patriotism,- William the Silent founded the 
 University of Leiden, which is still an institu- 
 tion which commands world-wide respect, 
 although it is not the leader that it once was. 
 
 Near the church of St. Ludwig, a powder 
 explosion occurred in 1807 which wrecked 
 three hundred houses and killed several hun- 
 dred people. The members of the church 
 thought that the fact that the edifice was not 
 destroyed showed a special bias in their favor 
 on the part of Providence. What the friends 
 of the deceased thought is not recorded, but we 
 venture that even the most reverent of them 
 hoped that the next time an instance was 
 wanted of how near you could come to hitting 
 a church without doing so, another locality 
 would be selected. At any rate, that part of 
 the city was never rebuilt, but a handsome park 
 bearing the honored name of Van der Werf 
 now covers the ground. 
 
 To show how little this partiality impressed 
 the church-members, the jar tilted the tower of
 
 50 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 die edifice to such an extent that the city inter- 
 posed and ordered it braced up. The money 
 was not paid by the congregation, who doubt- 
 less had a reckless idea that if they had been 
 saved from a powder explosion they surely 
 would not be smashed by a church steeple. So 
 the city made the repairs and took over the 
 title to the tower, leaving the rest of the 
 building the property of the church. Thus a 
 leaning tower has been straightened, and a 
 mechanic's lien substituted, and so it stands to 
 this day. If the congregation ever moves its 
 building it will leave the steeple and the city up 
 in the air. 
 
 There is in Leiden a church of more vital 
 interest to Americans than St. Ludwig's, and 
 that is St. Peter's. Here for fifteen years John 
 Robinson kept the light of religious liberty 
 burning and within its walls the Pilgrim 
 Fathers worshiped. While planning to follow 
 his flock across the broad Atlantic, John Rob- 
 inson died without entering the Promised Land 
 of America. He dearly loved theological con- 
 troversy and often crossed swords with the 
 followers of Arminius, in which contests both
 
 Leiden 5 1 
 
 sides always asserted that "the truth had a 
 famous victory." 
 
 In the Heerensteg the printers lived, and 
 Shoemakers street is lined on both sides by the 
 old residences of these same Fathers. Opposite 
 the church stands a building which bears a 
 memorial plate to John Robinson and which 
 occupies the site of his home. But it was not 
 built until sixty years after his death. The 
 Dutch have reformed and deformed the 
 interior of St. Peters with whitewash and while 
 we feel that there are still enough Madonnas 
 on exhibition in the world to satisfy our per- 
 sonal craving, we regret the methods followed 
 and the results achieved. Then, after the out- 
 raged feelings of Dutch protestantism had been 
 soothed by whitewash. Napoleon came along 
 and calmed his republican ire by knocking the 
 crowns off of all the effigies over the graves of 
 buried nobility. From the flat gravestones, 
 worn by the feet of the hosts of worshipers 
 and sight-seers, he caused every crown to be 
 chiseled. 
 
 The Leiden University is scattered over a 
 section of the city and has no impressive groups 
 of buildings. Its library contains 60,000 vol-
 
 52 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 times and 14,000 manuscripts, including many 
 rare Oriental ones. Its museum of natural 
 history is one of the finest in the world. Much 
 of the instruction is now imparted in the homes 
 of the professors. Its faculty has included 
 such names as Grotius, Descartes, Heinsius, 
 Scaliger, Bocerhaave, Arminius and Gomarus. 
 Goldsmith and Fielding were among the 
 Englishmen who attended lectures here. 
 
 The quaintest thing in connection with the 
 school is the prison for scholastic offenders. 
 The walls are covered with verses, pasquinades 
 and cartoons and a term in one of its cells 
 is considered essential by the students before 
 they can graduate with a clear conscience. 
 
 At last we see an "Aansprecher." He is in 
 full regalia and waiting near the station for a 
 funeral party. We ask the guide in awed whis- 
 pers whether so stately an individual would 
 consent to pose for a photograph. The guide 
 said, "If you pay him." We questioned whether 
 we could afford it. He looked rather expens- 
 ive. So we asked how much we ought to pay 
 for the accommodation. "Not over ten cents" 
 said our mentor. And so for ten cents (Dutch), 
 equivalent to four cents in America, we secured
 
 AN AANSPRECHER
 
 Leiden 53 
 
 his picture. An aansprecher adds to the duties 
 of an undertaker those of a messenger of bad 
 news and conveys the announcements of death 
 to friends and relatives. We saw many of them 
 later in our trip and their garb of gloom with 
 its tall black hat and quantities of sombre cord 
 soon failed to attract our attention. 
 
 Like all Holland towns, Leiden has its chari- 
 table institutions admirably managed. We 
 drove past a home for aged men and women 
 which the guide told us was a refuge for "Old 
 Orphans." As a sample of guide-English that 
 will answer very well.
 
 54 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 V 
 
 Haarlem 
 
 E leave Leiden for Haarlem at three 
 o'clock. It takes thirty-three minutes 
 for the trip. President Roosevelt's 
 ideas about race suicide are manifestly heredit- 
 ary, but he can find no precedent for that other 
 idea of his (spelling reform) in the land of his 
 ancestors. They would not take that extra 
 "a" out of Haarlem for the world. 
 
 A lost dog is galloping madly up and down 
 the tracks looking vainly for his master. No 
 wonder. A Dutch cent is only two-fifths of 
 an American one. 
 
 On the train again through a country of gar- 
 dens with canals for fences. We pass many 
 barges towed by men and boys and reach our 
 destination on time. Haarlem is the center of 
 the tulip bulb industry, and earlier in the year 
 is one of the beauty spots of Holland. Holland- 
 ers worship flowers and in the seventeenth cen-
 
 Haarlem 55 
 
 tury they literally went crazy over tulips. The 
 bulbs became the subject of speculation, corners 
 were formed and all of the usual accompani- 
 ments of mad gambling were witnessed ; em- 
 bezzlements, scandals, suicides and wrecked 
 ancestral fortunes. Finally the government took 
 a hand in the matter, declared all bets off and 
 stopped the thing. Holland has queer ideas 
 on the subject of Frenzied Finance and inter- 
 poses governmental restrictions in a way that 
 would be highly objectionable in some parts of 
 the United States. 
 
 A great many of these beautiful flowers are 
 grown on made ground. When the waters were 
 separated and the dry land appeared, parts of 
 Holland were left unfinished. Between 1833 
 and 1877 she has increased her area from 8,768 
 to 12,731 square miles. A growing country. 
 Before 1531 Haarlem Meer was four small 
 lakes with four villages on their banks. One 
 hundred years later there had been a run on 
 the banks and the four villages had gone into 
 liquidation. Another two centuries pass, the 
 soil is squeezed dry, drained and diked and is 
 now farm land. Over 40,000 acres were thus 
 added to Holland's little kingdom.
 
 56 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 No wonder that the dike is supreme in Hol- 
 land. The government can seize anything to 
 strengthen the dikes in time of "water snood" ; 
 carts, fences and even houses. 
 
 In front of the Groote Kerk is a bronze 
 statue of Laurens Coster, who did not invent 
 printing although Holland for centuries con- 
 tended that he did. 
 
 Within the Kerk is one of the best known 
 organs in the world. For over a century it 
 held rank as the largest instrument of its kind 
 in existence. It has five thousand pipes and 
 sixty stops. Only the stops were working the 
 day we were there. Three model ships are sus- 
 pended from a center arch, a recognition of 
 Holland's debt to that best of servants and 
 worst of masters, the sea. Not only has she 
 found food in her fisheries, but wealth in her 
 commerce and victory in her battles on the 
 bosom of this stern old mother, and doubtless 
 the unsleeping vigilance required by her system ' 
 of dikes has done more to develop the Holland 
 character along right lines than any other 
 influence. In the interior south wall a cannon 
 ball protrudes, a mute reminder that these 
 streets once ran blood and echoed to the shrieks
 
 THE HAARLEM ORGAN
 
 Haarlem 57 
 
 of men, women and children, massacred by 
 Phillip II. 's soldiers after a seven months' siege 
 ended only by the promise of full pardon by 
 Frederic, a worthy son of his father, the Duke 
 of Alva. 
 
 This siege cost the Spaniards ten thousand 
 men. The heroic defenders dwindled from four 
 thousand fighting men to eighteen hundred, to 
 which force was added an effective corps of 
 three hundred women commanded by the hero- 
 ine of the siege, Kenan Hasselaer. Even in their 
 exhausted condition they were strong enough 
 to make terms with the besiegers, terms which 
 were ruthlessly broken by the butchery of two 
 thousand persons, and the drowning of three 
 hundred others, tied back to back and thrown 
 into Haarlem Meer. 
 
 We took a drive through Frederic's Park 
 and Haarlem wood. The park is named for 
 the son of William the Silent and together with 
 the wood forms another of those idyllic dreams 
 of verdure which you find here and there in 
 Holland. Holland does not abound in timber 
 but what she has she guards jealously and she 
 is adding to her resources yearly.
 
 58 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 E caught a train for Amsterdam at 
 five-forty-eight, and in twenty-two 
 minutes we were in the largest city in 
 Holland. As we left the train we snapped 
 an Amsterdam orphan whose parti-colored cos- 
 tume, half black and half red, unfortunately 
 does not show in the photograph. It is not 
 stated for which parent she wears black, but it 
 is probably another hit at father. 
 
 At the Amstel we have a big room, with 
 windows through which we have an excellent 
 view of the Canal. Amsterdam is the city 
 whose inhabitants "dwell in the tops of trees." 
 Erasmus in his venerable joke referred to the 
 thousands of piles which form the foundations 
 of the buildings. Canals divide the city into 
 ninety islands connected by nearly three hun- 
 dred bridges. 
 
 We ate in the small dining-room. Some
 
 Amsterdam 59 
 
 friends from the Statendam joined us at dinner, 
 and the head-waiter could not resist the oppor- 
 tunity to air his English. He remarked as he 
 seated us, "It is heat like the hell in the large 
 room." You must admit that his English 
 needed airing. 
 
 After dinner we found a vaudeville theater 
 where the admission fee of thirty-two cents 
 included a drink. We divided the attention of 
 our neighbors with the show by declining the 
 drink and the waiter took it. The entertainment 
 was fair, being more Continental than Dutch, 
 and the crowd was orderly and good natured. 
 We went home before the cinematograph and 
 again were regarded as eccentric Americans. 
 
 The lifts in this country are the same old 
 fraud. In the Bellevue at The Hague there was 
 no regular attendant and a push button when 
 it brought anyone was as liable to bring the 
 concierge as the elevator boy. Here in the 
 Amstel, a first-class hotel, we were forced to 
 use the freight elevator, the other being out 
 of order, and we were three minutes in ascend- 
 ing two floors. I do not mean that it seemed 
 like three minutes. It was exactly three min- 
 utes by the watch.
 
 60 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 The bolt on our hotel door is on the jamb 
 and slides into the door. Our beds have a 
 sort of shelf for the head with a thin veneer of 
 pillow. The feathers have been taken out of 
 the pillows to stuff the mattress-like bag which 
 we put over us at night, but which only an 
 expert balancer could keep over him for sixty 
 consecutive minutes. 
 
 Amsterdam was the residuary legatee of 
 Antwerp's prosperity after the "Antwerp 
 Fury," in the sixteenth century. Drunken and 
 mutinous Spanish troops burned and sacked 
 Antwerp and she lay prostrate for years. Am- 
 sterdam, although three hundred years old at 
 the time, had no prospects of ever being a 
 metropolis prior to that calamity. 
 
 From Amsterdam came many customs which 
 have become part of our national life. Among 
 others the practice of moving on May first may 
 be mentioned. It is also interesting to note 
 that Lieut. Hobson's idea of blockading a har- 
 bor originated in the same city. Admiral 
 Sonor sunk ships loaded with stone at the 
 entrance of the Y River to keep the Spanish 
 Admiral Bossu out of the Zuider Zee. As 
 usual, the ruse failed and as usual, it was bet-
 
 Amsterdam 61 
 
 ter for the blockaders that it did fail. Bossu 
 succeeded in entering the Zuider Zee, where his 
 fleet was destroyed, and Admiral Cervera broke 
 out of Santiago harbor only to be mowed down 
 by the guns of Sampson and Schley. 
 
 The Ryks Museum is comprehensive in its 
 scope. It has a large collection of objects. 
 These include the uniforms and armament of 
 Holland in all ages. A stack of stone cannon 
 balls reminds one of the first years of gun- 
 powder. Many models of locks, dikes and dock 
 yards show where a large portion of Holland's 
 brains and energy are expended to this day. 
 There is said to be a scheme of defence in Hol- 
 land, centering in Amsterdam, whereby the 
 whole kingdom can be flooded and the bridges 
 blown up should such desperate steps be neces- 
 sary. 
 
 We are fond of admiring the heroism or 
 pitying the necessity which keeps the vine 
 grower of Italy at work on the sides of Vesuv- 
 ius. In Holland a danger as great as that from 
 earthquakes, equally powerful and more con- 
 stant, is transformed into a helper. Eternal 
 vigilance is the price of dry land. If Holland- 
 ers had settled the slopes of Vesuvius they 
 would not merely have braved its dangers.
 
 62 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 They would have calked the smaller cracks and 
 piped heat from the larger ones over their 
 farms and would have grown grapes and vege- 
 tables all winter. As an instance of their thrift, 
 there are many farms where hard peat is found 
 underlying a layer of clay. This clay is care- 
 fully put on one side, the peat is removed, the 
 water is drained off, and the clay mixed with 
 sand is restored, making an excellent soil. Can 
 you beat that ? 
 
 There is a fine gallery of paintings in the 
 Ryks Museum. The best known, and strange to 
 say, the best executed, is ''The Night Watch." 
 by Rembrandt. The management has been 
 wise enough to give it a separate room and it 
 richly merits the distinction. In the handling 
 of light and shade and in the animation of the 
 figures it is a masterpiece. It tells a story and 
 tells it plainly and you do not need to be told 
 that you are looking at one of the triumphs of 
 art. 
 
 Of course, "Susannah and the Elders" are 
 among those present. I have seen so many 
 "Susannahs" in so many surprised attitudes 
 that I have grown cynical. She undoubtedly 
 was a good woman, but has a lot of fool friends
 
 OLD SUNKEN GATE AMSTERDAM
 
 Amsterdam 63 
 
 among the painters. Then there is a Vander 
 Heist banquet wrought out so well that you 
 almost fear that the drop of lemon juice on the 
 oyster shell will dry up and leave a stain on the 
 canvas. Of. course, there are anatomical pic- 
 tures as a result of the success of Rembrandt's 
 "Lesson in Anatomy," at The Hague. They 
 are nightmares on canvas that stare you out of 
 countenance. \Yell done? Yes. That is the 
 trouble. The better they are done the worse 
 they look. 
 
 Corporation pictures of groups of burgomas- 
 ters are hung here and there. For all his 
 phlegm, your old Hollander spent a good deal 
 of money on portraits of himself. 
 
 The Stadhuis has on its rear wall a group 
 of statuary. Atlas in the center with Tem- 
 perance on one side and Vigilance on the other. 
 The same being interpreted, "If you can't be 
 temperate, be careful." 
 
 The Palace cost eight million florins and is 
 severely plain. It rests on fourteen thousand 
 piles driven seventy feet into the ground. Some 
 wag named it "The House without a Door" 
 and called the Bourse near by with its Grecian 
 portico "The Door without a House." The
 
 64 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 square in front of the Palace is called "Dam." 
 That's all. Just plain Dam. Some taxpayer 
 looked at the palace and at the bill of costs and 
 then christened the square. 
 
 The queen uses the Palace one week each 
 year, and then has fifty-one weeks in which to 
 forget its exterior, for inside, it is a delight. 
 Most of the marble flooring is covered by wood, 
 during the absence of the royal family. The 
 furniture dates from 1808, and was put in by 
 Napoleon. But it is in its marble carving that 
 the Amsterdam palace excels all rivals. One 
 queer idea is a statue called "Silence," a female 
 figure. Diana has a prominent place in one of 
 the large halls and her weapons, hunting bag 
 and accoutrements, are wrought out in stone 
 as delicately as lace work. In every room and 
 at every turn your eyes are delighted by mas- 
 terpieces of sculpture. 
 
 The old butler who showed us through was 
 performing his duty in a rather perfunctory 
 manner when a strategist in our party mur- 
 mured, "Oh, this is not a bad palace, but it does 
 not compare with the 'House in the Wood.' ' 
 Presto! How his manner altered. "Wait, I 
 will show you. Did the 'House in the Wood'
 
 Amsterdam 65 
 
 have anything like that?" From that on he 
 showed us the best that he had in stock, and 
 even condescended to prevaricate about some 
 of his exhibits. 
 
 The palace was originally a stadhuis and 
 many of the carvings are allegorical. The door 
 of the room which was once used as a bank- 
 ruptcy court has bas-reliefs around and over it 
 depicting Icarus' fall, while rats and mice gnaw 
 at documents and treasure chests. 
 
 The throne room has magnificent chandeliers 
 but the star chamber of the palace is the audi- 
 ence room. It is one hundred feet high and 
 fifty-seven by one hundred and seventeen feet 
 surface dimensions unbroken by a single 
 column ; supported entirely by tax-payers. 
 
 A lady asked our conductor to show us the 
 queen's bed-room, but he said, "It is noding. De 
 queen sleeps choost like anoder man." 
 
 The women of Holland conduct the shops 
 and are much finer looking than the men. In 
 one post card store was exhibited a book called 
 "La Jungle ; Les.Empoisonneurs de Chicago." 
 
 We had a stupid guide during part of one 
 day. He pointed out automobiles and took us 
 a long drive to show us a modern turn-bridge.
 
 66 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 lie insisted on telling us all about the San 
 Francisco earthquake and seemed prouder of 
 his smattering of American news than of his 
 beautiful city. Finally, he laid the last straw 
 on my back. We wished to return to the 
 hotel for a photographic film, and told him our 
 desire. He issued orders to the coachman. The 
 carriage was driven several blocks and stopped. 
 I asked him why he stopped at that point. He 
 gave me elaborate directions for walking the 
 two or three blocks which intervened between 
 us and the hotel. As rain was falling, I indig- 
 nantly ordered the driver to take us there and 
 we settled with our guide and went on our 
 unimpeded way. 
 
 As it was raining quite hard by this time we 
 drove to a diamond-cutting establishment and 
 watched the process by which a dull, unattrac- 
 tive pebble is rubbed and scraped until it be- 
 comes a brilliant gem. \Ve priced a few unset 
 diamonds. Among others was a magnificent 
 bluish white stone for which the proprietor 
 wanted seven thousand dollars. It was in a 
 case by itself, set apart from the common herd 
 like Rembrandt's "Night Watch." We would 
 as soon have thought of tearing the painting
 
 Amsterdam 67 
 
 from its frame and hiding it in a cellar as of 
 taking that beautiful stone from where all 
 could see and enjoy it and locking it in a 
 private casket. We grew real noble and 
 unselfish over the matter and while the sales- 
 man was disappointed, he was plainly awed by 
 the grand stand we took. And that was all we 
 took, except several looks at the heaps of gems 
 around us. 
 
 Having exhausted the possibilities of the 
 diamond-cutting establishment as a place of 
 amusement, we returned to the sidewalk, and 
 finding the weather still heavy, went back to 
 the hotel, and I started in search of a bar- 
 ber-shop. My barber was a Frenchman. His 
 shop contained three chairs. They were of the 
 ordinary cane-seated variety, but with an ad- 
 justable head-piece for stretching the victim, 
 similar to those exhibited in the old prison at 
 The Hague. The barbers wore white coats of 
 Prince Albert length and I was invested in a 
 Mother Hubbard with full-length sleeves and 
 buttons down the back. The work was well 
 and quickly done, for a price about one-half of 
 home rates. How much more my bill would 
 have been had I not refused the half dozen
 
 68 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 brands of perfume, pomade, and brillantine 
 urged on me, I am unable to say. 
 
 Having prolonged my stay in the barber- 
 shop as long as possible, let me beg you to 
 accompany me back to our hotel room. For 
 if you are to share our travels, you must not be 
 deceived into thinking there are no "gray days" 
 in Holland. Let us sit at our window and 
 gaze out at leaden skies and scurrying pedes- 
 trians. It is too drizzly to walk and too hazy 
 for photographs, so eyes and pencil must gather 
 and transmit to you when legs and camera 
 refuse to act. 
 
 Amsterdam's streets and canals are in con- 
 centric circles like an onion-peel, and the 
 resemblance to an onion does not cease with 
 the formation. 
 
 At our feet is the intersection of Amstel and 
 Sorphati streets. The latter crosses the canal by 
 a bridge and leads to the Exposition building, 
 a cheap affair of glass and corrugated iron, big 
 enough and ugly enough for any city in the 
 United States. Its exterior is plastered with 
 advertisements of vermouth, cocoa, and other 
 beverages. 
 
 The trolleys are following the excellent num-
 
 Amsterdam 69 
 
 eral system mentioned before and share the 
 streets with the push carts. Following the trol- 
 ley car is a wagon painted white, immaculately 
 clean and labeled "Ijs Handel," which means 
 that the ice man is abroad. The Hollander is 
 very fond of "j's." Wherever there is room 
 every "i" is followed by a "j." If Belgium is 
 the country of Rubens, Holland is certainly the 
 country of "j's." 
 
 Following the ice wagon are more push 
 carts and a dozen cyclists. Under the bridge 
 glide barges and house-boats and gasoline 
 launches. Not many dogs are employed in 
 hauling in Amsterdam. The city is too big and 
 busy for that. The dogs were freed by law 
 from the labor of towing boats thirty or forty 
 years ago. Women and children took their 
 places. 
 
 Amsterdam has six hundred thousand people, 
 seventy thousand of whom are Jews. We drove 
 through the Jewish quarter today. It is the 
 oldest part of the city and it is as crowded as 
 their facial peculiarities will admit. Their 
 noses seem to thrive by what they feed upon 
 and the largest ones are in evidence in neigh- 
 borhoods where most people would prefer not
 
 70 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 to have any. The district abounds in markets 
 and booths rather than stores. 
 
 We lunched on pannekoek and spiegelieren, 
 which are nothing worse than pan cakes and 
 eggs. For a small country to crowd itself with 
 such words seems foolish. In Rotterdam they 
 have a philosophical society whose motto is 
 ''Verschiedenbeit an Overrenstemmingv' It 
 means, "Variety and Harmony." To American 
 eyes it is much more suggestive of variety than 
 harmony. 
 
 We tramped over much of the city trying to 
 find a piece of leather or a pair of insoles. We 
 finally succeeded. The fresh insight it gave 
 us into Dutch courtesy repaid the trouble. They 
 seemed more depressed over their -inability to 
 supply us than we were but were always pleas- 
 ant and gave us a cheerful "Good day" when 
 we left their shops. It is the universal cus- 
 tom here and in Belgium to lift your hat to the 
 clerk when you enter a store, and when you 
 leave it. One jeweler from whom we had pur- 
 chased nothing wrote out the name and address 
 of a competitor who he thought could accom- 
 modate us. 
 
 After dinner we went to a concert where we
 
 Amsterdam 71 
 
 listened to a good orchestra render classical 
 music. The admission charge was fourteen 
 cents and included a cup of excellent coffee. 
 
 On the morning of our last day in Amster- 
 dam \ve moved to a hotel nearer the depot in 
 order to get an early start on our tour of the 
 small towns. "\Ye will visit five villages on 
 a circular excursion by tram, train and trek- 
 schuyt. 
 
 On our way to the station we snapped the 
 Crying Tower. We passed it yesterday but 
 the weather was weeping too hard for kodak- 
 ing. This ancient tower is on the bank of the 
 canal and formerly marked the point of depar- 
 ture of sea-going vessels. It witnessed thou- 
 sands of tearful partings in days when crossing 
 the ocean was no mere holiday jaunt, hence its 
 name.
 
 72 Three Weeks /;/ Holland 
 
 VII 
 
 A Zuider Zee Excursion 
 
 EAR the station we went aboard a small 
 launch which took us to the point of 
 departure of the Broek (pronounced 
 broke) train. We are surrounded by English 
 tourists. 
 
 The Dutch have a dry sense of humor. Their 
 new church in Amsterdam was built in 1408. 
 I asked the concierge if he thought the plas- 
 tering thoroughly dry. They also have an ex- 
 aggerated notion of the speed of an American 
 pedestrian. If they tell you that anything is 
 within fifteen minutes' walk, and you reach it 
 in half an hour, you have probably broken a 
 record. 
 
 Our launch starts and in two minutes the 
 captain cries "Hats off" for a low bridge. B. 
 says that I do not need to stoop so much, but 
 I would rather miss it a foot than hit it an 
 inch. Another bob of our heads and we pass
 
 A Zuider Zee Excursion 73 
 
 into the Y (pronounced I) and across it to 
 the train. Climbing aboard, we are soon in 
 the open country with a two-story canal on one 
 side, and a reservoir eight feet above us on the 
 other. We pass miles of green pasture where 
 black and white cows graze by the side of silent 
 canals and their reflections as they ruminate 
 make you frantic to stop the train for a pic- 
 ture. Windmills wave a welcome to you on 
 every hand. 
 
 Brcek is a "show" place with a guide book 
 reputation for cleanliness. Do not misunder- 
 stand me. Broek is clean. It is clean Broek. 
 But so are dozens of other Holland villages. 
 We walked down its brick-paved streets and 
 followed their spotless courses between rows of 
 dainty cottages set in little hand-made yards 
 with here and there a group of statuary or a 
 tiny fountain. Our walk terminated at a model 
 cheese dairy. Here we were conducted through 
 the spick and span residence portion of the 
 house to the still neater part reserved for the 
 cows. The cow house is divided into stalls. 
 Each stall has a glass window, in front of 
 which is draped a lace curtain. The floor is 
 covered with oil cloth. Loops are hung
 
 74 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 from the ceiling from which the cows' 
 tails are suspended during the milking process. 
 A misplaced switch might do a great deal of 
 damage at a critical moment. There is a sus- 
 piciously large pump in the cow parlor. The 
 hay is stored in the middle of the house. The 
 milking is done at four in the morning. Even 
 the cream rises early in Holland. It is mixed 
 with rennet and churned in a large mixer. The 
 whey is drained off and fed to the pigs, and 
 the cheese is put into earthenware moulds and 
 kept under pressure four hours. It is then 
 placed in a salt mixture for four days and 
 allowed to dry for five or six weeks before 
 marketing. The red Edam cheese, best known 
 in America, is dipped into a dye vat to give it 
 the required color. "We visited the living rooms 
 and drank milk and were shown the way the 
 bipeds live. The beds are in recesses in the 
 walls and are closed by doors like a cupboard. 
 Above the bed is an upper berth for the baby 
 and it is seldom without an occupant. Every- 
 thing is absolutely clean. 
 
 The old church has an ebony pulpit made in 
 1685, f r Broek was once the home of wealth. 
 The quaint old foot-warmers were piled in one
 
 A Zuider Zee Excursion 75 
 
 corner. Winters are cold in Holland and 
 churches are insufficiently heated. Each woman 
 is provided with a foot-stove, in which peat is 
 burned. 
 
 We return to our train and depart for Mon- 
 nikendam. This is a quaint old village. Half 
 of the inhabitants are asleep and the other 
 half are afraid of awakening them. It boasts 
 of a sixteenth century tower and a still older 
 church. Its houses totter with age and it has, 
 of course, a picturesque cheese market. Most 
 of these old towns of the Zuider Zee are too 
 large for their present population, and have 
 public buildings far beyond their present needs. 
 Their tarnished civil finery hangs on their 
 shrunken frames and exaggerates their present 
 poverty and forlornness. Spoiled by tourists 
 these people are eager for opportunities to pose 
 for pennies in front of our camera in a way 
 that would earn them the scorn of the sturdy 
 fisherfolk of Scheveningen. 
 
 We met a charming French family and re- 
 mained with them through the balance of the 
 day. The husband and father was burned out 
 by the Chicago fire of 1871 and returned to 
 France, where he has prospered. But all of his
 
 76 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 old associates in the United States are million- 
 aires, he said. He was very gentle in his 
 treatment of our French accent and won our 
 hearts. The daughter spoke French and 
 English, but the mother spoke nothing but 
 French. She asked us why we had not bought 
 a cheese to take to America. We pleaded in 
 extenuation the amount of luggage with which 
 we were already burdened. She said with a 
 comical shrug, "But in a few days the cheese 
 would help you carry the others." 
 
 We took a steamer for Marken, a half-'iour's 
 ride on the Zuider Zee. This body of water 
 is a mere infant among seas. It was formed in 
 1300, when the North Sea, in re-making its 
 bed, threw part of the covering over several 
 towns and villages and re-arranged the geog- 
 raphy of Holland. It is large superficially, but 
 not deep. Plans are being made to drain it 
 and re-convert it into pasture and peat land. 
 
 Marken is another place that has been spoiled 
 into self-consciousness by too much attention. 
 Old customs and costumes are retained on this 
 tiny island, but you feel that their preservation 
 is a matter of revenue and not reverence. The 
 children beg for pennies, and the women
 
 A Zuider Zee Excursion 77 
 
 clamor for positions in front of the camera. 
 The men are sturdy fellows, but except on Sun- 
 days are not on the island. The few whom we 
 saw did not seem to approve of the action of 
 the women and children, and refused all 
 requests to pose for photographs. From early 
 Monday morning until late Saturday night they 
 fish in the shallow waters of the Zuider Zee. 
 That name means South Sea, and is pro- 
 nounced almost to rhyme with chowder. 
 
 There are five or six thousand people on 
 the island, and there has been little admixture 
 of blood from the main land for centuries. Only 
 the preacher and schoolmaster are aliens. This 
 tiny little island has governed itself for many 
 generations without interference from the rul- 
 ers of Holland. Possibly its barrenness has 
 as much to do with its independence as has 
 its bravery. It offers few attractions to the 
 tax collector. 
 
 All of the females from three years of age 
 to a hundred dress alike. Their hempen colored 
 hair, burned by the sun, is cut square across the 
 forehead in a bang like a whitewash brush. 
 Over this is a tight cap, from underneath which 
 protrude two ropy-looking curls which are
 
 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 brought over the shoulders and hang in front 
 of the body on opposite sides of the face. The 
 cap and waist are of the red and yellow pat- 
 tern, a cross between a bandana handkerchief 
 and a Vatican Swiss guard. Their hips are 
 padded from the moment they can toddle. 
 
 Marken is not diked to amount to anything 
 and many of the houses are built on stilts. 
 They are all of wood except the pastor's resi- 
 dence, which is stone. The interiors are scrupu- 
 lously neat. The rules of good Marken society 
 require the wooden shoes to be kicked off and 
 left outside the house. You will see rows of 
 them at thresholds as you walk along the 
 streets. 
 
 We entered the modest little Calvinist 
 church. Modest as it is, and meager as are its 
 furnishings, it is orthodox in one respect. It 
 has a church debt and a box is placed near the 
 door for the reception of contributions. It 
 must be slow work raising funds in that com- 
 munity. Most of the money comes from tour- 
 ists, and comes rather slowly, it must be con- 
 fessed. After several centuries of endeavor, 
 the debt is now two thousand five hundred dol-
 
 A Zuicler Zee Excursion 79 
 
 lars, on a building which could be duplicated 
 for five thousand dollars. 
 
 We leave Marken for Volendam on the good 
 launch, "President Roosevelt." It is cold on 
 the water. We abandon the aristocratic awn- 
 ing of the first cabin and emerge into the sun- 
 shine of the second class at the other end of 
 the boat. There are fishing smacks in every 
 direction. 
 
 Volendam is the resort of painters and mine 
 host of the Hotel Spaander is their patron 
 saint. Many a poor artist has been allowed to 
 partake of his generous hospitality and to pay 
 in promises, maturing when his ship should 
 come in. And notwithstanding the hundreds 
 of ships that do come into Volendam so few of 
 them belong to artists that his only pay in 
 many cases takes the form of pictures. And 
 so his hotel is* filled with paintings, some of 
 them good, and all of them interesting. Some 
 are on canvas and others are on the plastered 
 walls. Few artists who have studied abroad 
 have failed to visit Hotel Spaander, and many 
 whose ships have come in laden with fame and 
 gold hung their earlier efforts on its walls. 
 
 We eat an excellent lunch and add ourselves
 
 8o Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 to the list of those who remember this spot 
 with gratitude. Our meal is served on the 
 piazza overlooking the water. A fisherman in 
 quaint costume is posing on the pier, while in 
 front of him an artist sits at his easel trans- 
 ferring his mortal outlines to immortal canvas. 
 The waitresses, daughters of mine host, to 
 whom this bunch of hungry tourists is no holi- 
 day picture, are punching our tickets, for this 
 meal is a part of the day's entertainment, for 
 which the total charge is one dollar and eighty 
 cents per person, first-class. 
 
 And now for Edam on a trekschuyt towed 
 by a man and kept away -from the bank by an- 
 other man with a pole. It is not rapid but it 
 is restful to watch them work. We study the 
 man ahead, with his harness over his breast 
 and shoulders, as he bends to his work. Towing 
 twenty tourists who have lunched table d'hote 
 at the Spaander is no light task, and as you 
 watch his efforts something strangely familiar 
 in his gait strikes you. You are puzzled. You 
 have never seen a man towing a boat at home, 
 and yet you have seen people walk exactly like 
 that. Of course! How stupid of you not to 
 see it at once. Certain young ladies in the
 
 A Zuicler Zee Excursion 81 
 
 United States have that same bend, that same 
 swing of the arms back of the hips. And you 
 realize with mental apologies that what you 
 have considered an affectation with them is 
 simply a case -of unconscious atavistic reversion 
 to a canal boat ancestry. 
 
 We are passing an interesting duck farm. 
 The duck pens have threads strung across the 
 top, about a yard apart and this palpable bluff 
 actually keeps those ducks from attempting to 
 fly over the low boundaries of their prisons. 
 Henceforth as a symbol of stupidity, the duck 
 ranks with the goose, in my estimation. 
 
 We have not seen a field of grain in Hol- 
 land. All the land seems to be devoted to pas- 
 ture or to vegetable and flower gardens. Our 
 men tow us along at ordinary walking speed 
 and seem to notice the sun's rays less than we 
 on the boat. In half an hour we are in Edam, 
 the town which gives the name to the best- 
 known cheese in Holland, but which, of course, 
 produces only a small portion thereof. 
 
 We simply walk through Edam amid the joy- 
 ful acclaim of the villagers. "Good bye" and 
 "Bon jour" represent their polyglot acquire- 
 ments and they try both on each member of the
 
 82 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 party. It does not sound very hospitable to be 
 welcomed with a "Good bye," but, perhaps it 
 will suggest better than volumes the speed with 
 which tourists are jerked through their streets. 
 At any rate we impart quite as much pleasure as 
 we receive and are as great curios to the Hol- 
 landers as they are to us. Even the old houses 
 seem to stoop and peer at us through their win- 
 dow glasses as we pass along. Perhaps they 
 have been pulled over by the loads which are 
 drawn up by the cranes which project below 
 every gable.
 
 Zaandam and Zaandyk 83 
 
 VIII 
 
 Zaandam and Zaandyk 
 
 ARLY the next morning our hotel por- 
 ter carries our suit cases to the depot 
 and we bid farewell to Amsterdam, 
 sometimes called the " Venice of Holland," but 
 Venetian only in mosquitos. In twelve minutes 
 we reached Zaandam. It was 8 102 and no one 
 was up so we struck out on foot for the house 
 of Peter the Great. A long walk brought us to 
 our destination. The house was occupied by 
 him in 1697 for a short time. It is now the prop- 
 erty of the Russian government and has been 
 enclosed by another building, and not any too 
 soon. The high water caused by the break- 
 ing of a dike almost carried it off in 1825. 
 Since then it has been well taken care of. This 
 is the birth place of the Russian navy, which 
 lived over two hundred years and was buried 
 at sea. The house looks pretty wobbly but it 
 outlasted the navy. It was a hundred years
 
 84 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 old when Peter moved in. Many memorials 
 adorn the walls. The original bed and table 
 are preserved. A full length portrait of Peter 
 hangs in one room. It represents him at the 
 age of twenty-five, when he was ransacking all 
 Europe for ideas which he could take home to 
 Russia. It shows him as he was, a creature of 
 unbounded animal energy and courage, a man 
 who, when whipped, swore that he would keep 
 on fighting until his enemies had taught him 
 how to whip them. He founded St. Petersburg 
 in 1703 and spent millions on internal improve- 
 ments. These millions were partly raised by 
 taxes levied on beards and the skirts of the 
 Tartars' coats. His subjects willingly paid the 
 tax rather than surrender either. 
 
 The present Czar once slept all night in 
 Peter's bed, but it did not take. The old lady 
 in charge has been there thirty-eight years, hav- 
 ing inherited the job from her mother. We 
 were admitted to the attic, which is not usually 
 open to visitors. But kind smiles and a 
 double tip won the heart of the custodian. She 
 presented us with some post cards and two red 
 roses grown in Peter's yard. Sight-seers can
 
 Zaandam and Zaandyk 85 
 
 thank Anna Paulowna for much of the preser- 
 vation of this interesting house. She was a 
 Russian princess, a descendant of Peter, and 
 married William II. of Holland. 
 
 It rained most of the time we were in Peter's 
 house. Baedeker says that the reason Peter 
 did not stay longer in Zaandam was that he 
 was annoyed by the curiosity of the natives 
 when his identity was discovered, but we think 
 it was on account of the weather. 
 
 However, it cleared a bit and we took a 
 carriage drive through Zaandam and Zaandyk. 
 We drove for three quarters of a mile along a 
 twelve-foot street flanked by a sidewalk vary- 
 ing from nothing to three feet in width. A 
 canal is on one side of us and stores on the 
 other. Across the ten-foot canal are little resi- 
 dences, each with its tiny drawbridge. We have 
 glimpses of the Zaan River on our right 
 between the stores. Our drive terminates at 
 a windmill which is grinding corn and oil-cake. 
 We climb up several dusty ladders and the pro- 
 prietor tells us that his raw material all comes 
 from America. From the little gallery midway 
 can be seen thirty windmills in varying stages
 
 86 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 of activity. The mills are so constructed that 
 the part which bears the arms can be tinned to 
 catch the breeze. The arms are of lattice work 
 and when the breeze is light, canvas is stretched 
 over part or all of the latticed surface thus 
 increasing the wind pressure. Many mills 
 have small models like weather vanes to indi- 
 cate the direction of the wind for the informa- 
 tion of the miller in adjusting his apparatus. 
 
 We were shown courteously through the 
 home which nestles at the foot of the mill and 
 saw the same shining neatness that you find in 
 every Dutch abode. 
 
 We passed the scene of a conflagration on 
 our return. A long hose was stretched along 
 the bank of the canal and water was being 
 forced into it by half a dozen men operating 
 a hand-pump. It was pretty hard work as the 
 hose was punctured and spouted merrily every 
 ten feet. Small boys tried to hold the cracks 
 shut with little success and it looked as though 
 the only dry place along that entire hose length 
 was at the nozzle. 
 
 Our street was so narrow that in avoiding a 
 loaded push-cart on one side of it we struck an
 
 Zaandam and Zaandyk 87 
 
 empty one on the other and sent it upside down 
 into the canal. Our driver never stopped but 
 two or three men rescued the cart without ex- 
 hibiting anger or surprise at the accident. Pos- 
 sibly they had heard about automobiles and 
 were glad to escape with their lives.
 
 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 IX 
 
 Helder 
 
 OW we take our longest railroad jour- 
 ney up to the present time. It requires 
 an hour and nineteen minutes to go to 
 Helder, "the Gibraltar of the North Sea." 
 
 This country is full of babies and very old 
 people. Apparently deaths are rare and births 
 are plentiful. Hence, colonization is neces- 
 sary to take care of the surplus population now 
 that the Spanish Inquisition is no more; and 
 Hollanders have always been the best of col- 
 onizers. 
 
 We invaded a first-class compartment hold- 
 ing "eight personen," and although there were 
 six people already in it and we had a great 
 quantity of luggage, no one frowned or made 
 a face at us. Our only reason for traveling 
 "eerste klasse" is that we have considerable 
 hand luggage and are less liable to be interna- 
 tional nuisances than in the more crowded
 
 Helder 89 
 
 second-class compartments. For travelers who 
 carry trunks the second-class accommodations 
 are much cheaper and the surroundings are just 
 as desirable. 
 
 Some of the ticket windows have an ingen- 
 ious shelf on which you place your money. The 
 same motion that draws the money toward the 
 ticket seller slides your ticket to you on a 
 lower shelf. 
 
 Our train takes us through Alkmaar, to 
 which place we will return this evening and 
 spend the night in order to be there on Friday, 
 the day of the cheese market. Five of our 
 eight companions got off at Alkmaar and gave 
 us room in which to stretch out. Polite people 
 always tender you the seat with its back to 
 the engine, in Europe, in order that you may 
 escape some of the cinders if the window is 
 open. 
 
 Leaving Alkmaar we pass miles of market 
 gardens largely given over to green and purple 
 cabbages, the most popular vegetable in Hol- 
 land. The one least liked is the leek. 
 
 There are few bare-footed children, but a 
 great many in woolen stockings and wooden 
 shoes. They clatter after your carriage and
 
 90 Three \Yeeks in Holland 
 
 hang on behind. Like children, all the world 
 over, if they find you do not care, they soon 
 leave you for some more irascible and, to them, 
 more interesting tourists. 
 
 The narrow sidewalks, together with the 
 clean pavements, combine to make people walk 
 in the streets. Once our cabby had to drive 
 on the sidewalk to avoid the pedestrians. 
 
 I am so fond of Hollanders that I dislike to 
 record their pettiness in the matter of cab 
 charges. No rate arranged for in advance is 
 binding and after you have overpaid them 
 fifty per cent they hold out their hand for a 
 pourboire. And while I am in a critical mood, 
 I may as well state that much of their art to 
 our hasty observation indicates that while they 
 are as a nation singularly free from many vices, 
 yet they are coarse and material and blunt in 
 their attitude toward the refinements of life. 
 
 About the most dreary sight in Holland is a 
 sheep herder's hut. It is about as big as a 
 dog kennel but not so well built, being made of 
 thatch that soaks up the falling rain so that 
 it continues raining inside for several days 
 after it has ceased outside. 
 
 Our waiter at Helder commenced to tell us
 
 Helder 91 
 
 the menu in very fair English, but I never can 
 let well enough alone. I said, "Have you no 
 carte dc jour?" "Yes, please." 
 
 He was gone five minutes and returned with 
 one written by himself in pencil. We are too 
 early for the regular luncheon but we are ush- 
 ered into the "Eetzaal," where a table is spread 
 for us and a repast prepared. That is why 
 Holland is so restful. Nothing is impossible. 
 Nothing is even difficult if mynheer desires it. 
 
 This is the country of rosy cheeks. Babies, 
 girls, women and old crones, all have blotches 
 of red and look the picture of health. We just 
 passed an old woman whose face looked like 
 an old cranberry, it was so round and red. 
 
 There are thirty thousand children who live 
 on the canals and this floating population offers 
 a serious obstacle to compulsory education. 
 
 After lunch we drove out to the harbor and 
 past the naval school and training ship. The 
 officers' quarters were built by Napoleon, who 
 expended a great deal of labor in this neigh- 
 borhood. Realizing its strategic importance at 
 the entrance to the Zuider Zee, he transformed 
 Helder by the magic of his indomitable will 
 from a fishing village into a fortress of the first
 
 92 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 rank. We drove two miles along the great Hel- 
 der Dyke, a model of which we saw in the Ryks 
 Museum at Amsterdam. It is Holland's out- 
 post against the North Sea. It is five miles 
 long, twelve feet wide at the top and descends 
 into the sea two hundred feet, and is entirely 
 built of Norwegian granite brought here at 
 great cost. The tons of sea grass deposited on 
 the dike are dried and used for mattresses. 
 Anyone who has ever slept on a sea-weed mat- 
 tress can understand why the ocean at times 
 tosses so restlessly in its bed. Across the strait 
 we can see the low coast of the Island of Texel. 
 
 Our drive ended at the lofty lighthouse. We 
 were told that we might make the ascent if we 
 desired and that the view was magnificent. But 
 we told them that we could not see it that way. 
 Instead thereof, we watched a fisherman and 
 his boy being tossed about in a wherry, reeling 
 their lines as calmly as though their boat was 
 stationary, when at times it seemed to be 
 engulfed. 
 
 Our guide said that the guns we heard be- 
 longed to "sea-soldiers shooting for to learn" 
 or "learning for to shoot," I am not sure which. 
 
 Gangs of men are at work repairing this
 
 Helder 93 
 
 monster artificial coast. Barges are unloading 
 granite and every square foot of the dike is 
 tested daily. 
 
 We went through Helder lengthways, cross- 
 ways and diagonally and we still have an hour 
 to spare, so we are sitting in an al fresco cafe 
 drinking "melk" at four cents a glass and rest- 
 ing. The various uniforms, military, naval and 
 civil, form an interesting study. People live in 
 rings in Holland. Rings mark growth in trees, 
 but they restrict it in communities. 
 
 Helder is a "new" town and densely dull. 
 The houses are of uniform size. The streets 
 are straight and narrow and everything is so 
 clean as to tire the eyes. The butcher shops 
 are as spotless and shining as the candy stores.
 
 94 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 X 
 
 'Alkmaar 
 
 E return to Alkmaar on the four o'clock 
 train. As Helder is a terminus, we have 
 ample time to take possession of a com- 
 partment and spread ourselves. Alkmaar means 
 "all sea." Forty-three lakes once covered this 
 province. Cornelius Drebel, the inventor of 
 the thermometer, was born here in 1634 and 
 prior thereto, in 1595, Paschiers Lammertyn 
 invented damask weaving in this same unpre- 
 tentious town. We learn facts like the above 
 in almost every city we visit, and our attitude 
 towards the stolid, plodding citizens around us 
 is changing from good-natured amusement to 
 a most humble respect. We are sure that the 
 genius which once was Holland's is not dead, 
 but sleeping, and simply awaits the occasion to 
 assert itself. 
 
 Many of the hotels on the Continent give 
 you a rate on the European plan, including
 
 Alkmaar 95 
 
 lights and service, and have notices in the 
 rooms reserving the right to advance the rate 
 if guests take meals outside the hotel. Another 
 practice which worries a teetotaler is that of 
 adding twenty or thirty cents to the price of a 
 table d'hote dinner when wine is not ordered. 
 
 Our train passed a field of nasturtiums as 
 red and yellow as a prairie fire. There are sev- 
 eral acres of bloom and it is only one of the 
 many such fields that make rural Holland a 
 flame of color. 
 
 De Toelast is a comparatively new hotel, but 
 it occupies the site of its predecessor, which 
 dated from 1600, and its management has been 
 in the same family for centuries. 
 
 Like most Holland towns, Alkmaar has had 
 its troubles. In 1573 it successfully withstood 
 a Spanish siege. 
 
 Its Groote Kerk is a large building with 
 whitewashed interior and timber vaulting. It 
 contains a curious set of pictures painted in 
 1507, representing the seven acts of mercy. 
 They are painted on boards and are anatomical 
 wonders. We were assured that they were 
 "rare works of art." Construing "rare" as
 
 96 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 the antonym of "well done," we heartily agreed 
 with our informant. 
 
 A finely wrought brass tablet covers the 
 grave of Burgomaster Palinck, who died in 
 1546. They also show the tomb of Floris V, 
 Count of Holland, who died in 1296. 
 
 The tower of the church fell in the fifteenth 
 century and has never been rebuilt. 
 
 Just a block away, down the main street, 
 along which a one-horse tram jingles at irregu- 
 lar intervals, is the Stadhuis, containing the 
 Municipal Museum. This building dates from 
 1507. We are guided through by an ancient 
 Hollander who admits everything we say but 
 volunteers no information. 
 
 We are shown instruments of torture and 
 old paintings, including the inevitable corpora- 
 tion groups. A few cannon balls and spiked 
 poles remind the visitor of the siege. 
 
 Your ticket is not taken up at the museum, 
 but it bears a printed request that you tear it 
 up after seeing the exhibits. 
 
 After dinner we walked through the busi- 
 ness section of the town. The streets are light 
 at eight-thirty, but the stores are not. These 
 thrifty people do not waste gas and only ilium-
 
 Alkmaar 97 
 
 .inate when a customer enters. A Welsbach was 
 lighted in a store where we went to look at 
 post cards, but it went out soon after we did. 
 
 This is our first night in a real Dutch tavern. 
 T am journalizing by candlelight. Only one 
 American has been registered here for months. 
 We are off the beaten path and we are glad 
 of it. The floor of our room is almost as con- 
 cave as a bowl. The pillow ends of our beds 
 are three feet higher than the feet, and you 
 sleep standing up, like a policeman, unless you 
 discard the pillows altogether. 
 
 Having written so far, B. enters from a tour 
 of investigation and announces that she saw 
 gas burning in the next room. With revived 
 hopes we start another search which results in 
 locating a gas jet which is promptly turned on. 
 We may not be so mediaeval as we were but 
 we can study our surroundings better. Two 
 curious old French engravings in elliptical 
 frames adorn our walls and a mirror eighteen 
 inches wide reaches from floor to ceiling. 
 
 In the morning we wait in vain for Alk- 
 maar's only street-car, and finally walk to the 
 cheese market. As with most Holland street- 
 cars the gong is on the brake handle, and is
 
 98 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 sounded by sliding the bell up and down. This 
 is an altogether unnecessary exertion on the 
 part of the driver, for you can hear the clack 
 of the horse's hoofs on the clinker paving 
 farther than you can the gong. 
 
 Good pavements are universal in town and 
 country. Clinker bricks predominate, but there 
 are occasional stretches of macadam, with a 
 clinker path for the horses in the center. Usual- 
 ly you strike these just about the time that you 
 feel the filling of your teeth separating. It 
 requires an alert driver to keep his horse on the 
 clinkers for he naturally prefers the macadam 
 and this causes us to "tack" a great deal. 
 
 We enjoyed the cheese market immensely. 
 One of the mysteries to a visitor from America 
 is how Holland squeezes a living out of her 
 scanty resources. It is undoubtedly true that 
 the Dutch peasant would live and accumulate a 
 bank account on what the American farmer 
 wastes. North Holland makes three million 
 dollars' worth of cheese every year on land 
 which needs to be nursed and petted and set up 
 with nights to make it produce anything. 
 
 Just as the clock struck eight and the chimes 
 played "Home, Sweet Home" in the weigh-
 
 THE OLD WEIGH HOUSE ALKMAAR
 
 Alkmaar 99 
 
 house tower, we stepped into the busy cheese 
 market. The product is all of the Edam vari- 
 ety, spherical and yellow, and as soft as the 
 best Swiss cheese. It is not the red, brittle 
 proposition which we gouge out at home. The 
 buyers are testing and tasting and smelling 
 the cheese and haggling over prices. Your true 
 Dutchman dearly loves to bargain. When a 
 deal is concluded the buyer signals his porters, 
 who carry off the big yellow balls on stretchers 
 to the official scales. Each buyer has a distinct 
 color for his porters' blouses, and the scene is 
 lively and picturesque. The weigh-house dates 
 from 1582 and the tower from 1599. It was 
 fixed up a few years ago and now looks good 
 for another three hundred years without re- 
 touching.
 
 ioo Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 XI 
 
 Hoorn and Enkhnizen 
 
 RIDE of twenty minutes due east 
 brings us to Hoorn, on the banks of the 
 Zuider Zee. It is gross flattery to call 
 the selvage which fringes Holland's coast by 
 such a pretentious name. Naturally, banks 
 which stand no higher in the community than 
 do these have great difficulty in keeping their 
 heads above water. 
 
 Hoorn has about ten thousand people and 
 most of her industries are connected with the 
 fisheries of the Zuider Zee. The nets used in 
 catching herring were invented here. 
 
 Her most celebrated citizen was Willem 
 Schouten, a navigator, who was the first man to 
 round Cape Horn, and who named that prom- 
 ontory after his native village. It would 
 have been equally Dutch to have called it 
 "Hook" instead of "Horn," for from the 
 moment you pass the "Hook of Holland," you
 
 Hoorn and Enkhuizen 101 
 
 hear every sort of turn and angle called a 
 hook. If you inquire the way to the hotel par- 
 lor, the maid says, "At the end of the hall, 
 around the hook " 
 
 We checked our luggage at the depot and 
 walked through the interesting old town. The 
 Groo e Kerk is a modern structure, the suc- 
 cessor of several which have been destroyed by 
 fire on the same site. 
 
 The most picturesque trio of buildings are 
 St. Jans Gasthuis (a hospital), built in 1563, 
 the Weighhouse (1609) and the Tribunal 
 (1632). 
 
 Everyone was polite and cordial and poured 
 forth information as if his vocal dikes had 
 broken. After circumnavigating Hoorn, we 
 found a tramless car-track which we followed 
 to the station with ten of our seventy minutes 
 unexpended. 
 
 The charge for caring for luggage at a 
 depot is four cents for each piece. We thought 
 it very reasonable, but discovered later that 
 the same service is performed in Belgium for 
 one cent. 
 
 It requires half an hour to reach Enkhuisen 
 and every foot of the way is a picture of com-
 
 IO2 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 fort and cultivation. Pretty villas with minia- 
 ture moats and tiny drawbridges delight the 
 eye. Many farms are devoted to flower culture 
 and the accurately planted rows look like gaily 
 colored ribbons stretching away from the train 
 on either side. 
 
 Enkhuizen is another "dead city," and has 
 only about one-sixth of its seventeenth-century 
 population. It is our port of embarkation for 
 Stavoren. Its fishing industry has disappeared. 
 Its Stavoren Poort is entirely deserted even by 
 the sea. It is an older town than Amsterdam, 
 having been founded about 1000 A. D. It is 
 three hundred years older than the Zuider Zee 
 and narrowly escaped a splashing when that 
 sea was formed. In 1514 the Zuider Zee tried 
 it again and temporarily wiped Enkhuizen off 
 the map. It rose above the wave, or the wave 
 receded, to be exact, and under Spanish rule 
 it became a fortified town. It opened its gates 
 to William the Silent in 1572 and remained 
 ever loyal to the cause of Dutch freedom. 
 
 Paul Potter was born here in 1625. His 
 father took the family to Amsterdam in 1631. 
 In 1646, Paul joined the Painters' Guild at 
 Delft, and in 1649 settled at The Hague and
 
 Hoorn and Enkhuizen 103 
 
 married. Maurice of Nassau became his 
 patron, and his most celebrated but not his best 
 painting, the "Bull," is the pride of the Mau- 
 ritshuis Gallery today. In 1653 he returned to 
 Amsterdam, where he died the following year, 
 a victim of overwork. He left over one hun- 
 dred pictures and a large number of etchings. 
 At the Enkhuizen depot we found ourselves 
 for the first time in a town without an 
 English-speaking inhabitant. We had to 
 make known our desires for a carriage by pan- 
 tomime. When we were finally understood, we 
 found that the only way to get a conveyance 
 was to go to the solitary livery stable in the 
 town and hire one. Our informant cheerfully 
 headed the procession to the barn of M. Visser, 
 where we bargained for a two-horse carriage 
 for forty cents an hour. We were just begin- 
 ning to realize some of the difficulties of out- 
 lining an itinerary to our driver when a female 
 voice from an upper window accosted us in 
 English. Our pleasure was the greater for 
 being unexpected, and we discovered that the 
 voice proceeded from Mr. Visser's sister-in- 
 law, a citizeness of the United States for thirty 
 years, who was spending a month in her native
 
 IO4 Three Weeks /'// Holland 
 
 town. She was as pleased to talk English as 
 we were -to hear it, and she gladly shared our 
 carriage and acted as interpreter and guide. 
 
 We first drove to the Drommedaris tower, a 
 sixteenth century relic of the days when Enk- 
 huizen was fortified. Thence we asked to be 
 shown the choir screen in the \Yesterkerk. This 
 it one of the finest pieces of wood-carving in 
 Holland, and bears relief figures of prophets 
 and apostles beautifully done. The baptismal- 
 room is an important adjunct to a Holland 
 church, and the one in the Westerkerk is large 
 and prettily decorated. Tlie deacon's room 
 was just receiving its finishing touches, and 
 the sand on the floor had been moulded into 
 artistic designs by the care-taker. Each dea- 
 con's pipe bears its owner's initials and is ready 
 for use at the next meeting. 
 
 Our drive took us past the hospital. It was 
 a welcome respite from clinker paving to strike 
 the asphalted street which bounds the hospital 
 on every side. 
 
 After thanking our conductress, who, after 
 a struggle 'twixt love and duty, saved us from 
 an overcharge on the part of her brother-in- 
 law, we had an hour for luncheon before start-
 
 Hoorn and Enkhuizen 105 
 
 ing for Sneek by way of Stavoren. We should 
 have bought through tickets, but in our 
 ignorance did not do so. Consequently we 
 will try to explain our desires to the Stavoren 
 ticket agent in the eight minutes' interval be- 
 tween the landing of our boat "Groningen" 
 and the departure of the Sneek train. 
 
 Our boat is spick and span, like all Holland 
 craft. The Zuider Zee radiates an opalescence 
 all its own as we move through the light haze. 
 This peculiar glow is due to the shallowness 
 of the huge basin, and is found nowhere else. 
 
 We are only a little more than an hour on 
 the boat, and the low shores of Friesland soon 
 come into view. Friesland boasts that she has 
 never bowed her head to despot. Her men 
 are the tallest and her women the handsomest 
 in Holland. W r hen she made her boast she 
 alluded to foreign despots, of course, for the 
 first legend that you read connected with 
 Stavoren is that of the Vrouwensand, a sand- 
 bar which chokes the harbor. 
 
 It seems that years ago the wife of a wealthy 
 merchant desired one of her husband's sea 
 captains to bring her from abroad "the most 
 precious thing in the world." She was femi-
 
 io6 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 nine and imaginative. He was Dutch and 
 literal. He brought her a cargo of wheat. In 
 anger, she ordered the cargo dumped into the 
 harbor. The grain took root and helped to 
 form the sandbar, which put Stavoren out of. 
 business as a port for large vessels.
 
 In Friesland 107 
 
 XII 
 
 In Friesland 
 
 E did not stay long in Stavoren, but 
 took the train for a twenty-seven- 
 minute run to Sneek. Our first halt 
 was at Workum. That would make a good 
 name for some of our bond-selling American 
 railroads: The Workum & Sneek Railway. 
 
 Just at that point the train stopped and the 
 guard put his head into the compartment and 
 yelled "Sneek !" We got out. 
 
 A curved walk under lovely shade trees 
 brought us in view of our first stork "at home." 
 The nest was on top of a high pole, and when 
 he discovered our wishes we had no trouble in 
 getting a picture. The distance rendered the 
 result rather small, but a more quiet sitter 
 never posed for a camera in the world. 
 
 Hollanders are enthusiastic billiard players. 
 Every village and hamlet has signs announc- 
 ing "billards," and frequently there are several
 
 io8 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 to a block. We are sitting in a billiard hall 
 stirring "lemon squash" with a horn-spoon and 
 studying the orderly crowd around us. 
 
 Everyone is the soul of courtesy, and you 
 are kept busy responding to lifted hats from 
 all grades of men, including the day-laborers. 
 Someone ought to write a poem, and set it to 
 music, on the clang of the klompen on the 
 clinker. Certainly the man who made the first 
 wooden shoe must have foreseen the brick 
 pavement, for they are pitched in the same key 
 and make sweet music in the summer air when 
 school lets out or errands are run. 
 
 Sneek has a pretty Louis XIV stadhuis and 
 an old water-gate, but its chief charm to the 
 traveler is its people. 
 
 Having lost our bearings, we entered a gro- 
 cery store and asked directions from its busy 
 proprietor. He called a clerk and told him to 
 accompany us to our destination. Later, en 
 route to the depot, we made inquiry of a 
 prosperous-looking citizen who was talking 
 with another gentleman on the sidewalk. He 
 dropped all other concerns, walked to the cor- 
 ner of the block with us, pointed the proper
 
 A STORK "AT HOME"
 
 In Friesland 109 
 
 way, and acknowledged our thanks by a polite 
 lifting of the hat. 
 
 At another time we waited for the closing 
 of a bridge which spanned a twenty-foot canal. 
 Only a single chain was stretched across the 
 roadway, but it held the crowd like a stone 
 wall. In America we would have been over 
 before the bridge stopped turning, but not in 
 Holland. Not a soul moved until the man who 
 was furnishing the power laid down his lever 
 and released the chain. 
 
 The Frisian language is different from that 
 of the rest of Holland. It more nearly resem- 
 bles English. It is said that a Scotch High-- 
 lander has no trouble in making himself 
 understood in Friesland ; but why that is cited 
 as proof that their talk resembles English, I 
 cannot say. At any rate, there is a marked 
 similarity in the dialects of the two sections, 
 and this has formed a basis for much interest- 
 ing speculation pointing to a common origin. 
 
 We reached Leeuwarden in forty-one 
 minutes after leaving Sneek. Leeuwarden is 
 the ancient capital of Friesland. We register 
 at the Amicitia and search the book in vain 
 for another English or American name for
 
 no Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 months back. We learn of a Cafe Chantant 
 and visit it. We had the most expensive seats 
 in the house forty cents and sat in a loge 
 holding twenty-four persons. The audience 
 was quiet and orderly and the entertainment 
 clean and of a high class. A group of twenty- 
 five or thirty Frisian women sat together, 
 wearing gold helmets with lace caps over them. 
 They ranged in age from sixteen to sixty-five, 
 and all were dressed alike. They attracted no 
 attention, except ours, and furnished another 
 proof that tourists are scarce in this locality. 
 Prices are reasonable. Our lodging and break- 
 fast cost seventy cents for each of us. Car- 
 riages are sixty cents an hour, but there is an 
 Exposition and Kirmess in town, which ac- 
 counts for their high price. Every lassie has 
 a laddie, for it is quite customary for the farm- 
 er's daughter to hire a male escort for the week 
 if she have no suitor, and she pays all of their 
 joint expenses and his fee besides. 
 
 We watch from our window a woman 
 carrying two pails suspended from her shoul- 
 ders by a wooden yoke. She stops at a door 
 and rings the bell. A bowl is handed out and 
 a measure of milk is put into it, and the milk-
 
 In Friesland in 
 
 woman proceeds to the house of the next 
 customer. 
 
 We have not seen any ice water since we 
 left Amsterdam. At breakfast our demands 
 for water brought a pitcher of hot water. We 
 could make another town a day if we would 
 not insist on drinking water. 
 
 We took a delightful ride into the country 
 along canals and under rows of shade trees. 
 After resting in this way for a while, we 
 returned to the town past the Kanselary (a 
 public library) museum, stadhuis and weigh- 
 house, to the Groote Kerk where the progeni- 
 tors of William the Silent are buried. We go 
 through streets too narrow to permit the pas- 
 sage of another carriage. A bicycle squeezes 
 by us with difficulty. We receive the homage 
 of bowing and hat-lifting citizens until an ill- 
 mannered, noisy, smelly motor-car dashes 
 down a cross-street, and, presto ! we are alone, 
 absolutely deserted by the fickle populace. We 
 drive out to the Oldehove, an unfinished church 
 tower dating from 1529. We return through 
 the Noorden Plantage, a beautiful park inter- 
 sected by canals, to the Frisian Museum, rich 
 in porcelain of Delft, India and China. They
 
 112 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 have an eighteenth century set of rooms from 
 Hindeloopen completely furnished and very 
 interesting. We cast envious eyes at a set of 
 East Indian china containing nine hundred 
 pieces, but we compromised on being permitted 
 to purchase four Delft plates of the sixteenth 
 century, and to leave orders for some fifteenth 
 century ware to be made and shipped to our 
 home address. How time flies in an antique 
 salesroom !
 
 Groningen and Assen 1 1 3 
 
 XIII 
 Groningcn and Assen 
 
 E drive back to the station and catch 
 the train for Groningen and leave 
 Leeuv^arden behind us with its 33,600 
 people and not a street-car. In addition to the 
 difficulty that would be experienced in getting 
 a Hollander to pay carfare under any circum- 
 stances, it must be borne in mind that Dutch 
 cities are compactly built and cover very small 
 areas. Many a town in the United States with 
 only 3,500 inhabitants is spread out over more 
 territory than Leeuwarden. Houses are built 
 flush with the sidewalk and with no intervening 
 yard space. This was done in days of old, 
 when towns were circumscribed by walls, and 
 has been continued partly from habit or con- 
 servatism, and partly as a measure of thrift. 
 Our train just crossed a country road paved 
 for miles, having a row of uniform trees on 
 each side of it, better than most city boule-
 
 114 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 yards at home. We are carrying a lot of 
 soldiers and distributing them at the little 
 towns. Every train seems to carry them, and 
 every depot has a crowd of them. 
 
 Groningen has 69,500 people and is the capi- 
 tal of the province of the same name. It is a 
 Hanseatic town and can trace its pedigree to 
 the ninth century. Its university was founded 
 in 1614. 
 
 For the benefit of those who* have "forgot- 
 ten" what 'the Hanseatic League was, it may 
 be well to state briefly that it was German in 
 its origin and commercial in its purposes, but 
 had nothing to do with baseball. At the height 
 of its power it included eighty-five cities, but 
 jealousy and over-reaching among its members 
 honeycombed it, and its separate cities surren- 
 dered their rights one by one to their respective 
 sovereigns. They did a good work in afford- 
 ing to commerce the protection which arrogant 
 over-lords were too blind or too weak to 
 extend. In their day they declared war and 
 signed treaties. In short, they made trade so 
 safe and profitable that as a reward for their 
 efforts it was taken away from them, and in 
 1630 they held their last meeting.
 
 Groningen and Assen 1 1 5 
 
 It is necessary to inspect your railroad tickets 
 closely in Holland. The round-trip ticket only 
 costs one-fourth more than the single trip, so 
 its use is almost universal. We cannot use 
 them, as we are going straight ahead, but I 
 bought two to Groningen and return, by mis- 
 take, and now have two inexpensive and 
 characteristic souvenirs. 
 
 No carriages were at the depot, so we waited 
 twenty minutes for one to be brought, and then 
 drove to the church of St. Martin. As usual, 
 the cabby wanted to show us the new part of 
 town, but we were firm. The church has a 
 fine tower and an excellent organ. Near the 
 tower is the Regthuis, a small building built 
 in 1509, and now used as a guard-house. We 
 drove past the University grounds, through the 
 park, to another of Holland's well-organized 
 charities, an asylum for the deaf and dumb. 
 Every claim of human suffering is cared for. 
 Our driver showed us what he called "a house 
 for loose children," which we interpreted to 
 mean an orphan asylum. 
 
 Then we drove to one of the meaningless 
 sights of the town, the old house in Jat Street 
 which bears the bas-relief of a bearded man's
 
 n6 Three Weeks /// Holland 
 
 head with the inscription Ich kick uoch in't 
 "I still peep into it." But no one seemed to 
 know the story connected therewith. 
 
 Here is something for you to remember: 
 If you ask a cabby "How much ?" after a ride, 
 he will not overcharge you. If, on the con- 
 trary, you tender him fifty per cent in excess 
 of his fare without inquiry, he will invariably 
 demand more. 
 
 Speaking of cabbies reminds me of a curious 
 fact, viz., that Holland horses do not know 
 how to back. If one gets into a tight place he 
 simply must turn around, for the backing 
 process is entirely unknown to both horse and 
 driver. 
 
 Assen is forty minutes' ride from Groningen. 
 According to Baedeker, "it is a town of 9,500 
 inhabitants partly concealed by woods" ; so we 
 will look behind the trees for the inhabitants. 
 It is the capital of Drenthe. En route, we pass 
 peat-bogs, with stacks of black peat drying in 
 the sun, and see our first big wheat fields. 
 
 At Assen we are scheduled for three hours in 
 a fifteen-minute town. So we go to a nearby 
 cafe, where we sip lemonade and await the 
 arrival of a carriage ordered by our bustling
 
 Groningen and Assen 117 
 
 landlady. We will drive to Rolde and see the 
 Giants' Graves, a name given to two groups of 
 bowlders deposited by some prehistoric glacier 
 and bearing to the trained eye of the geologist 
 the label, ''Made in Norway." 
 
 When at home we join in the universal out- 
 cry against Standard Oil and the Sugar Trust, 
 but in Holland we regret that the last named 
 corporation does not follow the other one into 
 Holland and improve the quality of the native 
 sugar. It is coarse and gritty. Pulverized 
 sugar is unknown. Long before the loaf-sugar 
 furnished us has dissolved in our lemonade; the 
 carriage is announced. B. gives the necessary 
 instructions to the driver, who grasps every- 
 thing she says with an alertness that should 
 have warned us. We start out on the most 
 magnificent ride of our trip. We get into 
 the real country, with paved roads and between 
 trees that fairly deserve the hackneyed title of 
 "Monarchs of the Forest." We drive on and 
 on, pass through a village, and out again into 
 the country. It is delightful, but we are 
 nervous regarding our train. We spy a sign, 
 "Tumulibosch," and stop our unwilling driver 
 and clamber out. A rustic gate admits us to
 
 n8 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 a dense wood, but with no indication of bowl- 
 ders. After losing fifteen minutes and our 
 path, we return to the carriage, having found 
 plenty of "bosch" but no "tumuli." 
 
 We then have another heart-to-heart talk 
 with the driver. "Oh, ja, Stein," he says, and 
 whips up his horse. In ten minutes more he 
 dismounts, exchanges his plug hat for a cap, 
 and beckons us to follow on foot, leaving the 
 horse to be baited during our absence. 
 
 After ten minutes' walk through an old 
 churchyard and over ploughed ground, we 
 reach two groups of bowlders, interesting to 
 the antiquarian, and marvelous even to our 
 jaded eyes. 
 
 They are thrown about in two heaps, as if 
 spilled from some giant's hand. Trees have 
 grown around them during the centuries that 
 they have lain there. They have been rounded 
 by glacial erosion, and when we remember 
 that through the length and breadth of Holland 
 these are the only rocks not brought here by 
 the agency of man, we can understand the 
 wonder they excite. 
 
 It had taken us almost two hours to reach 
 the stones, and our train was due to leave
 
 Groningen and Assen 119 
 
 Assen in another hour. Naturally, we were 
 perturbed, but the driver was calm with a 
 Dutch calmness, alongside of which a cigar- 
 store Indian is acrobatic. 
 
 At the end of twenty-five minutes we had 
 settled back in our seats and bowed our heads 
 to the inevitable, when B. said, "That place 
 looks familiar," and lo and behold! It was 
 the cafe from which we started. 
 
 It seems that the trouble arose from B.'s 
 thinking that she was telling the driver to go 
 past the town hall. She put it into her freshest 
 Holland; Holland that she had only had a 
 week. He said, "Eerste?" which means 
 "First." We nodded an affirmative and he 
 started off. B. said : "There! After this, you 
 let me talk to these Hollanders. There is a 
 different dialect for each province, and I seem 
 to learn them more quickly than you." 
 
 As my vocabulary never pretends to go 
 beyond distinguishing a smoking-compartment 
 from the other kind, I meekly acquiesce. She 
 hardly leaned back during the first mile, she 
 was so elated with her success. After ten 
 minutes of leafy woods, I murmured, "Where 
 is the town hall?" She conceded that the
 
 I2O Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 driver must have misunderstood the order of 
 exercises, and that we were going to Rolde 
 first. Finally, when we made our twenty-five- 
 minute return, it dawned on us that in some 
 way or other we had asked to be driven 
 through the Assen Wood. 
 
 Well, it was worth the money.
 
 Zwolle and Kampen 121 
 
 XIV 
 
 Zwolle and Kampen 
 
 SSEN to Zwolle is another long ride, 
 taking an hour and thirty-nine minutes. 
 Zwolle is the capital of Over-Yssel. It 
 is the birthplace of the painter Terburg. 
 Thomas a Kempis lived sixty-four of his 
 ninety-two years in a monastery in the suburbs. 
 
 Between Assen and Zwolle we pass miles of 
 peat country, black and barren, covered with 
 excrescences of heather, with here and there 
 deep scars where the peat has been removed. 
 Dark, noisome vapors are drawing over it like 
 a shroud. It is a ghostly, dismal place, fit 
 roaming-ground for another "Hound of the 
 Baskervilles'' to choose for his nightly 
 prowlings. 
 
 Black and white cows move through the 
 mist with blurred and softened outlines, while 
 others are untouched by the vapor, and gaze 
 at our train, in bovine placidity, as through a
 
 122 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 torn web. Here are whole acres completely 
 hidden, and our train rides through the clouds 
 as though we were miles above the ocean level 
 instead of several feet below it. A short dis- 
 tance away, a farmhouse with its clump of 
 trees looks like an island. It is a weird, creepy 
 ride, and we are glad when it is over. 
 
 We found a modern hotel at Zwolle, with 
 good service and running water. Our room 
 is on the first floor, or, to be exact, it is four 
 steps above the first floor. It is twelve feet 
 by twenty-four, and is furnished like a show- 
 window. We have two French windows, a fire- 
 place and marble mantel, a clock, bronze vases, 
 four chairs, two tables, twin beds, a double 
 washstand, a small stand for a candle, and one 
 of those papered-over panels opening into a 
 "no thoroughfare" sort of Bluebeard Cham- 
 ber which reeks with mystery. All of this 
 elegance costs one dollar each for room and 
 breakfast. 
 
 Last evening a Saturday-night bedlam pre- 
 vailed. It was the breaking up of a kirmess, 
 and unbridled license held sway. There were 
 yelling and singing and loud laughter until 
 the wee. small hours.
 
 Zwolle and Kampen 123 
 
 This morning a Sabbath stillness pervades 
 everything. I went downstairs and opened up 
 the hotel. Everyone was asleep and the doors 
 were locked. I unlocked and threw open the 
 front door, paced the echoing clinkers for a 
 while, but, seeing no signs of patronage, I 
 locked up again and returned to our room. 
 
 We have been so busy that we forgot it was 
 Sunday, and are forced to live economically 
 until we can cash an express order. We have 
 only had three post-cards in twenty-four hours. 
 
 We took a round-trip ticket to Kampen. It 
 is a twenty-minute ride, and only costs twenty 
 cents for a round-trip ticket, and that appeals 
 to us. Kampen is another town that has seen 
 better days. It was once a Hanse town, but 
 its harbor has silted up and it has shrunk to 
 twenty thousand people. It was formerly on 
 the banks of the Zuider Zee, but is now an 
 inland village. The geography of this country 
 is constantly shifting. Places once reached by 
 a steamer now depend on a tram line, and vice 
 versa. Plowing the sea is no mere figure of 
 speech in Holland. Much of the old bed of 
 the Zuider Zee is now farm land. Before an- 
 other century passes it will all be under culti-
 
 124 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 ration, instead of under water, and the area 
 of Holland will be nearly doubled. 
 
 We crossed a modern bridge after leaving 
 the station, and walked along the principal 
 street. We inquired of some boys the way to 
 the Corn Market. They did not understand 
 us, and a gentleman stepped up, hat in hand, 
 and gave us directions. Their language is a 
 closed book to us, but their hands are eloquent. 
 They persist until they are satisfied that they 
 have made their meaning clear, and apparently 
 are proud of the fact that they can understand 
 us, and it is quite an achievement. 
 
 Men, women and children in their Sunday 
 clothes were trooping into the fourteenth- 
 century Bovenkerk which faces the old market, 
 and we followed them. We refused the offer 
 of a seat on the part of a kindly and courteous 
 old gentleman, but stood while a hymn was 
 sung. Men and women occupy separate sec- 
 tions of the church, and the men frequently 
 leave their hats on until they are seated. 
 
 Outside the church we noticed the sign of a 
 publisher who had a most peculiar name: G. 
 Nottrot. He would starve to death in the 
 United States if he tried to live up to his name.
 
 Zwolle and Kampen 125 
 
 We next visited the old Corn Market gate, 
 which has been rendered ugly with whitewash. 
 This is a great country for whitewashing ruins, 
 a practice which obtains to some extent on our 
 side of the Atlantic. 
 
 We went the length of the town to the Stad- 
 huis, which was restored after the fire in 1543 ; 
 but the statues on the exterior are from the 
 original building, and they look it. They repre- 
 sent Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, 
 Moderation, Fidelity, Justice, and Neighborly 
 Love. They form rather a mixed crowd. 
 
 Within, we found an elaborately carved 
 stand for the magistrates and little stalls 
 through which peeped the advocates. A cur- 
 tain-pole in front of the advocates was used 
 for rolling briefs upon. The most attractive 
 exhibit in the room is a beautifully sculptured 
 marble mantel. 
 
 We return to Zwolle, and, after waiting 
 twenty minutes for a carriage, which is espe- 
 cially summoned for us from a livery barn, 
 we drive to the Sassenpoort, one of the old 
 gateways in whose towers are stored the 
 archives of the town. 
 
 Thence we take our leisurely way to the
 
 126 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 Stadhuis. This building has a disappointing 
 modern exterior; but do not be fooled by it. 
 Within, it holds the quaintest of council- 
 chambers, with an interesting fireplace and a 
 ceiling supported by caryatides, which are 
 caricatures of former councilmen carved in 
 wood.
 
 Utrecht and Arnhem 127 
 
 XV 
 
 ETWEEN Zwolle and Utrecht, our 
 next stop, our road lies through the 
 Veluwe, the most sterile portion of 
 Holland. The Salvation Army has 220 acres 
 under cultivation, giving employment to thirty 
 men, and it is reclaiming land and men. 
 
 Utrecht is the capital of Utrecht province. 
 It is a city of 108,500 people. It was the ford 
 of the Rhine for ancient Rome. The Rhine 
 here splits into the Old Rhine, which we saw 
 at Leiden, and the Vecht, which empties into 
 the Zuider Zee near Muiden. We are now 
 within less than an hour's ride of Amsterdam, 
 since leaving which city we have almost en- 
 circled that inland sea. When we reach Arn- 
 hem tonight we will have been in every prov- 
 ince in Holland except Zeeland, and we will 
 go there after visiting Belgium. This has been
 
 128 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 accomplished in eight days, one of which was 
 spent in The Hague, and two in Amsterdam. 
 This statement is not made for the purpose of 
 emphasizing the rapidity with which we have 
 traveled. I have been too much chastened and 
 humbled on that score to desire to call attention 
 to it. But it will show you what a mite of a 
 country Holland is, and what a world of thrift 
 and industry it requires for her to be made a 
 source of wealth to her citizens. 
 
 This Veluwe is principally sand-dunes. 
 Nothing is raised here but tobacco and chil- 
 dren. We are three hundred feet above the 
 level of the sea, but the giddy elevation does 
 not seem to affect us. 
 
 At Utrecht we relieve the financial situation 
 by trading a twenty-dollar bill for forty-seven 
 gulden. This enables us again to revel in a 
 carriage. We drive along the Oude Gracht 
 and feast our eyes on enchanting scenes along 
 the canal. The town is one or two stories above 
 the water, and people live under the pavements 
 and their doors open on the canal. 
 
 The Cathedral was once one of the finest 
 and largest churches in Holland, but the nave 
 blew down in 1674 and was never rebuilt, con-
 
 Utrecht and Arnhem 129 
 
 sequently our carriage is standing on ground 
 that was once occupied by worshipers, while 
 the choir and tower now stand as two distinct 
 and widely separated buildings. 
 
 A statue of John of Nassau adorns the 
 square thus formed. He was brother to 
 William the Silent and his most untiring and 
 faithful ally in Holland's war with Spain. His 
 death was a double blow to the Prince of 
 Orange, and came at a time when the Nether- 
 lands were harrassed by misfortunes on every 
 hand. A less determined leader would have 
 sought terms with the enemy, but reverses 
 seemed to add to William's courage. It is 
 hard for a student of Dutch history to account 
 for the successful termination of their eighty 
 years' war with Spain. Overwhelmed by num- 
 bers, arrayed against the veterans of countless 
 victories, the Hollander did not really whip 
 the Spaniard. The Spaniard wore himself to 
 a shadow whipping the Hollander, and in the 
 end found an opponent as undaunted and 
 vigorous as in the beginning, while Spain was 
 impoverished and discredited at home and 
 abroad.
 
 130 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 The Antiquarian Museum is closed, so \ve 
 will drive along the Maliebaan, a handsome 
 boulevard, and view the youth and beauty of 
 Utrecht on Sunday dress parade. 
 
 Nothing else being open, we return to the 
 Cathedral, whose exterior is defaced by the 
 usual hideous gargoyles. Within, we find 
 thrilling interest in studying the tomb of 
 Bishop Guy of Hainault, who died in 1317, 
 and we try in vain to realize an antiquity which 
 antedates the discovery of America by almost 
 two centuries. 
 
 Just to show what mistaken zeal can do when 
 it tampers with the beautiful, the Cathedral 
 has eighteen needle-like Gothic columns as 
 slender and graceful as reeds. What do these 
 vandals do but put a wooden pen in the center 
 and seat it with pine pews, completely obliter- 
 ating half of the design and all of the effect. 
 
 The Paushuizen, or "pope's house," is worth 
 a visit. Pope Adrian VI. built it in 1517, when 
 he was provost of St. Salvator. On its gable 
 is an ancient figure of the Savior. 
 
 Utrecht has a one-horse tram system that 
 permeates the entire city. Its cars 'seat eight
 
 ENTRANCE TO THE CLOISTERS UTRECHT
 
 Utrecht and Arnhem 131 
 
 persons. Think of that in a city of over 
 100,000 inhabitants. The cars are never 
 crowded, and it is a pleasure to ride in them 
 through the clean old burg. 
 
 Another hour on the train and we are in 
 Arnhem, the capital of Guelderland. En route 
 we pass through the Moravian village of Zeist, 
 the Quaker settlement of Holland. Everything 
 tells of order and cultivation. The women 
 wear costumes to indicate whether thev are 
 maidens, wives or widows. 
 
 At Maarsbergen the railroad passes the 
 "Pyramid of Austerlitz," a mound raised in 
 1805 in honor of Napoleon's coronation. If 
 you fail to see it, do not blame us; blame 
 Baedeker. We did not see it either. On our 
 right is that portion of Holland known as the 
 Betuwe, the antipode of the Veluwe in 
 productiveness. 
 
 At Arnhem we tried to get into the Conti- 
 nental Hotel, near the depot, but it was impos- 
 sible. We mean that the hotel was. It was 
 cheaper and woodener and more combustible 
 in appearance than a World's Fair hostelry. 
 After inspecting its interior we managed to
 
 132 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 gain the threshold and signaled to a porter 
 from the du Soleil, who rescued us and took 
 us to the loveliest of rooms, which we will 
 describe to you later. 
 
 Having dined at Utrecht, we made a hasty 
 toilet and started on a pedestrian tour of ex- 
 ploration. We walked several blocks along a 
 shaded avenue bounded on one side by the 
 Rhine, which is crossed at this point by a 
 bridge of boats. A tall wooded bluff is to our 
 right, and we finally reached a point from 
 which a zig-zag path leads to the top. We 
 followed the path to the grounds of the Buiten- 
 Societett. There we bought tickets for ten 
 cents each and sat at a table while a military 
 band from Deventer played excellent music. 
 
 We concluded to return to our hotel by a 
 different route and lost our bearings. Two or 
 three people gave us explicit directions which 
 did not work out in practice, and we were about 
 to summon a cab when a young fellow and 
 his sweetheart laughingly took us in tow and 
 led us right up to the door before leaving us. 
 
 And now for an idea of this room and its 
 furnishings. The room at Zwolle seems taw-
 
 Utrecht and Arnhem 133 
 
 dry in comparison. There are four small oil 
 paintings on the wall, and one eight-by-ten- foot 
 canvas, four cabinets and a mantel with a ten- 
 foot cheval glass; the mantel and cabinets are 
 filled with Dresden and Delft china and ivory 
 carvings; a handsome four-panel Japanese 
 screen; a shepherd-boy statuette eighteen 
 inches high on an ebony pedestal ; a large blue 
 pottery vase with a portrait of Rembrandt fired 
 in; eight chairs, five hassocks, a settee in bro- 
 cade and framed-in mirrors, a brass clock and 
 candelabra, a six-foot standing-lamp with two 
 brackets; wardrobe, dresser and all the usual 
 essential furniture of a bedroom topped off 
 and finished with a double bed from which we 
 hesitate to lift the cream and gold confection 
 in lace and satin, for fear it will all fade away 
 like one of Nemo's dreams. 
 
 Adjoining and connected by French windows 
 is an alcove filled with potted palms, just for 
 good measure. 
 
 We arose early Monday morning, refreshed 
 after our day of rest, and ready to go to work 
 again. In our stroll last night we noticed 
 several pretty wicker summer houses, entirely
 
 134 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 open on one side, with chairs, a table and lamp, 
 and Japanese pictures on the walls. They look 
 very cozy with the family grouped around the 
 light father smoking, mother knitting or 
 sewing, and the children reading and playing. 
 They afford a glimpse of fairyland, and with 
 their bright coloring seem too fanciful for this 
 work-a-day world. 
 
 We eat breakfast in the garden, and, our 
 time being limited, we take our baggage with 
 us and show it the town. Many brawny- 
 looking youths in rowing costumes are canoe- 
 ing on the Rhine. 
 
 It suggests a sameness to keep repeating that 
 the Groote Markt and Church are "interest- 
 ing," when, as a matter of fact, each one is 
 unique and elicits fresh admiration. In the 
 same way, the general architecture of Stad- 
 huises is the same, and could not possibly be 
 confused with any other form of buildings, and 
 yet each one has distinguishing characteristics 
 that strike you with the charm of novelty. 
 
 For example, the decorations of the Arnhem 
 stadhuis are largely Satanic, and this has given 
 it the name of Duivelshuis among the people.
 
 Utrecht and Arnhem 135 
 
 As usual, we have to resort to strategy to 
 keep the small boys and girls from in front 
 of the camera. One successful ruse is to focus 
 carefully at right angles to the desired object, 
 until the juvenile population is massed in front 
 of you, and then whirl and snap before they 
 can re-form their lines.
 
 136 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 XVI 
 
 Farewell to Holland 
 
 T takes twenty-two minutes to get from 
 Arnhem to Nymwegen, another old 
 Roman town, later a member of the 
 Hanseatic League. We drive along the Sta- 
 tions weg to a beautiful square, the Keizer- 
 Karels-Plein, and through it to the crowded 
 fruit and vegetable market, past the Stadhuis 
 with its facade filled with statues of German 
 kings. Our destination is the Valkhof, in 
 whose grounds are the ruins of a palace built 
 during the reign of Carlovingian emperors. 
 There is not much of the old palace remaining, 
 and still less of the chapel, which was conse- 
 crated in 799. 
 
 We ascend the Belvedere, from whose top 
 you get glimpses of four river valleys the 
 Waal, Rhine, Maas and Yssel. We can see 
 Arnhem and Cleve. This is the home of legend.
 
 IN KRONENBURK PARK NYMWEGEN
 
 Farewell to Holland 137 
 
 The Knight of the Swan is claimed by both 
 Cleve and Nymwegen. 
 
 In what Baedeker calls "the center of the 
 picturesque huddle of the old town" is the 
 Groote Kerk. The first object that greets us 
 in the entry is a box containing a harp. The 
 lid of the box bears the name of a well-known 
 Chicago firm, and we are rather glad to see 
 that something sweeter than canned meats is 
 exported from our native land. While we are 
 looking at it, we are greeted by the sound of 
 chimes from the tower playing "The Last Rose 
 of Summer." We have not visited a Holland 
 town which did not have a set of chimes in 
 some old tower or belfry. 
 
 We were shown through the church by the 
 charming wife of the Sacristan, whose little 
 two-year-old took my hand confidingly and led 
 me along behind her mother and B. There 
 are many bas-reliefs from the original church 
 (1272) built into the structure, which was 
 not completed until the fifteenth century. The 
 paintings, as usual, have been whitewashed, 
 destroying the general effect, but doubtless 
 improving some of the pictures. There is a 
 very beautiful monument in the church in
 
 138 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 memory of Catherine of Bourbon, who died 
 in 1469. 
 
 Our conductress showed us one small room, 
 which she called the "kinder dope," and made 
 us understand after much elaborate pantomime 
 that it was the baptismal room. Either we 
 misunderstood her, or else the name is very 
 irreverent. 
 
 Kronenburg Park furnishes a beautiful drive. 
 It contains a picturesque rockery and waterfall 
 and one of the sixteen towers which once 
 strengthened the town walls. We had to drive 
 a block out of our way to keep from crossing 
 a fifteen-foot strip of grass. We are becoming 
 so obedient to the law that we will be the 
 laughing-stock of our friends at home. 
 
 It takes two hours and twenty-eight minutes 
 to get to Maastricht, which is the capital of the 
 Dutch portion of Limburg the part that has 
 the holes in it. 
 
 This is a wheat-growing district The wheat 
 is in shocks, eight bundles to a shock, each tied 
 by hand, and placed in pyramids with wide 
 bases, permitting free circulation of air. Our 
 compact method of placing the bundles would 
 never do in this rainy country. Of course it
 
 Farewell to Holland 139 
 
 is not so easily shocked as at home, but appar- 
 ently nothing in Holland is. Two men are 
 cutting wheat in a field, while a woman is 
 binding up the sheaves. 
 
 We did not stay long in Maastricht. We 
 could not. No one in town would cash our 
 express-orders. Our driver nearly kept us over 
 another train by almost forcing us to drive 
 through a park, but we detected his scheme 
 in the nick of time, and caught the train for 
 Aix-la-Chapelle. This is our first hot day. We 
 pass more wheat fields and clover patches, and 
 the tracks are bordered with a riot of wild 
 flowers, waving poppies for red flags. 
 
 When we reach Aix-la-Chapelle it turns out 
 to be Aachen, and we find ourselves on German 
 soil. We crossed the frontier at Zemplerend, 
 went through the empty formality of a customs 
 examination in a stuffy baggage-room, carried 
 our suit-cases the length of a long depot, set 
 our watches ahead an hour, and settled our- 
 selves for a good night's rest. 
 
 As Aachen is not on our itinerary, and is in 
 neither of the countries which we started out 
 to visit, we will not attempt to do or see any-
 
 140 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 thing for a few hours, except a German vaude- 
 ville. 
 
 Desiring a hotel near the station, we selected 
 the Hotel du Nord as having the most gilt 
 on its sign, but we did not stay long. The 
 concierge showed us to a bathroom with a bed 
 in it, or a bedroom with a bathtub in it we 
 are not sure which. At any rate, we were 
 afraid that coming into that candle-dimmed 
 apartment after the vaudeville we might con- 
 fuse the bed and the tub. The tub was whiter 
 than the bed, but not so hard. 
 
 So our patient porter carries our effects to 
 the Berliner, and we take up our abode in the 
 least desirable quarters we have seen since 
 landing, except those we just left at the du 
 Nord; We will not photograph this interior, 
 nor describe it. The double bed is against 
 three of the four walls, and we climb in over 
 the foot of it. There is a single electric bulb 
 above our heads, but the room looks clean, and 
 we are tired, and so we keep it. 
 
 After dinner we go to Bernart's Theatre (no 
 relation to Sara), where the concierge assures 
 us "It is for to laugh." We had an excellent 
 dinner for thirty-six cents each. We could have
 
 A STREET SCENE IN NYMWEGEN
 
 Farewell to Holland 141 
 
 had the ordinary table d'hote for twenty-four 
 cents, but felt like celebrating our arrival on 
 German soil. 
 
 The evening entertainment did not entertain 
 us. There was a one-act German comedy fol- 
 lowed by four very bad specialties, culminating 
 in a German cakewalk. Those who remained 
 were given another comedy, but we thought 
 that we could sleep more comfortably at the 
 hotel. 
 
 We were mistaken. The cafe of our hotel 
 was occupied by a noisy crowd that did not 
 disperse until long after we had retired. 
 
 Then, just as I was slipping into dreamland, 
 a heavily shod man and woman could be heard 
 approaching from the end of the street. They 
 came nearer and nearer, with fearful distinct- 
 ness on those narrow brick pavements. They 
 stopped at our door and rang the bell until 
 they woke everyone in the house, finishing with 
 the porter, and, after some colloquy, were 
 admitted. 
 
 A half hour later three men came down the 
 block and pulled our bell handle, which by 
 this time must have been hanging out a foot. 
 One was taken and the others left. And so it
 
 142 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 went all night, while through my brain chased 
 memories of the footsteps in "The Tale of Two 
 Cities,'' and my sleep was full of tumbrils and 
 guillotines. 
 
 In the morning we found a bank and cashed 
 an express-order. The banking hours on the 
 Continent are from nine to twelve in the 
 morning and from three to five in the after- 
 noon. We almost lost our luggage when we 
 embarked for Liege. The porter took one path 
 and we another to the platform. Minutes 
 passed and he did not appear. I did not know 
 his number nor his intentions. Finally, when 
 it only lacked a few minutes of train time, I 
 rushed back to the baggage-room, saw our suit- 
 cases on the counter, grabbed them and ran 
 for the exit, in spite of the remonstrances of 
 the baggage-man and porters.
 
 Liege 143 
 
 XVII 
 Liege 
 
 T is only twenty-two minutes ride to 
 Liege, but we travel in a sleeping-car. 
 It is our first continental sleeper, and 
 we may have no business in it; but I have 
 gulden in one trousers-pocket, francs in the 
 other, dollar bills and express-orders in my 
 innermost vest-pocket, and marks all over me, 
 and am feeling reckless. I am an international 
 bank of exchange. 
 
 A guard struck me for extra fare for the 
 sleeper. I adopted our usual practice of giving 
 him my largest piece and waiting for the 
 change. 
 
 The first thing that caught our eye in our 
 compartment was a seventy-two-page pam- 
 phlet issued by the Belgian government 
 "The Truth About the Congo," in English, 
 French and German. 
 
 In 1876, Leopold called a geographical con-
 
 144 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 ference at Brussels and equipped four expedi- 
 tions to Africa. About this time Stanley 
 reached the mouth of the Congo. Leopold 
 took him in on the ground floor and proceeded 
 to carry civilization and annihilation into 
 Africa. The Congo state was recognized in 
 1884, when Europe fell into line and guaran- 
 teed the title. It has an area of nine hundred 
 thousand square miles and a population of 
 twenty million, and yet Belgium bosses it. If 
 a smaller dog ever had a bigger tail, I never 
 heard of it. Belgium had to spread out. Her 
 seven million people were crowding her less 
 than twelve thousand square miles. 
 
 Rubber is Congo's chief export. Five thou- 
 sand tons were shipped out in 1902, worth 
 seven and a half million dollars. 
 
 But think of it, you who groan when part of 
 your substance is taken from you by unright- 
 eous monopoly and irresponsible power ! Here 
 is a whole country exploited, and just enough 
 thrown back to the real owners and real labor- 
 ers to keep them in working condition. 
 
 They tell a humorous story in the West 
 about a man who advertised for a thousand 
 men and boys who wanted work. To each
 
 Liege 145 
 
 applicant he gave a spear and a coil of rope, 
 and told him to go to the Missouri River, 
 which was on its annual rampage, and catch 
 all the driftwood he could, offering him half 
 of all he caught. It was only a funny story. 
 But would -it have been funny if the river had 
 been the property of these men and boys and 
 they had been required to furnish their own 
 spears, and had only received a tithe of the 
 results of their labor? That is what Leopold 
 is doing to the Congo Free State. 
 
 The pamphlet is subdivided into four heads : 
 I. The Congo Reforms. 
 II. The Letter of the King Sovereign. 
 
 III. The Decrees. 
 
 IV. Comments of the Press. 
 
 Belgium has evidently been stung out of her 
 attitude of silence by outside criticism, in addi- 
 tion to which she probably has anti-imperialists 
 at home. 
 
 We are going through the garden spot of 
 the world, the Meuse Valley, and approaching 
 the Forest of the Ardennes. It is better to visit 
 Belgium after visiting Holland. The reverse 
 itinerary would make Holland seem pretty flat. 
 We pass another custom-house at Hervesthal.
 
 146 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 Holland is so small that we had to go into Ger- 
 many to turn around without knocking over a 
 windmill. 
 
 They build rivers differently in the low coun- 
 tries from the method pursued at home. The 
 Mississippi, for example, is fed by countless 
 streams, and widens and becomes larger as it 
 approaches the Gulf. The Meuse and the 
 Rhine, when they reach the shifting soil of the 
 Netherlands, split into numerous branches as 
 they near the coast and empty into the North 
 Sea by countless mouths. 
 
 Liege (two syllables, please) is the capital 
 of the Walloon district, is a university town, 
 and has one hundred and sixty four thousand 
 people. Its university is about a hun- 
 dred years old and is the headquarters 
 of the Roman Catholic party. Its chief indus- 
 tries are coal mining and the manufacture of 
 arms. Its people are insubordinate to authority 
 and stiffer-necked than the Ghenters. Between 
 here and Namur is a chain of twelve forts by 
 which this portion of the Meuse Valley is 
 guarded against German invasion. They cost 
 twenty million dollars, but they are insuffi- 
 ciently manned and officered. Many of the
 
 Liege 147 
 
 officers sleep in the towns, leaving the forts at 
 dinner-time. Some time some one will be rude 
 enough to attack them after office hours, and 
 the next day there will be a sign out, "This 
 place has changed hands." 
 
 Seraing is .to Liege what the stock-yards are 
 to Chicago the source of its wealth and a 
 great show place for visitors, but not attractive. 
 John Cockerill, an Englishman, founded this 
 suburb in 1816. 
 
 In 1468, Charles the Bold, having failed to 
 convert the town to his religious ideas, con- 
 verted it to ashes, leaving only the monasteries 
 and churches untouched. In 1482, Charles' 
 bishop, Louis of Bourbon, was murdered by 
 de la Marck, "the wild boar of the Ardennes," 
 who wished to obtain the mitre for one of his 
 own litter. 
 
 I had to set my poor abused watch back an 
 hour when we entered Belgium. We were 
 treated so gently by the customs officers that 
 we did not know when we passed. So B. was 
 perfectly excusable when she threw open the 
 suit-cases for the train guard's inspection. 
 
 In a carriage at Liege, the first thing that 
 attracted our attention was a statue commemo-
 
 148 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 rating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the revo- 
 lution of 1830, by which Holland got rid of 
 Belgium. This is a legacy of the Exposition 
 of 1905, which celebrated the same event. No 
 student of political or religious history is sur- 
 prised at the separation of two countries so 
 dissimilar in temperament, politics and reli- 
 gion. They make excellent neighbors when not 
 tied together. Farther along the Avenue 
 Rogier is a handsome terrace with four bronze 
 groups. On the north of the Pare d'Avroy is 
 an equestrian statue of Charlemagne, who con- 
 ferred upon Liege its first privileges. 
 
 B. alighted to take some pictures. I could 
 not stand it any longer. I had been making 
 signs and struggling along without a single 
 verb for ten days in Holland, but here I was 
 at home. I can talk French. I said, "// fait 
 tres chaud" to the driver. Fatal mistake ! He 
 launched into voluble French, doubtless ex- 
 plaining that this was the hottest summer Liege 
 has had for years, or words to that effect ; and 
 I could only look affable and murmur, "Old" 
 and "Sans doutc." The next time I strike a 
 Belgian who is keeping still, I will not unplug 
 him.
 
 Liege 149 
 
 Part of the Church of St. Jacques dates from 
 1163, and the older part is easily distinguished 
 from the newer, which was built in 1513. It 
 has beautiful windows, in many of which the 
 faces of donors mingle with the others around 
 the biblical groups. The elaborate stone 
 carving of the choir has been cheapened and 
 spoiled by being painted in bright colors, until 
 it looks like some of the stick candy recently 
 legislated out of existence by the pure- food law. 
 
 In St. Paul's, mass was being celebrated and 
 the floors scrubbed at the same time a strange 
 mixture of cleanliness and godliness. Those 
 kneeling in front of the altar are watching us 
 from the corners of their eyes and making 
 the sign of the cross whenever the bell rings. 
 They are confident that the matter needs no 
 attention on their part, so nobody works but his 
 reverence. 
 
 We look up at the most beautiful vaulted 
 roof imaginable, and, as Belgium has always 
 been Catholic, no part of the church has been 
 marred by the iconoclasts. 
 
 We were conducted into the treasury, where 
 we saw the vaults containing massive articles
 
 150 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 of gold and silver and the tibia of St. Lambert 
 and sections of other saints. 
 
 The court of the Palais de Justice is its most 
 beautiful part. The palace is the King's resi- 
 dence when he visits Liege. The interior looks 
 pretty cheap after our hotel room at Arnhem. 
 It has a dining-room in which, to quote a 
 German friend, the King can "eat eighty 
 people." 
 
 The Montague de Bueren is a street of six 
 hundred ascending steps, up and down which 
 people are passing. We drive to the Church 
 of St. Barthelemy, a twelfth-century basilica, 
 gray with age, and containing an interesting 
 font borne on the backs of ten oxen, and with 
 handsome relief carving. There are chimes in 
 the two towers. 
 
 Near it the magnificent Pont des Arches 
 spans the river with five arches adorned with 
 statuary. 
 
 We spend an hour in the Musee des Beaux 
 Arts and find many attractive paintings and 
 sculptures. Then, having seen about all of 
 Liege but the university, we drive about aim- 
 lessly until half-past four. 
 
 After returning to our hotel we fool around
 
 STHKET OF SIX HUNDRED STEPS LIEGE
 
 Liege 151 
 
 an ''Automatic Cafe" for a while, dropping ten- 
 centime pieces into various slots and obtaining 
 sundry articles of food and drink. If you 
 desire, you may have the choice of several 
 varieties of meats and sandwiches, not to men- 
 tion different and indifferent wines, beer and 
 schnapps. 
 
 \Ye dropped a coin into a porcelain hen, just 
 above the wish-bone, and were rewarded by 
 several clucks, an eggful of chocolate sweets, 
 and a fair imitation of a rooster's crow. 
 
 In the evenings we visit a Cafe Chantant, 
 much frequented by students and grisettes. 
 Our waiter is a colored man, a native of 
 Canada, who speaks five languages. His 
 English is like that of a Londoner, and has not 
 a hint of darkey dialect. He is saving his 
 money to return to the United States and be a 
 Pullman porter. Heaven is probably full of 
 darkeys who would return to earth cheerfully 
 if they could don the beloved uniform. 
 
 We sat in the balcony which runs around 
 the four sides of the room. Those opposite 
 us are right over the stage and cannot see it 
 at all, but by a combination of mirrors they 
 can see the performance by reflection.
 
 152 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 The program stated that the orchestra is 
 playing "Tou jours ou Jamais," by Waldteufel, 
 but the air is unmistakably "Biddy McGee." 
 
 We only survived one vocal number, and 
 went out into the falling rain and, finding a 
 cab, shouted until the driver left the neighbor- 
 ing shelter and took us to the hotel.
 
 The Meuse Valley 153 
 
 XVIII 
 The Meuse Valley 
 
 ROM Liege we went to Huy. It looked 
 for a while as though we would not 
 succeed in our efforts to buy a railroad 
 ticket. We called it "High" and "Hoo" and 
 "Hooey," and were about to give it up and go 
 to some other town, when it occurred to us to 
 write "Huy'' on a piece of paper and shove 
 it at the ticket agent. "Oh ! Oui, Hwee," he 
 said, and sold us the tickets. We are in a 
 through Paris train, so clean and cool and 
 French, with its dove-colored upholstery. Our 
 road passes through the Borinage, the mining 
 section of Belgium, where life is cheap, vice 
 rampant, and labor underpaid. Women and 
 children work in the mines, and women clean 
 the streets. The miners work fourteen or 
 fifteen hours a day and get little pleasure from 
 their beautiful surroundings. The guide-book 
 says that the scenery hereabouts is "pretty and
 
 154 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 rocky" ; and to the miner life must seem the 
 same, with the "and" silent. 
 
 At Huy we found a carriage at the station 
 and drove across the bridge that spans the 
 Meuse (or Maas) River. In front of us rises 
 a high green hill crowned by a formidable 
 looking citadel, parts of which are formed by 
 the solid rock as it lies in the quarry, so that 
 fortress and hill are welded together in one 
 inseparable mass. 
 
 The Collegiate Church on our right is a per- 
 fect Gothic gem which was begun in 1311 and 
 restored in 1611 after a disastrous fire. In its 
 setting of hills and trees it forms a picture 
 never to be forgotten. Within the church, we 
 admire the beautiful windows and study the 
 votive offerings hung around the altar. In 
 the entrance is a queer life-size wooden statue 
 of St. Joseph breaking his neck to look at the 
 child on his shoulder, while the child is holding 
 up two fingers and staring straight ahead with 
 such a peculiar expression that it makes us 
 smile. It is probably very old and therefore 
 entitled to admiration, but anatomically it is a 
 remarkable production. 
 
 It is market day in Huy and our way is
 
 The Meuse Valley 155 
 
 constantly obstructed by cattle, sheep and hogs. 
 We drive up to the market place, where we 
 squeeze in among the quadrupeds and their 
 owners, the latter in smock frocks and carrying 
 long whips. As each beast is inspected a bar- 
 gain is concluded, apparently without resort to 
 scales, and the animal is marched off by his 
 purchaser. Pigs are marked with red paint 
 when their ownership changes. 
 
 We drive down a steep hill, past a residence 
 which has lace curtains painted on the window 
 panes, through the dusty little park at whose 
 head stands a Lincoln-like statue of Joseph Le 
 Beau, a statesman of the former century. 
 
 Peter the Hermit died at Huy in 1115 and 
 was buried there. Peter tried several pursuits 
 and failed in all of them before he concluded 
 to be a hermit. His preaching was instru- 
 mental in forming the first Crusade. He was 
 a much better preacher than warrior, and could 
 move others to deeds of heroism in which he 
 took little part. 
 
 Between Huy and Namur we have three- 
 quarters of an hour of rugged scenery, with 
 rocks sculptured by the forces of nature into 
 castles and fortresses. Namur is the capital of
 
 156 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 the province of Namur. It is not a large city, 
 but it is superbly situated at the junction of 
 the Meuse and the Sambre. 
 
 In the Cathedral lies the heart of Don John 
 of Austria, who died in camp near here. It 
 is covered by a tombstone erected by Alexander 
 Farnese. Don John came to the Netherlands 
 flushed with his victory over the Turks at 
 Lepanto, to lead in a disheartening and fore- 
 doomed war against right and truth. He was 
 even denied the glory of dying in battle, and 
 many hint that he was poisoned by order of his 
 own half brother, Phillip II. There is no 
 question as to Phillip's jealousy of his hand- 
 some and dashing relative, and he was probably 
 selected to take command of the Spanish army 
 in the Netherlands in order to dim the luster 
 achieved at Lepanto. 
 
 The cathedral contains a magnificent altar 
 of carved wood representing the Virgin pro- 
 tecting he city. As Namur has been battered 
 to the ground on several occasions, one might 
 question the efficacy of the protection afforded. 
 
 A bridge with a graceful arch spans the 
 Sambre and at its keystone it narrows to such 
 slender proportions as to make it look unequal
 
 The Meuse Valley 157 
 
 to the traffic it bears. It is a foot bridge 
 approached by steps, and is not used by ve- 
 hicles. 
 
 Namur looks like a small, a very small Paris. 
 It has five-story buildings and its ladies dress 
 in the latest mode. 
 
 Less than an hour's ride brings us to Dinant. 
 When we reached the depot at Namur we had 
 half an hour to wait for a train, so we foolishly 
 went into the dining room before buying our 
 railroad tickets. When we had finished our 
 lunch and had ten minutes to spare we returned 
 to the ticket window only to find the room 
 occupied by a howling mob of several hundred. 
 
 We managed to buy tickets and get our lug- 
 gage in time, but the ticket seller's gruff 
 "Allez" was superfluous. We had to "Allez" 
 to make connections. 
 
 Our train passes miles of seamy, dry rocks 
 without a sign of the pretty waterfalls which 
 gladden the eye of the traveler in Switzerland. 
 The caverns hereabouts are the traditional 
 headquarters of gnomes. Nothing but legends 
 flourish in these hills, but they do grow some 
 pretty tall stories. This part of Belgium is as 
 rich in tales of chivalry and deviltry as any
 
 158 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 part of the Rhine from Cologne to Mayence. 
 The stories are fully as thrilling and the setting 
 much more picturesque. An occasional ruined 
 chateau hangs to the top of a perpendicular 
 cliff. We do not stop at Dinant, but arrange 
 at the depot for a round trip to Rochefort and 
 the wonderful grottoes of Han-sur-Lesse. It 
 looks showery and we know of no form of 
 sight-seeing better adapted to rainy weather 
 than exploring grottoes. The character of the 
 cliffs we are now passing gives hints of queer 
 things to come. The rocks have stared at the 
 hot sun until they are wrinkled into frowns, 
 while other strata stand on end like chimneys. 
 We have selected an accommodation train un- 
 fortunately. It has more stops than the Harlem 
 organ. Once we chuckled in glee when the 
 engineer passed one section house without a 
 pause. But we were premature. He stopped 
 a half mile beyond and went back.
 
 The Grotto of Han 159 
 
 XIX 
 
 T Rochefort we are put into a small 
 carriage bound for the cavern. Our 
 companion on the ride is a mature 
 matron, an American, who tells her troubles in 
 loud, nasal English to every Belgian she meets. 
 She bought a ticket which entitled her to a 
 ride all the way to the grotto via tram car, but 
 climbed into the wrong train and has to pay 
 extra for a carriage. She attributes this ex- 
 pense to foreign cupidity, whereas it is due to 
 native stupidity. But the patience with which 
 innumerable innocent bystanders bear with her 
 attacks is a lesson in endurance and courtesy. 
 \Ye are pretty near ready to give up our 
 grotto after an hour and forty minutes of her 
 grumbling society behind a sleepy horse on a 
 dusty road. You finally reach a sort of tavern 
 where you leave the carriage and buy your 
 tickets two miles from the entrance and are
 
 160 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 turned loose on foot to find your way without 
 a guide. You first discover the place where 
 the river enters the cave and loiter around it 
 awhile. Then you explore farther and strike 
 the real entrance. Near it are a closed lemon- 
 ade stand and some wooden benches, but no 
 sign of a guide. You sit down and wait. 
 Finally two guides appear and you start on a 
 journey of an hour and a half through an 
 underground wonderland that makes you for- 
 get all the troublesome preliminaries. It is 
 useless to attempt description. Every fanciful 
 form that can be wrought by the action of 
 water and the precipitation of stalactite and 
 stalagmite is there. If only Cook & Sons 
 would take hold of the Han Grotto and remove 
 its unnecessary inconveniences they could 
 double its patronage and reduce its discomforts 
 to nil. We may not approve of "personally 
 conducted parties," but they are better than 
 permanently neglected ones. 
 
 In describing the cave permit me to sub- 
 stitute for my own inadequate vocabulary a 
 few gems from the book sold by the guides. 
 
 "The Grotto of Han! What a wonderful
 
 NOTRE DAME AND CITADEL AT DIXAXT 
 BRUSSELS
 
 The Grotto of Han 161 
 
 scenery, what enrapturing enchantments are 
 called up by this name alone !" 
 
 "The electric light which has recently been 
 placed in some halls projects glares of entranc- 
 ing beauty in those gloomy caverns." 
 
 "The water (of the Lesse River), which 
 disappears in flokky ( !) bubblings, does not 
 issue from the mountain until it has reached 
 the Hole of Han, after a mysterious passage 
 of eight to twenty hours, though the distance 
 be only 1138 metres." 
 
 "Oftentimes the experience of it was made 
 by throwing coloring matter into the water." 
 
 "Half a score of comely girls surround us; 
 each of them holds a lamp-post with two lamps 
 in her hand." 
 
 "In the Gallery of the Precipice there are 
 two rich obelisks, the tops of which disappear 
 in the anfractuosities of the vault." That's 
 right ; we saw them do it. 
 
 "Some tunes played by the droplets enhance 
 the pleasantness of your walk." 
 
 A few names of these halls and formations 
 will suggest their weird beauty to the reader: 
 The Mysteries, the Mosque, the Trophy, the 
 Tiara, the Alhambra, the Sieve of the Danaides
 
 1 62 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 and, grandest of all, the Hall of Dome. This 
 is the last word in cave sculpture. In it stands 
 a pyramid 168 feet high, a mountain within a 
 mountain. In this one room half a million cubic 
 meters of rock have dissolved from the core of 
 the mountain. It is 170 yards long, 150 wide, 
 and 220 yards high. Three fifteen-story "sky 
 scrapers" could be piled one above the other 
 in this monster cavern and not even scrape the 
 under surface of the hill top above you. 
 
 One guide descends to the bank of the sub- 
 marine river which cuts a channel through this 
 portion of the grotto, and another clambers to 
 the top, leaving us about one-fourth of the way 
 up. At a signal each one kindles a bengal 
 light and we get a good idea of the immensity 
 of the Salle du Dome. 
 
 After an hour and a half of walking, we 
 leave the cave by means of a row boat on the 
 waters of the Lesse. When you are seated in 
 the boat a cannon is fired but why need I 
 struggle with its description. Hearken to the 
 guide book ! 
 
 "The cannon shot was scarcely announced 
 when a tremendous rumbling shakes the whole 
 grotto, reverberates from hall to hall, and,
 
 The Grotto of Han 163 
 
 growing fainter and fainter, dwindles away 
 far off with a thousand sonorous vibrations." 
 After which we land safely on the banks of 
 the river and are left to guess our way to the 
 village of Han, where we manage to evade our 
 American friend and clamber into a bus which 
 takes us back to Rochefort.
 
 164 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 XX 
 
 Dinant and a Glimpse of France 
 
 FTER an excellent dinner at Rochefort, 
 seasoned by our afternoon's work we 
 return to Dinant, pick up our baggage 
 in the check room and try to find a hotel. The 
 Tete d'Or, starred by Baedeker, had a runner 
 at the station, but no bus. Some of our fellow 
 passengers allowed him to put their belongings 
 on a push cart and trudged away behind him. 
 The Hotel des Ardennes had a bus there, and 
 as it was past ten o'clock we climbed in and 
 drove for several minutes, only to find the 
 hotel full. Query : Why do European hotels 
 so frequently haul you for blocks when they 
 have not a vacant room in the house, and did 
 not have when the bus went to the station ? 
 
 They kindly drove us to the Hotel des Postes 
 where we have an excellent room on the 
 entresol, looking out over the Meuse and at the 
 citadel on its opposite bank. Framed by the
 
 Dinant and a Glimpse of France 165 
 
 steep rock which supports the old fortress is 
 the Church of Notre Dame. Back of it are 
 four hundred and eight steps leading up the 
 rock to the citadel. As usual we are greeted 
 each quarter of an hour by melodious chimes 
 from the belfry. 
 
 There is a beautiful drive along the Meuse 
 through a doorway in the solid cliff. One side 
 of this is the Rock of Bayard. Bayard was a 
 horse belonging to the four sons of Aymon. 
 He was possessed of magical attributes, and 
 among his lesser achievements was that of 
 jumping over the Meuse Valley from this rock, 
 leaving a hoof mark as evidence of his feat. 
 Some people might doubt this story but for 
 the hoof mark, but we did not because we once 
 saw the place in Wisconsin, near Kilbourn 
 City, where Black Hawk's horse leapt across 
 the Wisconsin River. It was not so wide as 
 the Meuse, but it was not a bad jump for a 
 broncho. Besides, the Black Hawk story is a 
 thousand years younger than the other one, and 
 will undoubtedly grow as time passes on. 
 
 Charlemagne finally captured Bayard and 
 weighted him with stones and threw him into 
 the water. But he shook himself free from his
 
 1 66 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 encumbrances, swam ashore and, with a defiant 
 neigh, disappeared into the Arden forest, 
 which he roams to this day. 
 
 One of the Aymon boys, Renault, kept up 
 his outlaw career as long as he could, and when 
 he could no longer plunder by force, became a 
 monk and was canonized. 
 
 Dinant is noted for its chased copper ware 
 and its ginger bread. This latter named article 
 adorns countless shop windows and much skill 
 is shown in the formation of fanciful designs. 
 
 From Dinant we go to Givet. We are again 
 surprised by the customs officials at Heer- 
 Agimont and find that we are unintentionally 
 in France. From Givet it is only forty-eight 
 minutes to Sedan, the big battle field of the 
 Franco-Prussian war, so disastrous to French 
 arms. As Waterloo, the scene of another 
 French defeat, is on our itinerary, we conclude 
 not to visit Sedan. 
 
 We do not stay in Givet long, but after 
 luncheon proceed to Charleroi. This train 
 takes two hours to go thirty-one miles, and 
 should transfer its cow catcher to the rear car. 
 We believe that we change cars at Chatelineau, 
 but we are not certain and we do not care.
 
 THE ROCK OF BAYARD DINANT
 
 Dinant and a Glimpse of France 167 
 
 These countries are so small that we could 
 start all over again if we lost ourselves and 
 then make the circuit. 
 
 We soon go back to Belgium and through 
 another custom house. Leopold will have to 
 buy some more chalk when his customs officials 
 get through marking up our baggage. You 
 need a balance pole to keep from stepping over 
 the wavy line which divides these two by four 
 countries. 
 
 On this train is posted the following notice : 
 "It is formally and under penalty of a fine pro- 
 hibited to deposit in the nets of the carriages 
 any parcel the accidental fall of which might 
 expose the passengers to be injured."
 
 1 68 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 XXI 
 
 Charleroi and Mons 
 
 E reach Charleroi safely, having 
 changed cars successfully. As we have 
 also refused a piece of bad money we 
 feel that we are very knowing travelers. 
 
 B. thinks she has a joke on me. She was 
 studying the time card and asked me the name 
 of the station at which we were stopping. I 
 read the name on the end of a building near 
 the tracks and told her "Merchandises." The 
 name is common to all the freight houses in 
 the country, so she thinks that she has the 
 laugh on me. 
 
 Although we are still in the Borinage, the 
 home of the over-worked and under-paid coal 
 miner, we notice that the bumpers at the end 
 of the tracks within the stations are covered 
 with flowering vines or made up into flower 
 beds. 
 
 We did not see much of Charleroi. We
 
 Charleroi and Mons 169 
 
 drove about for awhile, but it is a manufac- 
 turing town with a glorious past and a sooty 
 present. The day is hot and we are anxious 
 to get nearer to the sea. Holland is a much 
 better summer resort than this portion of Bel- 
 gium. 
 
 This section of the country witnessed the 
 preliminaries of the Battle of Waterloo. Char- 
 leroi 's capture was Napoleon's first step in the 
 campaign, and it was successfully achieved. 
 But it only stayed for a moment his progress 
 from Elba to St. Helena. 
 
 Mons is the capital of Hainault. Its Flemish 
 name is Berghen. No chance for confusion 
 there ! 
 
 Cresar laid it out and it has been laid out 
 several times since, but never completely buried. 
 For a couple of centuries, whenever a general 
 was not busy he would say. ''Let's go and take 
 Mons." It has been left alone for over a hun- 
 dred years now, and has become a prosperous 
 town. It is the heart of the Borinage, or rather 
 the center thereof. The Borinage has no heart. 
 Three-fourths of Belgium's 125,000 miners 
 live in the Province of Hainault. This accounts
 
 170 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 for the fact that ninety per cent of the passen- 
 ger cars in this neighborhood are third class. 
 
 The Church of St. Waltrudis has gargoyles 
 that make those on Notre Dame in Paris look 
 like a Congress of Beauty. People in Mons go 
 to church because once inside they cannot see 
 the gargoyles, and they can see a most mag- 
 nificent interior. It is three hundred and fifty- 
 five feet long and has sixty columns and ninety 
 windows. There are some very handsome 
 chapels in the transepts. The carriage in which 
 the reliquary is carried is the most glittering 
 wheeled vehicle imaginable. Our guide through 
 this old church brings to mind Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes and one of his inimitable metaphors : 
 
 "Abbey churches are like old cheeses. They 
 have a tough grey rind and a rich interior 
 which find food and lodging for numerous 
 tenants who live and die under their shelter; 
 lowly servitors, some of them, holy ministers 
 of religion many, I doubt not, larvae of angels, 
 who will get their wings by and by." 
 
 We climb to the top of the Beffroi, two 
 hundred and seventy-five feet high, from which 
 we get a fine view of the smoking foundries
 
 Charleroi and Mons 171 
 
 of Mons. It reminds one of Chicago on a clear 
 day. 
 
 The Hotel de Ville was started in 1458, but 
 it is not completed. That is a little worse 
 than the public building record in the United 
 States. Its. fagade has ten statues and its 
 baroque tower has a curious combination clock 
 and sun dial. The small cast iron ape project- 
 ing from the wall to the left of the main en- 
 trance has no meaning, but is considered a 
 feature by the citizens and shown to strangers. 
 The lock of the court yard gate is in the form 
 of a four-turreted castle, that being the munici- 
 pal coat of arms. 
 
 Every time our driver quits touching him 
 up and turns around to tell us something, his 
 horse stops. He is like the old colored man 
 who sat weaving back and forth in the shade 
 of his cabin. A white passer-by said : "What's 
 the matter, uncle? Don't you feel well?" 
 
 "Yes, boss, I feels fust rate, but I done been 
 to Atlanta, and I bought one of them dollah 
 watches, and if I stops the watch stops." 
 
 We notice revenue stamps on the "For rent" 
 signs placed in vacant buildings. Very few 
 articles or activities escape taxation in Belgium.
 
 172 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 We drove through a long shady boulevard 
 and then asked the driver to show us the 
 poorer neighborhoods, but he intimated that 
 they were too shady. 
 
 There is an equestrian statue of Baldwin IX. 
 at the head of the boulevard. He headed the 
 fourth crusade, but was diverted from his 
 original purpose and used his army for restor- 
 ing Constantinople to the Christians. Assisted 
 by the venerable Dandolo, a successful three 
 months' siege was carried on. At its conclu- 
 sion, the jealousy of the Venetians prevented 
 the election of Dandolo as emperor, and his 
 youthful contemporary Baldwin IX. of Flan- 
 ders became Baldwin I., emperor of Constanti- 
 nople. The news of the capture of Constanti- 
 nople was conveyed to Venice by carrier 
 pigeons, and the descendants of these pigeons 
 are protected by law, and levy tribute on all 
 visitors to Venice. 
 
 The wooden klompen in this district is made 
 with a leather strap, and sometimes the entire 
 upper is of leather with a wooden sole. Shrines 
 are plentiful and have been so ever since we 
 left Holland. Practically all of the people of 
 Belgium are Roman Catholics, while two-
 
 Charleroi and Mons 173 
 
 thirds of the Hollanders are Protestants. It 
 is hard to conceive that two such tiny kingdoms 
 crowded so closely together should be such 
 polar opposites in everything climate, topog- 
 raphy, temperament and religion. As stated 
 before, the' only surprising thing about the 
 revolution of 1830 was that it did not come 
 sooner.
 
 174 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 XXII 
 Brussels 
 
 E start for Brussels about midday. Our 
 compartment is shared by three ladies 
 in deep mourning, apparently return- 
 ing from a funeral. Their parasols are adorned 
 with crepe. The young woman of the party 
 is not too bowed down with grief over the 
 dead to forget the admiration of the living, 
 for her deep black gown is very transparent 
 in sleeves and yoke. You can see right through 
 that sort of mourning. 
 
 You may be interested in having a real ex- 
 ample of official politeness. The guard or con- 
 ductor enters your compartment, removes his 
 cap, and says, "Bon jour, madame; bon jour, 
 m'sieu; les billets, s'il vous plait." 
 
 I hand him the tickets. 
 
 "Merci, bien." 
 
 He punches them and as he hands them back, 
 murmurs :
 
 Brussels 175 
 
 "S'il vous plait." 
 
 It is my turn, so I say, "Merci, bien." 
 
 "Desirez-vous un commissionaire a Bruxel- 
 les?" 
 
 "S'il vous plai^"-**vW*4 
 
 And at Brussels he has a "commissionaire" 
 waiting for our luggage when the train stops. 
 
 The ride to Brussels was clean, cool and 
 smooth, through a farming region like the best 
 portions of rural France. 
 
 At the Hotel de 1'Europe we have a suite of 
 two rooms at a cost of twelve francs per day. 
 Those are metropolitan prices and our rooms 
 are the best in the house. This hotel is on the 
 square the public square. Our windows open 
 on the square and are only four feet high. You 
 have to lie down on the floor to look out on 
 the square. I am lying now as I write. 
 
 In the center of the square, the Place Royale, 
 stands an equestrian figure of Godfrey of 
 Bouillon. On that spot he formed his first little 
 army of crusaders with the cry, "God wills it." 
 To a few good men it seemed intolerable that 
 Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre should re- 
 main in the hands of the Mohammedans. To 
 these was added a large number of the scum
 
 176 Three \Yeeks in Holland 
 
 of the earth, who were lured by promises of 
 carte blanche absolution for their sins. After 
 a series of ebbing and flowing fortunes they 
 captured Jerusalem amid scenes of atrocity 
 and slaughter. Having recovered His grave 
 they buried therein all that their Lord had 
 ever taught of love, peace and good will. God- 
 frey was the first king of Jerusalem elected, 
 and during his reign, there was much righting 
 with the Mussulman forces. 
 
 From Godfrey's statue it is only a few min- 
 utes' walk down the Rue de la Regence to the 
 Royal Museum, with its splendid gallery of 
 old pictures and new. The Hall of Sculptures 
 is on the first floor. "Innocence" is a master- 
 piece, but she is carved from heavily veined 
 marble that gives her the appearance of having 
 had some severe bumps. If she has been in 
 Brussels long, she probably has had a few. 
 
 Two striking bronzes attracted our attention. 
 They were figures of a negro slave. In the 
 first he was being bastinadoed and in the sec- 
 ond, called "Vengeance," he was crawling on 
 the ground, knife in hand and with his face 
 drawn by the passion of hate and revenge. It 
 was cruelly well done.
 
 Brussels 177 
 
 . Of the paintings, we really enjoyed Rubens' 
 "Adoration of the Magi." It seemed consistent 
 throughout, and that is not an ever-present 
 virtue in Netherland paintings. For example, 
 in his "Way to Golgotha," in the same gallery. 
 Veronica is- dressed in a costume of Rubens' 
 day and country, and in a picture near by, the 
 group around the "Madonna and Child" are 
 all sixteenth century burgomasters. 
 
 Rubens' "Martyrdom of St. Livinius" is a 
 masterpiece of repulsiveness. Many of the 
 triptychs or winged pictures are amusing be- 
 cause they frequently include the patron among 
 those present in the Bethlehem stable or at the 
 cross, while they did not hesitate to add to 
 those watching at the tomb his whole family, 
 if he so desired it. 
 
 Please notice No. 243. It represents a group 
 of burgomasters kneeling to the Virgin, but 
 with faces turned squarely to the artist. 
 
 This is a grand collection and is second in 
 Belgium to only one, the Antwerp gallery. It 
 has much of beauty that will be pointed out 
 to you by better judges than I, and many 
 paintings which you will be expected to rave 
 over and which you can worship safely without
 
 178 Three Weeks /;/ Holland 
 
 violating' the second commandment, for they 
 do not resemble anything that is in heaven 
 above or in the earth beneath or in the water 
 under the earth. 
 
 The big picture galleries should be broken 
 up into smaller ones. Their highest purpose 
 is to instil a love of the beautiful in the minds 
 of the people, but unless that love is already 
 there the size of some collections wearies one 
 and the impression made by the really beautiful 
 paintings is completely lost in the succeeding 
 maze. One or two small galleries, like the 
 insignificant one at Mons, have given us more 
 pleasure than the acres of canvases by Dutch 
 and Belgian masters exhibited in the larger 
 cities. The eight or ten really fine painters of 
 the seventeenth century must have been ambi- 
 dexterous. Single handed they could never 
 have ground out the large number of pictures 
 that they are accused of painting. 
 
 The Palais de Justice crowns the slope at 
 the end of the street. It is a very large and 
 impressive structure. It cost nine million dol- 
 lars. Its area is larger than that of St. Peter's 
 in Rome. 
 
 We took a street car back to the Park. The
 
 Brussels 179 
 
 band was playing and the benches were filled 
 by people of the poorer classes. The Park is 
 very dusty and its narrow strips of grass are 
 carefully defended against invasion. 
 
 The palace is being enlarged and is inacces- 
 sible. Some buildings are being torn down to 
 make room for additions. One building is 
 completely encased in scaffolding to the roof, 
 with floors at every story, so that not a speck 
 of debris falls outside of the structure. 
 
 We then shopped along the Montagne de la 
 Cour, where the nic-nacs are a joy and the 
 gloves a disappointment in form, quality and 
 price. 
 
 We are assured that Leopold walks the 
 streets like any other citizen of Brussels, but 
 so far we have not seen him. Once a trumpet 
 blast caused us to rush to the window, but it 
 heralded the return of a Waterloo coaching 
 party. 
 
 The hotel room numbers are painted on 
 frosted glass and set in spaces cut out of the 
 door panel, so that they are readily distinguish- 
 able. Notwithstanding this precaution it is 
 quite easy to lose yourself if your room is on 
 the entresol. There is a wide stairway leading
 
 I So Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 up from the office. At the landing it divides. 
 If you turn to the right your stairs stop at the 
 entresol. If you turn to the left that floor is 
 omitted altogether and you land in the one 
 above. It is quite bewildering to know that 
 your room is immediately above the office and 
 not to be conscious of having passed a floor, 
 and yet to find yourself amid totally unfamiliar 
 surroundings. 
 
 There are barracks in the court back of the 
 hotel, and a sentry paces the sidewalk under 
 our window night and day, so we feel perfectly 
 secure in sleeping with wide open windows. 
 
 We are both barbered in the same shop, con- 
 ducted by the barber to the king. If he should 
 let as much hair go down Leopold's back as 
 he did mine there would be a new court barber 
 appointed. My predecessor in the chair was 
 a man past sixty years of age, who was being 
 elaborately marcelled. It must have required 
 an hour to fix him up, for the barber had first 
 to find the hair and then curl it. 
 
 The price of a table d'hote dinner at this 
 hotel is five francs. If you are half an hour 
 late it is six francs. If you do not order wine
 
 Brussels 181 
 
 it is seven francs. Wouldn't that drive you to 
 drink ? 
 
 At seven in the morning it is interesting to 
 watch the town wake up. A dog peddler is 
 out early, with a fluffy white poodle, looking 
 for a patron. among the nobility or the tourists. 
 The mere looks of this perfumed pet excites 
 the ire of a big working dog hitched to an 
 adjacent milk cart, and he nearly upsets his 
 cart in his efforts to get at the offender. The 
 girl in charge returns in time to prevent an 
 accident, but by this time all of the dogs in the 
 square are barking madly. 
 
 Half of the shops display signs announcing 
 that they cater to the King or the Court of 
 Flanders, but they get most of their real money 
 from the visitors. 
 
 The buses are trackless street cars. The 
 one that goes down the Montagne de la Cour 
 on the right of our hotel has two horses and 
 the fare is two cents. Coming up the hill they 
 hitch on two more horses and charge four 
 cents a ride. 
 
 The Gare Midi or Central Station, from 
 which the train for Waterloo departs, is sur- 
 rounded by a persistent and offensive set of
 
 1 82 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 guides, men and women, from whom it is very 
 difficult to escape. They follow you about and 
 volunteer information at every turn and want 
 to be paid for it. They tell you which is the 
 entrance to the station and what time the 
 Waterloo train goes, and a lot of other facts 
 which are plainly indicated on the signs all 
 about.
 
 Waterloo 183 
 
 XXIII 
 
 Waterloo 
 
 T is half an hour's ride to Waterloo, or 
 to Braine-l'Alleud, for the battle 
 ground is several miles from the vil- 
 lage of Waterloo. The village has been coupled 
 with the most famous battle of modern history 
 because Wellington sent the dispatches an- 
 nouncing his victory therefrom. It is rather 
 a curious fact that earlier in the day couriers 
 had been sent from the French lines to Paris, 
 announcing a French victory. 
 
 After leaving the train we took a small car- 
 riage and had for companions two American 
 young men and an Englishman with two ladies. 
 Our first stop was at the foot of a mound on 
 top of which stands the Belgian Lion. On 
 this spot not on top of the mound, but on the 
 spot covered by it the Prince of Orange was 
 wounded. The lion was cast at Seraing by 
 Cockerill from the metal of captured French
 
 184 Three Weeks in Holland ' 
 
 cannon and weighs twenty-eight tons. In 
 building the mound the unpardonable mistake 
 was made of destroying the "sunken road," so 
 graphically described in Les Miserables, and 
 leveling all of the field of battle thereby com- 
 pletely obliterating the story which it might 
 have told to the student of strategy. Women 
 working for eight cents a day carried the dirt 
 in baskets to the mound. 
 
 It was charged against the French that their 
 soldiers, returning from the Belgian revolution 
 in i 32, cut off the tail which they had failed 
 to twist in 1815. But our guide denies the 
 story, and substantiates his denial by quoting 
 his grandfather who lived here from 1807 until 
 his death a few years ago and who never heard 
 of the transaction. 
 
 It is a weary climb up the two hundred and 
 twenty-six steps to the top. Looking at the 
 monotonous plain of Waterloo from that ele- 
 vation suggests no more to the unimaginative 
 mind than would the glassy surface of the Sea 
 of Japan dissassociated from the fact of Togo's 
 victory. 
 
 The first thing that impresses one is the small 
 size of the field. Only seven hundred yards
 
 THE MOUND AT WATERLOO
 
 Waterloo 185 
 
 separated the flanks of the French and the 
 allies. Wellington's center was but three- 
 quarters of a mile from Napoleon's head- 
 quarters. The line of battle was less than three 
 miles long. In this little spot of ground, hardly 
 large enough for a dress parade, over three 
 hundred thousand men tore at each others' 
 throats for five or six hours, and when it was 
 over counted a loss of fifty thousand dead or 
 disabled. Men did not sight their cannon 
 with telescopes and learn the results of each 
 shot by wireless telegraphy in those days. The 
 smooth bore flintlock of our fathers had an 
 effective range of less than a hundred yards 
 and could be fired about once a minute, while 
 the muzzle loading field gun sent grape or 
 canister about six hundred yards. A modern 
 magazine rifle can deliver twenty-five shots a 
 minute and can kill at forty-two hundred yards, 
 while within two thousand yards it is accurate 
 and deadly. An automatic machine will send 
 a hail of bullets at the rate of one thousand a 
 minute. Today Wellington would not need to 
 leave the Brussels ball room to direct a battle 
 on this spot. 
 
 We drove over the road built by Napoleon
 
 1 86 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 in 1800, fifteen years before the battle. It is 
 probably a good cavalry road,, but is very rough 
 for buggy riding. We passed La Haie Sainte, 
 a farm house which the French succeeded in 
 taking. A little farther down the road is the 
 cabaret, La Belle Alliance, which was Na- 
 poleon's headquarters. Then we left the main 
 road and went across country to the farm 
 house of Hougomont, which was the white hot 
 point of the battle all day. This little brick 
 enclosed farm yard was a natural fortress, and 
 it was like a pit of the Inferno during the entire 
 battle. But it was never taken by the French. 
 It was literally shot to pieces. Every foot of 
 wall and buildings is pitted with the scars of 
 bullet, grape and canister. Fifteen hundred 
 were killed there in one hour. Three hundred 
 bodies were thrown into the old well after the 
 battle. Part of the family chapel was not de- 
 stroyed and still stands. Within is a life-size 
 crucifix. Fire broke out in the farm house and 
 no one had time to put it out. It burned to the 
 wall holding the crucifix and went out of its 
 own accord. 
 
 The family who own this farm make a large 
 income from sight-seers. They plant little bul-
 
 Waterloo 187 
 
 lets and souvenirs. These are sown in the fall 
 and the winter's snows and spring rains bring 
 them to perfection. Early in the summer they 
 are ploughed up and sold to the credulous. We 
 have a grape shot and an insignia from an 
 artilleryman's cap which came from the field 
 of Waterloo. But when they went to the field 
 of Waterloo, deponent saith not. 
 
 The shin bone of some unidentified hero was 
 offered at three francs over the same counter 
 where we purchased our relics. 
 
 The French have erected a monument near 
 La Belle Alliance on the spot where the Im- 
 perial Guard covered the personal retreat of 
 Napoleon. It is in the form of an eagle with 
 its wings shot full of holes, but clutching the 
 banner of France in one talon and defying its 
 enemies with beak and claw. It is the most 
 impressive memorial on the field and in telling 
 its story ranks with the Lion of Lucerne. 
 
 Our visit to Waterloo is made more realistic 
 by a light rain, similar to the one which 
 softened the ground June 18, 1815, and made 
 rapid artillery maneuvers impossible. The battle 
 ground is all either in pasture or under culti-
 
 1 88 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 vation, and between the rows of grain, poppies 
 flare out like drops of blood. 
 
 We return to the station by the Paris road, 
 built by ancient Rome and extending to the 
 capital of France, one hundred and sixty-two 
 miles away. Napoleon brought his army over 
 that road to Waterloo. It seems a long way 
 to come for a thrashing. 
 
 Of course an Englishman may be pardoned 
 for being a trifle self-assertive on this battle 
 field, so it was not surprising to have our 
 British traveler say, rather pompously: 'The 
 victory was the more creditable for Wellington 
 because he had to fight with raw recruits. 
 Most of our veterans were in your country at 
 that time." I could not help suggesting that 
 most of them are there yet. He took my re- 
 mark in good part, and we were getting on 
 famously when some one spoke of the quaint 
 costume of the Dutch. One of the young men 
 from New Jersey blurted out that he did not 
 think the Hollanders dressed any funnier than 
 the English. That made an Anglo-American 
 alliance impossible for the time being, and we 
 finished our ride in silence. 
 
 Without wishing to precipitate an argument
 
 THE CHAPEL OP HOUGOMONT
 
 Waterloo 189 
 
 with the regular army man, one is reminded 
 that many battles have been won by raw re- 
 cruits. However seasoned were Holland's 
 sailors in her war with Spain, her army was 
 made up of peasants and burghers whose trade 
 was peace, and yet the Spanish veterans were 
 unable to conquer them. Great Britain's 
 trained soldiers laid down their arms before 
 the farmer boys of the American colonies. 
 Wellington's best fighting at Waterloo was 
 done by men with the first smell of powder in 
 their nostrils. In South Africa the untrained 
 Boer collected heavy tribute from the flower 
 of England's army before he was overwhelmed 
 by numbers. The Russian army, the perfected 
 tool of several centuries of autocracy, was 
 swept away like chaff before the little men of 
 Japan, who have only recently turned their 
 attention to fighting. It takes more than 
 money and time and discipline to make a vic- 
 torious army. It requires faith in the cause 
 and in the leader, and when this abounds it 
 will carry the day against scarred and powder- 
 burned legions. 
 
 One of the odd things in the neighborhood 
 of Waterloo is a monument to the Marquis
 
 190 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 of Anglesea's leg, which was amputated after 
 the battle and buried in the garden of a peasant. 
 We ate lunch at a restaurant near the station 
 where there was a notice to the effect that if 
 the music played while you were eating, the 
 regular price would be "augmented" a few 
 centimes. The only war-like trait that seems 
 to have been transmitted to the present genera- 
 tion of Belgians is the ability to charge.
 
 Brussels Again 191 
 
 XXIV 
 
 Brussels Again 
 
 ETURNING to Brussels, we loaf 
 around the Grand Place, the most per- 
 fectly preserved mediaeval square in 
 Europe. This was the scene of some of Alva's 
 murderous executions. Twenty-five nobles 
 were beheaded here in 1568 for loyalty to the 
 Dutch cause, and the next year Egmont and 
 Horn met their fate in the same spot. 
 
 The Hotel de Ville occupies one side of the 
 Place. It is a gothic structure with a delicate, 
 needle-like tower. The Maison du Roi is on 
 the north east side. Egmont and Horn passed 
 their last night alive therein, and from its win- 
 dows Alva witnessed their execution. Quaint 
 guild houses surround the rest of the square. 
 The drapers, the skippers, the archers, carpen- 
 ters, printers, bakers, brewers, tailors and 
 painters, each have their building and each one 
 is distinct and characteristic. All have been well 
 taken care of and are in excellent condition.
 
 192 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 We wish to go to the Botanic Gardens. The 
 legal cab fare is twenty cents for the trip. We 
 approach a group of cabmen in the center of 
 the square and ask the fare to our destination. 
 As a unit they declare it to be thirty cents. 
 Some demon of obstinacy makes me resolve to 
 spend a lot of valuable time in teaching these 
 cabbies a lesson, so we start to walk. By good 
 luck we choose the right direction, and before 
 we have gone half a block we are overtaken 
 by one of the men, who gladly lets us ride at 
 the legal rate plus the ever present pourboirc 
 of a few cents. 
 
 The Botanic Gardens are not large but 
 abound in beautiful specimens of flowers and 
 trees from all over the world. Scattered 
 through this splendid display of nature's handi- 
 work are magnificent bronzes. Seven statues 
 represent young girls in various graceful atti- 
 tudes, the most beautiful of them to our eyes 
 being the Goose Girl. 
 
 We drive back to the Church of St. Gudule, 
 an old Gothic structure begun in the thirteenth 
 century, and well situated at the top of a hill. 
 The stained glass windows are beautiful. It 
 is a very large and very busy church. There
 
 Brussels Again 193 
 
 are a great many people at prayer. One altar 
 is devoted to those who seek for healing, and 
 numberless images of arms and legs are sus- 
 pended therefrom as a reminder to the saint 
 of the portion of the body which needs help. 
 
 The carved pulpit is supported by figures of 
 Adam and Eve, and the Tree of the Knowl- 
 edge of Good and Evil overshadows it, just 
 as it does so many other pulpits. On the side 
 of Adam are gathered animals of the strong, 
 devouring type, while the sculptor has grouped 
 about Eve peacocks, parrots and monkeys 
 the mean thing ! 
 
 The street names are printed at all intersec- 
 tions in French and Dutch. All public procla- 
 mations receive the same treatment. 
 
 As Leopold wears a full beard, many Bel- 
 gians show their patriotism by growing all the 
 whiskers that their chins will carry, just as 
 loyal Germans turn up the ends of their mus- 
 taches in emulation of Emperor William. One 
 wonders what would happen should a one-eyed 
 monarch ascend the throne. 
 
 Since writing the above in jest, my eye fell 
 on some reminiscences of the singer, Emma 
 Nevada, in which she states that at a concert
 
 194 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 in Copenhagen, attended by the royal family, 
 every man in the audience had his hat on. 
 Later she learned that the crown prince was 
 obliged to wear his hat in order to protect an 
 inflamed eye. So every loyal Dane did like- 
 wise, and even pulled his headgear forward a 
 trifle over one eye. 
 
 Outside of a comic opera there never was 
 such a variety of military uniforms as you see 
 in Belgium. A company of infantry just 
 passed our hotel window with a bugler and 
 natty captain in the lead. Their uniform is a 
 dark green, with stiff black hats and pompons 
 of feathers. 
 
 We dine at a sidewalk cafe the Joseph on 
 the Boulevard Anspach. It is delightful to sit 
 and nibble and sip while the life and gaiety of 
 the city are all about you. Our waiter has two 
 essentials of a successful caterer: He makes 
 an irreproachable salad and he remembers 
 faces. On our second visit to the Joseph after 
 an absence of twenty-four hours, we secured 
 the same table and the same waiter, for we 
 wanted some more of his salad dressing. He 
 came up smiling and bowing, and, as a sort of 
 experiment, I said, "Bring us the same dinner
 
 Brussels Again 195 
 
 that we had before." He looked at me a mo- 
 ment, his face brightened with recollection and 
 he named over each course interrogatively. He 
 did not omit a dish and served it in perfect 
 order. 
 
 After dinner we attend the kirmess. As 
 Brussels is a large city and always filled with 
 strangers, the kirmess continues for six weeks 
 each summer. One long street is devoted to 
 booths, carrousels and side shows, and it seems 
 two miles from one end to the other of the 
 brilliantly colored incandescent lights. We 
 enter a booth which looks attractive. The 
 tickets are four, six and ten cents. The seats 
 nearest the stage are the cheapest. The band 
 in front is playing "The Honeysuckle and the 
 Bee." The performance is entirely cinemato- 
 graph. In fact this form of entertainment is 
 popular all over Holland and Belgium. We 
 go in and out of several booths and see frag- 
 ments of programs or catch glimpses of fat 
 ladies and snake charmers. There are a few 
 trained animal shows. Some of the booths 
 are highly ornate, with papier mache statuary 
 outside and velvet draperies within. The most 
 characteristic stalls are those in which are sold
 
 196 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 a sort of Dutch fried cakes, "poppertjes," made 
 while you wait, and served hot. The girls and 
 women who preside over these places wear the 
 national head-dress and costume. 
 
 We arise early on Sunday morning and go 
 to the Grand Place. The scene is changed 
 since our last visit. It is bird and flower 
 market day, and we are greeted by a bedlam 
 of screeches from birds and cries from their 
 owners. One side is banked with flowers for 
 sale. An enterprising proprietor of a cafe 
 which occupies the old Weigh House has a 
 card in his window stating that his second floor 
 balcony is for rent to kodakers for a franc. 
 It commands a good view of the square, and 
 soon we are spreading our tripod in it and 
 getting ready for business. It is a fitful day 
 and the sun seems to want to tantalize us by 
 emerging for just a few seconds and then re- 
 treating again. In spite of his playfulness we 
 get a few pictures. 
 
 A peddler of drinks circulates among the 
 people. He carries a double metal tank on his 
 back and faucets project from each side on a 
 level with his waist. One cup is used for both 
 sides and for an unlimited number of patrons.
 
 Brussels Again 197 
 
 En route to our car line we make some pur- 
 chases in a dainty little copper shop where the 
 proprietress, her little six-year-old and the kit- 
 ten are all clad in the same soft shade of gray. 
 Then we drop in on Leopold's haberdasher and 
 purchase a white vest. Either my body or the 
 King's is upside down, for the garment has to 
 be altered in a manner that amounts to a com- 
 plete reversal. It is done, however, without 
 charge and delivered to the hotel room in half 
 an hour. Judging from the very low price 
 charged today by his furnisher and yesterday 
 by his barber, I cannot help wondering what 
 Leopold does with his salary. 
 
 The closing of my vest deal involved more 
 red tape than it would take to convey a corner 
 lot in Cook County. The salesman took me 
 to the cashier and commenced to tell him facts 
 and figures which were repeated by the cashier 
 in a monotonous drone. They could not have 
 been more solemn and sepulchral if I had been 
 taking orders instead of giving one. 
 
 In the afternoon we visited the Wiertz Mu- 
 seum. Anton Joseph Wiertz was a crank. A 
 crank has been defined as something that you 
 cannot turn. At any rate he had ideas at vari-
 
 198 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 ance with those held by other men and he put 
 those ideas on canvas. He did not believe in 
 capital punishment and he made a nightmare 
 which he called "A Vision of a Beheaded 
 Man." He loved peace and he painted "Na- 
 poleon in Hell," with soldiers and their widows 
 taunting him. He preached a sermon against 
 vanity in two pictures, one a study of a female 
 figure before a mirror and the other the same 
 pose and mirror, but the figure a skeleton. 
 There are four small pictures at which you 
 look through peep holes, and the illusion cre- 
 ated makes them seem like flesh and blood. 
 You step around a corner and a smiling maid 
 holds a door ajar for you to enter, but door 
 and maid are painted on the wall. In another 
 corner a painted dog lies in a painted kennel 
 with a painted bone between his paws, while 
 one floor above him sits an old concierge 
 smoking at a window, the shutter of which is 
 not painted, but swings back and forth. Ec- 
 centric, bizarre, not "art," I grant you, but 
 effective just the same. 
 
 After the death of Wiertz the state bought 
 his residence and made it into this museum 
 where all are admitted free.
 
 Brussels Again 199 
 
 While at dinner with table on the sidewalk, 
 a new variety of soldier marches by. He wears 
 cerise trousers with shiny boots half way to his 
 knees, yellow stripes, a dark green coat and a 
 visorless cap. 
 
 On the Rue de la Regence, not far from 
 our hotel, is the monument to Egmont and 
 Horn in a small park. Back of this park is 
 Egmont's former residence, now the palace of 
 the Due d'Arenberg. The palace is open to 
 the public on week days. 
 
 The bronze statue is surrounded by marble 
 figures of William the Silent and his friends 
 and lieutenants, who made the history of the 
 Netherlands glorious in the sixteenth century. 
 Egmont fell a victim to his own vacillating 
 disposition and dragged sturdy, straight-for- 
 ward Horn down with him. He was trying 
 to get into the Spanish band wagon when he 
 fell under the wheels, and he was always an 
 uncertain quantity in William's calculations. It 
 is exasperating to see him in bronze towering 
 above William the Silent, who is simply one 
 of the chorus in marble surrounding him. 
 
 We have had to put lemon squash on our 
 Index Expurgatoris. In Belgium they put
 
 2OO Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 some sort of aniline dye into it that spoils it 
 for us. To get straight lemonade you must 
 ask for "Citroen naturelle," and they bring you 
 two glasses with the juice of half a lemon in 
 each, some loaf sugar and a bottle of water. 
 If you have time, you dissolve the sugar, pour 
 in the water and serve. 
 
 Some of the streets in Brussels must have 
 been guilty of dark crimes in their youth. They 
 turn and twist as if to elude pursuit, and 
 further add to their suspicious behavior by 
 assuming a new alias every few blocks. For 
 example the Rue Montagne de la Cour leaves 
 the Place Royale with its kingly surroundings 
 and drops a little lower, becoming the Rue de 
 la Madeleine, then changing to the humble Rue 
 de Marche aux Herbes. It crosses the Boule- 
 vard Anspach and emerges as the Rue de 
 Marche aux Poulets. Farther on it becomes 
 the Rue St. Catharine, straightens up a bit as 
 the Rue de Flandre, and finally loses itself in 
 the street of the Field of the Four Winds. A 
 map of Boston looks like a checker board when 
 placed beside a plan of Brussels. 
 
 They use the croupiest little tin horns here 
 with which to start street cars. They might
 
 5TATUE OF EG MONT AND HORN BRUSSELS
 
 Brussels Again 201 
 
 start a riot in America or a runaway, but never 
 a street car. They are used as a sort of con- 
 cession to Brussels' patron saint, Gabriel. 
 
 Here come some more of Leopold's soldiers. 
 This mannerchor has on white duck trousers, 
 green, long-tailed coats and shiny black hats. 
 
 The women of Brussels have beautiful forms 
 and walk like queens. In fact, they are much 
 better made than their apparel. The material 
 is costly, but as a rule ill-fitting and unbecom- 
 ing. White is naturally prevalent in such a 
 clean city, and the majority wear cream-colored 
 leather shoes with black hose. All of the above 
 observations are made from our sidewalk table 
 in a speckless atmosphere. Barring the ped- 
 dlers of post cards and the inharmonious 
 hosiery, there is nothing in the scene that you 
 would wish to have different. 
 
 Think of buying a bouquet of three roses, 
 red, white and pink, for two cents, and then 
 taking your sweetheart two blocks to the Palais 
 d'Ete, where for eighty cents each you may 
 occupy a box and study both the audience and 
 the actors in a fashionable vaudeville theater. 
 The hall is very long and the parquet almost 
 level, and you wonder how the people in the
 
 2O2 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 rear see anything. The seats are marked 
 Loue as fast as they are sold. A gallery runs 
 around three sides of the building, and the 
 whole scene is brilliant with red, white and 
 blue electric lights. Each seat has a shelf in 
 front of it for opera or wine glasses. The 
 ushers are girls and the programs cost five 
 cents each. There are twenty-four pieces in 
 the orchestra. There are American, French, 
 German and Chinese specialties on the stage, 
 the last named terminating in a "slide for life" 
 from the roof, which ended comically when the 
 actor nearly lost his cue. It became entangled 
 in the little wheel and halted it half way, and 
 left him kicking and spluttering Chinese in mid 
 air. The whole apparatus had to be lowered 
 to the floor in order to liberate him. 
 
 After the performance we caught a late bus 
 up our mountain and occupied the only two 
 standing places vacant on the front platform.
 
 Tournai and Lille 203 
 
 XXV 
 
 Tournai and Lille 
 
 HE next day we shopped among the 
 lace makers and jewelers until time to 
 take the train for Tournai. 
 As the battle of Waterloo was not fought 
 at Waterloo, we are not disturbed to learn 
 that the principal industry of Tournai is the 
 manufacture of "Brussels" carpets. Our train 
 takes us through more of the Borinage and we 
 murmur "Back to the mines" as we survey the 
 uninviting towns and villages through which 
 we pass. We notice one curious piece of vege- 
 tation. It is a pear tree which spreads over a 
 space eight or ten feet square, but is not over 
 six inches in thickness. It is trained against 
 the walls of houses and at first glance resembles 
 a vine. 
 
 At Tournai we find an intelligent driver and 
 our first visit is to the Cathedral. It is an 
 eleventh century church, but Tournai was six
 
 2O4 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 hundred years old when its corner stone was 
 laid. Its stained glass windows are beautiful 
 and seem to have taken something from the 
 centuries of sunlight sifted through them and 
 to have blended it with the artists' colors, soft- 
 ening and harmonizing them. The exterior is 
 rich with sculptures. The choir screen within 
 is magnificent. 
 
 In the Grand Place stands a statue of the 
 Princess d'Epinoy, Tournai's Joan of Arc. She 
 led the defenders when the city was attacked 
 by Alexander of Parma in 1581. 
 
 The Church of St. Quentin is a small struc- 
 ture but beautiful. It contains a most effective 
 statue of the Virgin, which is so placed and 
 lighted as to seem very life-like. 
 
 At the Cloth Hall they were having the 
 graduating exercises of a boys' school. The 
 little fellows went through a number of calis- 
 thenic evolutions in perfect unison to the ac- 
 companiment of piano music. We listened to 
 two embryo Belgian statesmen recite, and their 
 gestures and intonations denoted a natural gift 
 of oratory unusual in ten-year-olds. 
 
 The museum is in the gallery of the same 
 building. It contains a great many Roman
 
 Tournai and Lille 205 
 
 antiquities unearthed near Tournai, and a very 
 death-like picture of Egmont and Horn re- 
 ceiving the homage of the guilds after their 
 execution. 
 
 The belfry affords a magnificent view of the 
 cathedral, the city and its surroundings. 
 
 The drive to the Hotel de Ville takes you 
 past several interesting Gothic houses of the 
 seventeenth century. The Hotel de Ville is a 
 suppressed monastery. It was in the hands of 
 the house-cleaners, hence the salon of the queen 
 was no more impressive than any other room 
 would be if viewed beneath step ladders and 
 filled with soap suds and dust rags. 
 
 You next go past a number of old churches, 
 gray with the grist of ages, to the Pont des 
 Trous, a bridge built in 1290 across the 
 Scheldt, and recently closed by the building 
 commissioner. It has two massive towers at 
 each end. Between the bridge and the station 
 stands the old tower of Henry VIII. , built in 
 1513, and resembling a tomb on the Appian 
 Way. 
 
 We had time for luncheon at the depot be- 
 fore departing for Lille. After we were safely 
 installed in our compartment we asked a pass-
 
 206 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 ing guard when we were due to arrive at Lille. 
 His reply developed the fact that he had a hair 
 lip. We can understand good French a little 
 and Belgian French less, but when confronted 
 with Belgian hair-lip French we threw up our 
 four hands and told him we would wait until 
 we reached Lille and look at our watches. 
 
 Lille is in France, and we were hardly seated 
 comfortably when the train stopped and a uni- 
 formed official ordered us to take our baggage 
 into the depot for examination. This adds 
 Eaiseau to our list of frontier towns. It was 
 awarded to France by the Peace of Utrecht. 
 
 At Lille our hotel is built around a big court 
 into which the bus drives. We have a good 
 night's rest and ride around the city in the 
 morning. Lille is the birth-place of lisle thread. 
 
 The Bourse is an attractive old shell within 
 whose walls is played the same attractive old 
 shell game as in other Bourses. 
 
 The Hotel de Ville was built during the 
 nineteenth century and we pass it by in scorn. 
 
 In the Church of St. Catharine is an altar 
 piece by Rubens, representing Catherine's mar- 
 tyrdom. The name of P. P. Rubens is given 
 great prominence on the frame, while you have
 
 Tournai and Lille 207 
 
 to refer to Baedeker to learn who is the lady 
 that is being martyred. That is proper. There 
 is only one Rubens while there is an army of 
 martyrs. 
 
 The Jardin Vauban (named after the great 
 military engineer) is a pretty park within 
 whose shady depths a cascade ripples and 
 sparkles as it emerges from a natural grotto. 
 It is another of those sights which are endorsed 
 by the cab drivers' union because you have to 
 walk quite a distance to it from the roadway, 
 while horse and driver rest and your bill keeps 
 moving on. In the park a man is sprinkling 
 grass and shrubbery over a wide area by dip- 
 ping a long oar with a spoon-shaped end into 
 the brook and throwing the water from it. 
 
 Our driver takes us next to the Porte de 
 Paris and grows so enthusiastic over it as he 
 leans back to tell us about it that he fairly 
 foams at the mouth and we have to keep 
 dodging. Having struck his gait, he persists 
 in driving us around the outskirts of the city 
 from gate to gate. 
 
 No one need ever suffer from thirst in Lille 
 if he has money. There are saloons every few
 
 208 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 doors, mostly kept by women and largely pat- 
 ronized by women. 
 
 There are some striking pictures in the gal- 
 lery of the Palais des Beaux Arts. The "Inun- 
 dation of the Loire" is a very strong portrayal 
 of the rise of that river and the panic of the 
 stricken populace. It is well lighted and tells 
 its story without the need of an interpreter. 
 The sacred pictures are numerous and interest- 
 ing. 
 
 Van Dyck's "J esus on the Cross" is a mar- 
 velous work, while there are several by Rubens, 
 including a small copy of his "Descent from 
 the Cross," the original of which is in Antwerp 
 Cathedral. His "Death of Mary Magdalen" 
 is a sad and realistic painting. 
 
 Zustris, a sixteenth century artist, has 
 painted a picture of the Savior and the Magda- 
 len in which Mary wears a princess dress cut 
 decollette. 
 
 Americans will be startled at seeing a picture 
 by George Washington in this gallery. But it 
 is by another George, and was painted in 1827. 
 
 We paused longer before Muller's "Give Us 
 Barabbas" than any other work in the gallery. 
 The brutal mob and the more brutal Barabbas
 
 Tournai and Lille 209 
 
 are depicted with startling accuracy of expres- 
 sion. It lightened our gloom later to smile at 
 a bronze by Idrac, "Cupid Stung," in which 
 the playful god has a taste of his own medicine. 
 We pass the Church of St. Maurice on our 
 way to the. station, but as Lille is really an 
 "extra" and not in either Holland or Belgium, 
 we do not linger, but catch the first train for 
 Courtrai.
 
 2io Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 XXVI 
 
 Courtrai and Ostend. 
 
 E had quite a struggle with our porter 
 at the Lille station. Evidently he did 
 not believe in signs and insisted on 
 putting us into the wrong train. We called in 
 the gateman as referee and he gave us the 
 decision. We pass the Belgian customs with- 
 out a ripple. They ask us if we have any 
 "gros bagage," and when we point to our suit 
 cases and say "Cest tout," they bow politely 
 and withdraw. Trunks are always a nuisance 
 in traveling on the Continent, but at custom 
 houses they are especially troublesome. As a 
 rule they are objects of suspicion and must be 
 rummaged thoroughly. 
 
 Courtrai is famous for its table linen, and 
 Jan Palfin, the inventor of the forceps, was 
 born here. They have a statue in his honor 
 in the Grand Place. See what a pull will do 
 for a man.
 
 Courtrai and Ostend 211 
 
 The Battle of the Spurs was fought beneath 
 the walls of this city in 1302. The weavers 
 and artisans of Bruges and Ypres met a com- 
 pany of proud knights of France under the 
 Count of Artois. Twelve hundred knights fell, 
 and for several generations there was scarcely 
 a family that did not have at least one gold 
 spur in its possession. The last ones disap- 
 peared with the destruction of an old church in 
 which many were hung as trophies. 
 
 The Market Place has a belfry in the center, 
 with the Hotel de Ville on one side and the 
 new post office on the other. In the Hotel de 
 Ville are two handsome fire places and a mag- 
 nificent fresco painting representing the de- 
 parture of Baldwin IX. on the fourth crusade. 
 It is worthy of long study. Our conductor 
 is as lively as a cricket and runs up and down 
 stairs after forgotten keys, and is cordially 
 acquiescent when we ask permission to photo- 
 graph the fire place in the Council Chamber. 
 
 In St. Martin's Church there are the usual 
 beautiful windows and carvings, and an un- 
 usual triptych with the "Descent of the Holy 
 Ghost" as the central figure, flanked on either 
 side by "Creation" and "Baptism." There is
 
 212 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 a startling grotto contrivance representing 
 "Jesus in the Sepulchre," which is gruesome 
 enough for a Chamber of Horrors. 
 
 In the Museum is a large picture of the 
 "Battle of the Spurs." There is also a cattle 
 piece by Robbe, as well done as Paul Potter's 
 "Bull," and with much better looking subjects. 
 They have erected a monument to this artist 
 in Courtrai. 
 
 Today is a national fete day. Flags are fly- 
 ing and a procession is forming. Much un- 
 translated excitement pervades cabby and every 
 one else. 
 
 In the Cathedral we looked in vain for a 
 priest to roll back the curtain from Van Dyck's 
 "Raising the Cross." He was probably out 
 following the band. So your sensibilities will 
 be saved any of our crude comments thereon. 
 It is about eight by ten and undoubtedly good, 
 or Van Dyck would not have done it. 
 
 By chance we drove in sight of two massive 
 bridge towers, and we both exclaimed in uni- 
 son, "There they are!" For years we have 
 loved them as they stand reflected in the clear 
 water. We saw them long ago in an unnamed 
 picture of Belgian life, and hoped some day to
 
 Courtrai and Ostend 213 
 
 see the originals, and there they stood in front 
 of us. Their outlines were quickly transferred 
 to a photographic film. 
 
 Does any one know why a continental driver 
 so rarely drives you to the curb when you finish 
 your ride? Invariably he stops five or six feet 
 from it, even if yours is the only vehicle in the 
 block. 
 
 The signs in this station are in French, Flem- 
 ish, English and German, a sure sign that 
 Ostend is near and tourists are numerous. It 
 takes about an hour to reach that famous 
 bathing resort, and from the first we dislike it. 
 It is not a place in which to do anything quickly 
 or inexpensively. If you have an abundance 
 of money and plenty of time, and are not fin- 
 icky on moral questions, Ostend will suit you. 
 
 We found difficulty in getting a room. Two 
 hotels were full, and at last we were taken in 
 by the manager of a villa. From that on dur- 
 ing our brief stay we were taken in with great 
 frequency. 
 
 Having obtained shelter for the night we 
 went for a stroll on the Digue before dinner. 
 This is Ostend's "Board Walk." It is a hand- 
 some promenade with grand hotels, residences
 
 214 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 and a kursaal on one side, and a magnificent 
 beach with rolling surf on the other. The walk 
 is thronged with men and women whose hand- 
 some apparel and blase expression proclaim 
 that money is plentiful, but that it will not buy 
 satisfaction. Only the children really enjoy 
 this delightful spot and their little brown arms 
 and legs are in constant action on the sand and 
 in the water. 
 
 After dinner we listened for a while to a 
 concert and then returned to our villa. The 
 key to our room door could not be found. 
 Great Gallic excitement. Monsieur le proprie- 
 taire, to whom we had given it, had gone out. 
 We sat on the stairs while the elevator boy, 
 porter and chambermaid ran up and down 
 stairs and conversed loudly from one floor to 
 another. Being in a hurry, they did not use 
 the lift. Finally it was discovered that the key 
 to the room across the hall would unlock our 
 door, but would not lock it. However, we are 
 not afraid. If there are any burglars in Ostend 
 they are all too busy running hotels to break 
 into our room. Besides, this room, although 
 the most expensive, is also the smallest one we 
 have occupied since leaving New York, not
 
 Courtrai and Ostend 215 
 
 even excepting our steamer cabin. There is 
 not space in it for a burglar. We are handed 
 our bill in the hall to keep from crowding the 
 apartment. 
 
 Our view at breakfast is superb. The combs 
 of the breakers roll in for miles in either direc- 
 tion. The Digue is filling with promenaders. 
 Bathing machines are being rented and hauled 
 into the surf. Each machine has a number, and 
 it is very important to remember your number 
 for locations are occasionally changed while 
 you are in the water. 
 
 People of both sexes and all ages are en- 
 gaged in playing Diabolo, and marvelous skill 
 is displayed by some of them. 
 
 It is not a good morning for photographs. 
 There is not enough sunlight. Otherwise we 
 might bring home some rather startling reve- 
 lations in the way of continental bathing ap- 
 parel. In defense of their frankness in such 
 matters it is only fair to add that their bathing 
 suits are used for bathing purposes, and the 
 women are never seen walking or lying on the 
 beach in them. 
 
 As at Scheveningen, the sand is full of pretty 
 little shells, and in a short walk we fill our
 
 216 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 pockets. As the morning advances the tide 
 retreats and bathers arrive by the score. Still 
 the children seem most "in the picture," as they 
 build their sand forts or bathe their dolls in 
 pools left by the tide. 
 
 One morning of it is enough for us. We 
 are in the crowd but not of it. We drive to 
 the depot, and on our way we have a contrast- 
 ing picture to study. Two blocks from the 
 depot a porter sights our luggage and runs 
 beside our carriage until we reach the station 
 to get a few cents for helping us aboard the 
 train.
 
 Bruges 217 
 
 XXVII 
 
 T takes less than half an hour to reach 
 Bruges, and there you can set your 
 watch back four hundred years. That 
 such a dreamy old spot could slumber so near 
 the noise and glare of Ostend seems impossible. 
 You feel as though you had taken the "road 
 to yesterday" and had been carried past. 
 
 Bruges is so named from its numerous 
 bridges which cross its intersecting canals at 
 scores of points, and at every crossing a picture 
 is formed of rich color, blended and har- 
 monized by age and softened by the contact of 
 water in which it is repeated with hardly a 
 quaver. 
 
 It is an old town. It was laid out in the 
 seventh century, and now in its dotage it nods 
 on the shady banks of its canals and tells of 
 how it once headed the Flemish Hansa; of how 
 Philip the Good instituted the Order of the
 
 218 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 Golden Fleece within its walls, the only surviv- 
 ing chapter of which seems to be at Ostend; 
 and how Johanna, queen of France, once de- 
 clared that she found hundreds of women of 
 Bruges whose attire vied with her own. Now 
 her principal visitors are the artists who love 
 to attempt the transfer of her baffling beauty 
 to canvas, and her principal commerce is post 
 cards. 
 
 We find a front room at the Panier d'Or 
 whose basket at the apex of its high gable 
 once may have been golden, but is so no longer. 
 Our window looks out at the belfry in the 
 center of the Grand Square, and was there 
 ever such luck? This is Wednesday, and the 
 chimes are played all day on Wednesday. In 
 every place in the town their sweet rich tones 
 reach us. 
 
 We walk past the statue of the two leaders 
 in the Battle of the Spurs, Pieter de Conine and 
 Jan Breidel, to the Chapel of the Holy Blood. 
 This is a small church which was built as a 
 repository for some drops of the Savior's blood 
 brought from the Holy Land in 1149. These 
 are exhibited every Friday morning, but we did 
 not stay over. No one has tampered with the
 
 Bruges 219 
 
 relic since it reached Bruges. Of that we are 
 confident. But there is a lack of confirmatory 
 detail between the time of the crucifixion and 
 1149 that makes us skeptical. We would not 
 jar any one's else faith for the world, but we 
 are not thoroughly convinced. There is an 
 interesting museum in the upper chapel con- 
 taining some old lace and paintings. 
 
 The Hotel de Ville is near the chapel. It 
 has a magnificent Great Hall Chamber roofed 
 in massive oak. 
 
 The drives along the canals are all beautiful. 
 The most perfect reflections are found in the 
 water of the Quay of Mirrors, back of Jan 
 Van Eyck Place, adorned with a statue of the 
 artist. The swan is the municipal bird and it 
 adds to the beauty of the little canals. All this 
 is within twenty-five minutes ride of Ostend, 
 where 100,000 people are spending a million 
 dollars a day in trying to enjoy themselves. 
 
 In the Hospital of St. John are a number 
 of Memling's paintings, including his master- 
 piece, the "Chasse of St. Ursula." This depicts 
 scenes in the life of the saint from her de- 
 parture from Cologne to her martyrdom, and 
 that of the maidens who accompanied her. The
 
 22O Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 work is executed with marvelous fidelity to 
 detail, and when examined under a microscope 
 reveals a painful exactness of execution. It is 
 beautiful in design and coloring. 
 
 Another painstaking work is a winged pic- 
 ture of John the Baptist and John the Evan- 
 gelist. 
 
 A small triptych near the door is interesting 
 because in it Memling has delineated his own 
 features among those present at the "Adoration 
 of the Magi." 
 
 Notre Dame, adjoining the hospital, is full 
 of interest. The tomb of Charles the Bold and 
 Mary his daughter are there. She married 
 Emperor Maximillian and was the grand- 
 mother of Charles V. 
 
 The tomb is a marvel of brass work. The 
 coats of arms of all the allied houses from 
 which they descended are carved thereon, while 
 the lace work and ermine of the apparel is 
 beautifully done. This seemingly endless 
 group of insignia helps one to understand the 
 marvelous combination of marriages which cul- 
 minated in the formation of the empire over 
 which Charles V. was ruler, an empire includ- 
 ing half the civilized world.
 
 Bruges 221 
 
 The church contains paintings by Van Dyck 
 and a marble group by Michael Angelo. The 
 most interesting portion, however, is the en- 
 trance to the old chapel of Mary of Burgundy. 
 Its purple tinged glass gives a weird light to 
 the interior. She did not worship long in this 
 tiny chapel, but was thrown from her horse 
 and killed four years after her marriage. 
 
 Near our hotel are many historic spots. On 
 one side of the square is the house where 
 Charles II. lived during his exile from Eng- 
 land. Near it is the Cranenburg where Maxi- 
 milian himself was imprisoned for four months 
 .by the pugnacious burghers of Bruges. He 
 was released upon giving his kingly pledge 
 to grant certain rights to Bruges. It is hardly 
 necessary to tell the student of history that 
 the pledge was broken just as soon as possible 
 after his liberation. 
 
 In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre you can 
 view a peculiar piece of adoration. The 
 brothers Adornes constructed a facsimile of the 
 Holy Sepulchre and built a church over it. 
 You almost crawl through a low aperture into 
 a dimly lighted apartment and see what is 
 probably a good reproduction. There is a
 
 222 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 bronze of one of the brothers and his wife over 
 their grave just within the entrance to the 
 church. 
 
 Before dinner we took an aimless stroll 
 through some of the back streets. A pretty 
 canal attracted us. We stood on the bridge 
 and looked into the placid water. We hap- 
 pened to notice the dates on the two buildings 
 flanking the bridge. One was built in 1614 
 and the other in 1608. The irons that form 
 the figures of the date in each instance are 
 fastened to the ends of the rods which help to 
 sustain the walls. 
 
 The man who invented decimals was born 
 in Bruges. His name was Stevin and he has 
 a monument somewhere in town. We did not 
 look him up, but we were surprised to learn 
 that decimals were invented. We thought they 
 "just growed," like Topsy. 
 
 As w'e sit at breakfast two children, whose 
 ages we estimate at five and seven years re- 
 spectively, are nonchalantly puffing cigarettes 
 on the curb. They evince no consciousness of 
 "showing off" and attract no attention from 
 the adult natives. Our table companions are 
 two young men from London, who are doing
 
 Bruges 223 
 
 the Continent, one of whom admits that he 
 never saw the interior of Westminster Abbey. 
 It is evident that others beside Americans must 
 be reproached for traveling abroad before see- 
 ing their own country.
 
 224 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 XXVIII 
 Ghent 
 
 HENT is a short ride from Bruges, and 
 it is even more a city of bridges. It 
 stands on twenty-six islands, joined by 
 two hundred and seventy bridges. Charles V. 
 was born here, and it is lucky for Ghent that 
 he was, for that fact saved the city from severe 
 punishment at his hands on one occasion. He 
 satisfied his kingly ire by executing twenty-five 
 or thirty malcontents, and ended several days 
 of terror by making the burgomasters crawl at 
 his feet with halters about their necks. 
 
 In the Cathedral of St. Bavon there is a 
 beautiful marble "Madonna and Child," and a 
 picture of "The Raising of Lazarus," painted 
 by the teacher of Rubens, Vaenius. In Rubens' 
 picture of "St. Bavon Renouncing the Army 
 for the Church," the artist has painted himself, 
 his father, his two wives and three children 
 into the scene.
 
 AUGUSTINE'S BRIDGE BRUGES
 
 Ghent 225 
 
 The star attraction of the cathedral is the 
 Van Eycks' winged picture "The Adoration of 
 the Lamb." The dominating figure is the 
 Christ. It is hard to realize that mere pigment 
 could convey to canvas such dignity blended 
 with love and such serenity, not the serenity 
 of the mystic far removed from the travail of 
 men, but the serenity of one who knows the 
 problems that beset his brethren but at the same 
 time knows that these problems can be solved. 
 
 But we would not enthuse over the land- 
 scape in the other pictures, although we were 
 surrounded by gasping enthusiasts who were 
 urged on by an eloquent guide, and who raved 
 over trees and hills that were as badly out of 
 plumb as the scenery on a Japanese fan. 
 
 Pourbus the Elder, in his "Christ Among 
 the Doctors," has painted a crowd that could 
 never have been assembled anywhere but on 
 canvas and by a highly imaginative artist. 
 There are Charles V., Philip II., Alva, William 
 the Silent and Pourbus himself, all in the 
 Temple. 
 
 Opposite the west front of the cathedral is 
 the belfry. In it swings the big bell, Roland, 
 as closely associated with the history of Ghent
 
 226 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 as is Liberty Bell with that of the United 
 States. So eloquent was its iron tongue in 
 calling Ghent to arms that at the time of the 
 halter episode Charles V. decreed its destruc- 
 tion. But it was saved any worse fate than 
 hanging, and it still swings in the old tower, 
 although re-cast in the seventeenth century. 
 
 The old ceilings of the Hotel de Ville are 
 its most attractive feature. It was built at 
 three widely separated intervals. They ap- 
 parently thought nothing of building one 
 fagade of a building and resting a couple of 
 centuries before starting another one. 
 
 The Chateau of the Counts is a picturesque 
 old ruin. It dates from the ninth century, but 
 was rebuilt in 1180, and it needs kalsomining 
 and a new hall carpet already. Jacques van 
 Artevelde, "the brewer of Ghent," lived here 
 until he met the fate of many a demagogue 
 before and since, and the power which he had 
 awakened in the people turned on him. You 
 can walk around the inner platform and peer 
 through the port holes and form a good idea 
 of a mediaeval fortress. The central dungeon 
 has four stories. The torture chamber is in 
 the basement.
 
 Ghent 227 
 
 In the Carthusian Convent was signed the 
 Treaty of Ghent which ended the war of 1812 
 between England and the United States. Sev- 
 eral of the rooms in this convent are papered 
 with elaborate designs executed with thousands 
 of canceled postage stamps. 
 
 The Petit Beguinage of St. Bavon contains 
 three hundred little houses occupied by lay 
 sisters of the Roman Catholic Church. Each 
 house has a walled court shutting it from the 
 view of passers by. Each court has a door 
 bearing the name of some saint. Thus rigidly 
 do these good ladies think it necessary to rein- 
 force their self control. From one door the 
 saint's name has been removed, indicating that 
 the place has changed saints. Possibly tomor- 
 row they will put out a sign to that effect or 
 one reading, "Wanted : A good saint with ref- 
 erences." An excellent quality of lace is sold 
 on the grounds. 
 
 Belgians seem inordinately afraid of water 
 inside and out. Barometers are as numerous 
 as thermometers, and every one has an um- 
 brella. At the slightest mist up it goes. 
 
 We have not yet recovered our equilibrium 
 over the assaults on our self respect made by
 
 228 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 the covert sneers of the people who were en- 
 thusing over the perspective and atmosphere 
 in the Van Eyck "Adoration." When will the 
 world cease to rave over beauties that do not 
 exist in old paintings, or which, if they exist 
 at all, are visible to the eye of the trained 
 artist alone? Let us grant that, considering 
 the age and the materials and the environ- 
 ment, the Van Eycks did wonders. Let us 
 look at their productions as we do at the 
 guns used at Waterloo, as antiquities, but let 
 us not shut our eyes to the progress made in 
 painting as in fighting. The modern galleries 
 possess more of life and color, as we see it, 
 than the best Old Masters ever hung. The 
 "Night Watch" and some others are good 
 enough to be modern, but most of them would 
 stand no more show, stripped of their labels 
 and placed in honest competition with modern 
 pictures, than would Nelson with his equip- 
 ment against Dewey or Togo with modern 
 battle ships. 
 
 I never saw a Madonna to whose arms any 
 baby would fly, nor did I ever see the Holy 
 Infant portrayed as the radiant, healthy, nor- 
 mal babe such as I love to think He was. There
 
 Ghent 229 
 
 are undoubtedly lovelier Madonnas than I have 
 seen, but I am speaking of the hundreds I 
 have seen. The nearest approach to the ex- 
 pression of loving maternity that I recall is 
 in the marble group in the Cathedral of St. 
 Bavon, and it is not even mentioned in Bae- 
 deker and other works on art. 
 
 As for landscapes, more convincing ones 
 decorate theatrical drop curtains. 
 
 If those beauties really exist to ,the trained 
 eye, why write about them in books intended 
 for the multitude ? Suppose a person so highly 
 endowed with sense perception that he could 
 hear the grass grow and see flies walking on 
 steeples, should write a guide book and tell 
 you that the grass growing in Holland made a 
 distinctly different tone, or that the hay was 
 pitched higher than in France, he would un- 
 doubtedly command some followers who would 
 stand on the edge of a Friesland cow pasture 
 and say they could hear sweet tones. And their 
 hypocrisy would differ in degree, but not in 
 kind, from that of many rhapsodists who wor- 
 ship old paintings.
 
 230 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 XXIX 
 
 Antwerp 
 
 Y that time our train had reached Ant- 
 werp, the metropolis of Belgium and 
 one of the greatest seaports in Europe. 
 Her most celebrated margrave was Godfrey of 
 Bouillon. 
 
 Antwerp derives its name from a cheerful 
 way they had of collecting the tariff in legend- 
 ary days by cutting off the hand of any one 
 caught smuggling. It means "hand-werpen" 
 or hand throwing. The Province of Brabant 
 was named after Brabo, who overthrew the 
 custom and the custom house with it. 
 
 The neighborhood of its docks presents all 
 the usual temptations for relieving poor sailors 
 of their possessions. So many English seamen 
 were robbed there that the British Consul 
 arranged an ingenious scheme of issuing pay 
 notes not negotiable outside of England. Now 
 the English sailor is not robbed until he gets
 
 STATUE OP UUBEXS ANTWERP
 
 Antwerp 23 1 
 
 home. Great Britain has hung up the sign, 
 "Do not go next door and be cheated. Come 
 in here." 
 
 Antwerp has arisen from the ashes often 
 enough to have scorched the pin feathers of a 
 phoenix. Her worst disaster was the "Fury of 
 Antwerp" in 15/6, when she was pillaged and 
 burned by mutinous and drunken Spanish sol- 
 diers. Then she suffered a fourteen months' 
 siege by Alexander of Parma in 1584-5. In 
 1589 her population was reduced to 55,000. 
 Then she lost her commerce to the Dutch and 
 the Scheldt was closed, until in 1790 she had 
 only 40,000 people. Napoleon helped her some, 
 and she was just getting 'on her feet when 
 the revolution of 1830 prostrated her again. 
 But her natural advantages as a port enabled 
 her to surmount all obstacles, and today she 
 has within her borders 355,000 souls. 
 
 Antwerp is metropolitan in aspect. Her 
 Central Station is one of the finest depots in 
 the world. The drive down the Boulevard des 
 Arts is charming in any conveyance except an 
 ambulance or a hotel bus. Hotel buses are 
 made from Roman chariots, with the springs
 
 232 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 removed and loose panes of glass inserted in 
 the sides. 
 
 The Place Verte is the nucleus of the city. 
 The car lines converge at that point and there 
 are benches and a waiting room for loiterers. 
 A bronze statue of Rubens adorns its center, 
 and today it is radiant with the blooms of a 
 flower market. 
 
 In the Grand Place a butter market is in 
 progress. On the west side rises the Hotel de 
 Ville. It has a beautiful staircase of various 
 Belgian marbles up which the king and his 
 retinue may climb when they visit Antwerp. 
 Tourists and packages are delivered in the rear. 
 There is much beautiful paneling of carved 
 wood. The great hall is lined with well exe- 
 cuted paintings of historical events. 
 
 At the Royal Museum we saw the best gal- 
 lery in Belgium. In it are three of Rubens' 
 masterpieces, "The Adoration of the Magi," 
 "Christ Between the Thieves" and "Christ on 
 the Pallet of Straw." 
 
 We saw Matsy's triptych, "The Entomb- 
 ment," but we liked his wrought iron well 
 curb in front of the Cathedral much better. 
 Matsy was a blacksmith when he fell in love
 
 Antwerp 233 
 
 with the daughter of a painter, and, in order 
 to obtain her father's consent to his suit, 
 studied painting and became a great artist. 
 Matsy's Well shows as true artistic taste in 
 shaping iron as he exhibited later with the 
 brush. We sit awhile in front of Van Dyck's 
 "Entombment," and then inquire the way to 
 the modern paintings. Arriving in that part 
 of the Museum we drop with a sigh of grati- 
 tude in front of a wholesome landscape by 
 Elsen, which has not a drop of blood or a 
 corpse in it. What good does it do to multiply 
 revolting representations of the death of our 
 Savior and neglect the beautiful things of His 
 life? 
 
 Near the Elsen landscape is a canal by Col- 
 lart, into which you can almost dip your fingers 
 and moisten your heated brow. 
 
 Leaving the Royal Museum we visit the 
 Musee Plantin-Moretus, which fares the noisy 
 and crowded little Friday Market, in which 
 everything is being auctioned from a knitting 
 needle to a plaster statue five feet high. Second 
 hand bicycles are numerous. 
 
 The Musee is most interesting, as it shows 
 the combined work-shop, sales room and resi-
 
 234 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 dence of a well-to-do and enterprising sixteenth 
 century printer and engraver. Every detail of 
 the shop is preserved with a care that amounts 
 to reverence. The engraved copper plates give 
 one a better idea of the painstaking skill re- 
 quired to produce them than do the prints 
 made from them. There are many family 
 portraits by Rubens on the walls. The presses 
 are still in working order, and samples of 
 recent work done on them may be purchased. 
 The attendants are artistically clad in brown 
 suits, with knickerbockers and caps of the six- 
 teenth century cut. Much beautiful work is 
 shown in illuminated prayer books and missals 
 that equal in beauty and surpass in workman- 
 ship the product of the best modern shops. 
 The preservation of this Musee deserves the 
 gratitude of every student of mediaeval customs 
 and history. 
 
 We adjourn to a little ivy covered bower on 
 the pavement near the Place Verte and wait 
 for our coffee to drip through an individual 
 percolator into a glass similar to those used 
 for soda water at home. 
 
 A very well mannered dog follows us to our 
 table and snuggles up in a corner remote from
 
 Antwerp 235 
 
 the garden's vision and calmly awaits events. 
 Evidently some Brussels dog has dropped him 
 a line to look out for a lady in gray, who is 
 susceptible to the appeal in a hungry canine's 
 eye. We seldom eat alone. Either a dog or 
 a cat spots B. as soon as we sit down, and 
 then she orders what she thinks our guest will 
 enjoy. The present incumbent has good table 
 manners and awaits his turn patiently. When 
 we finish our meat and the salad is brought, he 
 departs with a grateful wag of his tail. In 
 return for our hospitality he gave us the only 
 thing he possessed. We know we have it, 
 although we cannot put our hand on it. 
 
 In Notre Dame are three of Rubens' most 
 famous paintings: "The Descent from the 
 Cross," "The Elevation of the Cross" and 
 "The Assumption." All are beautiful, but as 
 we looked at the last named the sun came out 
 and bathed it in light for a moment, and it 
 seemed as if the gates of Paradise had opened. 
 The artist has succeeded in making an atmos- 
 phere of heavenly radiance that is indescribable. 
 
 If I have said anything in my previous notes 
 reflecting on Old Masters, I wish to withdraw 
 my criticism so far as Peter Paul Rubens is
 
 236 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 concerned. The two pictures, "The Descent 
 from the Cross" and "The Elevation," are 
 marvelous presentations of vigor and action. 
 They make intensely real two most distressing 
 scenes. The art which marked the shade of 
 difference between the winding sheet and the 
 death pallor of the Savior's body has been 
 commented on over and over again, and the 
 almost brutal fidelity to detail which places a 
 corner of the sheet between the teeth of a 
 Roman soldier has been criticised as revolting, 
 but it all seems part of the picture. 
 
 But these brilliant exceptions only emphasize 
 the fact that the great majority of the Pietas, 
 Annunciations, Assumptions, Adorations, Ele- 
 vations and Descents, made in wood or marble 
 or painted on canvas, boards or plaster, could 
 well be spared by a weary world. 
 
 Strangers are not admitted to Rubens' house, 
 but we caught a glimpse of the court and sum- 
 mer house while we reasoned with the care- 
 taker. Nothing else remains of the home which 
 he built in 1612 and in which he died in 1640 
 at the age of sixty-three. 
 
 The old Waterpoort was designed by him 
 and built in 1624. Over its arched portal lies
 
 OLD GATE BY RUBEN'S ANTWERP
 
 Antwerp 237 
 
 a recumbent river god, and sparrows quarrel 
 over the best locations for nests about his 
 anatomy. 
 
 The Antwerp Zoo is splendidly arranged. In 
 the monkey house they have the most human 
 looking chimpanzee who became intensely in- 
 terested in our pocket mirror and made all 
 sorts of faces at himself in it, and then tried 
 to peer behind it to locate his vis-a-vis. He 
 had on a short red jacket and slept in a little 
 bed. 
 
 In this Zoo are specimens of everything that 
 swims, flies, walks or creeps. The elephant 
 here, as everywhere, is a prime favorite and 
 has been trained by his sagacious keeper to beg 
 for pennies. When one is thrown to him he 
 knocks vigorously on the wall and summons 
 his keeper, who gives him a morsel of bread in 
 exchange for the penny. In this way a pocket 
 full of bread in the morning becomes a pocket 
 full of coin by evening. 
 
 The Zoo is well supplied with benches and 
 refreshment booths, and you can spend many 
 hours there enjoyably. The lion houses are 
 magnificent and near them are domiciled speci-
 
 238 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 mens of that much rarer beast, the American 
 buffalo. 
 
 We left the grounds by means of an avenue 
 lined on both sides by brilliant lined parrots, 
 each chained to a perch and squawking vigor- 
 ously. Sometimes the vocal rivalry results in 
 throwing a bird off his balance, and his efforts 
 to regain his perch remind one of a man get- 
 ting into an upper berth in a storm tossed 
 steamer. 
 
 In the evening we attended an indoor circus 
 and water carnival. The performance was 
 carried on with a laborious and conscientious 
 attention to detail that marks so much of the 
 work done over here. The circus ring was 
 gradually stripped of its carpets as act followed 
 act. After the circus had finished, scenery 
 was lowered from the dome and a maze of 
 elaborate spectacle and ballet followed. The 
 performance concluded with a flooded arena 
 and an illuminated fountain. The audience 
 was orderly and almost childish in its enjoy- 
 ment. The program did not contain a single 
 objectionable feature. The horses showed 
 wonderful training and the clowns were mas- 
 ters of pantomime.
 
 Antwerp 239 
 
 When it was all over we took tram 3 for 
 Place Verte, reaching there at eleven thirty. 
 After sitting in the waiting room for fifteen 
 minutes we inquired of a policeman for a car 
 to our hotel and found that the cars on that 
 line did not run after eleven o'clock. We woke 
 up a cabman and rode home. The hotel was 
 locked and we had to ring a bell to get in. 
 Can you imagine an American city of over 
 three hundred thousand people taking in its 
 trolley cars and going to bed at that hour?
 
 240 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 XXX 
 
 The Island of Walchcrcn 
 
 E returned to Holland by way of Rosen- 
 daal, a frontier town which has 
 stamped nothing on our memories but 
 its double custom house, one on each side of 
 the railroad tracks, and its first-class cooking 
 at the little depot. Our forty-six minute ride 
 was spaced off by four brisk showers. Fortu- 
 nately we had an interval of sunshine, which 
 enabled us to traverse the town its full length 
 down to its tiny canal harbor filled with fishing 
 smacks and back to its inevitable church and 
 stadhuis. The whole place is modern and all 
 uninteresting, but the people are the same de- 
 lightful Hollanders that we have grown to love. 
 An interesting family is at the adjoining 
 table. It consists of a father, mother and four 
 daughters. The baby girl is three or four 
 years old and the pet of the other five members 
 of the family. She is amusing even without
 
 The Island of Walcheren 241 
 
 an interpreter, as she tells of some adventure 
 in Dutch baby talk. As each dish is brought, 
 she stands on her chair to peer in, and claps 
 her hands when an especial favorite is served. 
 Nevertheless, when, tempted by the presence 
 of appreciative strangers, she gets too demon- 
 strative, a word from papa instantly quiets her 
 without any tears or remonstrances, but quite 
 as a matter of course. Papa is king of his 
 household, and no one is served until his plate 
 has been heaped. The whole family drink beer 
 with their luncheon, even the little one getting 
 her portion. 
 
 To discuss the weather is generally viewed 
 as an admission of conversational bankruptcy, 
 and to devote a paragraph to such a frayed 
 topic is perilous. But the word "weather" as- 
 sumes an entirely new meaning in Holland. 
 Most dwellers in the United States regard it 
 as a more or less fixed atmospheric condition, 
 remaining unchanged for intervals varying 
 from a few hours on the shores of Lake Michi- 
 gan, to the long, yellow, brazen weeks of a 
 prairie drouth. It is no such monotonous 
 creature in Holland. As if to amend for the 
 plodding patience of everything human which
 
 242 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 it surrounds, the weather is a thing of moods 
 only a few minutes in duration. As flat as 
 an ironing board, Holland is swept from east 
 to west by unobstructed showers which fill their 
 clouds with North Sea water and swing back 
 again. We are constantly busy opening the 
 windows on one side of our car and closing 
 them on the other as Mother Nature flaps her 
 wet clouds back and forth, slapping first one 
 side of our train and then the other until we 
 seem to be passing under a titanic clothes line 
 blown to and fro by the wind. 
 
 A most explosive young German artist 
 shared our compartment from Antwerp. A 
 chance remark aroused him and he revealed 
 an excellent vocabulary of vituperative English 
 in telling of his experience in having some 
 Belgian soldiers quartered on him recently in 
 a first class compartment. Then he roundly 
 denounced the whole country, its king, its 
 people and its practices. He had a high voice, 
 and it would mount higher and higher in his 
 wrath until it would get beyond his control. 
 At such times he would return to pitch by 
 saying: "What I mean to say is " excruciat-
 
 The Island of Walcheren 243 
 
 ingly like Bobby Gaylor with his "Well anny- 
 how." 
 
 The road to Flushing is through a marshy 
 country, half land, half sea, and at some point 
 you make the transition to an island, for Flush- 
 ing is on. the island of Walcheren. But it is 
 hard to define the point where it ceases to be 
 muddy water and becomes muddy land. The 
 Scheldt is on our right and the atmosphere is 
 raw and cold even on an August day. A long 
 dike forms part of our horizon. We pass pas- 
 tures with sea gulls in them. Some sort of 
 drainage operations are being carried on with 
 a uniformed officer in charge of a gang of men. 
 Much of the ground looks like a newly made 
 polder. 
 
 At Krabbendijk we get glimpses of the Zee- 
 land costumes, the oddest in Holland. Three 
 types of women are at the depot. They all 
 wear short, tight sleeves, queer head dresses, 
 the most compressed bodices and the most ex- 
 pansive hips imaginable. And they have such 
 fat, red, parboiled arms. From five years old 
 to eighty the outline is the same. 
 
 Flushing is called Vlissingen by the Dutch 
 and Flessingue by the Belgians. We are for-
 
 244 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 tunate enough to find the bus from the beach 
 when we reach the station. At the beach there 
 is such a tremendous wind blowing that we 
 rent bath chairs and sit snugly out of it and 
 watch the few bathers who are daring enough 
 to brave the cold blasts. The patrons are 
 practically all Germans and are a sensible, 
 happy, healthy-looking lot of people. Our 
 chairs are gradually forced back by the rising 
 tide, so we pay the boy two cents rental for 
 each chair and return to the hotel veranda. 
 
 This is the mouth of the Scheldt, but it is 
 tidewater and indistinguishable from the North 
 Sea. Breskens, on the Belgian coast, is in plain 
 sight across the three miles of turbulent river. 
 Flushing is loved by lovers of Dutch liberty 
 because it was the first town to raise the 
 Orange standard after the Sea Beggars took 
 Briel. It is entitled to their further gratitude 
 because it was the place of embarkation of 
 Charles V. and his son, Philip II., both of 
 whom saw their last of this unconquerable 
 country as the low shores of Flushing blended 
 with the horizon. It was the birthplace of 
 Admiral de Ruyter, who had the impudence to
 
 The Island of Walcheren 245 
 
 sail his war vessels up the Thames in 1667 and 
 had all London frightened. 
 
 A dinner at the Grand Hotel des Bains gives 
 you a chance to see a beautiful sunset over the 
 circling waves. Large vessels bound to and 
 from Antwerp, pass frequently. 
 
 The town of Flushing is midway between 
 the beach and the depot, just a mile from each. 
 I was about to grumble a question as to why 
 they placed the depot so far from the town, 
 when I remembered that in a similar case in 
 Iowa, the Irish station agent informed a re- 
 monstrating traveling man that he supposed it 
 was because they wanted it near the railroad. 
 
 We go back to Middelburg in eleven min- 
 utes. We have return tickets from Flushing 
 to Rosendaal and we will use them between 
 Middelburg and Bergen op Zoom, two inter- 
 mediate stations. Our action will probably 
 tangle up the Holland railway accounting sys- 
 tem somewhat, but it will save us a little time 
 and some money. 
 
 Occasionally, when we are in a hurry and do 
 not want all of the courses of a two-and-a-half 
 gulden table d'hote, we make selections of a 
 portion thereof and omit the rest. In such
 
 246 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 cases they itemize what we select, and our bill 
 is three gulden or more for leaving out part 
 of our dinner. Years ago some mathematician 
 expounded the axiom that "The sum of all the 
 parts is equal to the whole." He would have 
 been astonished to learn that the sum of part 
 of the parts is greater than the whole. Jerome 
 K. Jerome tells us that milliners charge for 
 what they take from ladies' bonnets, and that 
 those with the least trimming are the most 
 expensive. Apparently table d'hotes are man- 
 aged in the same way. 
 
 The depot and the boat landing at Flushing 
 are contiguous. An English steamer has just 
 arrived in a driving rain. \Ye are safely en- 
 sconced in our compartment and expect a grand 
 rush of damp Britishers, but only one passen- 
 ger disembarked. 
 
 Ours is the slow train for Amsterdam, so 
 no buses are at the Middelburg station when 
 it arrives. Our suit cases are placed on a push 
 cart and we walk behind it and our porter to 
 the Nieuwe Doelen, opposite the stadhuis. The 
 latter is partly concealed by a scaffolding, and 
 we are sorry to have arrived at so inopportune 
 a time, until we learn that the scaffolding has
 
 A MIDDELBURG FAMILY GROUP
 
 The Island of Walcheren 247 
 
 been over some portion of the building for 
 thirty or forty years. Then we are glad we did 
 not wait. 
 
 There is a provincial exposition in town of 
 old gold and silver, and the streets are full of 
 farmers and their families. After a lemon 
 squash in a cafe we are wandering back to the 
 hotel when we notice that hundreds of people 
 are quietly lining up on the curbs and gazing 
 toward the market place. We said, "Here! we 
 have come five thousand miles to see things. 
 We must not miss this." So we got in line. 
 After a few minutes we walked a block nearer 
 to the focal point, then a little nearer; until 
 finally it dawned on us that these dear, tranquil 
 people were waiting for a brass band which had 
 been playing in front of our hotel all evening. 
 They are great lovers of music and are patient 
 with a patience which has rendered their great 
 accomplishments possible. 
 
 This part of the country gives you an idea 
 of the web-footed soldiers that formed part of 
 the armies of William the Silent. Through 
 these trackless marshes there are paths under 
 the water known to the natives as the pilot 
 knows his harbor. In one instance a traitorous
 
 248 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 betrayal of these secrets of the marsh gave 
 Flushing into the hands of Spain temporarily. 
 
 Again our ears are delighted with chimes. 
 These are smaller and play more intricate 
 music than some of the others. Mendelssohn's 
 Spring Song just came floating over the air to 
 us from a neighboring belfry. The mosquitoes 
 are not so melodious as the chimes but they 
 strike oftener. 
 
 We went early to the Abbey and were shown 
 through by a shirtless sacristan in felt slippers 
 the kind that are felt but not heard. He did 
 not have much English, and to keep from ex- 
 hausting his vocabulary he handed us one word 
 at a time. His features were obliterated by 
 a grass-like beard, and he was as emotionless 
 in appearance as some of the images he ex- 
 hibited. His face gave no preliminary hints 
 of an approaching word, but would explode 
 under his nose in a guttural ejaculation at the 
 most unexpected moments. We would be 
 standing in front of a gobelin tapestry rapt in 
 contemplation when suddenly "Fifteen hun- 
 derd" would issue from his face somewhere 
 and he would close up again. 
 
 These tapestries are magnificent. They por-
 
 The Island of Walcheren 249 
 
 tray naval scenes and the details are given witf 
 the exactness of a drawing. Great battles are 
 depicted with men struggling among the 
 waves, while others are huddled on a rock 
 with ships fighting or sinking all around them. 
 
 Four large paintings purloined from a pri- 
 vate residence in Utrecht are exhibited as 
 brazenly as though they were honestly ob- 
 tained. 
 
 The Abbey is being thoroughly restored and 
 work is in progress. Two of the vaulted cham- 
 bers through which we passed date from the 
 thirteenth century. The Abbey was founded 
 in 1106, but, of course, it is no longer an 
 Abbey. It is a good old Dutch Reformed 
 Church, whitewash and all. 
 
 The Stadhuis contains an interesting mu- 
 seum in which are some beautiful old hand- 
 illumined books and documents of the various 
 guilds. The oldest existing deed in the Dutch 
 language is shown. This is the charter granted 
 to the town in 1253 by the German William of 
 Holland. 
 
 Personal relics of the brothers, Jan and Cor- 
 nelis Evertsen, are on exhibition, including 
 locks of hair and sections of their trousers.
 
 250 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 These patriots fell in 1666 in combat with 
 England. The articles are authentic and have 
 that advantage over the reliquaries palmed off 
 on the Crusaders by the tricky heathen in the 
 neighborhood of the Holy Sepulchre and wor- 
 shiped in many of the churches on the conti- 
 nent. 
 
 We took a long drive to the dry dock and 
 past the Koepoort, one of the old gates of the 
 town. We wound for miles along the banks 
 of an old serpentine canal that \vould have 
 been still prettier if it had been strained. 
 
 Thanks to our driver's interposition and the 
 magic of a few pennies, we found willing sub- 
 jects for our camera in the person of a father 
 and three children. The Dutch have the same 
 spirit of barter that made their forefathers sell 
 gunpowder to the besiegers outside their own 
 walls. 
 
 An occasional advertising sign appears on 
 the old windmills. It is the beginning of the 
 end. As soon as the idea sinks in/ that money 
 can be made by the process somebody's sarsa- 
 parilla will begin to create that tired feeling in 
 the minds of all lovers of the beautiful that it 
 is supposed to alleviate.
 
 Middelburg to Rotterdam 251 
 
 XXXI 
 
 From Middelburg to Rotterdam 
 
 HE name of Bergen op Zoom looked 
 so quaint that we concluded to stop 
 over a train. So back we went over 
 miles of Holland in the making, where land 
 and water fight for the mastery, but where the 
 land finally will be wrung dry and hung up 
 on a dike, while the baffled ocean will creep 
 dripping back to its bed. 
 
 The only thing in Bergen op Zoom that is 
 interesting is its name, and you can read that 
 without getting off the train. We did not know- 
 that fact, however, and alighted. But if we 
 received little amusement, we imparted it in 
 abundance. It was Sunday and no one had 
 anything else to do, so the entire juvenile popu- 
 lation and some adults fell in behind us and 
 tried to figure out why we were there. And 
 really we could give them no assistance in 
 solving the mystery.
 
 252 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 Of course, there were a kerk and a stadhuis, 
 and we photographed them. Then we saw a 
 kitten and puppy lying side by side in a door- 
 way. They would have made a pretty picture, 
 but they were alarmed by our kodak and re- 
 treated into the shop. Finding them proof 
 against our cajolery, we were about to give 
 up when the old lady in charge of the shop 
 came to our rescue. She poured some milk 
 into a plate and put it in a sunny place, and in 
 a very brief space of time both animals were 
 lapping it up from opposite sides of the plate, 
 and we took the picture. I offered the old lady 
 some money for the milk, but she smilingly 
 refused it and, ascertaining that we had fin- 
 ished, she drove the puppy and kitten away 
 from the dish and poured the milk back into 
 the can. It was a splendid illustration of Dutch 
 courtesy and thrift. 
 
 There we were, marooned in a little town, 
 with the sun beating down on the shining walls 
 and clean clinkers, and three hours to wait for 
 the next train. And now we were truly glad 
 that Holland was no larger, for we hired a 
 carriage, loaded our luggage on it and drove 
 to Rosendaal in an hour. The road was a
 
 Middelburg to Rotterdam 253 
 
 paved strip of stone blocks with a cycle path 
 of clinkers on each side and shaded by trees 
 for the entire distance. We passed through 
 two small villages, where we were kept busy 
 responding to hat liftings. We were interested 
 in the many little country places with their 
 names or some motto placed over the gates or 
 set in flower beds. 
 
 At Rosendaal we get a train to Breda, where 
 we secure a royal suite at De Kroon, but we 
 can have it for one night only, as the concierge 
 says it is "recommended" for tomorrow, and 
 seems elated over his mastery of the word. A 
 one-horse tram passes our door and is quite 
 noisy, but one can get plenty of sleep between 
 trips. 
 
 Breda was the scene of a happy-go-lucky 
 incident in the war with Spain. In 1590, 
 Maurice, son of William of Orange, concealed 
 some soldiers on a flat boat, covered them with 
 peat, and succeeded in passing the fortifica- 
 tions. Once inside the walls these dare-devils, 
 with the assistance of sympathetic townsmen, 
 overcame the garrison and captured the place. 
 
 As we had eaten at Rosendaal, we walk up 
 to the Grand Place to hear the band concert.
 
 254 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 Seats and tables cover the sidewalk and most 
 of the street. The band is no better than most 
 country bands, so we do not stay long. 
 
 The most interesting relic in Breda has been 
 remodeled to the point of extinction. It was 
 the old castle in which William the Silent, 
 Egmont, Horn and other Dutch nobles, met 
 to prepare the compromise or petition to Philip 
 II. in 1566. As Philip declared he had nothing 
 to arbitrate, the trouble continued. The former 
 castle is now a military school. 
 
 The hand of the whitewasher has been laid 
 heavily on the Protestant Church. Still more 
 heroic methods were adopted by the icono- 
 clasts, and many beheaded statues bear witness 
 to their mistaken zeal. Some mural paintings 
 recently have been uncovered and they are in- 
 teresting, but not much prettier than the white- 
 wash. The reformers took another poke at 
 the Catholic Church in making the carvings of 
 the choir seats. These are caricatures of 
 monks. It must have done them a world of 
 good to slam a seat down on a monk and then 
 sit on it. 
 
 The monument to Count Engelbert and his 
 wife is a marvelous work in alabaster. The
 
 Midclelburg to Rotterdam 255 
 
 bodies are sculptured side by side on top of 
 the sarcophagus, which is roofed by a slab of 
 black marble borne on the shoulders of four 
 kneeling figures, Caesar, Regulus, Hannibal and 
 Philip of Macedon. On the top of the black 
 marble lies -the armor of the count wonder- 
 fully executed in alabaster. 
 
 We reach the island on which Dordrecht is 
 located by crossing the Hollandsch Diep, an 
 arm of the North Sea not five hundred years 
 old. A one-horse tram traverses the town 
 from end to end. It runs from the depot to 
 the harbor, over a picturesque old canal, lined 
 on both sides by buildings built straight up 
 from the water. 
 
 The stadhuis has been restored and is mod- 
 ern and uninteresting. The Groote Kerk is 
 large and graceful in outline, and, wonder of 
 wonders, it actually has a hint of color inside. 
 The religious world knows Dordrecht (or 
 Dort) chiefly for its famous Synod of 1618-19, 
 so full of interest to predestined sinners and 
 unborn infants. The Calvinists, headed by 
 Maurice, won the victory. 
 
 The most unique museum in the world is the 
 South African Museum at Dordrecht. It is
 
 256 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 filled with memorials of the British-Boer War, 
 and with personal relics of President Kruger 
 and General Cronje. The Russians gave the 
 former a beautiful sword accompanied by the 
 signatures of seventy thousand donors. These 
 signatures, handsomely bound in several vol- 
 umes, form an even more impressive exhibit 
 than the gift which they accompanied. There 
 are gold loving cups and gem-studded gifts of 
 various sorts, but none is so interesting as the 
 pipe, bible and old plug hat of Oom Paul. 
 They bring his stolid old figure right before 
 your mind's eye. The motto of the republic, 
 "Eendract maakt magt," greets you on every 
 hand. It means "Union makes strength," and 
 in that atmosphere of devoted loyalty to a 
 hopeless cause one regrets that it did not make 
 more strength. 
 
 One room is devoted to articles manufac- 
 tured by Boer prisoners in the detention camps, 
 and hand bills are on the walls giving the 
 appalling death statistics among the women 
 and children, a form of silent but effective ex- 
 termination which is going on to this day. In 
 the court of the museum is a reproduction of
 
 Middelburg to Rotterdam 257 
 
 a Boer farm house, life size, and furnished 
 throughout. A Kaffir kraal is behind it. 
 
 Dordrecht has never been battered by any 
 but theological guns, hence it is full of old 
 houses. They lean over in a way that makes 
 you want to hurry past before they fall. 
 
 A statue of the artist, Ary Scheffers, adorns 
 the Scheffers Plein. He was a native of Dord- 
 recht, but passed most of his life in France. 
 At the age of twelve he painted an historical 
 picture which attracted much attention in the 
 exhibition at Amsterdam. He died at Paris in 
 1858.
 
 258 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 XXXII 
 Little Journeys Around Rotterdam 
 
 ND so we ride into Rotterdam five 
 days ahead of our sailing date resolved 
 to take life easy. We stop at the Maas 
 Hotel on the bank of the river of that name, 
 and from our parlor window we can see the 
 green, white and green funnel of the Potsdam 
 being put in apple-pie that simile is too weak 
 in Dutch order for our return trip. 
 
 The weather man co-operated with us in our 
 resolve to stay in doors by giving us an abun- 
 dance of rain. Rotterdam is like Naples in 
 that it has little to offer within itself, but makes 
 a splendid base for short excursions. Gouda, 
 Delft, The Hague and Scheveningen are less 
 than an hour away. 
 
 As soon as we were fairly settled in our 
 hotel we went over to the steamship company's 
 offices and found some mail awaiting us. On 
 our way we saw something that so completely
 
 Journeys Around Rotterdam 259 
 
 epitomizes Holland that we must tell you of it. 
 A freight train of eight or ten cars was being 
 drawn along the tracks which run parallel with 
 the Holland-America docks. Ten feet in front 
 of the engine a man walked slowly and sol- 
 emnly, ringing a big dinner bell. 
 
 Still it rains. The hotel is filling with tour- 
 ists who have just landed, and we are sorry 
 for them, but glad that we were blessed with 
 such good weather. Statistics state that Hol- 
 land only has sixty-five clear days a year, and 
 we have had twenty bright ones out of twenty- 
 three, so some one is in for a soaking. We sit 
 at our window and watch the rain and read 
 the Newport specials in the Mrs. Reginald 
 Vanderbilt edition of the New York Herald, 
 and recall some of the oddities of the Hol- 
 lander. 
 
 For example, his courtesy and economy lead 
 him to minimize distances when giving infor- 
 mation in order to save you cab hire or car 
 fare. If you ask him to assist you in getting 
 a carriage to some point he will say, "Oh, a 
 carriage is not practical. It is only two or 
 three minutes' walk." He gives you explicit 
 directions and starts you for your destination,
 
 260 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 which you cannot possibly reach in ten min- 
 utes without breaking a speed ordinance. Oc- 
 casionally he will accompany you and expect 
 no reward but your thanks and a tip of the 
 hat. He will also decry the attractiveness of 
 a museum to which the entrance fee is half a 
 gulden, not because he loves art less, but be- 
 cause he loves twenty cents more. 
 
 If there is anything that B. does funnier 
 than drinking pop out of a bottle, it is lighting 
 or extinguishing a candle. Her early education 
 having been too metropolitan to have acquired 
 the knack in youth, she quite often blows all 
 of the small articles from the mantel without 
 causing a waver of the candle flame. Recently 
 she had three matches and a candle and was 
 trying to light the candle. The first two 
 matches were struck and instantly jabbed at 
 the unoffending taper with the natural result 
 that they went out. I suggested that she wait 
 a moment until the third and last match had 
 caught thoroughly. She did so and succeeded 
 in warming the cold wick into life. She stood 
 radiant with success before the flickering light, 
 triumphantly ejaculated "There!" and, raising
 
 Journeys Around Rotterdam 261 
 
 the match to her lips, blew out both match and 
 candle. We undressed in the dark. 
 
 Today we will drive to Capelle, five miles 
 away, and see the canals and cows at short 
 range. The ranges are all short in Holland. 
 Capelle appeals to us in our present sated con- 
 dition because there is nothing to see there. 
 
 Our driver lost his way. We drove for ten 
 miles or so before we struck a village. I said, 
 "Isn't this Niemverkerk?" He said "Ja," and 
 at our suggestion turned his horse around and 
 started in search of Capelle, which was some- 
 where between us and Rotterdam. He took 
 another road and drove along the top of a 
 grass-covered dike for miles. There was not 
 the mark of a wheel to indicate that any one 
 had driven that way for months. At eleven, 
 when we should have been back in Rotterdam, 
 a heavy rain came up, or down, rather. We 
 put up the carriage top, unrolled the apron and 
 kept as dry as we could. Then, when we 
 thought we were almost to Rotterdam, we 
 reached Capelle ! By this time we had lost all 
 interest in that little brick kiln town. Our road 
 next led us past a ship building suburb, where 
 we drove through a crowd of grimy men out
 
 262 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 for the noon hour. As most of them carried 
 lunch pails and were on their way home, the 
 inference is that they go to work early and 
 have a meal between breakfast and noon. We 
 have seen road repairers knock off at ten in 
 the morning and eat bread and cheese from 
 their pails. We drive a little distance farther, 
 when a small boy informs our coachman that 
 the end of the street we are following is closed, 
 so we retrace again. By this time the affair 
 has become funny, and we cease to worry over 
 the outcome, and finally reach our hotel at half 
 past twelve. 
 
 Our ride took us past some more villas, 
 whose quaint mottoes amused us. Some of 
 them translated read : "Without care" ; "Peace 
 is best"; "Pleasure to build"; "Never a 
 thought" ; "Satisfied" ; "My parents' wish." 
 
 In the afternoon we called at a friend's office 
 in the Witte Huis, the sky-scraper of Rotter- 
 dam, the tallest business building on the conti- 
 nent. It is ten stories high. There is an ob- 
 servatory on its roof, one hundred and thirty 
 feet above the side walk, and reckless people 
 pay ten cents to go up there and view the 
 country.
 
 Journeys Around Rotterdam 263 
 
 Our friend was out, and, although it was 
 one o'clock and the office unlocked, there was 
 not a soul in the room. All had gone to the 
 mid-day meal, leaving their books on the desks. 
 We concluded to go to Gouda then and there. 
 We bought second-class round-trip tickets. 
 The seats are not subdivided, as in first-class 
 compartments, and the partitions do not extend 
 to the top of the car. Without luggage we 
 require little space. The upholstery is a golden 
 brown plush in place of the dark red to which 
 we are accustomed. Ours is a "verboden te 
 rooken" (smoking forbidden) compartment, 
 while the adjoining one is reserved for ladies 
 without escorts. As this is Rembrandt's ter- 
 centenary, his name is everywhere. A cigar 
 is named after him. This is unusual in Hol- 
 land. As a rule they do not show their re- 
 spect ( !) for great men in that way. A Rem- 
 brandt cigar ought to draw easily. 
 
 The flood gates of heaven were opened when 
 we reached Gouda, so we drove to the Groote 
 Kerk and, being admitted to its massive in- 
 terior, feasted our eyes on the most magnificent 
 stained glass windows in Holland. Number 
 seven, the one containing a likeness of Philip
 
 264 Middelburg to Rotterdam 
 
 II. was removed pending restorations, so our 
 desire to throw a brick through it was baffled. 
 Window twenty-two, "Christ Driving the 
 Money Changers Out of the Temple," was our 
 favorite, primarily because it was the gift of 
 William the Silent and secondarily for its in- 
 trinsic beauty. The perspective and distance 
 effects are equal to anything ever done on can- 
 vas, while the details are wrought out with 
 wonderful fidelity down to the doves in their 
 cages. 
 
 Our bus was waiting for us at the church 
 door and the rain was pouring down, so we 
 returned to the depot. When we reached it 
 the sun was shining brightly, and we concluded 
 to stay over another train, and went back for 
 a snap shot of the stadhuis. That is the way 
 we played tag with the sun during most of our 
 last five days in Holland. 
 
 There is nothing so exasperating as the per- 
 sistence of the Dutch children in their efforts 
 to get in front of a camera. Their intentions 
 are not malicious, but they have jeopardized 
 several pictures for us that we would not lose 
 for worlds. Delft children were a nuisance, 
 but Gouda juveniles are worse. Since unfold-
 
 Journeys Around Rotterdam 265 
 
 ing our tripod we have had a troop of them at 
 our heels. 
 
 No one leaves Gouda without purchasing a 
 tobacco pipe. Ours is of clay twisted like a 
 French horn and covered with black varnish. 
 In winter the natives of neighboring villages 
 consider it great sport to skate to Gouda. on 
 the canals, buy a pipe and return to their 
 homes, pipe in teeth, without having it broken. 
 Of course, every one they meet tries to upset 
 them and break the precious pipe. 
 
 We return to Rotterdam and take the trolley 
 which leads from the depot across Williams 
 Bridge to Noordereiland, a large island in the 
 middle of the Maas, adjacent to the one on 
 which are the docks of the Holland-America 
 line. 
 
 Noordereiland is almost a mile long and 
 three hundred yards wide, built up as com- 
 pactly as the rest of the city and traversed by 
 the trolley line just mentioned. 
 
 We sit at a window on the second floor of 
 the Cafe Fritschy and watch the sun setting 
 over the queer old roofs. Then another driv- 
 ing rain is turned on and in the midst of it the 
 sun tears a big hole in a cloud and shoots
 
 266 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 through several rays which are cooled 
 to a lurid red by the vapors in which they are 
 immersed. With such scenic accompaniments 
 we ate a well-cooked dinner and voted the 
 Fritschy chef an artist in his line. 
 
 After waiting until several cars had passed 
 us, each marked "Vol," we took one going in 
 the opposite direction, paid four cents for a 
 round-trip ticket and circumnavigated the 
 island, passing the same group of patient peo- 
 ple who were standing there when we left. 
 
 We are growing humble and obedient to 
 authority. We attended a vaudeville last night, 
 and, when it was three-fourths over and 
 showed no signs of improvement, we left. We 
 had carefully blazed our way from the point 
 of disembarking to the theater, and had no 
 trouble in retracing our steps, with the logical 
 intent of getting on the same car at the same 
 place and eventually landing near our hotel. 
 A car came by, stopped, some ladies alighted, 
 and we started to get on. There was a chorus 
 of "Niet, niet," and we were obliged to leave 
 the car, cross a narrow circle and get aboard 
 at the place designated by the regulations. 
 
 Our car filled rapidly, and when it had pro-
 
 Journeys Around Rotterdam 267 
 
 ceeded a few blocks it was halted by a gentle- 
 man who was accompanied by his wife and 
 child. The conductor counted the vacancies, 
 admitted the wife and child and gave the start- 
 ing signal after collecting their fare from the 
 husband, who was left standing on the curb to 
 wait for the next car. 
 
 This morning we are on a Delft launch (we 
 hope) without any tickets, but trusting to the 
 good fortune which has not deserted us on the 
 entire trip. We almost missed the boat be- 
 cause it leaves at ten, city time, while my watch 
 is set by railroad time, twenty minutes slower. 
 Fortunately there is a third time quite preva- 
 lent in Holland, behind time, and by grace 
 thereof we are sitting on deck waiting for the 
 boat to start. 
 
 There is a bright sun. We are steaming 
 right through the heart of Rotterdam. Pedes- 
 trians, house boats, bicycles, scows, cabs, ferry 
 boats, trolleys, tow boats and fishing smacks, 
 form a panorama impossible outside of the 
 Netherlands. We just passed a house boat 
 whereon the good wife was getting out the 
 week's washing while her husband was on 
 deck doing some plain sewing.
 
 268 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 "Low bridge," or its Dutch equivalent, is 
 called, and flat we all lie on the deck while 
 the first mate hurriedly folds our camp stools. 
 This last is an unnecessary touch of realism, as 
 the bridge would not have touched them by a 
 foot. Out into the open country we glide. 
 Clouds are gathering. It looks squally, but we 
 have every confidence in our brave skipper and 
 his stout craft. If the worst happens we can 
 always wade ashore. There are nine wind- 
 mills in sight. The roofs of the farmhouses 
 are on a level with the banks of the canal. We 
 pass many lumber yards and saw mills with 
 rafts of logs around them. A motor boat 
 splutters past and spoils the picture for a mo- 
 ment. The captain leaves the bridge to collect 
 the fares. We are charged eight cents each, 
 first class, for the twelve-mile ride. We could 
 have ridden more cheaply, second or third 
 class, but the end of our vacation is so near 
 that we are extravagant. 
 
 We let off a passenger at a saw mill. Our 
 boat does not stop, but slows up and he jumps 
 ashore. We graze a pile of lumber and upset 
 it into the water. Only one board gets into 
 the current and it is harpooned by a small boy
 
 Journeys Around Rotterdam 269 
 
 and recovered. There are wind mills on every 
 side. Here comes a boat with a big brown 
 sail, as patched as a Dutchman's breeches. B. 
 snaps it right on top of a wind mill which she 
 took a moment ago, and she says, "Oh shoot !" 
 and two pictures are lost. We tie up at a 
 little garden where refreshments are served. 
 It has been half an hour since we started and 
 there is much hunger among the passengers. 
 
 Off again, between two streets of tiny one- 
 story, red tiled houses, with yards only three 
 feet wide but planted in flowers. Our threat- 
 ened storm breaks. All hands are piped below 
 just as we pass through a lock. 
 
 Below there is a babel of tongues. An old 
 Frenchman and his daughter lament the 
 weather. The skipper talks to his wife in 
 Dutch. Some English tourists sit and silently 
 glare at each other. Our canal is so nearly 
 level with its banks that a very slight inflow 
 of water would inundate the neighborhood. 
 We have seven first cabin, twelve second cabin, 
 and no steerage on the boat. One of our second 
 cabin lands in the rain. Many friends greet 
 her. She has traveled. She will regale her
 
 270 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 neighbors for weeks with stories of Rotterdam 
 and our stormy return passage. 
 
 The rain stopped at Delft long enough for 
 us to get to the railroad station and we caught 
 the eleven thirty-three train for The Hague. 
 The fare is eighteen cents for the round trip, 
 second class. The sun is shining brightly when 
 we do not need it. We could have used a few 
 rays on that canal trip. The weather is like 
 a spoiled child. If you notice it, it tries to 
 show off. The best way is to ignore it alto- 
 gether. 
 
 A steam tram takes us from The Hague 
 depot to Scheveningen. Our route lies through 
 a new addition, and there are whole rows of 
 houses in various stages of completion. They 
 are of cheap summer-resort construction, and 
 their only redeeming feature is that they will 
 not last long. 
 
 On the beach we cannot find the custodian 
 of the bath chairs, so we just pre-empt two 
 and take it easy. The revenue from bathing 
 costumes is small today. It seems to be the 
 usual thing to remove your shoes and stock- 
 ings, put the rest of your apparel at half mast 
 and wade in. We watch the crowds, eat large
 
 Journeys Around Rotterdam 271 
 
 quantities of delicious green plums and big 
 black grapes, and then take a farewell peep at 
 The Hague and doff our hats to the statue of 
 William the Silent, returning to Delft in time 
 to catch the return boat to Rotterdam. 
 
 In order that you may know in advance a 
 fact that we learned too late, let us advise 
 passengers arriving on the early-in-the-morn- 
 ing steamers from America to take this little 
 boat ride just as soon as they can after getting 
 through the custom house. Boats leave Rot- 
 terdam at four thirty, seven and ten in the 
 morning, and the trip makes an ideal introduc- 
 tion to Holland. 
 
 Being unable to find the proper size of photo- 
 graphic films in Rotterdam we take a shopping 
 tour to Amsterdam. The fare is one dollar 
 for the round trip, and you can accomplish it 
 between breakfast and luncheon. 
 
 Returning from Amsterdam, we obey an im- 
 pulse and get off the train at Gouda in order 
 properly to end our travels in Holland with a 
 canal ride. We walk the length of the town, 
 and it is a long one, to the Rotterdam boat. 
 This is a very pretentious craft, fifty feet long. 
 We travel first class with the cheese. The
 
 272 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 second-class passengers ride with the lumber. 
 To a Hollander our surroundings are worth 
 the difference in the price. We go quite 
 rapidly, six or eight knots an hour, and soon 
 pass a miniature West Point, where boy sol- 
 diers are pole vaulting or shooting at targets. 
 We are again among the farms. As usual the 
 land is lower than the water. On our right 
 is one of the ornamental water towers that dot 
 all Holland. Even the lock-keepers' houses are 
 built with an eye for the beautiful. The small 
 and many colored bricks lend themselves read- 
 ily to pretty little designs in wall and pavement. 
 We pass a number of brick kilns where women 
 are working with the men. A clock in a village 
 steeple strikes 3 130. It does so by striking one 
 more than the preceding hour. By looking at 
 a clock which has just struck four times you 
 can tell whether it is 3 130 or 4. A stork fam- 
 ily on a neighboring roof makes a pretty pic- 
 ture. Father, mother and two young ones are 
 silhouetted against the blue sky. I do not see 
 how father stork gets any time to loaf around 
 his fireside in Holland. We stop at Nieuwer- 
 kerk for a minute. That is the town we found 
 the other day when we were looking for
 
 Journeys Around Rotterdam 2/3 
 
 Capelle. It is drowsy work riding on a canal. 
 One could easily fall asleep were not the cap- 
 tain such a willing performer with his whistle. 
 He toots at everything he passes. We use two 
 pounds of steam for whistling to every one we 
 use for locomotion. 
 
 Our last canal ride lands us on the banks 
 of the Maas. We return to the hotel. The 
 office is filled with Americans who have flocked 
 in from everywhere to catch tomorrow's boat. 
 We order a carriage for the next morning. 
 When it comes, that same Capelle driver is on 
 the box. When asked if he is as vague on the 
 location of the docks as of Capelle, he grins 
 sheepishly. We say a sad farewell to our hotel 
 friends and cross over to the island. We are 
 blocked, in company with a long string of other 
 carriages, but no one swears; no one is in a 
 hurry. We almost wish that circumstances 
 over which we have no control would make us 
 miss the steamer. It is raining hard up to the 
 moment that we leave. Except for the return- 
 ing tourists, an American-bound liner carries 
 no holiday crowd. The Hollanders on board 
 are, as a rule, homeseekers and not sightseers. 
 Until their fortunes are made they will not see
 
 274 Three Weeks in Holland 
 
 the canals and meadows of their kindly but 
 strict old fatherland. The longshoremen 
 march away with the big gangplanks on wheels 
 between them. There is an imperceptible tre- 
 mor as our ship wakes to life, we swing slowly 
 into midstream, the band plays, the handker- 
 chiefs wave and we are off. 
 
 It would seem appropriate to close with a 
 eulogy of Holland and Belgium, but if our love 
 for them has not breathed through every line 
 written, the lack is not in our hearts, but in 
 our ability to express ourselves. It would be 
 ungracious to make invidious comparisons be- 
 tween two such royal hosts. Had we visited 
 but one of the two countries we would have 
 declared it unsurpassable. Each has its parti- 
 sans, as have all good things. You will meet 
 many champions of one at the expense of the 
 other. Holland has cooler summers. Belgium 
 has more bright days. The Hollander gives 
 you more of the comforts of life, and the Bel- 
 gian more of its luxuries. The Hollander 
 charges you more for things, the Belgian 
 charges you oftener. Both do the best they 
 can to entertain you with a seeming absence 
 of effort and a self-effacement that marks the
 
 FAREWELL TO HOLLAND
 
 Journeys Around Rotterdam 275 
 
 perfect host. It is not necessary to choose 
 the countries are small. See both of them, and 
 see them thoroughly by leaving the cities arift 
 plunging into the smaller towns. There, and 
 there alone, will you meet the real people, 
 genuine and unspoiled. 
 
 The End
 
 MISS MINERVA 
 WILLIAM GREEN HILL 
 
 By FRANCES BOYD CALHOUN 
 
 J Screamingly ridiculous situations are mingled with bits of 
 pathos in this delightfully humorous tale of the South. 
 
 <I Do you remember "Helen's Babies ? and "Mrs. Wiggs"? 
 Do you recall "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn"? 
 
 Miss MINERVA AND WILLIAM GREEN HILL is every bit as 
 
 genuine as any of these. 
 
 <J It contains a delightful little love story, but deals principally 
 with William Green Hill, a six-year-old boy with sunny hair, 
 a cherub's face, and a wonderful dialect acquired from the plan- 
 tation negroes among whom he formerly lived. In the narration 
 of the activities of Billy and his associates, Jimmy, Frances and 
 Lina, the author shows an intimate knowledge of the workings 
 of the juvenile mind and makes the pages sparkle with laughs. 
 
 t| From start to finish mere is no let-up in me fun. Any normally 
 constituted reader of the book will soon be in a whirl of laugh- 
 ter over " Sanctified Sophy," "Uncle Jimmy-Jawed Jup'ter," 
 "Aunt Blue-Gum Tempy's Peruny Pearline's chillens," and the 
 other quaint characters of this fascinating book. Their hearts 
 will go out to lovable little Billy, and they will be convulsed 
 by the quaint speeches of bad Jimmy, who says to his chum : 
 "You all time gotter get little boys in trouble. You 'bout the 
 smart-Alexist jack-rabbit they is." 
 
 Small 12mo. ; 212 pages ; bound in scarlet 
 cloth cover attractively stamped ; 22 clever 
 illustrations by Angus MacDonall. Price $1.00.
 
 A orvT7!?*"IIJ 
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