Among these dark forms the vague
profile of a woman who prefers darkness to light may be detected here
and there....

Walking through Rotterdam in the evening, it is evident that the city
is teeming with life and in process of expansion; a youthful city,
still growing, and feeling herself every year more and more prest
for room in her streets and houses. In a not far distant future, her
hundred and fourteen thousand inhabitants will have increased to two
hundred thousand.[A] The smaller streets swarm with children; there is
an overflow of life and movement that cheers the eye and heart; a kind
of holiday air. The white and rosy faces of the servant-maids, whose
white caps gleam on every side; the serene visages of shopkeepers
slowly imbibing great glassfuls of beer; the peasants with their
monstrous ear-rings; the cleanliness; the flowers in the windows; the
tranquil and laborious throng; all give to Rotterdam an aspect of
healthful and peaceful content, which brings to the lips the chant
of "Te Beata," not with the cry of enthusiasm, but with the smile of
sympathy....

[Footnote A: The population now (1914) is 418,000, as stated In the
New Standard Dictionary.]

The Hague--in Dutch, s'Gravenhage, or s'Hage--the political capital,
the Washington of Holland, Amsterdam being the New York--is a city
half Dutch and half French, with broad streets and no canals; vast
squares full of trees, elegant houses, splendid hotels, and a
population mostly made up of the rich, nobles, officials, artists, and
literati, the populace being of a more refined order than that of the
other Dutch cities.

In my first turn about the town what struck me most were the new
quarters, where dwells the flower of the wealthy aristocracy. In no
other city, not even in the Faubourg St. Germain at Paris, did I feel
myself such a very poor devil as in those streets. They are wide and
straight, flanked by palaces of elegant form and delicate color, with
large shutterless windows, through which can be seen the rich carpets
and sumptuous furniture of the first floors. Every door is closed; and
there is not a shop, nor a placard, nor a stain, nor a straw to be
seen if you were to look for it with a hundred eyes. The silence
was profound when I passed by. Only now and then I encountered some
aristocratic equipage rolling almost noiselessly over the brick
pavement, or the stiffest of lackeys stood before a door, or the
blonde head of a lady was visible b