ehind them weariness, regret or misery. His volumes
are a storehouse of prudence and worldly wisdom. For every state
of life he has fit lessons, so nicely dovetailed into rhyme, that
the morality seems made expressly for the language, or the language
for the morality. His thoughts--all running about among the duties
of life--voluntarily move in harmonious numbers, as if to think
and to rhyme were one solitary attribute. For the nurse who wants
a song for her babe--the boy who is tormented by the dread of the
birch--the youth whose beard begins to grow--the lover who desires a
posey for his lady's ring--for the husband--father--grandsire--for
all there is a store--to encourage--to console--and to be grateful
for. The titles of his works are indices to their contents. Among
them are _De Ouderdom_, Old Age; _Buyten Leven_, Out-of-Doors Life;
_Hofgedachten_, Garden Thoughts; _Gedachten op Slapelooze Nachten_,
Thoughts of Sleepless Nights; _Trouwring_, Marriage Ring; _Zelfstrijt_,
Self-struggle, etc. Never was a poet so essentially the poet of the
people. He is always intelligible--always sensible--and, as was well
said of him by Kruijff,

Smiling he teaches truth, and sporting wins to virtue."

When President Kruger died last year the memoirs of him agreed in
fixing upon the Bible as his only reading. But I am certain he knew
Vader Cats by heart too. If ever a master had a faithful pupil, Vader
Cats had one in Oom Paul. The vivid yet homely metaphors and allegories
in which Oom Paul conveyed so many of his thoughts were drawn from the
same source as the emblems of Vader Cats. Both had the AEsopian gift.

We have no one English writer with whom to compare Cats; but a
syndicate formed of Fuller and Burton, Cobbett and Quarles might
produce something akin.

Scheveningen is half squalid town, half monstrous pleasure resort. Upon
its sea ramparts are a series of gigantic buildings, greatest of which
is the Curhaus, where the best music in Holland is to be heard. Its
pier and its promenade are not at the first glimpse unlike Brighton's;
but the vast buildings have no counterpart with us, except perhaps at
Blackpool. What is, however, peculiar to Scheveningen is its expanse of
sand covered with sentry-box wicker chairs. To stand on the pier on a
fine day in the season and look down on these thousands of chairs and
people is to receive an impression of insect-like activity that I think
cannot be equalled. Immovable as t