. But who would have the heart to complain of such
small grievances when the love of song is stronger than any other?"

I had no such fortune in Holland. No hotel proprietor rhymed for me,
no waiter sang. My chief friends were rather the hotel porters,
of whom I recall in particular two--the paternal colossus at the
Amstel in Amsterdam, who might have sat for the Creator to an old
master--urbane, efficient, a storehouse of good counsel; and the plump
and wide cynic into whose capable and kindly hands one falls at the
Oude Doelen at The Hague, that shrewd and humorous reader of men and
Americans. I see yet his expression of pity, not wholly (yet perhaps
sufficiently) softened to polite interest, when consulted as to the
best way in which to visit Alkmaar to see the cheese market. That
any one staying at The Hague--and more, at the Oude Doelen--should
wish to see traffic in cheese at a provincial town still strikes his
wise head as tragic, although it happens every week. I honour him
for it and for the exquisite tact with which he retains his opinion
and allows you to have yours.

A poet landlord and an operatic head waiter, what are they when all
is said beside a friendly hotel porter? He is the _Deus ex machina_
indeed. The praises of the hotel porter have yet to be sung. O
Switzerland! the poet might begin (not, probably, a landlord poet) O
Switzerland--I give but a bald paraphrase of the spirited original--O
Switzerland, thou land of peaks and cow bells, of wild strawberries
and nonconformist conventions, of grasshoppers and climbing dons,
thou hast strange limitations! Thou canst produce no painter, thou
possessest no navy; but thou makest the finest hotel porters in the
world. Erect, fair-haired, blue-eyed, tactful and informing, they
are the true friends of the homeless!--And so on for many strophes.

To Texel I did not cross, although it is hard for any one who has
read _The Riddle of the Sands_ to refrain. Had we been there in the
nesting season I might have wandered in search of the sea birds'
and the plovers' eggs, just for old sake's sake, as I have in the
island of Coll, but we were too late, and The Helder had depressed
us. It was off the Island of Texel on 31st July, 1653, that Admiral
Tromp was killed during his engagement with the English under Monk.

Medemblik, situated on the point of a spur of land between The Helder
and Enkhuisen, was once the residence of Radbod and the Kings of
Frisia. It is now