no less than a warrior. "When the people of Holland glorify Kenau,"
says the proverb, "the Frisians praise their Bauck." Kenau we have met:
the heroic widow of Haarlem who during the siege led a band of three
hundred women and repelled the enemy on the walls again and again.

Near Roodkerk is a lake called the Boompoel, into which a coach
and four containing six inside passengers, all of them professional
exorcists, disappeared and was never seen again. The exorcists had come
to relieve the village of the ghost of a miser, and we must presume had
failed to quiet him. Near Bergum, at Buitenrust farm, is the scene of
another tragedy by drowning, for there died Juffer Lysse. This maiden,
disregarding too long her father's dying injunction to build a chapel,
was naturally overturned in her carriage and drowned. Ever since
has the wood been haunted, while the bind-weed, a haunting flower,
is in these parts known as the Juffer Lysse blom.

From these scraps of old lore--all taken from the little Leeuwarden
guide--it will be seen that Friesland is rich in romantic traditions
and well worthy the attention of any maker of sagas.

Chapter XVII

Groningen to Zutphen

Fresh tea--Dutch meals--The Doelens--Groningen--Roman
Catholic priests--The boys' penance--Luther and
Erasmus--The peat country--Folk lore--Terburg--Thomas a
Kempis--Zwolle--The wild girl--Kampen--A hall of justice
indeed--An ideal holiday-place--The wiseacres--Urk--Sir Philip
Sidney--Zutphen--The scripture class--The wax works--Dutch
public morality.

I remember the Doelen at Groningen for several reasons, all of them
thoroughly material. (Holland is, however, a material country.) First
I would put the very sensible custom of providing every guest who
has ordered tea for breakfast with a little tea caddy. At the foot
of the table is a boiling urn from which one fills one's teapot,
and is thus assured of tea that is fresh. So simple and reasonable a
habit ought to be the rule rather than the exception: but never have
I found it elsewhere. This surely is civilisation, I said.

The Doelen was also the only inn in Holland where an inclusive bottle
of claret was placed before me on the table; and it was the only inn
where I had the opportunity of eating ptarmigan with stewed apricots--a
very happy alliance.

Good however as was the Groningen dinner, it was a Sunday dinner at the
Leeuwarden Doelen which remains in my memory. This