y more for persistent chimes than this--that
at the Abbey hotel it is no misfortune to wake in the night.

Long John has a companion in Foolish Betsy. Foolish Betsy is the
stadhuis clock, so called (Gekke Betje) from her refusal to keep time
with the giant: another instance of the power which John exerts over
the town, even to the wounding of chivalry. The Nieuwe Kerk would
be nothing without its tower--it is one of the barest and least
interesting churches in a country which has reduced to the finest
point the art of denuding religion of mystery--but the stadhuis
would still be wonderful even without its Betsy, There is nothing
else like it in Holland, nothing anywhere quite so charming in its
shameless happy floridity. I cannot describe it: the building is too
complicated, too ornate; I can only say that it is wholly captivating
and thoroughly out of keeping with the Dutch genius--Spanish influence
again apparent. Beneath the eaves are four and twenty statues of the
Counts of Holland and Zeeland, and the roof is like a mass-meeting
of dormer windows.

In addition to the stadhuis museum, which is dedicated to the history
of Middelburg and Zeeland, the town has also a municipal museum, too
largely given over to shells and stuffed birds, but containing also
such human relics as the wheel on which Admiral de Ruyter as a boy
helped his father to make rope, and also the first microscope and
the first telescope, both the work of Zacharias Jansen, a Zeeland
mathematician. More interesting perhaps are the rooms in the old
Zeeland manner, corresponding to the Hindeloopen rooms which we
have seen at Leeuwarden, but lacking their cheerful richness of
ornamentation. It is certainly a museum that should be visited,
albeit the stuffed birds weigh heavily on the brow.

After all, Middelburg's best museum is itself. Its streets and
houses are a never-ending pleasure. Something gladdens the eye at
every turn--a blue and yellow shutter, a red and black shutter,
a turret, a daring gable, a knot of country people, a fat Zeeland
baby, a milk-can rivalling the sun, an old woman's lace cap, a young
woman's merry mouth. Only in two respects is the town unsatisfactory,
and both are connected with its streets. The liberty given to each
householder to erect an iron fence across the pavement at each limit
of his property makes it necessary to walk in the road, and the _pave_
of the road is so rough as to cause no slight suffering to any one in