ten frowned at
us from the walls of picture gallery and stadhuis throughout the
country--almost without exception from the hand of Ferdinand Bol,
or a copyist.

Scratch a sea-dog and you find a pirate; De Ruyter, who stands in stone
for all time by Flushing harbour, lacking the warranty of war would
have been a Paul Jones beyond eulogy. You can see it in his strong
brows, his determined mouth, his every line. It is only two hundred
and thirty-seven years, only seven generations, since he was in the
Thames with his fleet, and London was panic-stricken. No enemy has
been there since. The English had their revenge in 1809, when they
bombarded Flushing and reduced it to only a semblance of what it had
been. Among the beautiful buildings which our cannon balls destroyed
was the ancient stadhuis. Hence it is that Flushing's stadhuis to-day
is a mere recent upstart.

Flushing does little to amuse its visitors after the sun has left the
sea; and we were very glad of the excuse offered by the Middelburg
kermis to return to our inland city each afternoon. The Middelburg
kermis is a particularly merry one. The stalls and roundabouts fill
the market square before the stadhuis, packed so closely that the
revolving horses nearly carry the poffertje restaurants round with
them. The Dutch roundabouts, by the way, still, like the English,
retain horses: they have not, like the French, as I noticed at three
fairs in and about Paris last autumn, taken to pigs and rabbits.

I examined the Middelburg kermis very thoroughly. Few though the
exhibits were, they included two fat women. Their booths stood on
opposite sides of the square, all the fun of the fair between them. In
the west was Mile. Jeanne; in the east the Princess Sexiena. Jeanne
was French, Sexiena came from the Fatherland. Both, though rivals,
used the same poster: a picture of a lady, enormous, decolletee,
highly-coloured, stepping into a fiacre, to the cocher's intense
alarm. Before one inspected the rival giantesses this community of
advertisement had seemed to be a mistake; after, its absurdity was only
too apparent, for although the Princess was colossal, Mile. Jeanae
was more so. Mile. Jeanne should therefore have employed an artist
to make an independent allurement.

Both also displayed outside the booths a pair of corsets, but here,
I fancy, the advantage was with Mlle. Jeanne, although such were the
distractions of the square that it was difficult to keep relative