er their trunks
or lockers; he peeped into the Jews' Quarter of the city, where the rich
diamond cutters and squalid old-clothesmen dwell, and wisely resolved to
keep away from it; he also enjoyed hasty glimpses of the four principal
avenues of Amsterdam--the Prinsengracht, Keizersgracht, Herengracht, and
Singel. These are semicircular in form, and the first three average more
than two miles in length. A canal runs through the center of each, with
a well-paved road on either side, lined with stately buildings. Rows
of naked elms, bordering the canal, cast a network of shadows over its
frozen surface, and everything was so clean and bright that Ben told
Lambert it seemed to him like petrified neatness.

Fortunately the weather was cold enough to put a stop to the usual
street flooding and window-washing, or our young excursionists might
have been drenched more than once. Sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing form
a passion with Dutch housewives, and to soil their spotless mansions is
considered scarcely less than a crime. Everywhere a hearty contempt is
felt for those who neglect to rub the soles of their shoes to a polish
before crossing the doorsill; and in certain places visitors are
expected to remove their heavy shoes before entering.

Sir William Temple, in his memoirs of "What Passed in Christendom from
1672 to 1679," tells a story of a pompous magistrate going to visit a
lady of Amsterdam. A stout Holland lass opened the door, and told him
in a breath that the lady was at home and that his shoes were not very
clean. Without another word she took the astonished man up by both arms,
threw him across her back, carried him through two rooms, set him down
at the bottom of the stairs, seized a pair of slippers that stood there,
and put them upon his feet. Then, and not until then, she spoke, telling
him that his mistress was on the floor above, and that he might go up.

While Ben was skating with his friends upon the crowded canals of the
city, he found it difficult to believe that the sleepy Dutchmen he saw
around him, smoking their pipes so leisurely and looking as though
their hats might be knocked off their heads without their making any
resistance, were capable of those outbreaks that had taken place in
Holland--that they were really fellow countrymen of the brave, devoted
heroes of whom he had read in Dutch history.

As his party skimmed lightly along he told Van Mounen of a burial
riot which in 1696 had occurred i