se we were below the sea level here, but one
cannot credit the old story about the boy who plugged the dyke with his
thumb, thereby saving the whole country.

The dykes are many feet high and as the foundation is composed of heavy
black stones, then layers of great red bricks and tiles, and finally
turf and large willow branches interlaced most cunningly like giant
basket work, such a story is impossible.

My _vis a vis_, all the while regarding me unwinkingly, overheard me
speak to A--, in English.

Then he slowly took the stogie from his mouth and ejaculated,
"_Ach--Engelsch!--Do it well met you?_"

I replied that it certainly did.

"_And met Madame?_"

I nodded.

"_Alst' u blieft mynheer--sir,_" he said. Then he changed his seat and
thereafter related to the others that he had conversed with the
strangers, who were English, and were traveling for pleasure, being
_enormously rich_. I think thereafter he enjoyed the reputation of being
an accomplished linguist. So, pleasantly did we amble along the narrow
little steam tramway through luxurious green fields and smiling fertile
landscape of the Flemish littoral in our well rewarded search for the
quaint and the unusual.

The Gothic Town Hall, a remarkable construction on the Grand' Place, and
erected 1526, has been restored with a great amount of good taste in
recent years, and the statues on its facade have been replaced with such
skill that one is not conscious of modern work.

The great Hall of the Magistrates on the ground floor, with its
magnificent furniture, and the admirable modern mural paintings by the
Flemish artists Guffens and Severts (1875) was worth a journey to see.
The most noteworthy of these paintings represented the "Departure of
Baldwin IX," Count of Flanders, at the beginning of the Fourth Crusade
in 1202, and the "Consultation of the Flemish, before the great Battle
of the Spurs" in 1302.

In this chamber is a remarkable Renaissance mantelpiece, which is
embellished with the arms of the Allied Towns of Bruges and Ghent,
between which are the standard bearers of the doughty Knights of
Courtrai, and two statues of the Archduke Albert and his Lady, all
surrounding a statue of the Holy Virgin.

On the upper floor is the Council Chamber, in which is another
mantelpiece hardly less ornate and interesting, and executed in what may
be called the "flamboyant" manner in rich polychrome. It is dated 1527
and was designed by (one of the) Kelderm