for an October day.

[Illustration: _THE SKATER OF THE ZUYDER ZEE._
Photogravure from a Painting by G. H. Boughton, A. R. A.]

The site selected for the race was a faultless plain of ice near
Amsterdam, on that great _arm_ of the Zuyder Zee, which Dutchmen of
course must call the Eye. The townspeople turned out in large numbers.
Strangers in the city deemed it a fine chance to see what was to be
seen. Many a peasant from the northward had wisely chosen the 20th as
the day for the next city-trading. It seemed that everybody, young and
old, who had wheels, skates, or feet at command, had hastened to the
scene.

There were the gentry in their coaches, dressed like Parisians fresh
from the Boulevards; Amsterdam children in charity uniforms; girls
from the Roman Catholic Orphan House, in sable gowns and white
head-bands; boys from the Burgher Asylum, with their black tights and
short-skirted harlequin coats. There were old-fashioned gentlemen in
cocked hats and velvet knee-breeches; old-fashioned ladies too, in
stiff quilted skirts and bodices of dazzling brocade. These were
accompanied by servants bearing foot-stoves and cloaks. There were the
peasant folk, arrayed in every possible Dutch costume,--shy young
rustics in brazen buckles; simple village maidens concealing their
flaxen hair under fillets of gold; women whose long narrow aprons were
stiff with embroidery; women with short corkscrew curls hanging over
their foreheads; women with shaved heads and close-fitting caps, and
women in striped skirts and windmill bonnets; men in leather, in
homespun, in velvet and broadcloth; burghers in modern European
attire, and burghers in short jackets, wide trousers, and
steeple-crowned hats.

There were beautiful Friesland girls in wooden shoes and coarse
petticoats, with solid gold crescents encircling their heads, finished
at each temple with a golden rosette, and hung with lace a century
old. Some wore necklaces, pendants, and earrings of the purest gold.
Many were content with gilt, or even with brass; but it is not an
uncommon thing for a Friesland woman to have all the family treasure
in her headgear. More than one rustic lass displayed the value of two
thousand guilders upon her head that day.

Scattered throughout the crowd were peasants from the Island of
Marken, with sabots, black stockings, and the widest of breeches; also
women from Marken, with short blue petticoats, and black jackets gayly
figured in fr