r pictures, and fee their
servants. Upon the table, in one, were thrown down carelessly the bonnet
and gloves of the lady of the house. I was tempted to carry them off.
Only a vigorous early training, and the thought of a long line of pious
ancestors, prevented. Here were pictures from most of the earlier and
some of the later Dutch artists--Paul Potter's animals, Jan Steen's pots
and pans, Vandervelde's quays and luggers, and green, foaming seas, and
even a touch or two from the brush of the master of Dutch art. We
stopped on our way back to the hotel, at a bazaar,--a place of
beguilement, with long rooms full of everything beautiful in art,
everything tempting to the eye,--and after dinner went out to one of the
adjacent tea-gardens. It was filled with family parties drinking tea
around little tables. The music was fine, though unexpected at times,
as, for instance, when a trumpet blew a startling blast, and a little
man in its range sprang from his seat as though blown out of his place.
It was amusing and interesting to watch the stream of promenaders
circling around the musicians' stand--broad, heavily-built men, long of
body, short of limbs; women "square-rigged," of easy, good-natured
countenance. I doubt if there was a nerve in the whole assembly.

At noon the next day, we took the train for Amsterdam--another two
hours' ride. The land began to undulate as we went towards the sea,
with the shifting hillocks of sand raised by wind and wave. We passed
Leyden, famous for its resistance to the Spaniards, as well as for
having been the birthplace of Rembrandt and a score of lesser lights,
and Haarlem, known for its great organ, and still the sand-hills rose
one above the other, until they shut out everything beyond. It was only
when we made a sharp turn, and struck out in a straight line for the
city, that the Zuyder Zee opened before us, the curving line of land
along its edge alive with windmills. We counted a hundred and twenty in
sight at one time, and still did not exhaust them; so many skipped and
whirled about, and refused to be counted. It hardly seems possible that
the city of Amsterdam is built upon piles driven into the sand and mud.
Certainly, when you have been jolted and shaken until your teeth
chatter, for a long mile, in one of the hotel omnibuses from the station
through the narrow streets and over the rough pavements, you will think
there must be a tolerably firm foundation. Such a peaceful, sleepy,