ed and unrefined, to the refinement and
culture of its illustrious and devout leaders, whose blood had stained
the foul pavement of the Buytenhof, reserving the right at a future day
to inscribe the names of its victims upon the highest stone of the Dutch
Pantheon.

It was arranged that the Prince Stadtholder himself should give the
prize of a hundred thousand guilders, which interested the people at
large, and it was thought that perhaps he would make a speech which
interested more particularly his friends and enemies.

For in the most insignificant words of men of political importance their
friends and their opponents always endeavour to detect, and hence think
they can interpret, something of their true thoughts.

As if your true politician's hat were not a bushel under which he always
hides his light!

At length the great and long-expected day--May 15, 1673--arrived; and
all Haarlem, swelled by her neighbours, was gathered in the beautiful
tree-lined streets, determined on this occasion not to waste its
applause upon military heroes, or those who had won notable victories
in the field of science, but to reserve their applause for those who had
overcome Nature, and had forced the inexhaustible mother to be delivered
of what had theretofore been regarded as impossible,--a completely black
tulip.

Nothing however, is more fickle than such a resolution of the people.
When a crowd is once in the humour to cheer, it is just the same as when
it begins to hiss. It never knows when to stop.

It therefore, in the first place, cheered Van Systens and his nosegay,
then the corporation, then followed a cheer for the people; and, at
last, and for once with great justice, there was one for the excellent
music with which the gentlemen of the town councils generously treated
the assemblage at every halt.

Every eye was looking eagerly for the heroine of the festival,--that is
to say, the black tulip,--and for its hero in the person of the one who
had grown it.

In case this hero should make his appearance after the address we have
seen worthy Van Systens at work on so conscientiously, he would not fail
to make as much of a sensation as the Stadtholder himself.

But the interest of the day's proceedings for us is centred neither in
the learned discourse of our friend Van Systens, however eloquent it
might be, nor in the young dandies, resplendent in their Sunday clothes,
and munching their heavy cakes; nor in the poor youn