Chapter II: Part 2

The royal family are off on a visit to Brussels, and I have not met any of them. This information I have gleaned from the hotel porters, the boat captains, the chambermaids, and the clerks who speak English. I imagine I have come nearer getting the facts than if I had sent in my card at the royal palace.

The Pilgrims’ Start

DELFTSHAVEN, July 25.

This is the town from which the Pilgrims sailed on the trip which was to make Plymouth Rock famous. Nearly a hundred of the congregation of Rev. John Robinson at Leyden came to this little suburb of Rotterdam, and embarked on the Speedwell. The night before the start was spent by the congregation in exhortation and prayer in a little church which still stands, and has the fact recorded on a big tablet. The Pilgrims went to Southampton, discovered the Speedwell was not seaworthy, and transferred to the Mayflower.

* * * * *

Those English Puritans who had emigrated from their own country to Holland were considered “religious cranks” even in those days when fighting and killing for religion was regarded the proper occupation of a Christian. The Puritans in England were strong in numbers, and while Queen Elizabeth had frowned upon them as dissenters from the church of which she was the head, she was politician enough to restrain the persecution of them, for they were useful citizens and loved to die fighting Spaniards. But a few extremists who persisted in preaching in public places were sentenced to jail, and some of these skipped to Holland. Queen Elizabeth died and James became the King of England, and he was a pinhead. He hated non-conformists as much as Catholics. So, more of the Puritans who could not pretend to conform went to Holland, and in Leyden and Amsterdam they founded little settlements. Holland was a land of liberty, and the Puritans wanted the right to disagree, non-conform, argue and debate over disputed questions. There were several congregations of them, and they did not agree on important doctrines, such as whether John the Baptist’s hair was parted on the side or in the middle. Public debates were held and great enjoyment therefrom resulted, although there is no record of anyone having his opinion changed by the arguments, and the side whose story you are reading always overcame the other.

The Puritans did not mix much with the Dutch, and naturally grew lonesome in their exile. They conceived the plan of emigrating to the New World and there establishing the right to worship God in accord with their own conscience. Influential Puritans in England who had not been so cranky as to leave home, helped with the king, and finally they secured permission from James to settle in America and to own the land they should develop. James remarked at the time he would prefer that they go to Hell, where they belonged, but he was needing a loan from the English Puritans, so he gave the permit. The Puritans in old England also provided a good part of the money with which to fit out the expedition. At the time there was a general movement among the Puritans in England for a big migration to the New World. This was to be a sort of experiment station. At the time, James was king, and Charles, a dissolute prince, was to follow. The Puritans were sick at heart and ready to leave their native land. But soon after the Pilgrims had made their settlement in New England, the Puritans at home developed leaders who put them into the fight for Old England. Then along came Cromwell, and for many years English Puritans were running the government, and the necessity for a safe place across the sea and an asylum for religious liberty disappeared so far as they were concerned, though their interest in the Colonists was maintained. The sons of these Puritans who crossed the ocean rather than go to the established church, refused to pay a tax on tea, about 150 years later, and formed a new country with a new flag. That was part of the result of the sailing of the little company from Rev. Mr. Robinson’s flock after a night spent in prayer in this town of Delftshaven, just about this time of the year in 1620.

* * * * *

The stay of the Puritans in Holland had no effect on the Dutch. They let the Puritans shoot their mouths any way they pleased, and the Puritan only prospers and proselytes on opposition. But the Dutch of the present day are getting good returns for that investment of long ago. There are a dozen places in Holland, here and at Amsterdam and Leyden, visited by Americans every year because they are historic spots in connection with the Pilgrims. At each and every place the contribution-box is in sight, and the Dutch church or town which owns the property gets a handsome revenue. New England churches give liberally to the fixing up of the Dutch churches which can show a record of having been just once the place where some Puritan preached.

* * * * *

Wooden shoes have not gone out of style in Holland. They are still worn generally in the country, and by the poorer children and men in the cities. They are cheap, which is a big recommendation to the Dutch. They are warm, said to be much warmer than leather. It does not hurt them to be wet, a very desirable feature in this water-soaked country. These are all good reasons, and as soon as you get used to the clatter and the apparent awkwardness you appreciate the fact that the “klompen,” as the Dutch call them, are a reasonable style for Holland. They are not worn in the house but dropped in the entryway, and house shoes or stocking feet go within. The Dutch farmer is proud of his clogs, paints them, carves them, and scrubs them. A man with idle time, like a fisherman, will often spend months decorating a pair of wooden shoes. They are considered a proper present from a young husband to his bride, and she will use them when scrubbing, which is a good part of the time. The shoes are generally made of poplar, and to the size of the foot. When the foot grows you can hollow out a little more shoe. Wooden shoes are as common here as overalls in America, and they will not grow less popular unless Holland goes dry--of which I see no indication.

* * * * *

The farm-houses are usually built in connection with the barns, the family living in front and the stock and feed occupying the rear. This is rather customary in cold climates, and you must remember that Holland is farther north than Quebec. The winters get very cold and the canals and rivers freeze over. Skating is the great national sport. There does not seem to be much summer sport except scrubbing. All through the summer the people dig and weed and fertilize and prepare for market. The dikes and canals must be maintained and the best made of a short season. In the winter they can live with the pretty black-and-white cattle, the sheep and the horses, and have a good time.

Amsterdam, and Others

AMSTERDAM, July 27

This is the largest and most important city of Holland. It has about as much commerce as Rotterdam, and is longer on history, manufactures, art, and society. It was the first large city built up on a canal system, and its 600,000 population is a proof that something can be built out of nothing. Along about 1300 and 1400 it was a small town in a swamp. When the war for independence from Spain began, in 1656, Amsterdam profited by its location on the Zuyder Zee. The Spaniards ruined most of the rival towns and put an end to the commerce of Antwerp for a while, and Amsterdam received the mechanics and merchants fleeing from the soldiers of Alva. The name means a “dam,” or dike, on the Amstel river. The swamp was reclaimed from the water by dikes and drainage canals, but even now every house in the city must have its foundation on piles. The word dam, or its inclusion in a name, means just about what it does in English, provided you refer to the proper dam, not the improper damn. As nearly all of the Dutch towns are built on dam sites a great many of them are some-kind-of-a-dam. Amsterdam is built below the level of the sea, which is just beside it, and the water in the canals is pumped out by big engines and forced over the dike into the sea. If this were not done the water would come over the town site and Amsterdam would go back to swamp and not be worth a dam site.

* * * * *

Amsterdam is the chief money market of Holland, and one of the financial capitals of the world. It is the place an American promoter makes for when he is out after the stuff with which to make the female horse travel. A large part of its business men are Jews, and their ability and wealth have maintained the credit of Dutch interests in all parts of the globe. At a time when the Jews were being persecuted nearly everywhere they were given liberty in Holland, and much of the country’s progress is due to that fact and to the religious toleration of all kinds of sects.

The canals run along nearly all the streets, and are filled with freight-boats from the country and from other cities. Thousands of these canal boats lie in the canals of Amsterdam and are the homes of the boatmen, who are the commerce carriers of Holland. Under our window is tied up a canal-boat which could carry as much freight as a dozen American box cars. The power is a sail or a pole or a man or a woman, whichever is most convenient. The boatman and his wife and ten or fifteen children, with a dog and a cat, live comfortably in one end, and we can watch them at their work and play. A dozen more such boats are lying in this block, some with steam engines and some with gasoline engines. The Standard Oil Company does a great business in Holland, and as usual is a great help to the people. It is introducing cheap power for canal-boats by means of proper engines, and in a short time will probably free the boatman and his wife from the pull-and-push system received from the good old days.

The canals are lined with big buildings, business and residence, mostly from four to six stories high, with the narrow, peaked and picturesque architecture made familiar to us by the pictures. All kinds of color are used and ornamented fronts are common. Imagine a street such as I describe and you have this one that is under our hotel window and which is the universal street scene of Amsterdam. Some one called this the Venice of the North, but to my mind it is prettier than Venice, although it lacks some of the oriental architecture and smell.

* * * * *

Last night we went to the Rembrandt theatre to see “The Mikado,” in Dutch. Of course we could follow the music of the old-time friend, and the language made the play funnier than ever. The Dutch are not near so strong on music as are their German or French neighbors. They utilize compositions of other nations, and American airs are very common. The window of a large fine music store is playing up “Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?” A few Americans were at the big garden Krasnapolsky, listening to a really fine orchestra with an Austrian leader. We sent up a request for the American national air and it came promptly: “Whistling Rufus.” The Europeans think the cake-walk is something like a national dance in our country, and whenever they try to please us they turn loose one of our rag-time melodies. They do not mind chucking the “Georgia Campmeeting” or “Rings on My Fingers and Bells on My Toes,” into a program of Wagner and Tschudi and other composers whom we are taught at home to consider sacred.

* * * * *

The most entertaining feature of the Amsterdam landscape that I have seen is a Dutch lady in a hobble skirt. The fashion is here all right, and it would make an American hobble appear tame and common. In the first place, the Dutch lady is not of the proper architecture, and in the second place, she still wears a lot more underskirts, or whatever they are, than are considered necessary in Paris or Hutchinson. But she does not expand the hobble. The shopping street of Amsterdam is filled with fashionably dressed Dutch ladies who look like tops, and who are worth coming a long ways to see. Far be it from me to criticize the freaks of female fashion. I never know what they are until after they are past due. But if the Dutch hobble ever reaches the American side of the Atlantic it will be time for the mere men to organize.

* * * * *

The greatest art gallery in Europe is here, The Rijks Museum. I went to see it--once. I do not get the proper thrills from seeing a thousand pictures in thirty minutes. They make me tired. But Rembrandt’s Night Watch, or nearly anything a good Dutch artist has painted, is a real pleasure. The Dutch are recognizing their own modern art, and in that way they are going to distance the Italians. The Dutch artists are good at portraying people and common things, such as cats and dogs and ships. They are not strong in allegory or imaginative work, and you do not have to be educated up to enjoy them. And they run a little fun into their work occasionally, which would shock a Dago artist out of his temperament.

* * * * *

Wages are higher in Holland than elsewhere in Europe. A street car conductor gets a dollar a day. Ordinary labor is paid sixty to eighty cents a day. Farm laborer about $15 per month, but boards himself. A good all-around hired girl is a dollar a week. Mechanics receive from one dollar to two dollars a day. The necessaries of life are not so high as with us. Vegetables are cheaper. Tobacco is much less. Meats are about as high. Clothing is cheaper, but our people wouldn’t wear it. Beer is two cents a glass and lemonade is five cents. The ordinary workingman lives on soup, vegetables, and very little meat; gets a new suit of clothes about once in five years, and takes his family to a garden for amusement, where they get all they want for ten cents. The Dutch citizen on foot is plain, honest, a little rude, but of good heart and very accommodating. I have not met the citizens in carriages and on horseback, who make up a very small part of the procession in Holland.

Cheeses and Bulbses

ALKMAAR, July 28.

Of course Holland is the greatest cheese country on earth, and Alkmaar is the biggest cheese market in Holland. Every Friday the cheesemakers of the district bring their product to the public market, and buyers, local and foreign, bargain for and purchase the cheeses. That is why we came to Alkmaar on Friday. The cheese market is certainly an interesting and novel sight. All over the big public square are piled little mounds of cheeses, shaped like large grape-fruit and colored in various shades of red and yellow. Each wholesaler has his carriers in uniform of white, and a straw hat and ribbons colored as a livery. When a sale is made, two carriers take a barrow which they carry suspended from their shoulders and with a sort of two-step and many cries to get out of the way they bring their load to the public weigh-house, where it is officially weighed. Then off the cheeses go to the store-rooms or to the canal-boats which line one side of the square, waiting to take their freight to the cities or to the sea. The farmers look over each other’s cheeses as they do hogs at the Kansas State Fair, with comments of praise or criticism. There is much chaffing and chaffering between them and the buyers. In about two hours the cheeses are gone, the square is empty and the beer-houses are full. The women-folks do not take an active part in the market, but they are present and looking things over, and I suspect they had been permitted to milk the cows and make the cheese.

About $3,000,000 worth of cheese is sold annually in the Alkmaar market. The country round about, North Holland, is all small farms, with gardens and pastures and little herds of the black-and-white cattle. The cheese wholesales at about 60 cents a cheese, and in America we pay about twice that much for the same, or for the Edam, which is like it. The farmers look prosperous, drive good horses and very substantial gaily painted wagons.

Alkmaar has 18,000 population, and is therefore about the size of Hutchinson. But it is a good deal older. Back in 1573 it successfully defended itself against the Spaniards. The name means “all sea,” because the country was originally covered with water. The land is kept above the water now by pumping and pouring into canals which are higher than the farms through which they flow. This is done very systematically and by windmills. A district thus maintained is called a “polder,” something like our irrigation district, and on one of them near Alkmaar, about the size of a Kansas township, six miles square, there are 51 windmills working all the time, pumping the water. These are not little windmills like those in a Kansas pasture, but great fellows with big arms fifty feet long, and they stand out over the polder like so many giants. The picture of these mills in a most fertile garden-spot, with canal streaks here and there and boats on the canals looming up above the land, is certainly a striking one. And it shows clearly what energy can do when properly applied.

The soil is as sandy as in South Hutchinson. But dirt and fertilizer are brought from the back country and the soil is kept constantly renewed. It seems to me that with comparatively little work the sandy soil of the Arkansas valley can be made into a market garden, producing many times its present value, whenever our people take it into their heads to manufacture their own soil and apply water when needed and not just when it rains. That time will come, but probably not until a dense population forces a great increase in production.

* * * * *

I have another idea. Along the coast of Holland are the “sand dunes,” which are exactly like our sand hills. What we should do is to change the name from sand hills to “dunes,” brag about them and charge people for visiting them. The city of Amsterdam gets its supply of drinking-water from the dunes. This was important news to me, for it confirmed my theory as to the similarity of the dunes and the sand hills, and also suggested that somebody in Amsterdam used water for drinking purposes, a fact I had not noticed while there.

* * * * *

We spent part of a day in Haarlem, where the tulips come from. The soil conditions are like those at Alkmaar, but the country is a mass of nurseries, flower gardens, and beautiful growing plants. We are out of season for tulips, but this is the time when the bulbs are being collected and dried to be shipped in all directions. Not only tulips but crocuses, hyacinths, lilies, anemones, etc., are raised for the market,--cut flowers to the cities, bulbs to all parts of the world. Just now the gardens are filled with phlox, dahlias, larkspurs, nasturtiums,--by the acre. The flowers are about the same as at home. Out of this thin, scraggly, sandy soil the gardeners of North Holland are taking money for flowers and bulbs faster than miners in gold-fields. With flowers and cheeses these Dutch catch about all kinds of people.

* * * * *

Haarlem is the capital of the province of North Holland, and is full of quaint houses of ancient architecture. It was one of the hot towns for independence when the war with Spain began. The Spaniards besieged it, and after a seven months gallant defense, in which even the women fought as soldiers, the town surrendered under promise of clemency. The Spaniards broke their promise and put to death the entire garrison and nearly all the townspeople. This outrage so incensed the Dutch in other places that the war was fought more bitterly than before, and the crime--for such it was--really aided in the final expulsion of the Spaniards.

* * * * *

Along in the seventeenth century was the big boom in Haarlem. The tulip mania developed and bulbs sold for thousands of dollars. Capitalists engaged in the speculation and the trade went into big figures. Millions of dollars were spent for the bulbs, and so long as the demand and the market continued every tulip-raiser was rich. Finally the reaction came, as it always does to a boom, and everybody went broke. A bulb which sold for $5,000 one year was not worth 50 cents the next. The government added to the confusion by decreeing that all contracts for future deliveries were illegal. The usual phenomenon of a panic followed, everybody losing and nobody gaining. A hundred years later there was about the same kind of a boom in hyacinths, and the same result. It will be observed that the Dutch are not so much unlike Americans when it comes to booms, only it takes longer for them to forget and calls for more experience.

* * * * *

Frans Hals, a great Dutch painter, almost next to Rembrandt, was born in Haarlem, and a number of his pictures are in the city building. It was customary in those days for the mayor and city council to have a group picture painted and hung in the town hall. This was the way most of the Dutch artists got their start, for the officials were always wealthy citizens who were willing to pay more for their own pictures than for studies of nature or allegory. I wonder if the officials paid their own money or did they voucher it through the city treasury and charge it to sprinkling or street work?

Both Alkmaar and Haarlem are interesting because they are intensely Dutch. Their principal occupations, cheesemaking and flower-raising, have been their principal occupations for centuries. They had nothing to start with and had to fight for that. Now they are loaning money to the world. If the people of Kansas worked as hard as do the Dutch and were as economical and saving, in one generation they would have all the money in the world. But they wouldn’t have much fun.

The American way of economizing may be illustrated by a story. Once upon a time in a certain town--which I want to say was not in Kansas, for I have no desire to be summoned before the attorney-general to tell all about it--a man and his wife were in the habit of sending out every night and getting a quart of beer for 10 cents. They drank this before retiring, and were reasonably comfortable. Prosperity came to them, and the man bought a keg of beer. That night he drew off a quart, and as he sat in his stocking-feet he philosophized to his wife and said: “See how we are saving money. By buying a keg of beer at a time this quart we are drinking costs only 6 cents. So we are saving 4 cents.” She looked at him with admiration, and replied: “How fine! Let’s have another quart and save 4 cents more.”

Historic Leyden

LEYDEN, July 31.

We came to Leyden to spend the night, and have stayed three days. This was partly because it is necessary to sometimes rest your neck and feet, and partly because the Hotel Levedag is one of those delightful places where the beds are soft, the eats good and the help around the hotel does its best to make you comfortable. Leyden itself is worth while, but ordinarily it would be disposed of in two walks and a carriage-ride. It is a college town, and this is vacation; so everybody in the place has had the time to wait on wandering Americans and make the process of extracting their money as sweet and as long drawn out as possible.

* * * * *

Leyden is a good deal like Lawrence, Kansas. It is full of historic spots, and is very quiet in the summer-time. In Leyden they refer to the siege by the Spaniards in 1573 just as the Lawrence people speak of the Quantrill raid. The Dutch were in their war for independence, and the Duke of Alva’s army besieged Leyden. They began in October, and as the town was well fortified it resisted bravely. Early in the year the neighboring town of Haarlem had surrendered and the Spaniards had tied the citizens back to back and chucked them into the river. The Leydenites preferred to die fighting rather than surrender and die. They had just about come to starvation in March of the next year, when they decided to break down the dikes and let the sea take the country. The sea brought in a relief fleet sent by William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and the Spaniards retreated before the water. Then the wind changed, drove back the waves, and William fixed the dikes. This siege of Leyden was really one of the great events in history, and the story goes that out of gratitude to the people of the town William offered to exempt them from taxes for a term of years or to establish a University in their city. Leyden took the University, which is hard to believe of the Dutch, unless they were farseeing enough to know that the students would be a never-ending source of income and that the taxes would come back. The university thus established by William of Orange in 1575 has been one of the best of the educational institutions in Europe, and has produced many great scholars. It now has 1700 students and a strong faculty. Some of the boys must be making up flunks by attending summer school, for last night at an hour when all good Dutchmen should be in bed, the sweet strains came through the odor of the canal, same old tune but Dutch words: “I don’t care what becomes of me, while I am singing this sweet melody, yip de yaddy aye yea, aye yea, yip-de yaddy, aye yea.”

* * * * *

The river Rhine filters through Leyden and to the sea. It never would get there, for Leyden is several feet below the sea-level, but by the use of big locks the Dutch raise the river to the proper height and pour it in. These are the dikes the Dutch opened to drive out the Spaniards. It is so easy I wonder they did not do it earlier. At any rate, the Spaniards never got much of a hold in this part of Holland again. The sandhills along the beach make an ideal bathing-place. I took a canal-boat and in three hours time covered the six miles from Leyden to Katryk. The Dutch ladies and gentlemen were playing in the water and on the sand, and it was no place for a man from Kansas. I have no criticism of these big bathing-beaches and we have some in our own fair land where the scenery is just as startling. But the Dutch ladies consider a skirt which does not touch the ground the same as immodest. And no Dutch gentleman will appear in public without his vest as well as his coat. On the beach the reaction is great, so great that I don’t blame the Spaniards for running away.

* * * * *

It was in Leyden that the congregation of Puritans resided which sent the delegation of Pilgrim Fathers across the Atlantic in 1620. In St. Peter’s church John Robinson, the pastor, lies buried, and there he is said to have preached. A tablet tells of the house across the way which occupies the site of the little church in which Robinson held forth for years. The present house was not built until 1683, but that is close enough to make it interesting. The Puritans had several congregations in Leyden, but the Robinson church is the only one that made history. When the civil war broke out in England and Cromwell was leading the cause of liberty, all of the Puritans in Leyden who had not gone to America and who could raise the fare, returned to England and disappeared from the Dutch records. They were fine people in many ways, but the Dutch did not try to get them to stay. They dearly loved to argue, and when it was necessary to promote religious freedom by punching the heads of those who did not believe as they did, the Puritans were there with the punch.

* * * * *

Rembrandt, the great Dutch painter, was born in Leyden, in 1606. A stable now marks the spot where he first saw the light. It is a little difficult to get up a thrill in a livery stable, but we did our best. Rembrandt’s father was a miller, and operated one of these big Dutch windmills. When Rembrandt was about 25 years old he married and moved to Amsterdam, but he did not settle down. While he became popular and made a good deal of money, he was no manager and he spent like a true sport. When his wife died he went broke, and lived the last years of his life in a modest way. About 550 paintings are now known and attributed to him, together with about 250 etchings and more than a thousand drawings. His portrayals of expression and of lights and shadows are the great points of excellence in his work, but he was a master of every detail of the art. His pictures command more money than those of any other artist, and to my notion he is the greatest of all the great painters. Most of the other old fellows have left but few masterpieces, while Rembrandt never did anything but great work. The Dutch worship God, Rembrandt and William of Orange, and I never can tell which comes first with them.

* * * * *

There is a hill in Leyden, eighty feet high and several hundred yards around the base. It is well covered with trees, and was topped with a fort in the good old days. Unfortunately, the buildings around it--for it is in the middle of town--keep it from being seen at a distance. People come from far and near to see the hill. It is as much of a novelty in this part of Holland as a Niagara would be in Kansas.

* * * * *

The public market is a feature in every Dutch town, as it is in most European countries. A large square is devoted to the purpose, and here the fish, the vegetables and everything from livestock to second-hand books is offered for sale. The square and the sidewalks are covered with the market displays, the farmers, the fishermen, the buyers, and the curious. There is only one small newspaper in this city of 60,000 inhabitants, but I suppose everybody hears the news at the market. It is better than a show, or an art gallery, or a cathedral, to see the dickering, hear the talk and watch the people. The housewives or their representatives are there with baskets and comments, and the men of the town have some excuse to be around. Peasant costumes, peculiar headdresses, large fat ladies, wooden shoes, and all the odd and picturesque things that you can put into a landscape surrounded by quaint buildings and a canal, are mixed in confusion and yet in order. The colors which the painters put into their Holland pictures are present, and the sturdy, thrifty, trafficking Dutch people are there with the petticoats or the tobacco-smoke, which their sex calls for under such circumstances. Here in Leyden, where a house less than a hundred years old is a curiosity and where Dutch traditions are held as sacred, we have enjoyed the wonderful nature-picture of this moving market. And I might add that we have contributed greatly to the hilarity of the occasion by our own peculiar appearance and ways--peculiar from the view-point of the other fellow.

The Dutch Capital

THE HAGUE, Aug. 2.

This is the capital of Holland and soon will be, in a way, of the civilized world. The first international peace conference was held here, followed by the establishment of an international tribunal to decide disputes between nations, and now, thanks to President Taft’s statesmanship, the nations are agreeing to arbitrate all differences, and this Hague tribunal will doubtless be the court of last resort for the world. The propriety of the selection of The Hague is not questioned. Holland is a small nation, with practically no forts or standing army or navy. It is not a factor in international politics, and its own independence and integrity are guaranteed by the various treaties between the nations. Its importance is commercial and not political, it has no alliances, and occupies a unique position among the countries of Europe. Paris or London or Berlin would not do for the location of an international tribunal, because each would be subject to local influence and force, but all nations can come to The Hague, the capital of the country whose territory they have promised to protect. As the arbitration treaties increase in number the practice of referring disputes to The Hague will become almost universal, and it seems to me that this will make the beautiful Dutch city the capital of the world. Other cities will strive for commercial supremacy, but The Hague will be the center for statesmanship and government.

* * * * *

The Dutch have abbreviated the old name S’Gravenhage to Den Haag, and they pronounce the name of the capital just as we do the word hog. The old word meant “The Count’s Hedge” or wood, because there was a small forest here belonging to the Counts of Holland. The forest is still here, a beautiful piece of natural woods about a mile and a half long and half as wide. At the farther end of this forest is “The House in the Wood,” which is in fact a beautiful little palace built in 1645 by Princess Amalia, the widow of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange. Amalia had a new idea in memorials, for the principal room of the palace, the orange room, is decorated by pictures from the brushes of pupils of Rubens, and while they portray scenes in the life of the Prince they are full of fat cherubs, scantily dressed ladies and very racy suggestion. I am told Amalia was that way, but I have no personal knowledge. All this happened nearly 300 years ago, and in any event she had a most charming palace. Several rooms are filled with gifts from the Emperors of China and Japan to Wilhelmina, and they add to the general hilarity of the memorial.

* * * * *

Although The Hague was the center of the Dutch government practically all the time from 1584, when the representatives of the Dutch provinces met here to form a League against Spain, it had no representation in the government until the last century. The original cities in the federation refused to admit The Hague, and it was a sort of District of Columbia until Napoleon took possession of Holland on the theory that it was formed from the deposits of dirt made by French rivers. Napoleon gave The Hague a local government, which it has since retained. It has grown much in late years, and is a beautiful city with good architecture, many wide streets, fine public buildings, handsome private homes, pretty canals, and shaded avenues. It is a custom in Holland and the Dutch colonies for men of wealth to come to The Hague, put up fine houses and spend some of their money, just as the “town farmers” do in Hutchinson.

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We went to see the Gevangenpoort, an ancient tower in which prisoners were confined, tortured and executed. They still keep some of the interesting machines with which justice was dealt out in the good old days. A prisoner whom the authorities desired to convict would be allowed to prove his innocence by the ordeal of fire. He was permitted to walk with bare feet on a red hot gridiron. If he was innocent the heat would not affect his naked soles, if guilty it would. But that is nothing. Our own dear old Pilgrim fathers used to take a woman charged with witchcraft and toss her into a pond. If she were a witch, the evil spirit would keep her from drowning and the Puritans would put her to death. If she drowned, her innocence of the charge was proven--and they buried her in the churchyard.

The Dutch got their early ideas of prison reform from the Spaniards. There is a machine in the Gevangenpoort which dropped water onto a man’s head for hours. If he lived he was crazy. Then they had a 1611 model of a rack which would break the bones in the arms and legs and not kill the prisoner, and he could be tortured later. Pincers to pull out finger-nails, branding-irons, and stocks that kept a man or a woman standing on the toes for hours, were light punishments for petty thievery. A very popular form of punishment was to hang the prisoner by his feet, head down, and let the populace come in and enjoy the sight. Of course these old instruments are mere relics now, but just remember they were the real thing only 300 years ago, and 300 years is not long in the history of the world. We never think that it was just as long between 1311 and 1611 as it has been from 1611 to now. We confusedly jumble all the events of about 500 years into “Middle Ages,” and can’t remember which was in which century. The last 300 years seem long and full of events, while the three centuries before are remembered as all of one time. I wonder if the people on earth in 2211 will look over some Gevangenpoort of ours and shudder at the savagery of 1911?

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Incidentally I want to report that the people of Europe are looking on President Taft as the great man of the age--I mean the great common people are. His successful advocacy of international arbitration is hailed as the coming of an era of peace. You don’t know what that means to Europe, where nearly every man has to give years of his life to army service, where heavy taxes for forts and ships bear down on the people, and where there is always a possibility of war with a neighboring nation, which would mean great loss of life. Nearly all of this war sacrifice falls upon the people, and while they patriotically sustain their governments they hail Taft’s policy of peace as the greatest help that has come to them in countless years, the advance step that will relieve the burden that bends the back of what Mr. Bryan calls “the plain common people.” No wonder these people are for Taft but of course they can’t vote for him in 1912.

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The government of Holland is a sort of aristocratic republic with a monarch for ornament. There is a lower house of congress elected by popular vote, with some restrictions as to property on the right of suffrage. There is an upper house selected with still more restrictions. The upper house only can introduce bills. The lower house only can enact them into laws. The queen signs when the Dutch congress, or states-general, tells her to sign. She gets a salary of about $400,000 a year and is rich in her own right. The business men complain that she is stingy and the women say she is slouchy. Taxes are high, and in all the forms imaginable. They tax theatre tickets, bank checks, receipts, all documents, incomes and lands, and in some places the number of windows in a house. Taxes are “high” everywhere I go. I thought perhaps when I got where I could not understand the language I would no longer be bored by the man who complains about taxes. But I have not yet found that place. I suppose when I quit traveling on this earthly sphere the first thing I will hear will be a kick on the cost of paving the golden streets, or a complaint that the tax on sulphur is going to kill the prosperity of the country.

“The Dutch Company.”

ARNHEM, August 5th.

This is the “last chance” station in Holland. About ten miles more and we cross the line into Germany. This is also the only hilly part of Holland, and it really is a surprise to find that somewhere in this little country there are neither canals nor dikes. The river Rhine flows here with some current, and the official documents say that at Arnhem it is 35 feet above the level of the sea. Right sharp little hills, as big as those about Strong City, rise from the river bank, and are covered with woods and handsome homes. Queen Wilhelmina has her summer residence near here, and Dutch colonials, who have made their fortunes and returned to the native land, are fond of this small and elevated piece of Netherland. The Dutch make a great deal of money out of their East India colonies, one of which is Java. They are not so much interested in preparing the Javanese or the Mochans for the work of self-government as our folks are the Filipinos. The Dutch theory is to treat the natives kindly but make them work as the dogs do in Holland. And the Javanese or the Javans, or whatever you call them, are too busy to get dissatisfied and plan revolutions. This question of what to do with the white man’s burden is a hard one to settle offhand. The brown people do not understand the American motives, and the Americans are probably the most detested people in the Orient. And yet the Americans are the only conquering nation which does not regard colonies as personal property and which tries to elevate the citizenship it finds. The English hold India by fear, but some day the English are going to be chased out of that part of Asia by the Indians they try to keep down. The other European nations make no bones of the fact that they own and operate their foreign possessions for what they can get out of them.

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A Hollander makes a very strong American when he is caught young. On shipboard I made the acquaintance of a young man about 25 years old who had been in America nine years, and was now going to his birthplace, The Hague, on business for the Chicago firm with which he is connected. I met him in The Hague this week. He wore a western cowboy hat, had a small American flag in his button-hole, and wore no vest. The stories he was telling about the United States to his Dutch friends showed that he would have made a success as a real-estate man if he had settled in western Kansas. And the manner in which he did not take off his hat when he met a doctor or a lawyer or a duke or a notary public was shocking to his family, but was sweet American patriotism to him. He was still loyal to Holland, but he would not trade his new home with its opportunities for all the comforts of canals and clean streets. “You see,” he said, “in Holland every man has to take off his hat to those above him--and there are always those above him.” Of course we have classes, in a way, in our country, but a man never has to take off his hat or pay homage to another man, and the real American, home-grown or imported, can’t get that feeling of equality out of his system. I think the Europeans must grow very tired of us Americans, our blustering ways and bragging talk, but they are kind enough not to mention it so long as our money holds out.

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Passenger fares on trains are cheaper in Holland than with us. But of course their railroad business is really like an interurban street-car system. Freight rates are higher than with us. The wages paid railway employés run from 60 cents a day to section hands up to $2 a day for an engineer--just about one-third to one-half our schedule. The service is good, the stations and tracks are better, every little country road-crossing is protected by a flagman or a flagwoman. Of course the canals and rivers do so much of the carrying business, and distances are so small, that comparisons are hard to make. There is no such thing in Holland as a sandwich or a piece of pie, and yet there are very successful and excellent lunch-rooms in every station. The first-and second-class passengers usually have a lunch-room with upholstered furniture, while the third-class travelers are compelled to use wooden benches or stand up, a la Americaner. The first-class railroad cars are fitted out with plush, and there are sometimes toilet accommodations on the cars. The second-class cars are comfortably upholstered; the third-class have plain seats like our street cars. But remember you can go clear across Holland in a couple of hours, and do not need some of the comforts which are considered necessities in America.

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The Dutch are great on fixing things comfortably and neatly. If the beautiful Cow Creek which winds its way through Hutchinson were transferred to a Dutch town it would be diked, the banks graded and covered with grass and flowers and trees. The government would do this, and would put seats along the little park, and a band-stand from which music would be heard, and swings for the children, and almost every block there would be a “garden” with tables and all the beer you could drink--if you were Dutch--for two cents. And the Government would make a nice profit out of the restaurant business and go ahead and dike another stream.

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The Dutchman is a great business man. He works and saves and then he is not afraid to spend--if he has a sure thing. I have seen a business man smoking a cigarette, take out of his vest pocket a pair of scissors, snip off the burning end and put the unconsumed half of a cigarette back in his case. No Dutchman is afraid to demand cheap prices while traveling at home. The average American who goes through Europe with the theory of spending his money like a sport must fill the Dutchman with disgust. You don’t impress the Hollanders that way. On the other hand, these Dutchmen will investigate and spend barrels of money on dikes, drains, railroads, buildings and large investments in all parts of the world. I suppose the almost penurious saving comes from the fight with the sea, in which everything had to be watched and worked for, while the ability to handle big affairs results from the consciousness of having wrested a lot of land from the ocean and having made good with it.

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The Dutch are proverbially honest. Of course I have been over-charged some, but I have never been anywhere on either side of the Atlantic where the rule was not observed, “he was a stranger and I took him in.” They hold a visitor up much more in Kansas City than in Amsterdam, and a man from Kansas who goes to New York is not even given the protection of the game laws. In fact, a stranger who does not know the language is treated much better in Europe than in America. I have often had a man walk half a block to show me the way when I could not understand his words. I say “walk a block,” but there is no such phrase in Dutch. There are no regular sized blocks, so a direction is given as “five minutes” or “two minutes, then to the right three minutes.” That is supposed to mean an average walk; but as legs differ in size and rapidity it is often confusing. I am told in the rural districts a distance is given as so many smokes, meaning the number of pipefuls of tobacco that a Dutchman would consume in going that far. But I have discovered that in Holland a pipe is a rarity. The men smoke cigars and smoke them incessantly. They are cheap. I get a good cigar, equivalent to a Tom Moore, for two cents American money. When I buy cigars I want to stay in Holland. But practically everything except cigars, beer and wooden shoes costs as much here as in the United States. Yes, there is one thing that costs less, and that is labor. Therefore hand-carved wood, hand-crocheted lace, hand-made shoes, tailored clothes, and houses are less expensive than with us. The more I see of a country where everything labor produces is cheap, the more I am in favor of high prices and good wages. Holland is probably the best country in Europe for a laboring man, but I don’t see how one can get ahead, unless he does without meat and wears the same suit for years, and his family economize the same way. Here in the land of cheese and butter, both articles are out of reach and the workingman uses “margarine.”

But now it is goodby to the land of the dikes, the canals, the windmills and the wooden shoes. They are all here as advertised, and they color the lives of the people as they do the landscape of the country. To the eye they are artistic and beautiful, but in practice they are common, plain necessities, and in these signs the Dutch have conquered.

The Great River

KOENIGSWINTER, GERMANY, August 7.

The river Rhine is in many respects the greatest river in the world. It is greatest in commercial importance, historical interest and artistic development. It has been the line of battle in Europe for centuries, since Cæsar first crossed the stream and met the original Germans. After that time it was the frontier of the Roman empire until Rome fell, and then it became the object for which Europe fought. The Germans and the French met on the Rhine, the other “civilized countries” got in the game, and the valley was filled with feudal counts and princes who sometimes took one side and sometimes the other, whichever seemed to offer them the best pickings. The broad and deep stream was a highway of commerce, and the old champions of chivalry, with whom robbery and murder were the principal business, built castles on the hills, and whenever they saw a merchant with a rich caravan of goods, down they would swoop on him, grab his valuables and kill the defenders. These adventures and wars were what the world called history, and during the Middle Ages the place where hell was continually breaking out was along this beautiful valley. The use of gunpowder finally put an end to knights in armor, and the Germans and the French struggled for the Rhine. Napoleon conquered the valley, organized it into a republic, and finally annexed it to France. The Allies conquered Napoleon and restored the Prussian king and the petty princes to their possessions. The war of 1870 between Germany and France pushed the boundary a considerable distance west, and made the Rhine valley all German, under the newly organized empire.

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