A Wanderer in Holland

ingen a

om-President Kruger-A monstrous resort-Giant snails-The black-headed manniki

ad in Holland: not one avenue but many, straight as a line in Euclid. On either side is a spreading wood, among the trees of which, on the left hand, as one leaves The Hague, is Sorgh Vliet, once the retreat of old Jacob Cats, lately one of the residences of a royal Duke, and now so

the writer who best represents the shrewd sagacity of the Dutch Page 86character-Jacob Cats, or Vader Cats as he was affectionately called, the autho

strated edition of Cats' Works (Amsterdam, 1655) which is held sacred in all rightly constituted old-fashioned Dutch

Bicker, Landr

der

cture in th

d starched collars and stiff farthingales of the women. In one picture you may see the careful housewife mournfully inspecting a moth-eaten garment which she has just taken from a chest that Wardour Street might envy; in another she is energetically cuffing the 'foolish fat scullion,' who has let the spotted Dalmatian coach-dog overturn the cauldron at the fire. Here an old crone, with her spectacles on, is cautiously probing the contents of the said cauldron with a fork; here the mistress of the house is peeling pears; here the plump and soft-hearted cheese-wife is entertaining an admirer-outs

the fables by Richard Pigot. As a taste of Cats' quality I quote two of the pieces. Why the pictures should

iends Are to Be

Even One Is G

iends, it's re

care as when w

aste a Melo

oice till three

when purchasi

uyer can fin

ged t' examine

find one when hi

how you choo

ips that are

dom any

see one's tr

e is an

the Food

n'd Shop, the

very one you

p?-his trade, O

bacco-Fie for

rue, and set a

ime he ever d

other thing h

ubstance of his

l Smoke, Smoke

else; but Love

s enter dail

ever, and i

st suited to

ours of their

od his Vota

seek-The Favo

tial as the

learnt Cats by heart, are almost the same thing. Old Father Jacob Cats-(we beg to apologize for his unhappy name-and know not why, like the rest of his countrymen, he did not euphonize it into some well-sounding epithet, taken from Greece or Rome-Elouros, for example, or Felisius; Catsius was ventured upon by his contemporaries, but the honest grey-beard stuck to his paternities)-was a man of practical wisdom-great experience-much travel-considerable learning-and wonderful fluency. He had occupied high offices of state, and retired a patriarch amidst children and c

ughts-all running about among the duties of life-voluntarily move in harmonious numbers, as if to think and to rhyme were one solitary attribute. For the nurse who wants a song for her babe-the boy who is tormented by the dread of the birch-the youth whose beard begins to grow-the lover who desires a posey for his lady's ring-for the husband-father-grandsire-for all there is a store-to encourage-to console-and to be grat

truth, and sporti

ge

r Cats by heart too. If ever a master had a faithful pupil, Vader Cats had one in Oom Paul. The vivid yet homely metaphors and allegories

Cats; but a syndicate formed of Fuller and Burton

have no counterpart with us, except perhaps at Blackpool. What is, however, peculiar to Scheveningen is its expanse of sand covered with sentry-box wicker chairs. To stand on the pier on a fine day in the season and look down on these thousands of chairs and people is to receive an impression of insect

bble in Holland. Life after lying upon sand can become to some of us a burden almost too difficult to bear; Page 91but the Dutch holiday-maker does not seem to find it so. As for the children, they are truly in Paradise. Ther

t leaven of tenderness which every collection of human beings must have was harder to find at Scheveningen than anywhere in Ho

his finger, perched on his hat, simulated death in the palm of his hand, and went through other evolutions with the speed of thought and the bright spontaneous alacrity possible only to a small loyal bird. These, however, were not for sale: these were decoys; th

heir blue shawls spread and mend their nets, this road is dull and suburban; but from it, when the light is failing, a view of Scheveningen's domes and spi

t than any of their sisters. The appearance of the homing fleet in the offing is a signal for

rthy pursuit. James Maris' pictures of Scheveningen's wet sand, grey sea, and huge flat-bottomed ships must run into scores; Mesdag's too.

am-tram carries people thither many times a day. The rail, when first I travelled upon it, in April, ran through tulips; in August, when I was there ag

cartes, his master in philosophy, who had for a while lived close by at Endegeest. Spinoza, who was born at Amsterdam in 1632, died in 1677. His house at Ryn

each, Sc

canal and controlled by locks. There is perhaps no better example of the Dutch power over water than the contrast between the present narrow canal through which the river must disembo

ll gatherers, but no one else. We drove before us all the way a white company consisting of a score of gulls, twice as many tern, two oyster catchers and one curlew. They rose and settled, rose an

lland in the light of sunset. As Hastings is to Eastbourne, so is Katwyk to Noordwyk; Scheveningen is Brighton, Yarmouth, and Bla

he side of the main street, by an avenue so leafy as to exclude even glints of the sky, we sipped something Dutch w