STREETS AND BYIVAYS 33

or stranger may help himself, may frequently be seen in
Dutch farm-houses. The men, and too often the boys,
smoke, smoke, smoke, as if some malicious fairy had given
them a perpetual season-
ticket for enjoying the priv-
ilege. Perhaps that is why
they seem sosleepy ; and yet,
with what a sudden glow
both pipe and Dutcliman
can brighten at a whiff!
Instead of seeming to
shrivel up, inside and out,
as constant smokers in

 

other lands are apt to do,

A MAIDEN FROM MONNIKENDAM.

a Dutchman grows sleeker
and fatter behind his pipe; as if the same fairy who gave
him the season-ticket had perched herself invisibly on the
bowl and was continually blowing him out like a rubber
balloon.

All things are reversed in Holland. The main entrance
to the finest public building in the country, The Palace,
or late town-hall, of Amsterdam, is its back door. Bash-
ful maidens hire beaus to escort them to the Kermis, or
fair, on festival-days. Timid citizens are scared in the
dead of the night by their own watchmen, who at every
quarter of the hour make such a noise with their wooden
clappers, one would suppose the town to be on fire. You

1A noble town-hall it is, too ; but the building, to be safe and dry, has

Do
to stand on more ‘than thirteen thousand piles driven deep into the
spongy soil.

2
3