52 THE LAND OF PLUUK

turban-flower, as well they may be. A great tulip-bed,
with its stately rows of gay flowers in their setting of soft,
waving green, is a beautiful sight. But, to enjoy it to the
utmost, one must love the flowers with true Dutch fond-
ness and pride. Not only this, but he must dwell upon
the special traits and charms of each specimen, as though
it were a personal friend.

Verily, as I said at first, Holland is the queerest
country that ever the sun shone upon! But the queerest
thing of all is, when you really know much about it
you feel more like crying than laughing; for this land
that lies so loosely wpon the sea has many a time been
forced to be as a rock against a legion of foes. Its stanch-
hearted people have suffered as never nation suffered be-
fore. Dutch country-folk look sleepy, I know, and have
some very odd ways; but —Motley’s history of the Rise
of the Dutch Republic is not a funny book.

There is no more heartrending, terrible story in all his-
tory than that of the siege of Haarlem by the Spaniards in
the sixteenth century. It cannot be told here; but one
of its opening incidents shows the Spanish forces, unused
to ice, tramping and tumbling toward Haarlem upon the
frozen, slippery sea. Their object was to capture the
Dutch ships that lay near the city, tightly held in by the
ice. Suddenly they were overpowered. How? By a body
of armed men on skates, who, springing from ice-trenches,
flew swiftly upon the astonished Spaniards, shooting
them down by hundreds. It was a day of victory for the
Dutch patriots. But what months of terrible suffering, of
almost superhuman endurance, came to them afterward!