68 THE LAND OF PLUCK

Hollow-land, Low-land, or Netherland, whatever men may
call it, their country stands high in their hearts. They
love it with more than the love of a mountaineer for his
native hills.

To be sure there have been riots and outbreaks there, as
in all other thickly settled parts of the world—perhaps
more than elsewhere, for Dutch indignation, though slow
in kindling, makes a prodigious blaze when once fairly
afire. Some of these disturbances have arisen only after
a long endurance of serious wrongs; and some seem to
have been started at once by that queer friction-match in
human nature, which, if left unguarded, is sure to be
nibbled at, and so ignited, by the first little mouse of
discontent that finds it.

There was a curious origin to one of these domestic
quarrels. On a certain occasion a banquet was given,
at which were present two noted Dutch noblemen, rivals
in power, who had several old grudges to settle. The
conversation turning on the codfishery, one of the two
remarked upon the manner in which the hook (hoek)
took the codfish, or kabbeljanuw, as the Dutch call it.

“The hook take the codfish!” exclaimed the other in no
very civil tone; “it would be better sense to say that the
codfish takes the hook.”

The grim jest was taken up in bitter earnest. High
words passed, and the chieftains rose from the table en-
emies for life.

They proceeded to organize war against each other ;
a bitter war it proved to Holland, for it lasted one
hundred and fifty years, and was fought out with all