Rollo in Holland

"At any time you please," said she; "that is, if it is not too early."

"How would half past nine do?" asked Mr. George.

"I think that will do very well," said Mrs. Parkman.

"We will say ten, if you prefer," said Mr. George.

"O, no," said she, "half past nine will do very well."

So Mr. George rang the bell, and when the waiter came, he ordered a sumptuous breakfast, consisting of beefsteaks, hot rolls, coffee, omelet, and every thing else that he could think of that was good, and directed the waiter to have it ready at half past nine.

"I shall also want a carriage and a pair of horses to-morrow," continued Mr. George, "and a commissioner."

"Very well, sir," said the waiter; "and what time shall you wish for the carriage?"

"What time, Mrs. Parkman?" repeated Mr. George, turning to the lady. "Shall you be ready by half past ten to go out and see the town?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Parkman, "that will be a very good time."

"Very well, sir," said the waiter; and he bowed and retired.

The next morning, when the different members of the party came out into the breakfast room, they found the table set for breakfast. At half past nine all were ready except Mrs. Parkman. She sent word by her husband that she would come out in a few minutes.

"There is no hurry," said Mr. George. "It will be time enough to have breakfast when she comes."

In about fifteen minutes she came. Mr. George asked her very politely how she had spent the night; and after she had sat a few minutes talking by the fire, he said that they would have breakfast whenever she wished.

"Yes," said she, "I am ready any time. Indeed, I was afraid that I should be late, and keep you waiting. I am very glad that I am in season."

So Mr. George rang the bell; when the waiter came, he ordered breakfast to be brought up.

While the party were at breakfast, a very nicely-dressed waiter, with a white napkin over his arm, stood behind Mrs. Parkman's chair, and evinced a great deal of alertness and alacrity in offering her every thing that she required. When the breakfast was nearly finished, Mr. George turned to him and said,—

"Is the commissioner ready, John, who is to go with us to-day?"

"Yes, sir," said the waiter.

"I wish you to go down and send him up," said Mr. George.

So the waiter went down stairs to find the commissioner, and while he was gone Mr. George took out a pencil and paper from his pocket.

"I am going to ask him," said Mr. George to Mrs. Parkman, "what there is to be seen here, and to make a list of the places; and then we will go and see them all, or you can make a selection, just as you please."

"Very well," said Mrs. Parkman. "I should like that."

Accordingly, when the commissioner came in, Mr. George asked him to name, in succession, the various objects of interest usually visited by travellers coming to the Hague; and as he named them, Mr. George questioned him respecting them, so as to enable Mrs. Parkman to obtain a somewhat definite idea of what they were. The commissioner enumerated a variety of places to be seen, such as the public museum of painting, several private museums, the old palace, the new palace, two or three churches, the town hall, and various other sights which tourists, arriving at the Hague, usually like to view. Mr. George made a list of all these, and opposite to each he marked the time which the commissioner said would be required to see it well. After completing this list, he said,—

"And there is a great watering place on the sea shore, not far from this, I believe."

"Yes, sir," said the commissioner, "about three miles."

"Is it a pleasant ride there?" asked Mr. George.

"Yes, sir," replied the commissioner. "It is a very pleasant ride. You can go one way and return another. It is a very fashionable place. The queen and the princesses go there every summer."

"Very well; it takes about two hours and a half, I suppose, to go there and return," said Mr. George.

"Yes, sir," said the commissioner.

"Very well," said Mr. George. "Have the carriage ready in– Shall we say half an hour, Mrs. Parkman? Shall you be ready in half an hour?"

Mrs. Parkman said that she should be ready in half an hour, and so Mr. George appointed that time, and then the commissioner went away.

Mr. George added up all the periods of time that the commissioner had said would be required for the several sights, and found that there would be time for them to see the whole, and yet be ready for the afternoon train for Amsterdam, where Mr. and Mrs. Parkman were going next. So Mrs. Parkman concluded not to omit any from the list, but to go and see the whole.

In half an hour the carriage was at the door, and in ten or fifteen minutes afterwards Mrs. Parkman was ready. Just before they went, Mr. George rang the bell again, and called for the bill, requesting the waiter to see that every thing was charged—carriage, servants, commissioner, and all. When it came, Mr. Parkman took out his purse, expecting to pay it himself, but Mr. George took out his purse too.

"The amount," said Mr. George, looking at the footing of the bill, "is forty-five guilders and some cents. Your share is, say twenty-two guilders and a half."

"No, indeed," said Mr. Parkman. "My share is the exact footing of the bill. You have nothing to do with this payment."

"Yes," said Mr. George. "I have just one half to pay for Rollo and me. We are four in all, and Rollo and I are two."

Mr. Parkman seemed extremely unwilling to allow Mr. George to pay any thing at all; but Mr. George insisted upon it, and so the bill was paid by a joint contribution.

All this time the carriage was ready at the door, and the gentlemen, attended by two or three waiters, conducted Mrs. Parkman down to the door. The party then drove, in succession, to the various places which the commissioner had enumerated. There were museums consisting of a great many rooms filled with paintings, and palaces, where they were shown up grand staircases, and through long corridors, and into suites of elegant apartments, and churches, and beautiful parks and gardens, and a bazaar filled with curiosities from China and Japan, and a great many other similar places. Mr. George paid very particular attention to Mrs. Parkman during the whole time, and made every effort to anticipate and comply with her wishes in all respects. In one case, indeed, I think he went too far in this compliance, and the result was to mortify her not a little. It was in one of the museums of paintings. Mrs. Parkman, like other ladies of a similar character to hers, always wanted to go where she could not go, and to see what she could not see. If, when she came into a town, she heard of any place to which, for any reason, it was difficult to obtain admission, that was the very place of all others that she wished most to see; and if, in any museum, or palace, or library that she went into, there were two doors open and one shut, she would neglect the open ones, and make directly to the one that was shut, and ask to know what there was there. I do not know as there was any thing particularly blameworthy in this. On the contrary, such a feeling may be considered, in some respects, a very natural one in a lady. But, nevertheless, when it manifests itself in a decided form, it makes the lady a very uncomfortable and vexatious companion to the gentleman who has her under his care.

In one of the rooms where our party went in the museum of paintings, there was a door near one corner that was shut. All the other doors—those which communicated with the several apartments where the pictures were hung—were open. As soon as Mrs. Parkman came in sight of the closed door, she pointed to it and said,—

"I wonder what there is in that room. I suppose it is something very choice. I wish we could get in."

Mr. Parkman paid, at first, no attention to this request, but continued to look at the pictures around him.

"I wish you would ask some of the attendants," she continued, "whether we cannot go into that room."

"O, no," replied her husband. "If it was any thing that it was intended we should see, the door would be open. The fact that the door is shut is notice enough that, we are not to go in there."

"I'm convinced there are some choice pictures in there," said Mrs. Parkman; "something that they do not show to every body. Mr. George, I wish you would see if you can't find out some way to get in."

"Certainly," said Mr. George, "I will try."

So Mr. George walked along towards one of the attendants, whom he saw in another part of the room,—putting his hand in his pocket as he went, to feel for a piece of money. He put the piece of money into the attendant's hand, and then began to talk with him, asking various indifferent questions about the building; and finally he asked him where that closed door led to.

"O, that is only a closet," said the attendant, "where we keep our brooms and dusters."

"I wish you would just let us look into it," said Mr. George. "Here's half a guilder for you."

The man looked a little surprised, but he took the half guilder, saying,—

"Certainly, if it will afford you any satisfaction."

Mr. George then went back to where he had left the rest of his party, and said to Mrs. Parkman,—

"This man is going to admit us to that room. Follow Him. I will come in a moment."

So Mr. George stopped to look at a large painting on the wall, while Mrs. Parkman, with high anticipations of the pleasure she was to enjoy in seeing what people in general were excluded from, walked in a proud and stately manner to the door, and when the man opened it, saw only a small, dark room, with nothing in it but brooms, dust pans, and lamp fillers. She was exceedingly abashed by this adventure, and for the rest of that day she did not once ask to see any thing that was not voluntarily shown to her.

After visiting all the places of note in the town, the coachman was ordered to drive to the watering place on the sea shore. It was a very pleasant drive of about three miles. Just before reaching the shore of the sea, the road came to a region of sand hills, called dunes, formed by the drifting sands blown in from the beach by the winds. Among these dunes, and close to the sea shore, was an immense hotel, with long wings stretching a hundred feet on each side, and a row of bath vans on the margin of the beach before it. The beach was low and shelving, and it could be traced for miles in either direction along the coast, whitened by the surf that was rolling in from the German Ocean.

After looking at this prospect for a time, and watching to see one or two of the bathing vans drive down into the surf, in order to allow ladies who had got into them to bathe, the party returned to the carriage, and the coachman drove them through the village, which was very quaint and queer, and inhabited by fishermen. The fishing boats were drawn up on the shore in great numbers, very near the houses. Rollo desired very much to go and see these boats and the fishermen, and learn, if he could, what kind of fish they caught in them, and how they caught them. But Mrs. Parkman thought that they had better not stop. They were nothing but common fishing boats, she said.

The carriage returned to the Hague by a different road from the one in which it came. It was a road that led through a beautiful wood, where there were many pleasant walks, with curious looking Dutch women going and coming. As the party approached the town, they passed through a region of parks, and palaces, and splendid mansions of all kinds. Mrs. Parkman was curious to know who lived in each house, and Mr. George contrived to communicate her inquiries to the coachman, by making signs, and by asking questions partly in English and partly in German. But though the coachman understood the questions, Mrs. Parkman could not understand the answers that he gave, for they were Dutch names,—sometimes long and sometimes short; but whether they were long or short, the sounds were so uncouth and strange that Mrs. Parkman looked terribly distressed in trying to make them out.

At length the carriage arrived at the hotel again; and there the porters put on the baggage belonging both to Mr. and Mrs. Parkman, and to Mr. George and Rollo. It then proceeded to the station. Mr. George and Rollo waited there until the train for Amsterdam arrived, and then took leave of Mr. and Mrs. Parkman as they went to their seats in the carriage. Mrs. Parkman shook hands with Mr. George very cordially, and said,—

"We are very much obliged to you, Mr. George, for your company to-day. We have had a very pleasant time. I wish that we could have you to travel with us all the time."

"I think she ought to be obliged to you," said Rollo, as soon as the train had gone.

"Not at all," said Mr. George.

"Not at all?" repeated Rollo. "Why not? You have done a great deal for her to-day."

"No," said Mr. George. "All that I have done has not been for her sake, but for William's. William is an excellent good friend of mine, and I am very sorry that he has not got a more agreeable travelling companion."

Chapter VII.

Correspondence

One day, when Mr. George and Rollo were at the town of Leyden, it began to rain while they were eating their breakfast.

"Never mind," said Rollo. "We can walk about the town if it does rain."

"Yes," said Mr. George, "we can; but we shall get tired of walking about much sooner if it rains, than if it were pleasant weather. However, I am not very sorry, for I should like to write some letters."

"I've a great mind to write a letter, too," said Rollo. "I'll write to my mother. Don't you think that would be a good plan?"

"Why,—I don't know,"—said Mr. George, speaking in rather a doubtful tone. "It seems to me that it would be hardly worth while."

"Why not?" asked Rollo.

"Why, the postage is considerable," said Mr. George, "and I don't believe the letter would be worth what your father would have to pay for it; that is, if it is such a letter as I suppose you would write."

"Why, what sort of a letter do you suppose I should write?" asked Rollo.

"O, you would do as boys generally do in such cases," replied his uncle. "In the first place you would want to take the biggest sheet that you could find to write the letter upon. Then you would take up as much of the space as possible writing the date, and My dear mother. Then you would go on for a few lines, saying things of no interest to any body, such as telling what day you came to this place, and what day to that. Perhaps you'd say that to-day is a rainy day, and that yesterday was pleasant—just as if your mother, when she gets your letter, would care any thing about knowing what particular days were rainy and what pleasant, in Holland, a week back. Then, after you had got about two thirds down the page, you would stop because you could not think of any thing more to say, and subscribe your name with ever so many scrawl flourishes, and as many affectionate and dutiful phrases as you could get to fill up the space.

"And that would be a letter that your father, like as not, would have to pay one and sixpence or two shillings sterling for, to the London postman."

Rollo laughed at this description of the probable result of his proposed attempt to write a letter; but he laughed rather faintly, for he well recollected how many times he had written letters in just such a way. He secretly resolved, however, that when they came in from their walk, and Mr. George sat down to his writing, he would write too, and would see whether he could not, for once, produce a letter that should be at least worth the postage.

After they came in from their walk, they asked the landlady to have a fire made in their room; but she said they could not have any fire, for the stoves were not put up. She said it was the custom in Holland not to put the stoves up until October; and so nobody could have a fire in any thing but foot stoves until that time. The foot stoves, she said, would make it very comfortable for them.

So she brought in two foot stoves. They consisted of small, square boxes, with holes bored in the top, and a little fire of peat in an earthen vessel within. Rollo asked Mr. George to give him two sheets of thin note paper, and he established himself at a window that looked out upon a canal. He intended to amuse himself in the intervals of his writing in watching the boats that were passing along the canal.

He took two sheets of note paper instead of one sheet of letter paper, in order that, if he should get tired after filling one of them, he could stop, and so send what he had written, without causing his father to pay postage on any useless paper.

"Then," thought he, "if I do not get tired, I will go on and fill the second sheet, and my mother will have a double small letter. A double small letter will be just as good as a single large one."

This was an excellent plan.

Rollo also took great pains to guard against another fault which boys often fall into in writing their letters; that is, the fault of growing careless about the writing as they go on with the work, by which means a letter is produced which looks very neat and pretty at the beginning, but becomes an ill-looking and almost illegible scrawl at the end.

"I'll begin," said he, "as I think I shall be able to hold out; and I'll hold out to the end just as I begin."

Rollo remained over his letter more than three hours. He would have become exceedingly tired with the work if he had written continuously all this time; but he stopped to rest very often, and to amuse himself with observing what was passing before him in the street and on the canal.

Mr. George was occupied all this time in writing his letter, and each read what he had written to the other that same evening, after dinner. The two letters were as follows:—

Mr. George's Letter"Leyden, Holland, September 27.

"My Dear Edward:5

"We have been travelling now for several days in Holland, and it is one of the most curious and amusing countries to travel in that I have ever seen.

"We all know from the books of geography which we study at school, that Holland is a very low country—lower in many places than the ocean; and that the water of the ocean is kept from overflowing it by dikes, which the people built ages ago, along the shores. I always used to suppose that it was only from the sea that people had any danger to fear of inundations; but I find now that it is not so.

"The people have to defend themselves from inundations, not only on the side towards the sea, but also quite as much, if not more, on the side towards the land, from the waters of the River Rhine. The River Rhine rises in Switzerland, and flows through various countries of Europe until it comes to the borders of Holland, and there it spreads out into innumerable branches, and runs every where, all over the country. It would often overflow the country entirely, were it not that the banks are guarded by dikes, like the dikes of the sea. The various branches of the rivers are connected together by canals, which are also higher than the land on each side of them. Thus the whole country is covered with a great network of canals, rivers, and inlets from the sea, with water in them higher than the land. When the tide is low in the sea, the surplus water from these rivers and canals flows off through immense sluices at the mouth of them. When the tide comes up, it is kept from flowing in by immense gates, with which the sluices are closed. They call the tracts of land that lie lower than the channels of water around them, polders. That is rather a queer name. I suppose it is a Dutch name.

"The polders all have drains and canals cut in them. As we ride along in the railway carriages we overlook these polders. They look like immense green fields, extending as far as you can see, with straight canals running through them in every direction, and crossing each other at right angles. These canals, in the bottom of the polders, are about six feet wide. They are wide enough to prevent the cattle from jumping across them, and so they serve for fences to divide the fields from each other. They also serve for roads, for the Dutchmen use boats on their farms to get in their hay and produce, instead of carts.

"The water that collects in these low canals and drains, which run across the polders, cannot flow out into the large canals, which are higher than they are, and so they have to pump it out. They pump it out generally by means of wind mills. So wherever you go, throughout all Holland, you find an immense number of wind mills. These wind mills are very curious indeed. Some of them are immensely large. They look like lighthouses. The large ones are generally built of brick, and some of them are several hundred years old. The sails of the big ones are often fifty feet long, and sometimes eighty feet. This makes a wheel one hundred and sixty feet in diameter. When you stand under one of these mills, and look up, and see these immense sails revolving so high in the air that the lowest point, when the sail comes round, is higher than the tops of the four story houses, the effect is quite sublime.

"With these wind mills they pump the water up from one drain or canal to another, till they get it high enough to run off into the sea. In some places, however, it is very difficult to get the water into the sea even in this way, even at low tides. The River Amstel, for instance, which comes out at Amsterdam, and into which a great many canals and channels are pumped, is so low at its mouth that the sea is never, at the lowest tides, more than a foot and a half below it. At high tides the sea is a great deal above it. The average is about a foot above. Of course it requires a great deal of management to get the waters of the river out, and avoid letting the water of the sea in. They do it by immense sluices, which are generally kept shut, and only opened when the tide is low.

"In the mean time, if it should ever so happen that they could not succeed in letting the water out fast enough, it would, of course, accumulate, and rise in the rivers, and press against the dikes that run along the banks of it, till at last it would break through in some weak place; and then, unless the people could stop the breach, the whole polder on that side would be gradually overflowed. The inundation would extend until it came to some other dike to stop it. The polder that would first be filled would become a lake. The lake would be many miles in extent, perhaps, but the water in it would not usually be very deep—not more than eight or ten feet, perhaps; though in some cases the polders are so low, that an inundation from the rivers and canals around it would make the lake twenty or thirty feet deep.

"Of course, in ancient times, when a portion of the country became thus submerged, it was for the people to consider whether they would abandon it or try to pump all that water out again, by means of the wind mills. They would think that if they pumped it out it would be some years before the land would be good again; for the salt in the water would tend to make it barren. So they would sometimes abandon it, and put all their energy into requisition to strengthen the dikes around it, in order to prevent the inundation from spreading any farther. For water, in Holland, tends to spread and to destroy life and property, just as fire does in other countries. The lakes and rivers, where they are higher than the land, are liable to burst their barriers after heavy rains falling in the country, or great floods coming down the rivers, or high tides rise from the sea, and so run into each other; and the people have continually to contend against this danger, just as in other countries they do against spreading conflagrations.

"In the case of spreading fire, water is the great friend and helper of man; and in the case of these spreading inundations of water, it is wind that he relies upon. The only mode that the Dutch had to pump out the water in former times was the wind mills. When the rains or the tides inundated the land, they called upon the wind to help them lift the water out to where it could flow away again.

"There was a time, two or three hundred years ago, when all the wind mills that the people could make, seem not to have been enough to do the work; and there was one place, in the centre of the country, where the water continued to spread more and more—breaking through as it spread from one polder to another—until, at last, it swallowed up such an extent of country as to form a lake thirty miles in circumference. This lake at last extended very near to the gates of Haarlem, and it was called the Holland Lake. You will find it laid down on all the maps of Holland, except those which have been printed within a few years. The reason why it is not laid down now is, because a few years ago, finding that the wind mills were not strong enough to pump it out, the government concluded to try what virtue there might be in steam. So they first repaired and strengthened the range of dikes that extended round the lake. In fact, they made them double all around, leaving a space between for a canal. They made both the inner and outer of these dikes water-tight; so that the water should neither soak back into the lake again, after it was pumped out, nor ooze out into the polders beyond. The way they made them water-tight was by lining them on both sides with a good thick coating of clay.