Dutch Life in Town and Country Part 2

Sometimes they have time to return home at 8 or 8.30 a.m. for a second hurried 'breakfast,' which as often as not is their first, for many of them start the day's work on an empty stomach. Those who cannot run home and back in the half-hour usually allowed for the first 'Schaft,' or meal-time, take their bread-and-b.u.t.ter with them in a cotton or linen bag, and their milk-and-water or coffee in a tin, and so s.h.i.+ft as well as they can. Dinner-time, as a rule, finds the whole family united from about twelve until one o'clock or half-past in the kitchen at home. This kitchen is, of course, used for cooking, was.h.i.+ng, dwelling, and sleeping purposes.

The walls are whitewashed, and the floor consists of flag-stones. Of luxury there is none, of comfort little. Generally the fare of the day is potatoes, with some vegetable, carrots, turnips, cabbage, or beans. A piece of bacon, rarely some beef, is sometimes added; while mutton is hardly ever eaten in Holland, unless by very poor people. Fish is too expensive for most of them, except fried kippers or bloaters. If there is time over, and the house has a little garden attached to it, the children help by watering the vegetables growing there, should it be summer-time, or by making themselves generally useful. But at 1 or 1.30 they have to be back at the workshop, and until 7 p.m. the drudgery goes on again. On Sat.u.r.day evening the boy brings his sixpence, or whatever his trifling wages may be, to his mother. Rent and the club-money for illness and funeral expenses must be at hand when the collectors call either on Sunday or Monday morning. As a rule, though the exceptions are numerous enough, the father also brings his whole pay with him; but drink is the curse--a decreasing curse, it may be, but still a curse--of many a workman's family, and in such cases the inroads it makes in the domestic budget are very serious.

So the boys grow up, in a busy, monotonous life, until they are called upon to subject themselves to compulsory military service. Before they become recruits they have usually joined various societies--debating, theatrical, social, political, or other. Arnold Toynbee has a good many admirers and followers in Holland, who do yeoman's work after his spirit, and bring bright, healthy pleasure into the lives of these youthful toilers. Divines of all denominations, Protestant and Catholic, have also their 'At homes' and their 'Congregations,' and innocent amus.e.m.e.nt is not unseldom mixed with religious teaching at their meetings. In this way, too, a helpful, restraining influence is exerted upon youth. And gradually the boy becomes a young man, a.s.sociating with other young men, and, like his wealthier neighbours, discussing the world's affairs, dreaming of drastic reforms, and thinking less and less of the dreary home, where father and mother, grown old before their time, are little more than the people with whom he boards, and who take the whole or part of his wages, allowing him some modest pocket-money for himself.

In the meantime his sisters have been living with some middle-cla.s.s family, starting as errand-girls, being afterwards promoted to the important position of 'kindermeid' or children's maid, though all the time sleeping out, which means that before and after having toiled a whole day for strangers, they do part of the housework for their mothers at home.

After some time, however, they find employment as housemaids, or in other domestic positions. If they have the good fortune to find considerate yet strict and conscientious mistresses, the best time of their life now begins; there is no exhaustion from work, yet good food, good lodging, and kind treatment. Should they care to cultivate the fine art of cooking, they get instruction in that line, and are in most cases allowed to work independently, and even, when reliable and trustworthy, to do the buying of vegetables, etc., by themselves in the market-places, which all Dutch towns boast of, and in which the produce of the land is offered for sale in abundance and appetizing freshness. All this tends to teach a servant-girl how to use alike her eyes, hands, and brain, and to educate her into a thrifty, industrious, and tidy workman's wife, who will know how to make both ends meet, however short her resources may be. This is one of the reasons why so many Dutch workmen's homes, notwithstanding the low wages, have an appearance of snug prosperity--the women there have learned how to make a little go a long way.

And how about their future husbands? Have they, too, learned their trade?

Perhaps; if they are particularly strong, shrewd, industrious, and persevering, though technical education ('ambachtsonderwys') is much a thing of the future in Holland.

In the general course of life a boy goes to a trade which offers him the highest wages. If he can begin by earning eightpence a week, he will not go elsewhere to earn sixpence if the wear and tear of shoes and clothes is the same in both cases, although the sixpenny occupation may perhaps be better suited to his tastes, ability, and general apt.i.tude. To his mother the extra two pence are a consideration; they may cover some weekly contribution to a necessary fund. Running errands is his first work, until accidentally some workman or some apprentice leaves the shop, in which case he is moved up, and a new boy has the errands to do. But now he must look out for himself; his master is not over-anxious to let him learn all the ins and outs of the work, for as soon as his compet.i.tors hear that he has a very clever boy in his shop, he is sure to lose that boy, who is tempted away by the offer of better pay. Nor are the workmen greatly inclined to impart their little secrets, to explain this thing and that, and so help the young fellow on. Why should they? n.o.body did it for them; they got their qualifications by their own unaided exertions--let the boy do the same. Moreover, the 'baas,' or chief, does not like them to 'waste their time' in that manner, and the 'baas' is the dispenser of their bread-and-b.u.t.ter; so the boy is, as a rule, regarded merely as a nuisance.

There are workshops, first-cla.s.s workshops, too, where no apprentices have been admitted for dozens of years, simply because the employers do not see their way to make an efficient agreement with the boys or their parents which would prevent them from letting a compet.i.tor enjoy the results of their technical instruction. One would not be astonished that in these circ.u.mstances all over Holland the want of technical schools is badly felt, and that agitation for their provision is active. Only some twenty-four such schools exist at present; the oldest, that at Amsterdam, dates from 1861, and the youngest, that of Nymegen, was established in 1900. Partly munic.i.p.al schools, partly schools built by the private effort of citizens, they all do their work well. It is only during the last few years that the nation has begun to ask whether technical education ought not to be taken up by the State. The Dutch like private enterprise in everything, and are always inclined to prefer it to State or munic.i.p.al action; but they have come to recognize that technical schools may be good schools, and may do good work on behalf of the much-needed improvement of handicraft, even though not private ventures, and that so far this branch of national education has not kept up with the times.

The idea which will probably in the end gain the day, is that the Technical Schools should be managed by the town councils and subsidized by the State, who in return would receive the right of supervision and inspection, and of laying down general rules for their curricula. For the present, however, there is no law settling the question, and the apprentices are the sufferers by the lack, since the employers shrink from employing their means, time, and knowledge on behalf of unscrupulous compet.i.tors.

In general the life of an urban working-man is a constant struggle against poverty and sickness. Children come plentifully, rather too much so for the unelastic possibilities of their parents' wages. The young wife does not get stronger by frequent confinements; and the fare is bound to get less nouris.h.i.+ng as the mouths round the domestic board increase--always simple, it often becomes insufficient. The mother, working hard already, has to work harder still and to do laundry work at home or go out as a charwoman, in order to increase the modest income. In industrial centres women frequently work in the factories as well, though the law does at least protect them against too long hours and premature work after confinement.

Thanks to the Dutch thrift, burial funds and sickness funds come promptly to the rescue when death lays his iron grip on the wasted form of the poor town-bred babies, when illness saps the man's power to earn his usual wages, and the family's income is for the time cut off. Of these benefit funds there are about 450 in Holland, distributed amongst some 150 towns.

Half of them are burial funds, and half mixed burial and sickness funds; their members number about two millions; yet, although they certainly do much to prevent extreme poverty, they do it in a manner which in many cases is little short of a scandal. Their legal status is rather uncertain, and in consequence many managers do as they like, and make a good thing for themselves out of their duty to the poor. Too often these managers are supreme controllers of the funds, and the members have no influence whatever. In many cases the only official the latter know is the collector, who calls at their houses for the weekly contributions. This official frequently resorts to questionable tricks for extorting money from the poor helpless members, who simply and confidently pay what they are told to pay--small sums, of course, a few cents or pence, it may be, but still 'adding up' in the long run--and when sorrow and death enter their humble dwellings they are easily imposed upon by cool scoundrels, who trade on their disinclination to quarrel about money when there is a corpse in the house.

Another danger of the irregular condition of these funds lies in the fact that outsiders may take out policies on the lives of certain families. A few years ago the country was shocked by the alarming story of a woman who had poisoned a series of persons merely to be able to get the funeral expenses paid to herself, while many a wretched little baby has in this manner been the horrible investment of heartless neighbours, who, knowing the poor thing was dying, took out policies for its funeral. For medical examination is not required for these beautifully managed a.s.sociations.

Their premiums are, however, so high that this detail does not materially affect their sound financial position; and this being the case, it cannot be denied that the absence of such examinations considerably increases their general utility for the labouring cla.s.ses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Dutch Street Scene.]

The clubs for preventing financial loss by illness do require a medical examination. They number in Holland nearly 700, distributed in over 300 towns. Some allow a fixed sum of money during illness, others provide doctor and medicines, others do both. But the same objections and grievances which workmen entertain against burial funds apply likewise to these latter clubs. The curious thing is that, instead of grumbling, the workman does not make up his mind to mend matters by insisting on having a share in the management of societies and funds to which he has contributed so large a part of his earnings. As yet, however, the Dutch labouring cla.s.ses have not found the man who is able to organize them for this or other purposes. They have able advocates, eloquent, pa.s.sionate reformers, straightforward, honest friends, but the work of these is more destructive criticism than constructive organization. Where organization exists, it is political, social, religious, but not industrial--local, but not universal, and it often has the bitter suggestion of charity. On the other hand, the poor fellows have so often been imposed upon that they feel very little confidence in each other and in the wealthier cla.s.ses who profess deep interest in their woes and sorrows. There are no very large industrial centres in Holland; the wages are so low that most workmen are obliged to find supplementary incomes, either by doing overtime, or by doing odd jobs after the regular day's work is over. Hence there is not much time or energy left for the common cause. Some great employers, like Mr. J.C. van Marken, of Delft, and Messrs. Stork Brothers, of Hengeloo, have organizations of their own, by which important ameliorations are obtained; but smaller employers hear the labour leaders constantly deprecating such efforts and preaching the blessings of Social Democracy as the true panacea, so they do not see why they should put themselves to any inconvenience or expense for the sake of earning abuse and ingrat.i.tude.

Moreover, many of these employers adhere to the obsolete maxim of the Manchester economists, that labour is merely a sort of merchandise, of which the workman keeps a certain stock-in-trade, and that the capitalist's simple task, as a man of business, is to buy that labour as cheaply as possible, and that he has done with the seller as soon as his stock-in-trade is exhausted. Happily, a good many others understand now that in the long run this ridiculous theory is quite as bad for the State as killing was for the fowl which laid the golden eggs.

At all events, the feelings of the workman for his 'patroon,' as the old name still in use calls the employer, are none of the kindest. Sweating is a much less common occurrence in Holland than it was some twenty years ago; but while it would be mere demagogic clap-trap to speak of the remorseless exhaustion of labour by capital, there is nevertheless room enough for the cultivation of greater amenity between the two. And so it will remain for some time to come. Social legislation may do a great deal in the course of time, but it cannot do everything, and at best it must follow the awakening of the popular conscience. Hence progress must be made step by step, for nothing is so menacing to the stability of the social fabric as sudden changes, and a wise statesman prefers to let every one of his acts do its own work, and produce its own consequences, before he risks the next move. The disintegration of social life is much worse than social misery, for disintegration makes misery universal, and throws innumerable obstacles in the way towards restoration.

And, however much the Dutch understand the workman's feelings and position, however much they all long to see the latter improved, they also have learned enough of social and political history to know that for the community in general the only wise and safe principle of action is progress by degrees--evolution, not revolution.

Chapter VI

The Ca.n.a.ls and Their Population

When Drusus a few years before the commencement of our era excavated the Yssel ca.n.a.l, and thus gave a new arm to the Rhine, he began a process of ca.n.a.lization in the Frisian and Batavian provinces which has been going on more or less ever since. To the foreigner Holland or the Northern Netherlands must always appear a land of d.y.k.es and ca.n.a.ls, the one not more important for protection than the other as an artery of communication; spreading commerce and supporting national life. Napoleon, with _nave_ comprehensiveness, called Holland the alluvion of French rivers. Dutch patriots declare with legitimate pride, 'G.o.d gave us the sea, but we made the sh.o.r.e,' and no one who has seen the artificial barrier that guards the mainland from the Hook to the Texel will disparage their achievement or scoff at their pretensions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Sea-Going Ca.n.a.l.]

The sea-d.y.k.e saves Holland from the Northern Ocean, sombre and grey in its most genial mood, menacing and stormy for the long winter of our northern hemisphere; but it is to the inland d.y.k.es that protect the low-lying polders that Holland owes her prosperity and the sources of wealth which have made her inhabitants a nation. The original character of the country, a marshland intersected by the numerous channels of the Rhine and the Meuse, rendered it imperative that the System of d.y.k.es should be accompanied by a brother system of ca.n.a.ls. The over-abundant waters had not merely to be arrested, they had to be confined and led off into prepared channels. In this manner also they were made to serve the purposes of man. High-roads across swamps were either impracticable or too costly; but ca.n.a.ls furnished a sure and convenient means of transport and communication.

At the same time they did not imperil the security of the country. Roads on causeways or reared on sunken piles would have opened the door to an invader, but the ca.n.a.ls provided an additional weapon of defence, for the opening of the d.y.k.es sufficed to turn the country again into its primeval state of marshland. The occasion on which this measure alone saved Holland during the French invasion of 1670 is a well-known pa.s.sage in history, and the hopes of the Dutch in resisting the attack of any powerful aggressor would centre in the same measure of defence, which is the submerging of the country, practically speaking, under the waters of the ca.n.a.ls and rivers. There exists a popular belief that there is at Amsterdam one master key, a turn of which would let loose the waters over the land, but whether it is well founded or not no one except a very few officials can say.

Pending any unfortunate necessity for breaking through the d.y.k.es and letting loose the waters, it may be observed in pa.s.sing that the effectual maintenance of the d.y.k.es is a constant anxiety, and entails strenuous exertions. They stand in need of repeated repairing, and it is computed that they are completely reconstructed in the course of every four or five years. A sum of nearly a million sterling is spent annually on the work.

A large and specially trained staff of engineers are in unceasing harness, a numerous band of d.y.k.e watchers are constantly on the look-out, and when they raise the shout, 'Come out! come out!' not a man, woman, or child must hold back from the summons to strengthen the weak points through which threatens to pa.s.s the flood that would overwhelm the land. It is a constant struggle with nature, in which the victory rests with man. As the d.y.k.e is the bulwark of Dutch prosperity in peace, it might be converted into the ally of despairing patriotism in war.

There are marked differences among the ca.n.a.ls. The two largest and best known ca.n.a.ls, the North Ca.n.a.l and the North Sea Ca.n.a.l, are pa.s.sages to the ocean for the largest s.h.i.+ps, and specially intended to benefit the trade of Amsterdam. The North Ca.n.a.l was made in 1819-25, soon after the restoration of the House of Orange, with an outlet at Helder, near the mouth of the Texel. It has a breadth of between 40 and 50 yards, a length of 50 miles, and a depth of 20 feet, which was then thought ample. After forty years' use this ca.n.a.l was found inadequate from every point of view.

It was accordingly decided to construct a new ca.n.a.l direct from Amsterdam to Ymuiden across the narrowest strip of Holland. Although the Y was utilized, the labour on this ca.n.a.l was immense, and occupied a period of eleven years, being finally thrown open to navigation in 1877. In length it is under 16 miles, but its average breadth is 100 yards, and the depth varies from 23 to 27 feet. Consequently the largest s.h.i.+ps from America or the Indies can reach the wharves of Amsterdam as easily as if it were a port on the sea-coast. Leaving aside the sea-pa.s.sages that have been ca.n.a.lized among the islands of Zeeland, the remaining ca.n.a.ls are inland waterways serving as the princ.i.p.al highways of the country, giving one part of the country access to the other, and especially serving as approaches or lanes to the great rivers Meuse and Rhine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Village in d.y.k.e-Land.]

The interesting ca.n.a.l population of Holland is, of course, to be found on these ca.n.a.ls, which are traversed in unceasing flow from year's end to year's end by the tjalks, or national barges. On these boats, which more resemble a lugger than a barge, they navigate not only the ca.n.a.ls of their own country, but the Rhine up to Coblentz, and even above that place. It has been computed that Germany imports half its food-supply through Rotterdam, and much of this is borne to its destined markets on tjalks.

The William Ca.n.a.l connects Bois le Duc with Limburg, and saves the great bend of the Meuse. The Yssel connects with the Drenthe the Orange and the Reitdiep ca.n.a.ls, which convey to the Rhine the produce of remote Groningen and Friesland. The Rhine represents the destination of the bulk of the permanent ca.n.a.l population of Holland, whose floating habitations furnish one of the most interesting sights to be met with on the waters of the country, but which represent one of the secret phases of the people's life, into which few tourists or visitors have the opportunity of peering.

The ca.n.a.l population of Holland is fixed on a moderate computation at 50,000 persons. For this number of persons the barge represents the only fixed home, and the year pa.s.ses in ceaseless movement across the inland waters of the country or on the great German river, excepting for the brief interval when the ca.n.a.ls are frozen over in the depth of winter.

Even during these periods of enforced idleness the barge does not the less continue to be their home, for the simple reason that the ca.n.a.l population possesses no other. Their whole life for generations, the bringing up and education of the children, the years of toil from youth to old age, are pa.s.sed on these barges, which, varying in size and still more in condition, are as closely identified with the name of home in their owners' minds as if they were built of brick and stone on firm land. The ambition of the youth who tugs at the rope is to possess a tjalk of his own, and he diligently looks out for the maiden whose dowry will a.s.sist him, with his own savings, to make the purchase. This he may hope to procure for five or six hundred gulden, if he will be content with one of limited dimensions, and somewhat marked by time. When a family comes he will want a larger and more commodious boat, but by that time the profits which his first tjalk will have earned as a carrier will go far towards buying a second.

The tjalks are all built in the same form and from a common model. They carry a mast and sail, although for the greater part of their journeys they are towed by their owners, or rather by the familles, wife and children, of the owner. Mynheer, the barge-owner, is usually to be seen smoking his pipe and taking his ease near the tiller. Formerly it was otherwise, for the towing was done by dogs, under the personal direction of, and no doubt with some a.s.sistance from, the barge-owner himself, while his wife and children remained on the p.o.o.p of the boat. But five and twenty years ago the authorities of Amsterdam issued a law prohibiting the employment of dogs in the work of towing, and gradually this law was generally adopted and enforced throughout the country. When dogs were emanc.i.p.ated from their servitude on the ca.n.a.l-bank the family had to take their places, and by degrees the ease-loving head of the family has grown content to look on and think towing a labour reflecting on his dignity.

There is nothing unusual in the sight of a barge being towed by an old woman, her daughter or daughter-in-law, and several children. As they strain at the rope the work seems extremely hard, but the people themselves appear unconscious of any hards.h.i.+p or inequality in the distribution of labour.

The barge is in the first place a conveyance. The whole of the front part of the boat represents the hold in which the cargo is placed. This is generally represented by cheese or vegetables, timber, peat, and stones, the last-named being a return-cargo for the repairing of d.y.k.es and the construction of quays. But in the second place it is a house or place of residence, and the stern of the boat is given up for that purpose. The living room is the raised deck or p.o.o.p, on which is not only the tiller, but the cooking-stove. The sleeping-room forms the one covered-in apartment. It is easily divisible into two by a temporary or removable part.i.tion, and it always possesses the two little windows, one on each side of the tiller, which give it so great a resemblance to a doll's house. This resemblance is certainly heightened by the custom of colouring the barges, which are always painted a bright colour, red or green being perhaps the most usual. As ornament there is usually a good deal of bra.s.swork; the handle of the tiller is generally bordered with the metal, and the owner seems to take pride in nailing bra.s.s along the bulwarks of his boat where it is not wanted and is even little seen. It has been suggested that the polis.h.i.+ng of these bra.s.s plates or bars provides a pleasant change from the dull routine work of towing. The brightness of the paint and the bra.s.swork const.i.tutes the pride of the barge-owners, and supplies a standard of comparison among them.

To increase the homelike aspect of this water residence, birds and plants, always in more or less quant.i.ty and variety, are to be seen either in the windows or on the deck. The poorest bargee, which generally means the youngest or the beginner, will have one song-bird in a gilt cage, and as he acc.u.mulates money in his really profitable calling, he will add to his collection of birds a row of flowers and bulbs in pots. Thus he says, with a glow of satisfaction, 'I possess an aviary and a garden, like my cousin Hans on the polders, although my home is on the moving waters.' To strengthen the illusion what does he do but fix a toy gate on the p.o.o.p above his sleeping-cabin, and thus cherishes the belief that he is on his own domain? In the evening, when the towing is over for the day, the women bring out their sewing, the children play round the tiller, and the good man smokes his immense pipe with complete and indolent satisfaction. And so day pa.s.ses on to day without a variation, and life runs by without a ripple or a murmur for the ca.n.a.l population, while the mere landsmen look on with envy at what seems to them an idyllic existence, and even ladies of breeding and high station have been known to declare that they would gladly change places with the mistress of the bargee's quarter-deck. That was no doubt in the days before women had to take on themselves the brunt and burden of the towing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Ca.n.a.l in Dordrecht.]

But even for the ca.n.a.l population of Holland the halcyon days are past.

The spirit of reform is in the air. It may not be long before the tjalk, with its doll's house and its residential population, will finally disappear, and leave the ca.n.a.ls of Holland as dull and colourless as the inland waters of any other country. The reform seems likely to come about in this way. There are at least 30,000 children resident on the ca.n.a.l-boats. How are they to be properly educated and brought up as useful citizens if they are to continue to lead a migratory existence which never leaves them for a fortnight in a single place? Formerly, n.o.body cared whether they were educated or not. They were left undisturbed to live their lives in their own simple and primitive way. As De Amicis wrote: 'The children are born and grow up on the water; the boat carries all their small belongings, their domestic affections, their past, their present, and their future. They labour and save, and after many years they buy a larger boat, selling the old one to a family poorer than themselves, or handing it over to the eldest son, who in his turn instals his wife, taken from another boat, and seen for the first time in a chance meeting on the ca.n.a.l.' But now the State has begun to interest itself in the children, and its intervention threatens to put a rude and summary ending to the system of heredity and exclusion which has kept the ca.n.a.l population a cla.s.s apart.

For some time past schools have been in existence, especially devoted to the education of the barge children, and whenever the barges are moored in harbour the children are expected to attend them. But these periods of halting are very brief and uncertain. The stationary barge earns no money, and it may even be that the parents evade the law as far as possible for fear of seeing their children acquire a distaste for the life in which they have been brought up. But the Government, having taken one step in the matter, cannot afford to go back, and it must also have definite satisfactory results to show for its legislation. The tentative measure of temporary schools along the ca.n.a.ls has not leavened the illiteracy of the ca.n.a.l population. It will, therefore, become necessary at no great interval to devise some fresh and drastic regulations. Compulsory attendance at school for nine months of the year, which now applies to children in normal circ.u.mstances, may not be the lot of the barge children for some time, but when it comes, as it inevitably will one day, it will of necessity mean the break-up of the home life on the ca.n.a.ls, for the children will have to be left behind during the almost unceasing voyages, and a place of residence will have to be provided on land. Where the children are the women will soon be, and gradually this place of residence will become the home, displacing the barge in the a.s.sociations and affections of the ca.n.a.l population. Whether these changes will benefit those most affected by them cannot be guaranteed, but at least they will put an end to the separate existence of the ca.n.a.l population.

When this result has been compa.s.sed by the inexorable progress of education and knowledge, the gradual disappearance of the ca.n.a.l population, the cla.s.s of hereditary bargees as we have known it, and as it still exists, may be expected to follow at no remote date, for it was based on the enforcement of the family principle, and on the devotion of a whole community, from its youngest to its eldest member, to its maintenance. As it is the tow-barge is something of an anachronism, but the withdrawal of the youthful recruits, whose up-bringing alone rendered it possible, will entail its inevitable extinction. The decay and break-up of the guild of tjalk owners will be hastened by the introduction of steam and electricity as means of locomotion. The ca.n.a.ls will lose the bright-coloured barges which are to-day their most striking feature, and the population that has so long floated over their surface. Life will be duller and more monotonous. The ca.n.a.l population, so long distinct, will be merged in the rest of the community. The tug will displace the tow-rope. The pullers will be housed on land, mastering the three R's instead of learning to strain at the girth.

But there is still a brief period left during which the ca.n.a.l population may be seen in its original primitive existence, devoted to the barge, which is the only home known to six or seven thousand families, and traversing the water roads of their country in unceasing and endless progression. There is nothing like it in any other country of Europe.

Venice has its water routes, but the gondola is not a domicile. There was a ca.n.a.l population in England, but, like much else in our modern life, it has lost whatever picturesqueness it might once have claimed. For a true ca.n.a.l population, bright and happy, living the same life from father to son and generation to generation, we must go to Holland. There these inland navigators ply their vocation with only one ambition, and that to become the owner of a tjalk, and to rear thereon a family of towers. It is said that the life is one that requires the consumption of unlimited quant.i.tics of 'schnapps,' and the humidity of the atmosphere is undoubted.

But even free libations do not diminish the prosperity of the bargees.

They are a thriving race, and it must also be noted to their credit that they are well behaved, and not given to quarrels. Collisions on the thickly-covered ca.n.a.ls are rare; malicious collisions are unknown. The barges pa.s.s and repa.s.s without hindrance, the tow-ropes never get entangled, there is mutual forbearance, and the skill derived from long experience in slipping the ropes uncler the barges does the rest. The conditions under which the ca.n.a.l population exists and thrives are a survival of an older order of things. When they disappear another of the few picturesque heritages of mediaeval life will have been removecl from the hurly-burly and fierce compet.i.tion of modern existence.

Chapter VII

A Dutch Village

Villages in Holland are towns in miniature, for the simple reason that when you have a marsh to live in you drain a part of it and build on that part, and so build in streets, and do not form a village as in England, by houses dotted here and there round a green or down leafy lanes. The village green in Holland is the village street or square in front of the church or 'Raadhuis.' Here the children play, for you cannot play in a swamp, and that is what polder land is seven months out of the year, and so we find that a Dutch village in most parts of the country is a town in miniature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: An Overyssel Farmhouse.]