The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1862-11-15
Other Cau0s.
The Dutch at Homo.

land, very close to Rotterdam, and has
about 81 900 inhabitants, and a large
trade, on the expanse of the Mas,
usually marked Mouse on the maps,)
formed by great inunda;ion, nearly four
hundred and fifty years ago, which sepa-
rated the town from the mainland. The
water in front of the quays is deep
enough to float an East Indiaman.-
Gigantic RATS of wood, from the forests
of Switzerland and the Schwarz- valid,
are Aoated down the Rhine by crews of
from 400 to 500 men each, into immense
ponds at Dort, and are there broken up
and sold, part of 1t sawn INTO planks by
d-mills, part handed over in bulk to
the ship builders. A single raft some
times sells for Sl50,000. At Dot, the
men work briskly; The women devote
themselves to cleaning their houses,
inside and ou', and not cleaning their
rotund children. We mentioned bort,
as single example, but any or every
other town in Holland would serve as
similar example.
In Dutch town, even in midst of
summer, particle of dust can rarely be
found. 1t has been laid under water,
with myriads of similar atoms In a
country literally stolen from the sea,
which is kept by cmbankments-where
the sum of 81 100000 900 was expcnd-
ed on the hydraulic works between the
Dollart and the Scheldt where its finest
cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, are
built upon piles driven deep into the
sand where the sea is so much higher
than the land, that the lowest ground is
twenty-four feet below high-wa er mark,
and thir fee, when the tide is driven
high by the wind ; where the keels of
the ships float above the chimneys Of the
houses, and the frogs, croaking among
the bulrushcs, look down upon he birds
setting on the house ops where the
rivers do not run in their ma ural chan
nels, but are forced through canals
where even Il cows tail is not allowed to
grow downwards, but, for cleanliness
sake, is tied up to ring in the stable,
when the animal is in its all where
sands abound and earth is scarce, the
carefuler Hollanders cannot afford to
nave put llClcS Vi uust Ch
wandered about, but are ever on the qui
uire to put them under water.
Andrew Marvel, describing the Du ch,
quantity said:
A daily dengc oyer them does boil 4;
The earth and water play Mt level coil
The fish ofimes the burgher dspossessed,
And sat, not as Il meat, but az guest
And oft The tritons and the sca-nymphs
Whole shoals of Dutch servei up for Cabllau
Or. as they over the new level ronged
For picked herring picked herring changed.
Nature. it seems, ashamed Of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake
Butler, author of " Hudibras," the
wi,tiest satire of the seventeenth century,
describes Holland as
country that draws fifty feet of water,
In which men live as in the hold of nature.
And when the does in upon them bre TX,
And drowas province, docs but spring a leak.
Cleanliness always is active in a
Dutch town but on Saturday the grand
cleaning, or schoon-maken, takes place.
The pavements are secured, and mopped
and even tinted with coloring matter,
dissolved or suspended in water. Not
the pavement alone Is eagerly scrubbed,
brushed, mopped. and scraped, but also
the walls, windows, doorways, ct cetera'
When hand or mop cannot reach a spot.
small engine-pump is used, to play as
much water upon it as will disloGge or
destroy it. Walking must be done in
the middle of the street, for female
hands are ever and anon dashing buckets
of water against the windows. With
spiders is wagcd eternal hostility. The
canals in the principal thorou ghfares
supply the water for this ceaseless lava
ton. Within doors, excessive cleanli-
ness sits enthroned The drawing room
is rarely opened oftener than once a
week, and then by the housewife and
her handnaiden, wearing list slippers,
to avoid scratching the polished floor.
In their hands, soap and wa err are not
spared. The furniture is sedulously
waxed and wiped, and then carefully
covered, after which the windows are
closed, the door pulled to, and the door
locked for another week.
Each house has two entrances, but
the front door is opened only to receive
a bridal, or give exit to funeral party.
Every one uses the back door in some
Dutch towns the visitor must put off
his shoes before entrance, but every
where he must carefully scrape, rub,
and dust them before he goes in
Almost every house has spions, Or little
mirrors, projecting in front of the win
dows. These are two pieces of looking
glass placed at an angle of forty-Gve
degrees to each other, one rejecting UP
and the other down the street. Thus
each Dutch lady can see all that passes
outside, as she secre ly sits behind the
gauze blinds, herself unseen. As she
thus sis at her window, her foots COL is
the uuur stool, square boz, in which
Is placed an earthcn pan filled with hot
embers of peat (turf,) and perforated at
the top for the emission of heat. The
feet rest upon it, and it is concealed BY
the dress. When the housewife visits
church or thea re, servant follows her
with the vuur stoof
Before stranger has been dozen
hours in Holland, he will have occasion
to notice that the painful cleanliness
which We have described, is not always
extended to the persons of the inhabl-
tants. The lower orders, especially
are usually filthy and greasy in III,
extreme. Oliver Goldsmith. who had