The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-05-26
a GERMAN VIEW OF THE DUTOH AT
HOME

A recent visitor TO Holland Karl Braun, of
Wiesbaden, contributes to the pages of the
GdFteRlaube some lively sketches of Dutch
life, q few facts from which may be new and
interesting to our readers. On landing at
Rotterdam his first meal consists of a super
eminently good beefstesk. He praises this
to the waiter, as in honor and gratitude
bound, aud is informed that the canny Dutch
always keep their grass-fed cattle for their
own consumption or to set before the guests
who do them the honor of a visit; whereas
those they send to the English market are
animals nonrished in the alcoholic distilleries
at Schiedam, etc.
Herr Braun's observations on Dutch beds
(not tulip beds) introduce us to a new branch
of comparative philosophy. The Dutch bed,
he saws, is very much larger, and therefore
more comfortable, than the German bed. Of
the convenience of the latter, in some parts
of Germany especially, he has touching
plants to make. He was at Weimar once
and, expostulatlng with his landlady in the
morning about the narrowness of the pre-
cincts to which his recumbent body had been
consigned, was taken to see the sleeping
apartment once occupied by the poet Schil-
Ter. II felt ashamed" he says, with touch
ing candor, "when 1 beheld the miserable
little garret in which our great poet had
dwelt, and the narrow board on which
he had slept, and which in
my opinion euphemistical injustice only
could have called bed" From Weimar he
on that occasion travelled south. Bad beds
accompanied him till he got quit of the Ger
man tongue, and descended from the dolo-
mite mountains into the Italian Tyrol. At
Cortina d'Ampezzo his bed was as wide as
that at Rotterdam. Such beds, he says, are
still to be found in the princely residences in
Germany, and in a few patrician and peasant
domiciles which have survived social dis
order and revolution. But for the most part
they have vanished. The more sordid ideas
of prevailing middle class came in with the
decline of the old arstocracy which set in
from the sixteenth century, and which the
prosperity of the nineteenth century burghery
is only now replacing Now, then, for re-
turn to better domestic accommodations, and,
above all, to larger beds, We look upon
Herr Brauns philosophy in this matter as
perverted. With us in England, luxurious as
are our house arrangements, small beds are
surely gaining the day on the spacious -four
posters" in which our ancestors delighted. A
soldiers habits are perhaps EXCEPTIONAL; but
Schiller could scarcely have died on smaller
bed than did the Duke of Wellington, or
even, in another land, Nicholas 1, Czar of all
the Russias
The Dutch ladies find a resource against
the disasreeable damp chills of their climate
in the habitual use of the ''stoofje," an
earthen vessel filled with hot Goals, and hav-
ing five holes at the top through which the
heat ascends. The ''stoofje" is an article of
rich and varied ornament as well as of use
among the wealthy classes; but the poorest
washerwoman and serving-maid have their
''stoofje," and to 10 without it would seem
to be as impossible for them as for the
habitual smoker to do without his pipe or
cigar. The indulgence, however, would seem
70 hou ho1 off on, fha baolfh
some are disposed to ascribe to it the Dutch
womans want of walking power.
On the ordinary personal qualities-or
''humors," as our old writers would say-of
the typical Dutchman, our author has some
quaint remarks to make. He is struck by
the mixture of great solidity and sedateness,
with turn for practical jokes of a childish
and somewhat clumsy description, which the
| character usually embodies, and in which he
is reminded of the whimsical contrasts once
| observable in the life of the Middle Ages
| such contrasts as "where in one and the self
same church, would be witnessed to-day the
practice of the most rigid self-mortifying
asce icism, tomorrow the celebration Of
some wild, grotesque, Gcentious Feast of
! Asses" The Germans are to the Dutch, in
Herr Braun's views, like daring go-ahead
nephew, who seeks his fortune in the wide
world without much respect to the opinions
| OI ulS uuCic az uOulc, Dub Scts
credit and success notwithstanding of which
the uncle is not a little proud, despite of him.
self.
The piece of musical clock-work which
usually graces the centre of a Dutchman's
dinner-table, and whose performances, alter
nately with the recital of poetry, were only O
short time back and are still in old-fashioned
houses the favorite social entertainment, tes
titles to the same heavy-sportiveness of the
national taste. No doubt much room is still
left on the banks of the Zuyder Zee for the
modifying influences of French Elasticity and
German Inspiration. Herr Braun's paper il
the last number of the Gartenlau6e is the frs
instalment only of what promises to be {
pleasant and instructive portraiture of ma
tional modes and manners. He adverts brief,
to the education question, on which, as il
other countries, war is being waged between
the denominationalist and undenomination
alist parties. The latter, he considers, hav
strong position on the platform of loca
self lf-government.-PdR Mall Gazette.