The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-05-10
DUTCH COMFORT.
Houses in Holland, and How They are
Furntsh0d,

Houses in Holland, and How They are
Furnished.
A writer in London Society says
A substantial Amsterdammer's house, plain
only on the outside, is resplendent with white
marble and glorious with carved work within.
The walls of the chief room have often been
painted by frst-rate artists, and italian sculp-
tors must have had fine time of it in the
wealthy city, for their hand is to be seen on
cornice and balustrade in many simple mer-
chants house.
The British-b born bow-window is not often
to be seen even in the country, and the more
antique oriel seems never to have been
adopted by post t-reformation architects. But
Mevrouw is not without the power of seeing
up and down the street at will, as she sits at
her work; for by the little spiegelen-spy-
mirrors suspended upon strong metal work
on either side of her sitting-room window,
she can calmly survey, herself out of view,
the passing crowd and scene below.
The basement floor is always raised few
feet above the surface of the ground to steal
little height in air for the kitchen, the floor
of Which is even then foot or two below the
level of the underlying ooze, but of course
ooze-tight with cement-Bettinji, the cook,
is stout and healthy notwithstanding-and
ascending from the street by flight of five
or six steps, a very solid door admits you to a
long and. narrow passage, lofty and marbled
on either side, and lighted by glass above the
door. The drawing room, or, not unusually,
the counting house, with this passage, takes
up the entire width of the house.
The first thought one has on entering any
Dutch chamber, drawing-room not excepted
is, GLOW very long!" the next, "How very
bare!" Everything is handsome but there is
30 little of it, No lsunging-chairs, no round
table with knickknackeries cabinet with
closed glass doors, of course, chairs placed in
formal rows, a handsome chandelier, stove
place, and that is all. You take seat, and,
perhaps, touch the wall with your elbow-lo
it yields to the touch. Wallpaper is mis-
nomer in Holland. Paper -hangings is the
proper word. These sometimes are of oil
paintings on canvas sometimes of paper
stretched on canvas fastened ON light wooden
frames, which can be taken down bodily when
their gay coverings have to be renewed.
Evidently these are the next descendants
from tapestry and arras. The walls may
be damp, and very probably are so, but then
"they assume virtue if they have it not;"
for ones eyes are never offended in Hol-
land by dripping, smeared, washed-out wall
paper.
The bedrooms are also but scantily fur
nished, and, except in guest chambers, one
| does not often see q chest of drawers or q
wardrobe. A foreign visitor, indeed, is apt
| to be at q loss what to do with clothes until
| he discovers that doors, cunningly concealed,
open into cupboards all about the room. By
the way, Mevrouw always hangs her dresses
in these; she seldom folds them in drawer
At the top of the house, both in town and
country, is invariably to be found spacious
laundry, extending, in fact, over the whole
area of the. house. In this the linen is stored
in presses, and the clothing of the past sea-
son, winter or summer, all duly turned inside
out, hangs on pegs all about. Here, twice in
the year, Mevrouw holds her grand saturna-
lia. Without doubt, the most important
item in a Dutch girls dowry is linen. The
| quantity she thinks necessary for her own
person and for household purposes is enor-
nous. But then it should be known that she
washes" the linen, of course) but twice in
the year. Cuffs, collars, and muslins, she
says, must be washed often, but all
other things are flung, for a time, into
huge buck-baskets big enough for half
a dozen Falstaffs to hide in; indeed,
these are astounding baskets, and when
full will weigh four or five hundred
weight. Every house has block and pulley
firmly fixed to the ornamented coping of the
roof, which, indeed, is purposely constructed
to carry this useful machine, and forms a
noticeable feature in the architecture of
all the Dutch houses and by means of
the block, these huge baskets are readily
lifted to and from the laundry; and furniture
or heavy articles OF any kind to the other
stories through the windows. A visitor for
the first time may see with amused bewilder-
ment that particularly numbering trunk of
his wife's, which has been the despair of
railway porters throughout his journey,
whipped up by invisible hands to height
of sixty or seventy feet in no time, and dis
appear through a bedroom window. The
clothes are simply rough. washed in the coun-
try, and when sent back all.the females in the
house set to work for a good fortnight to
mapgle and iron, starch and crimp; aad you
may be sure that every bit of clothing a
Dutch young lady of the middle classes is
wearing has thus been got up by her own
fair hands. The original outlay in linen ID
no doubt large, but the cheap mode of wash
ing pays good interest for the money.
One thing is very remarkable in Dutch-
mans house. You never see open book
shelves, and stray book but seldom. The
fact is, in the first place, that all books and
personal property are stored away in the