Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1883-04-12
Market Day in a Holland Town.

Market Day In Holland Town.
The very air seemed teeming with
cheeses. They looked like great golden
apples, or rather between a very large
apple anda small pumpkin. They are
very elastic and slippery, too, when
new, and these were all very new, and
evidently suffering from nervous ex-
citement, judging from the state of
"quiver" they all seemed to be in.
The market-place was filled with great
high wagon-loads of them, and frantic
peasants tossing them down to the
porters, who were "shying" them
madly about here and there, to and
fro, until it looked like some insane
jugglery practice. 1t was no joke to
walk calmly about during these ma
neuvers /; there was a tolerable chance
of stray shot with one CT these balls
of concentrated indigestion. Fatal
error to try and dodge them. Sure to
be hit. Keep your course, and the
pitchers and tossers allow for you and
rational amount of headway. But
of course they cannot allow for
eccentric dodging. There is much
demented shouting, and a SEEM
ingly absurd amount of hand
shaking. This is apt to mislead the
stranger. 1t is no merely sentimental
meeting or parting, but the usual ce-
menting grasp of "a final bargain. The
cheeses go merrily by, piled high on
hand-barrows, to the great weigh-house
to be sealed. The porters are race
apart. 1t is no small job to carry about
three or four hundred-weight of dodgy
and shiftless balls, piled up on hand
barrow, without spilling them. The
porters have curious scufiing, sham
bling way of gliding over the ground
The arms are outspread. partly for
buiohOO, PtelulJ " NdlO oil OOi1iSiCAc.
Every scale in the weigh-house is
painted some distinguishing color, or
arrangement of colors, and each set Of
porters have painted hats and badges
of the corresponding tint; and as there
are many scales, so does it come topass
that the whole scene looks like wild
revel of all the most positive and crude
colors out of the rainbow. The barrow
is slung across the shoulders by straps,
and as they do not touch their hands
to it to steady it, the slightest coneuss-
ion is enough to bring down the slip
perry pyramid with arun.
We saw a small and needless boy
manage to run full tilt against pair
of these carriers, and every golden
sphere of bounding cheese went flying
to the four winds. The unhappy ur-
chin was not cuffed nor even vilified,
nor did they speak unkindly of his
parents the crowd simply paused in
mad career and set to work to pursue
and bring back the fugitives, and no
one seemed to think himself or herself
too busy or too grand to land an oblig-
ing hand to restore them, or even the
obliging apron or coat sleeve to polish
off the dust from the grimed surface
before they helped to pile them back
on the barrow. The unlucky boy
seemed to be rather sympathized with,
and even mild sort of martyr. 1 was
surprised that nobody kissed him. We
noticed that children are invariably
made much of in the way of kindly
and indulgent treatment all over Hol
land.
When we found the cheese carnival
rather pail upon us, we sought other
scenes, but it was difficult to get en-
tirely away from it something would
turn up to show how deep and wide
its interests were in Alkmaar. Along
the quays were numbers of vessels
loading with all sorts of it, to all parts
of the globe, wherever the least scrap
of digestion remains intact. The
quaint old warehouses along the docks
had nearly all stone tablets, showing
that for two hundred years or SO they
had identified themselves with this
one industry. From the upper stories
of these cheeseries were long wooden
cutters leading to the ships in dock,
and along these troughs trickled a
never-ceasing rill of the ripened and
matured article, now brilliant GRIM
son-the final tint it comes to when
ready for the far-off dyspeptic.-Har-