Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1891-11-26
ANTWERP, Belgium, July s. 1891

"
My Dear Philip
/ am going to begin letter TO you here
while we are waiting at the depot. wish
could show you some OF the funny dresses
that the women wear, the country women
who come in with big carts of strawber-
ries and peas and beans and such things.
Some of them wear wooden shoes. though
they are more like slippers, low at the
heel. Then they wear short dresses and
little bright colored shawls about their
shoulders, but the oldest thing is the cap
that they wear, which has first piece of
gold that seems to go almost around the
head ard comes out Just above the ears in
"A coil that looks like a spring, or else a
little curl of wire with long gold pin, a
little smaller than a hat pin, struck
through 1T. This goes right over the hair
and then they put on cap of white lace
or of plain white lawn. Some We're little
caps, the shape of Joseph's silk hood, and
then others had deep capes pleated very
flil in the back of the neck. The caps
looked quite pretty, but when they put a
black bonnet on top OF these large white
caps it looked funny enough. These
women with the white caps live in Hol-
land, and that is such n clean country.
Every where the people seemed to be al
WAYS washing their windows and rubbing
up the brass door knobs and the brass
raiiings down the front door steps. Many
OF the streets are very narrow, and we
often walked right along in the middle of
the street, which was very clean, for they
sweep them every day, and, guess, sew
eral times day .and some of them looked
as if they had been scrubbed. The wind
mills are everywhere, not at all like ours.
but with four large arms. They keep
pumping the water from the little canals
into the big ones Some OF the little ones
look very green and dirty on top, but the
large ones are clear and clean. In one of
them | saw woman washing clothes,
kneeling down on the bank and rinsing
them back and forth in the water. That
must be hard work, think.
We seem to be in the land of soldiers;
they not only have the regular soldiers,
but schools for the boys where they learn
how to be soldiers SO we see good
many boys sixteen or seven seen wearing
the soldiers dress. In England most of
the soldiers wore bright red coats belted
down and funny little black caps trimmed
with red braid. On Sunday morning as
we were going to church we heard band |
playing and saw going into Westminster
Abbey a long line of sailors with blue
blouses and fiat white straw hats with |
broad brims, just such hats as YOU dis
lead the band. had ON a great fur hat, |
higher than stovepipe hat, but all COW
cred with black fur and some red POM
pons in front. One pretty soldiers cos
tune was black with yellow braid on all |
the seams and little round black cap
with yellow. The soldiers in |
Holland wear helmets, with brass pieces |
running over the back, and their blue |
have red Stripes on them. The |
prettiest suit that saw was at Antwerp
and was light grey, with white braid on
it.
When | looked out in the morning at
Antwerp saw the dog carts in which
milk is brought into the city. Two dogs
drew each cart and " oman walked along
by them. The dogs acted as if the load
was rather heavy, but they trotted along
very bravely and were soon out of sight
around the cor Ter. The evening before
he band gave concert in the square in
front Of our hotel and the people were out
n crowds--wamen with babies asleep in
heir arms, and little boys and girls,
,hough ii was after nine o'clock.
Since we left Antwerp we have been in
Brussels few hours, AMI we came on to
Cologne last night, and, now. as | write,
We are on one OF the Rhine steamers GO
ng up to Bingen. The hills on both