The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-09-14
ATTY. ARVINE IN HOLLAND
4 " INTER ESTING DESCRIPTIoY OF
 THE DUTCH.

The Women Are Charming, but Per- haps Trihe Too FNt to Suit Every- body's Taste The Hollander is De- eidedIy Gay-NenrIy All Names End With "dam"-scntiment as to the War
 Paris, Sept. 1, 1898.
 To the Editor of the Journal and Courier:
 The Netherlands, or the flat country, that is what Holland is called. It is certainly a very queer country. It is very flat, absolutely without hills. The whole country is intersected with canals. In the cities every third street is canal. The canals are muddy and foul; nevertheless it is very aristocratic to have your front yard in canal. Some of the finest houses in Holland are built close to the waters edge A common name for street in Holland is "kade:" that is the Dutch word for canal Many of the streets were once canals, so that it would seem that Rot terdam and Amsterdam were once pretty much all canal. Nearly all the names and cities end in "dam." The principal square in Amsterdam is the Dam. This termination indicates what is the fact, that very large part of the Netherlands has been rescued from the ocean. Cities, towns and fields are now where the sea was once It is equally true that the sea is now where dry land was once. In the cities there are lots of bridges over the great ca nals which intersect them. Many of these are drawbridges, and as the com merce of the world still crowds it's way up these canals, the draws are fre- quently open, and everybody, including the electric cars, have to wait until they are closed-a not very convenient arrangement when one is in hurry to take a train. Americans would never submit to such a state of things. But the Hollanders are patient. contented people, They take out their pipes and peacefully smoke while the bridge is slowly turning, for it does turn very slowly indeed. The Hollanders are a very different people from what l sup posed they were. First of all they are a handsome people. The women are charming. Perhaps they are trifle too stout to suit everybody's taste They are generally tall and have very fresh and rosy complexions, with great mass es of beautiful blond hair, which is not a makeup. Both men and women look very intelligent, and what is better they are very intelligent men, so think, on an average than any other people on the continent. They dress well and in excellent taste.
 Almost everybody in Holland speaks two or more languages. Their native tongue, "Hollando," as they call it, is horribly guttural, one of the most diff ficult languages to pronounce that is spoken in Europe. Nobody could learn it and nobody wants to. It is spoken by only three or four million of people; so the Hollander has to learn some oth- CT language or be cut off from the rest of the world. You can travel all over Europe easily if you know either Eng fish, French or German but what could a man do if he only knew Dutch? There are few such unfortunate per- sons, but not many in the cities. Ger man is the language most frequently spoken next to the vernacular. But many know both English and German; most educated people speak both, and d lew E is commonly regarded as a very stolid, unemotional, unimpressionable sort of a person The fact is the Hollander is decidedly gay, a good deal more like 8 Frenchman than he is like an Eng lshman or a German. The Hollander are a very jolly and pleasure-loving people. There is singular "camara- derie'' between the sexes that exists I ', ir 11n city that in proportion to it's size has as many cafes as Amsterdam. They simply abound in every quarter. One wonders how they exist under such competition. They are very fine and elegant cafes, too. But soon 1t is all made clear The Hollanders with their wives and children spend their evenings in these cafes. Sets and cir cIes have their special resorts, just as our people have their sewing societies. They seem to live really in their cafes. I must exclude from this statement the aristoerats. They are not like other people in any country, and nowadays, thank God neither control nor give character to any country. It is the Bourjoisie and the Prolatariat that fill these cafes The Krapolotski, a cele-
 
 claimed by the Dutch to be the finest restaurant in the world. Now the Dutch are believed to be very reli- gious people, Another mistake; Rot terdam and Amsterdam are as gay on Sunday as Paris. All the shows and theaters are open. Sunday is in fact a great holiday. One of the greatest charms of the Pays Bar" is it's coun- try villages. These have been celebra- ted in hundreds of landscape paintings by great masters. These paintings do not exaggerate. Indeed it seems to me that often they fail to express the real beauty of the Dutch village The villages of Bruick and Werkendam could not be more beautiful or look more poetic if they had actually been designed by great painters. They real ly look as if some great landscape painting had suddenly become a reali- ty The Dutch farmer is not any bet ter off nor any more intelligent, in- deed not as much so, as the American farmer, but he is certainly much more picturesque. How he contrives to ban ish not only from his door-yard, but even from his barn-yard, everything