The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1915-09-25

little individuality to start WITH the adventures
and patchings of time have endued it with
picturesqueness of its own. The builders gave
1t practically decoration, but such solid works
receive all they need from the hand Of time,
which adds detail with unerrng taste. The
palmer an edifce may have been to start with,
the better time adOrns it, provided it has been
built with sound materials, good workmanship
and in good proportions Most of Eng1ands noblest
castles must have looked gaunt and even Ito
contemporary eyes, ugly. To the Saxon citizens
of London the White doubtless whitewashed)
tower can hardly have conveyed esthetic pleas
ure But time has even decorated Norman cas-
ties, so that not the baldest modern sky-scraper
need despair of future admiration if it can hold
itself end up long enough.
Amersfoort tower is anything rather than plain
On the contrary, it is in the Gothic style tending
towards hamboyant, while its general design is
OF the type of the tower at Utrecht, which. indeed
being only fourteen miles away, doubtless sug-
gested it That was built during the middle half
OF the fourteenth century; Amersfoort at the
very end of the fifteenth. Both have the open
octagonal top story already described. Utrecht is
538 feet high, Amersfoort 312 feet. The latter is
considered to be the finest Gothic tower in Hol-
land suppose it to have been surmounted or
intended to be surmounted by a plain spire but
the present dubious top and open-work crown
were put on in 1855. Where did Holland get it's
taste for these bulbs? She did not have no
nopoly of them, for they are numerous enough in
Germany and even in Switzerland. An oriental
original probably suggested them The Auers-
foort church was built in the fourteenth century
and the tower may well have been projected from
the first An explosion damaged the building but
the damage made good and the tower for
tunately escaped.
Few tourists stop at Amersfoort, but plenty of
them can see the tower from the train on their
way eastward from Amsterdam. The summit of
it looks northward far away over the Zuyder Zee
and In every other direction over country as
nat as water. There was some fun in building
high towers in Holland. they could be seen from
so far away. Amersfoort can hail Utrecht on any
clear day, and both of them Rhenen q imagine)
which Rembrandt sketched
Anyone who has landed at Flushing and pro-
ceeded thence anywhither by train has been
carried for the first few miles over the am
phlD1ous region of the island of Walcheren He
mas passed Middelburg and presently if he looked
away on to the left, he will have SEEN at a dis
lance of two or three miles, the little town of
We're. Both are old towns and highly pietur.
esque- So indeed Durer recorded them in be
when he visited them in the cold December of
1920. Mfddelburg," he said lis a good town a
fine place for sketching It has beautiful tow,
hall with a fine tower. There is much art shown
in all things here. All he has to say about Veere
is that lit is fine little town where lie ships
from all lands" The object of Durer's unfor
tunate winter journey to the islands of iceland
was not, however. to see towers and town halls
but to satisfy his Unsuitable curiosity about
OF whale that had been stranded in those
parts Such curiosity in the case of men like
Durer and Leonardo is the first indication we
possess of the approach of the age of science
The whale had been washed away before Durers