And these are but a few of the reasons why a visit to Rotterdam, although barren of the types and characteristics that Holland is noted for, is well worth the trouble; if only to study the city and its inhabitants from a psychological point of view it is well worth while.
V
Delft and Her Tragedy
Nineteen minutes in the train from Rotterdam, and you are in Delft—such are the distances between towns in South Holland.
The population of Delft amounts, numerically, to some 32,000, but this is an item that is farthest from your thoughts. It is one of the quietest, quaintest cities in the Netherlands. Up and down its narrow, lime shaded canals the boatmen of Delft pole their barges laboriously, yet noiselessly, walking along the decks from stem to stern against their padded means of propulsion and literally pushing their craft out from under them. In the spring these watery highways are covered with a fragrant layer of fallen blossoms; in the fall, with leaves of variegated colors. The houses that stand behind the trees have been well built and are well preserved, adding to the place an impression of comfortable solidity.
My first visit to Holland brought me to Delft from “The Hook” at a very early hour in the morning, when the housemaids were about to commence the first concentrated assault of the day upon their pavements, doorsteps, front doors, and the brass-work pertaining thereto in the shape of knobs and knockers. “Scrub” seemed to be the housemaids’ slogan, and they were certainly living up to it. Pail after pail of water was hoisted from the canals and splashed over everything in reach, until it flowed across the streets and pavements, and fell back whence it came originally. If I had appeared upon the scene a little later I might have concluded that a cloud-burst had struck the town. And all this brackish water, that, in the canals, comes within an ace of being absolutely stagnant, being poured so recklessly over the town, gave to it a kind of antique odor, anything but pleasant to inhale. It gave every evidence that that same water had been hoisted, put to its task, and allowed to drip back into the canals again since medieval times.
This was on a week day. A subsequent visit to Delft took me there on Sunday.
Now, for some reason, psychological or otherwise, the housemaids of Delft don’t seem to take the same interest in the scrupulousness of their doorsteps on a Sunday that they do on a week day. Sunday is the day that everybody in Delft dons his or her best bib and tucker and goes to church, or leans over the railings of the canal bridges and chats with a friend, or walks about the town under the shade of its trees, contemplating, perhaps, upon the exigencies of life. And a housemaid is but human.
