“His firmness was allied to his piety. His constancy in bearing the whole weight of a struggle, as unequal as men have ever undertaken, was the theme of admiration, even to his enemies. The rock in the ocean, ‘tranquil amid raging billows,’ was the favorite emblem by which his friends expressed their sense of his firmness. From the time when, as a hostage in France, he first discovered the plan of Philip to plant the Inquisition in the Netherlands, up to the last moment of his life, he never faltered in his determination to resist the iniquitous scheme. This resistance was the labor of his life. To exclude the Inquisition, to maintain the ancient liberties of his country, was the task which he appointed to himself when a youth of three-and-twenty. Never speaking a word concerning a heavenly mission, never deluding himself or others with the usual phraseology of enthusiasts, he accomplished the task through danger, amid toils, and with sacrifices such as few men have ever been able to make on their country’s altar.”
Truly, Wilhelmina has an illustrious ancestor.
VI
The Hague and Scheveningen
A Dutch saw has it that you “make your fortune in Rotterdam, consolidate it in Amsterdam, and spend it at The Hague.” I am not so sure about the veracity of the first two clauses, but you can certainly spend it at The Hague.
The Hague is at once the most beautiful and the most expensive city in Holland. It is the Paris, the Washington, the Berlin of the Netherlands all in one. Like Paris, it is so overflowing with history and art that it would take a small book to tell of it all in detail; like Washington, it is beautiful, and the official residence of the chief executive of the nation and the diplomatic corps, but not half so expensive; like Berlin, again it is just as beautiful and twice as expensive. It is the magnetic pole of the American tourist in Holland, and it takes pains to cater in many ways to his whims and fancies, not to mention his pocketbook, and thus hold his patronage. Half the town speaks English and most of the remaining half understands it. Its people are obliging and courteous and seem to take a personal interest in making your stay one of pleasure and instruction as they do in no other city in Europe. In The Hague I have tried to explain to an obtuse conductor, in smatterings of German, Dutch, and English, where I wished to get off the car, and half a dozen fellow-passengers, finding a stranger in difficulty, have chimed in without the least solicitation and untangled my knots of pantomime with real Dutch verbiage.
Snapshots here and there. The Dutch maiden is a miniature of her mother, and she is taught cleanliness and thrift from the time she begins to learn the meaning of words