There is not that gradual shading off from the professional man to the coal-heaver that exists in the United States. One can no more conceive of a Hollander who looks forward to a career in the gentler walks of life “beginning at the bottom” than of one who aspires to the papacy taking a wife. He whose appearance stamps him as of those who live by the sweat of the brow cannot complain of any overt act of oppression. Yet he is early reminded that, as a worker with his hands, he has a distinct place in society and that he must keep to it. Among his fellow workmen, in his own caste, he lives and moves and has his being as in our own land. But in other ranks he catches here and there a glance, a gesture, a protesting silence, that brings home to him his lowly status.
My zigzag tramp ended late in the afternoon, and, after a deal of wandering in and out among the canals of the metropolis, I took a garret lodging overhanging a sluggish waterway. The proverbial cleanliness of Holland is no mere figure of speech. Few cities of the same size have as little of the slum district within their confines as Amsterdam. The Dutch laborer is, in many ways, far better off than those of the same class across the channel. In the city there is always a Koffie Huis close at hand, where eggs, milk, cheeses, and dairy products in general are served at small cost and in cleanly surroundings. Compare this diet with that of the British workman, who subsists often, not on food, but on the waste products of those places where food is prepared. One can identify a Briton of the lower classes by his teeth. At twenty he has a dozen, perhaps, that are neither broken off, crumbling, black, nor missing. At thirty he shows a few yellow fangs. But one cannot determine the class of the Hollander by the same sign. His diet is too wholesome.
Parks, museums, laborers’ quarters, and the necessity of a protracted search each evening for my canalside garret kept me three days in Amsterdam. On the fourth I drifted on board one of the tiny steamers of the Zuidersee and journeyed to Hoorn. Hoorn is one of Holland’s dead cities, one of the many from which prosperity and wealth departed to come no more as the shifting sands of the North Sea blocked up their channels and drove away the rich commerce that was their fortune. Now they are dead indeed. A tiny remnant of a great population clatters along their deserted streets, a few of the ancient mansions house humbler inmates, and all about is ruin.
By no means regretting the whim that had carried me away to this land of yesterday, I set back along the See towards Amsterdam. The typical Hollander is nowhere seen to better advantage than in this district. The population plies two vocations. Along the shores and on the adjoining islands the stolid, picturesque fisherman is predominant. In the great, flat meadows the care of his cattle occupies the no less stolid, if less quaint, peasant.
There are wheat shocks even in Holland. As night was falling over the vast plain I withdrew to a roadside field and retired. A Dutchman spied me out in my resting-place at some silent hour, but sped away across the country like a firm believer in ghosts when I offered to share my bed. I awoke at daybreak to find myself within sight of the much maligned island of Marken, with an unobstructed view of the quaint old church of Monnickendam, a once populous city that has shrunk to a baggy-trousered hamlet of fisherfolk. Beyond the town there rattled by occasionally a milk or baker’s cart, drawn, now by one dog, now by a team of two or three, harnessed together with utter disregard to size, breed, or disposition. Sometimes, indeed, a canine and a human team-mate tugged together at the traces.
There ran a rumor in my favorite Koffie Huis soon after my arrival at Amsterdam in the afternoon, that a cargo-boat which carried passengers for a song was to leave at four for Arnheim on the Rhine. I thrust a lunch into a pocket and hurried down to the mooring-place of the international liner. She was a canal-boat some twenty-five feet long and eight wide, as black as a coal-barge, though by no means as clean; her uncovered deck piled high with boxes, barrels, and crates ranging in contents from beer mugs to protesting live stock. I scrambled over the cargo and found a seat on a barrel of oil. It was already after four, but there was really no reason for my anxious haste. No Dutch cargo-boat was ever known to depart at the hour set.
It turned out that the overburdened craft was not yet loaded. From time to time lethargic longshoremen wandered down to the wharf with more bales, crates, and boxes, and stacked them high about us. It was long after dark when their task was done, and, what with quarrels between the captain and the crew as to the proper channel, we were scarcely out of the harbor when dawn broke.
A long day we spent in jumping about the cargo like jack-rabbits, in a vain attempt to keep out of the way of the crew searching for a bale to set ashore at each wayside village. That alone would have been endurable. But our lives were made miserable by two Hungarians, owners of a barrel organ, who insisted that the infernal squawk which the machine emitted was “moosik,” and who had the audacity to invite us periodically to pay for the torture.
I left the cargo-boat at Arnheim and, halting at the principal cities on its banks, made my way up the Rhine by steamer and on foot in a few days to Mainz. From there I turned eastward along the highway to Frankfurt. Strange and varied had been my sleeping-places in Germany. The innkeepers of the Fatherland, fearful of punishment for lodging those who turn out to be “wanted” by His Majesty’s officers, are chary of offering accommodations to strangers. Whether it was due to the garb that stamped me as a wanderer or to a foreign accent, it was my fate to be treated in the Kaiser’s realm as an extremely suspicious member of society.
It was late at night when I reached Frankfurt. The highway ended among the palatial edifices of the business section, and I wandered long in search of the poorer quarters. At last, in a dingy side street a tavern, offering logieren at one mark, drew my attention. Truly it was a high price to pay for a bed, but the hour was late and the night stormy. I entered the drinking-room, and waiting until the Kellner could catch a moment’s respite from his strenuous task of silencing the shouts of “Glas Bier” that rose above the tumult, made my wants known.