The professor’s wife, and their son, were also of the party; the latter was a handsome lad of fifteen, who sat in the cabriolet, and occupied himself in smoking a pipe nearly half as long as himself. We expressed our surprise at his being allowed to indulge himself in this manner, but his mother stated that he had entered the college, and therefore was of the age when it was customary to commence inhaling the fumes of this deleterious herb.
“Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
Unfriendly to society’s chief joys;
Thy worst effect is banishing for hours,
The sex whose presence civilizes ours.”—Cowper.
But the ladies of Holland are too much used to this custom, to find it disagreeable; not only habit, but an opinion of its utility, tends to reconcile them to it. If it possesses any quality in destroying contagion, I am disposed to imagine that this must depend upon the stronger poison subduing the weaker, like Aaron’s serpent swallowing up the rest.
We had also, in our party, a mild, pleasant, and well-informed Swiss clergyman, the pastor of a protestant church at Hamburgh.
After dining hastily at a village on the road, we continued our journey through a country, which my friend C⸺ described as beautiful, and possessing a novel character; we passed Dry Bergen, or three hills, a place much frequented in summer by the richer inhabitants of Amsterdam and Utrecht; and afterwards a beautiful village, where there is a magnificent chateau inhabited by Moravian missionaries; although the roads were excellent, in consequence of frequently baiting our horses, we did not reach Utrecht before half after four o’clock; having occupied ten hours in accomplishing a journey of only forty-two miles.