"Where? What do you mean?"
"Why, that paper on the door opposite. Don't you see? Two or three persons are reading it; I have noticed several of these papers since I've been here."
"Oh, that's only a health-bulletin. Somebody in the house is ill, and to prevent a steady knocking at the door, the family write an account of the patient's condition on a placard, and hang it outside the door, for the benefit of inquiring friends—a very sensible custom, I'm sure. Nothing strange about it that I can see—go on, please—you said 'all the'—and there you left me hanging."
"I was going to say," resumed Ben, "that all the—all the—how comically persons do dress here, to be sure! Just look at those men and women with their sugar-loaf hats—and see this woman ahead of us with a straw-bonnet like a scoop-shovel tapering to a point in the back. Did ever you see anything so funny? And those tremendous wooden shoes, too—I declare she's a beauty!"
"Oh, they are only back-country folk," said Lambert, rather impatiently—"You might as well let old Boerhaave drop, or else shut your eyes——"
"Ha! ha! Well, I was going to say—all the big men of his day sought out this great professor. Even Peter the Great when he came over to Holland from Russia to learn ship-building, attended his lectures regularly. By that time Boerhaave was professor of Medicine and Chemistry and Botany in the University of Leyden. He had grown to be very wealthy as a practicing physician; but he used to say that the poor were his best patients because God would be their pay-master. All Europe learned to love and honor him. In short, he became so famous that a certain mandarin of China addressed a letter to 'The illustrious Boerhaave, physician in Europe,' and the letter found its way to him without any difficulty."
"My goodness! That is what I call being a public character. The boys have stopped. How now, Captain van Holp, what next?"
"We propose to move on," said Van Holp; "there is nothing to see at this season in the Bosch—the Bosch is a noble wood, Benjamin, a grand Park where they have most magnificent trees, protected by law—Do you understand?"
"Ya!" nodded Ben, as the captain proceeded:
"Unless you all desire to visit the Museum of Natural History, we may go on the grand canal again. If we had more time it would be pleasant to take Benjamin up the Blue Stairs."