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WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN 
 HOLLAND 
 
CHILDREN OF OTHER LANDS BOOKS 
 
 Independent Volumes With Characteristic Illus- 
 trations and Cover Designs i2mo Cloth 
 Price of each Volume, net, 75 cts. 
 
 There are many books about the children of other coun- 
 tries, but no other group like this, with each volume written 
 by one who has lived the foreign child life described, and 
 learned from subsequent experience in this country how to 
 tell it in a way attractive to American children — and in fact 
 to Americans of any age. 
 
 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN CHINA 
 
 By Yan Phou Lee 
 
 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN ITALY 
 
 By Marietta Ambrosi 
 
 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN JAPAN 
 
 By Sakae Shioya 
 
 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN GREECE 
 
 By George Demetrios 
 
 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN PALESTINE 
 
 By Mousa J. Kaleel 
 
 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN BELGIUM 
 
 By Robert Jonckheere 
 
 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN RUSSIA 
 
 By Vladimir De Bogory Mokrievitch 
 
 WHEN I WAS A BOY IN ROUMANIA 
 
 By Dr. J. S. Van Teslaar 
 
 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 By Cornelia De Groot 
 
 LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 
 BOSTON 
 

WHEN I WAS A GIRL 
 IN HOLLAND 
 
 BY 
 
 CORNELIA DE GROOT 
 
 ILL US TRA TED FR OM PHO TO GRAPHS 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 
 
Published, August, 19 17 
 
 ^ 
 £■»» 
 
 Copyright, 191 7, 
 By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 When I Was a Girl in Holland 
 
 4 
 
 ± 
 
 SEP -7 1917 
 
 IRorwooD lpress 
 
 BERWICK & SMITH CO. 
 
 Norwood, Mass. 
 
 U. s. A. 
 
 ©CLA473366 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. 
 
 When I Was Born 
 
 • < 
 
 II 
 
 II. 
 
 My Baby Brother 
 
 . 
 
 17 
 
 III. 
 
 Our House 
 
 • i 
 
 21 
 
 IV. 
 
 How We Dressed 
 
 . 
 
 ■ 37 
 
 V. 
 
 Our Village School 
 
 . , 
 
 45 
 
 VI. 
 
 Some of Our Games . 
 
 . , 
 
 57 
 
 VII. 
 
 Our Holidays . 
 
 . 
 
 70 
 
 VIII. 
 
 St. Martin and St. Nicholas 
 
 78 
 
 IX. 
 
 Farm Life 
 
 , 
 
 86 
 
 X. 
 
 The Storks 
 
 , 
 
 108 
 
 XI. 
 
 The Walks We Took 
 
 » 
 
 • ii3 
 
 XII. 
 
 The Kermis 
 
 • 
 
 121 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Leeuwarden and Sneek 
 
 , 
 
 . 126 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Dutch and Frisian . 
 
 • < 
 
 132 
 
 XV. 
 
 Our Canal- Boats 
 
 . , 
 
 136 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Playing in the Snow 
 
 . , 
 
 142 
 
 XVII. 
 
 On Skates . 
 
 • 
 
 - 145 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Legends and Anecdotes 
 
 „ 
 
 . 160 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Birthday Parties 
 
 
 ■ 171 
 
 XX. 
 
 My Dreams of the Future 
 
 . 176 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The Wedding . 
 
 . 
 
 184 
 
 XXII. 
 
 How I Continued My Studies 
 
 192 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Crossing the Ocean . 
 
 7 
 
 • 
 
 203 
 
:::? 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Cornelia de Groot 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 16 
 
 / 
 
 Scene in the Village of Deersum 
 
 Church in Deersum .... 
 
 Rear View of our New Farmhouse . 
 
 Cow-Stalls in our New Farmhouse . 
 
 Corner of Living-Room in our New Farmhouse 
 
 Living- Apartment in our New Farmhouse 
 
 The Author's Mother . . ' . 
 
 Queen Wilhelmina of Holland 
 
 Merry-Go-Round at Kermis in the Village of 
 Deersum . . . . . 
 
 Skating-Race of Couples at Village of Deersum 
 
 Flower-Market at Sneek 
 
 Market-Day at Leeuwarden 
 
 Scene near Village of Weidum, Friesland 
 
 View of Moat or " Gracht " at Leeuwarden 
 
 Scene in the Village of Poppingawier 
 
 16 
 
 28 
 3* 
 36' 
 
 40 
 
 44 
 
 122 
 122 
 128 
 128 
 136 
 152 
 152 
 
 *x 
 
 9 
 
WHEN I WAS A GIRL 
 IN HOLLAND 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHEN I WAS BOEN 
 
 On a farm, in the province of Friesland, 
 near the little village of Deersum, I was 
 born on the ninth day of the year. My 
 advent caused quite an excitement, just as 
 that of each of three sisters and two broth- 
 ers had done previously. One brother 
 had not lived for me to know him. 
 
 That same day an elderly woman wad- 
 dled from house to house all through the 
 village and up the road and across mead- 
 ows to the farmers. She knocked at the 
 doors, called " Folk in," and when the 
 housewife appeared, extended to her the 
 11 
 
12 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 greetings of my parents, told her that a 
 little girl had been born to them and in- 
 vited her to the celebration to be held ten 
 days from then. 
 
 I was laid in a big, old-fashioned wicker 
 cradle on rockers, on a soft, downy bed, be- 
 tween snow-white sheets and covered with 
 the softest blankets. Over the whole of 
 the cradle, touching the floor, was draped 
 a cover of heavy green damask, to keep 
 the draft out. 
 
 During the next ten days, little blond, 
 red-cheeked girls came trudging through 
 the snow. Some were carrying parcels 
 in their mittened hands, others had flat 
 red-painted boxes. They knocked at the 
 front door, called " Folk in," and were 
 led into the house. They placed the par- 
 cel or the box in the hands of the maid 
 and timidly said : 
 
 " The compliments of mother, and here 
 is a present." 
 
 The present appeared to be a dress, an 
 apron, a petticoat, or a pair of socks, if it 
 
WHEN I WAS BOEN 13 
 
 came from a parcel, but if it was taken 
 from a box it was bound to be a large 
 layer-cake or several small tarts, baked 
 by the village baker or bought in the 
 nearest town, and intended for the party. 
 Then the fat nurse would lead the shy lit- 
 tle girl to the cradle, push the green cover 
 slightly aside, and ask : 
 
 11 Isn't baby pretty ? " 
 
 And the little girl would place her 
 finger in her mouth and nod, " Yes." 
 
 " Don't you wish you had such a new 
 baby sister?" 
 
 And again she would nod and stammer 
 a faint " Yes," while all the time she was 
 afraid that I might wake up and start to 
 cry. I fear some of these little girls when 
 they said " Yes " and nodded were telling 
 a little fib so as not to hurt my feelings. 
 Now the girl was led into the big living- 
 room and seated on an old-fashioned 
 chair with reed bottom ; on the table be- 
 fore her was placed a dainty, crisp Dutch 
 rusk covered with butter and sugar. 
 
14 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 This she ate, that I might grow up into a 
 healthy and strong child. 
 
 I had been swaddled around tightly 
 with such a lot of heavy, woolen cloths, 
 from my neck to the ends of my red toes, 
 that I somewhat resembled a cocoon. 
 Thus I was dressed for four weeks ; after 
 that I appeared in petticoats, dress, and 
 apron. 
 
 When I was ten days old, I gave my 
 first real party, or rather, it was given by 
 my mother in my honor. At about ten 
 or eleven in the morning, a large number 
 of village women and farmers' wives, some 
 young and slim, others middle-aged and 
 fat, came filling the enormously big front- 
 room. My mother and her guests — about 
 thirty women — were seated around the 
 table in the center of the room. The 
 women belonged to every social rank of 
 our village. They did a lot of talking, 
 and one by one they took me in their laps 
 and chattered, and smiled at me, and they 
 all gave my mother a great deal of advice. 
 
WHEN I WAS BORN 15 
 
 On the table stood several cakes, rich 
 and full of currants. There were also 
 large, decorated layer-cakes, small tarts 
 and deliciously spiced " koeken." A 
 koek is a long cake. And there were 
 many sorts of cookies. But the most im- 
 portant part of the feast was the cup with 
 " boerejongens " or farmer-boys. Now, 
 don't be horrified ! These good women 
 were no cannibals ; they did not eat little 
 boys. The " boerejongens " were only 
 boiled raisins steeped in brandy, to which 
 sugar and spices had been added. The 
 old-fashioned, beautifully wrought silver 
 cup had somewhat the shape of a loving- 
 cup, and was filled and emptied several 
 times. From this cup the " boerejongens " 
 were dipped with a solid silver spoon into 
 the glasses near the plates of the guests. 
 
 In former times, no glasses were used, 
 and the cup with the tablespoon did the 
 rounds from guest to guest ; helping him- 
 self, each person drank a spoonful when 
 his turn came. But in later years people 
 
16 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 became finical and each preferred a glass 
 with a small spoon to himself. 
 
 And so the women feasted and chat- 
 tered and gave advice and laughed at each 
 other's jokes until it was time for them to 
 go home at about three or four in the 
 afternoon. 
 
 Like my sisters and brothers, I received 
 as a present from my parents a large, 
 beautiful, solid silver tablespoon with my 
 name and date of birth engraved on it. 
 
Scene in the Village of Deersum. 
 Birthplace of the author of this book. 
 
 .£■;;; 
 
 
 Church in Deersum. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 MY BABY BROTHER 
 
 The next great event in my life, and 
 the first one that I can remember, was 
 the birth of my baby brother. I was 
 three years and six months old. 
 
 One morning, while my sister Anna, 
 who was seven, and I were sitting on a 
 piece of wood in the big yard, she said to 
 me: 
 
 " A new baby brother came this morn- 
 ing." 
 
 Now I suppose I should have been very 
 happy and excited and smiling all over. 
 I am sorry to say such was not the case. 
 I looked somber and thoughtful and did 
 not show any interest. Later in the day, 
 the hired girls and the men who worked 
 on the place asked me whether I was not 
 glad with the baby. They teased me. 
 17 
 
IS WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 They said that the newcomer was taking 
 my place and that I no longer was 
 " mother's darling," all of which I took 
 very much to heart. Naturally I began 
 to look upon the baby as an intruder. I 
 refused to see him, and when I finally, 
 mastered by the nurse, gazed at a tiny 
 red creature unlike anything I had 
 ever seen before, my whole soul was in 
 rebellion. The idea that such a small, 
 insignificant-looking piece of humanity 
 should wield such a power ! That he 
 should have taken my place in the family 
 and everybody be his slave ! 
 
 One day I saw the old family doctor 
 enter the house with my father. I did 
 not at all feel friendly towards him, for I 
 suspected him of having brought the 
 baby. I stuck my head under the table 
 and from out the corners of my eyes 
 looked at him to see whether he was 
 bringing any more children. I was re- 
 lieved to notice that he carried no parcel. 
 But perhaps he was hiding one under his 
 
MY BAB Y BROTHER 19 
 
 coat. So I stole another glance at him, 
 which reassured me that I had nothing 
 to fear. 
 
 I also suspected a neighbor, the mother 
 of many children, of having something to 
 do with my brother's arrival. Therefore, 
 when she brought me some candy, I 
 refused to accept it and even tore her 
 dainty, black silk apron. 
 
 As the days went by I became less 
 resentful and even came to like the child. 
 Sometimes, when he cried, I was en- 
 trusted with the task of rocking the 
 cradle. But I was warned not to rock 
 too hard, or the same thing might happen 
 to him as had happened to me when I 
 lay in the cradle, which was this : My 
 sister Anna often had to rock me to 
 sleep. She was very industrious and 
 worked with all her might and strength. 
 One day, when I was unusually cross, 
 she rocked harder than ever. Bang, the 
 cradle tumbled over. I fell out of it and 
 on top of Anna, who had slipped, and the 
 
20 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 cradle with the covers on top of us. I 
 instantly stopped crying, but now it was 
 my sister who cried. She yelled at the 
 top of her voice. So now, when it had 
 become my duty to rock the cradle, I was 
 warned from time to time not to be too 
 energetic. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 OUR HOUSE 
 
 Our house, like nearly all Dutch 
 houses, was built of tiny bricks on a 
 deep, firm foundation. It was by far the 
 oldest house in and around our village, 
 and one of the gables was covered with 
 ivy. 
 
 Like all the farmhouses of our prov- 
 ince, the rooms and barns were built 
 under one high, steep roof of tiles. The 
 part containing the rooms was supposed 
 to be about three hundred years old ; 
 the rest had been rebuilt in the year 
 1780. Yet in spite of the venerable age 
 of the house, the windows were larger 
 than those I have seen in many cottages 
 of rural United States. We had two cow- 
 stables, one had stalls for twenty cows 
 with two standing in one stall, and the 
 21 
 
22 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 other could contain twelve cows and 
 heifers and two horses. 
 
 That part of the house which was the 
 barn proper and which we called " schuur " 
 was used largely for the storing of hay, but 
 it also contained the family carriage, the 
 tilbury (which is a vehicle on two high 
 wheels and with a seat for two persons), 
 the work-bench, tools, harnesses, two hay- 
 wagons, a churn-mill, two maize and lin- 
 seed and bean mills, one horse-stable, spaces 
 for calves, etc. The carriage and the til- 
 bury were covered with big pieces of heavy 
 muslin to protect them from the dust. 
 
 Some farmers had separate coach- 
 houses, but we were not quite so for- 
 tunate. Only a small part of the floor 
 of the schuur was brick-paved ; the rest 
 was of earth. The dairy contained the 
 big churn, which, through the wall, was 
 connected with the churn-mill in the 
 schuur. There was also a large cellar for 
 the milk. 
 
 Our living-room was big. Three of its 
 
OUR HOUSE 23 
 
 walls were covered with white, glazed tiles, 
 which were washed off once a week, and 
 once a year the mortar between the tiles 
 was whitewashed. The fourth wall was 
 wainscoted ; two wall-, box- or closet-beds 
 and a china-closet were built into this 
 wall. Beneath each closet-bed was a 
 cellar with doors. The closet-beds had 
 doors, too, which during the day were 
 always closed, and behind the doors 
 hung colored and flowered curtains. At 
 night we opened one of the two doors 
 each box-bed possessed, but the curtains 
 were seldom pushed entirely aside, for 
 fear of draft and cold. Even in the 
 modern homes in Friesland one finds 
 these unhygienic closet-beds. 
 
 The enormous fireplace was built 
 against, and not inside, one of the tiled 
 walls. The wooden base of the very 
 wide chimney stopped a couple of feet 
 below the ceiling ; it was about three 
 feet by six and ended in a mantelpiece. 
 This mantelpiece was adorned with 
 
24 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 pretty plates and bowls of old china. 
 But below the mantelpiece, over a slant- 
 ing board, hung, in the winter, a sort of 
 curtain about a foot in width ; it was 
 part cotton and part leather and on it 
 were printed landscapes and people ; in 
 the summer a more pretentious curtain 
 of printed muslin stiffly starched and 
 accordion-pleated was fastened around 
 the mantelpiece. Farther up, the chim- 
 ney narrowed until it changed into a 
 brick top on the roof. Inside the chim- 
 ney, at about the height of the ceiling, 
 were laid some yellow-painted boards so 
 as to make the opening smaller and keep 
 out the draft. 
 
 The floor beneath this big chimney 
 was covered with an iron slab painted 
 black. Against the tiles, some of which 
 were decorated with pictures of fat 
 cherubs blowing trumpets, stood a black- 
 painted iron slab about three feet by 
 four and rounded at the top. It must 
 have weighed somewhere between two 
 
OUR HOUSE 25 
 
 hundred and three hundred pounds. 
 My father told that once his mother 
 employed a young girl who carried the 
 slab back and forth as if it were a toy. 
 Years ago a fire burned on this hearth, 
 but long before I was born stoves had 
 come into use and increased the comfort 
 of the people. 
 
 We washed the woodwork of our 
 living-room once a week with warm 
 soap-suds, and cleaned the windows in- 
 side and out, and the window-sills and 
 the casements inside and out, with fresh 
 water, so that they always shone as 
 bright as bright could be. All the 
 chairs, tables, wardrobes, etc., were pol- 
 ished on Saturdays. The ceiling, painted 
 dark red, as was the other woodwork, and 
 washed off every few weeks, was sup- 
 ported by very heavy beams. The paneled 
 wall, above the box-beds, was decorated 
 with a row of very large, heavy, blue and 
 white plates of old chinaware, and some 
 pretty, old, china bowls. 
 
26 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 When I was a baby, the floor of this 
 room was of green, glazed tiles ; these 
 being rather cold, even though always 
 covered with matting and rugs, were 
 later taken out and a wooden floor was 
 put in. This floor was painted a glossy 
 red. Each day we mopped it with 
 a large, square piece of heavy cotton, 
 called a " dweil " and a bucket of water 
 fetched from the moat. After that, we 
 polished it with wax. A large rug lay un- 
 der the table, and this was taken up and 
 shaken once a week. A strip of matting 
 lay the length of the room in front of the 
 paneled wall, and over this in front of the 
 doors of the closet-beds and the china 
 closet, as also in front of three other 
 doors, lay small rugs. The latter were 
 shaken each day ; the matting was taken 
 up and beaten as well as washed off on 
 both sides with hot soap-suds every Fri- 
 day. Of the Frisian housewives may 
 truly be said that their work is never 
 done. 
 
OUR HOUSE 27 
 
 The immense front-room was wall- 
 papered instead of tiled, but its floor 
 had retained its glazed tiles, which were 
 covered with a carpet and over this lay 
 one large rug and several small rugs. 
 The paneled wall, the doors and ceiling 
 were painted light green. The chimney 
 was even bigger than the one in the 
 living-room. In the center of the room 
 stood a mahogany table. This front-room 
 was so cold and damp that even during 
 the summer we often had to build a fire 
 in the stove to prevent the furniture and 
 other things from being spoiled. In fact, 
 the whole house was very damp ; shoes 
 and clothes in the closets would become 
 thoroughly mildewed and even the bread 
 in a very few days would become thor- 
 oughly spoiled by mildew. We had to 
 wage constant war against moisture. 
 
 Our house being so very old, in some 
 places the ceiling was not strong. My 
 younger brother, discovering such a 
 "weak spot," just for the fun of it, as 
 
28 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 boys will do, jumped on it. Suddenly, 
 to his great surprise, down he went, in a 
 cloud of dust, and fell on the floor of the 
 little cow-barn. Unlike the Katzenjam- 
 mer boys, he needed no tools to break 
 through a ceiling. Fortunately, he was 
 not hurt. 
 
 Besides, the house was not only too 
 small for us and our belongings, but the 
 builder evidently had had only one idea 
 in his mind, and that idea was to make 
 it as inconvenient and unpractical as pos- 
 sible and to make housekeeping as hard 
 and laborious as it could be made. When 
 I was no longer a child, the whole house 
 was taken down and in its place erected 
 an up-to-date Frisian farmhouse, much 
 larger and far more convenient than the 
 old one ; roomy and with many large 
 windows. 
 
 It was no more than natural that we 
 should possess many queer, old-fashioned 
 utensils. We had several brass and cop- 
 per kettles, and two brass lamps in which 
 
Rear view of our new farmhouse. 
 
 Cow-stalls in our new farmhouse. 
 
OUR BOUSE 29 
 
 we burned strings of twisted cotton with 
 rape-seed oil. One of these was a hanging 
 lamp and was used in the cow-barns to- 
 gether with a modern lantern ; the other 
 stood on a brass foot and was used for 
 carrying around in the house, being safer 
 for that purpose than kerosene lamps. 
 The rape-seed oil was kept in a brass can. 
 All these brass and copper utensils were 
 polished every Saturday. 
 
 One of the attics contained such queer 
 things as high silk stovepipe hats, old- 
 fashioned swallow-tail coats and knee- 
 breeches of black satin ; large, old man's 
 shirts of home-made linen ; these things 
 had once been worn by some of our an- 
 cestors; there also was mother's hoop- 
 skirt, worn by her when she was a young 
 girl. We children always played with it, 
 when, during the spring house-cleaning, 
 it was taken down into the yard for an 
 airing. 
 
 In the attic were also a couple of brass 
 bed-warmers or warming-pans with long 
 
30 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 brass handles ; and there was a bowl 
 and pan which once had been used 
 for the making of mustard. In our 
 front-room we had quite a collection of 
 dainty cups and saucers, teapots, cream- 
 ers, sugar-bowls and such things ; these 
 had come down to us from former gen- 
 erations. We never used them. They 
 were taken out of the shallow closet with 
 its glass door only to be washed off once 
 in a while by mother herself. Often we 
 were offered high prices for them by 
 travelling merchants, but my parents did 
 not want to part with them for any 
 amount of money. 
 
 Paper window-shades were unknown 
 in Holland. We had wooden blinds for 
 our windows ; some on the inside, others 
 on the outside. In the summer, we had 
 lace curtains ; in the winter curtains of a 
 heavy cream-colored cloth, the bottom 
 part of which was embroidered in a 
 pretty design and edged with fringes or 
 crocheted point-lace. The latter could 
 
OUR HOUSE 31 
 
 be lowered or rolled up at will, but they 
 were usually hanging a little below the 
 middle of the windows, and the interior 
 of the room was protected from the curi- 
 ous gaze of strangers by a row of flower- 
 pots. 
 
 Outside, in front of each door, was a 
 pavement of from three feet square to 
 four or five times that size. These pave- 
 ments, made of small, white bricks were 
 scrubbed every day or once a week and 
 kept as clean as possible. We were 
 not allowed to walk on them with our 
 wooden shoes. When we wore leather 
 shoes, we first had thoroughly to rub 
 them clean on rather thin, white, cotton 
 " dweils "; one of which lay in a corner 
 of the pavement and another in front of 
 the door. And around these pavements 
 one might see stationed the wooden shoes 
 of all the members of our family. 
 
 For fuel we used mostly turf or peat, 
 but in the winter also quite a lot of an- 
 thracite coal or coke. Turf, however, we 
 
32 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 always used for cooking. We had mod- 
 ern heating stoves, which, in comparison 
 to their small size, gave a great deal of 
 heat, took up little space, were very neat 
 and of nice appearance, and were of no 
 danger to little children. In these we 
 could not burn peat. 
 
 We bought our turf from the turf-skip- 
 pers. There were two kinds ; one, soft, 
 fibrous, brown, much longer than it was 
 thick and wide. We called it long turf 
 and it had been dug out of the soil. The 
 other was dark blue, almost black, as 
 wide as it was long and two or three 
 inches thick. We called it hard turf and 
 it was dredged out of pools, laid to dry 
 on the fields and cut into squares. It 
 did not ignite half so quick as the long 
 turf, but it lasted much longer, and 
 when it became all aglow, it was often 
 placed in a small stone pot called " test " 
 in a foot-warmer, or underneath old- 
 fashioned copper coffee-pots ; even kettles 
 of water were heated and often food was 
 
OUR HOUSE 33 
 
 cooked on these hot coals. They were 
 very unhygienic, taking the oxygen out 
 of a room and replacing it with carbonic 
 acid. 
 
 We also had a " doofpot," which was 
 a copper vessel with a brass lid. When 
 after dinner or supper we no longer 
 needed a big fire, we put the remaining 
 hard coals, be they entirely or partly 
 glowing, in this receptacle. The replac- 
 ing of them in the stove, a few of the 
 softest fibres of the long turf, and a 
 burning match, were all that was neces- 
 sary to start a new fire in a few mo- 
 ments. This contrivance was not only 
 a great convenience, but it cut down 
 household expenses. It prevented waste. 
 The lid on the doofpot was very tight- 
 fitting, so that not a bit of smoke could 
 escape, nor could any air reach the coals 
 to keep them burning. 
 
 The little foot-warmers called " stoven " 
 and used so much by the women, were 
 wooden stools perforated on top and one 
 
34 WEEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 side was missing. Inside was a " test " 
 containing a glowing hard turf. The 
 men-folks and we children used foot- 
 warmers that were much longer, flatter, 
 and wider and covered with an iron slab. 
 The one we children used was large 
 enough for three pairs of little feet, and 
 with room to spare. It was a very wel- 
 come article on winter evenings and 
 mornings. 
 
 The house, yard, and orchard were sur- 
 rounded partly by a moat or narrow ca- 
 nal and for the rest by a corral, a fence 
 and a hedge of hawthorn. In the yard 
 stood, part of the time, one or two high 
 stacks of hay, for lack of space in the 
 schuur ; also a wooden outhouse for two 
 cows and a brick pig-sty. On one side 
 of the sty, by way of a lean-to, stood a 
 brick chicken-run with windows, while 
 the roost was over the sty. There was a 
 wooden chicken-house in the orchard. 
 
 This orchard was bordered by rows of 
 pollard willows, plane trees and poplars 
 
OUR HOUSE 35 
 
 and ashes ; it contained forty apple and 
 pear trees and one plum tree, all for 
 home use. The grass grew luxuriously 
 among them, and there were also a small 
 flower garden and rose-bushes. A large 
 lawn was hedged off for the bleaching of 
 the family linen. For each week, when 
 the clothes had been washed and boiled, 
 the white pieces were bleached on the 
 grass for two days, after that rinsed and 
 hung on a line or racks to dry. 
 
 We had a lot of tame ducks, and wild 
 ducks joined them once in a while. As 
 early as February we placed baskets of 
 braided straw, in the shape of an hour- 
 glass but with one end closed and 
 rounded, the other open, in the trees ; 
 some in the pollard willows about four 
 feet from the ground ; others in the 
 poplars and ashes about twenty feet from 
 the ground. 
 
 To reach these baskets in order to 
 gather the eggs, we had to climb on a 
 ladder. Now, I have often told people 
 
36 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 in this country that our tame ducks laid 
 their eggs in these baskets and they 
 would laugh and say that tame ducks 
 cannot fly. But our ducks did fly a 
 little. They could fly high enough to 
 get into these baskets. Sometimes 
 chickens, too, would get into them. 
 And sometimes the cats, but then there 
 was trouble. And once in a great while 
 a skunk, and then there was still more 
 trouble ! 
 
Corner of living-room in our new farmhouse. 
 
 The walls are tiled. 
 
 > 
 
 
 Living-apartment in our new farmhouse. 
 In the tree is a duck-basket. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 HOW WE DKESSED 
 
 I suppose you think that all Dutch 
 girls look like those with the long skirts 
 and the winged caps that artists like to 
 draw for books and post-cards. The fact 
 is that while some have this picturesque 
 attire, the great majority are dressed quite 
 differently and very variedly. 
 
 As for myself and playmates, our 
 many pieces of loose and heavy under- 
 clothing made us appear very round and 
 fat and clumsy. We wore a flannel 
 shirt without any shape, next a loose 
 chemise of muslin, then a knitted "borst- 
 rok " or breast-skirt of worsted or cotton 
 yarn according to the season ; on top of 
 this a " lyfje " or underwaist, next some- 
 thing resembling a corset-cover made of 
 either woolen or cotton material. Each 
 37 
 
38 WEEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 and every one of these garments was 
 thick and heavy. 
 
 Our dresses were made of durable woolen 
 goods, usually dark-colored. Sometimes, 
 in warm weather, I wore a calico dress. 
 White dresses were out of the question. 
 And how I did long for one ! The nearest 
 I ever came to having my wish fulfilled 
 was the present of a yellow old dress that 
 had first been owned by one of my sisters 
 and that now I was allowed to appear in 
 while playing around the house and help- 
 ing with the hay harvest. 
 
 On Sundays I wore a big, white apron ; 
 on week-days one that was striped, check- 
 ered, or flowered. We had long sleeves — 
 in our dresses, I mean — or, in case of 
 short sleeves, wore long knitted bands 
 that reached from above the elbow to the 
 wrist. Our parents were always afraid 
 that we might catch cold. 
 
 We seldom received more than one dress 
 a year. Clothes were made so that they 
 could be lengthened and widened ; they 
 
HOW WE DRESSED 39 
 
 had to last a long time and were fre- 
 quently patched. I usually had one dress 
 for best, which I wore only a few times 
 during the first year, when its status was 
 lowered to that of Sunday dress. Next 
 came the school dress and the meanest 
 and oldest of all was the play and work 
 dress. Sometimes I had school and play 
 dresses made out of those outgrown by 
 my sisters. 
 
 On my feet I always wore woolen 
 stockings and over these black or dark 
 blue socks of a heavier worsted. The 
 socks served two purposes. They not 
 only kept the feet warm, but prevented 
 them from becoming sore from rub- 
 bing against the hard wooden shoes 
 or klompen, and they also made these 
 klompen fit snugly around the feet. Be- 
 fore entering the house, the school or the 
 stores, we always took our klompen off 
 and walked in our heavy socks. On the 
 stone and brick floors of the dairy, milk- 
 cellar, and cow-barns — in the latter only 
 
40 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 in the summer time — we all wore leather 
 slippers resembling in shape those worn 
 by the Japanese. Sometimes we put on 
 clean old klompen that were for indoor 
 use only. When going to church, to 
 town, and during the summer if it did 
 not rain we always wore leather shoes, 
 high or low. 
 
 My blond hair did not dangle in two 
 braids on my back, as the hair of Dutch 
 girls is supposed to do. I boasted only 
 one braid with a ribbon at the end. A 
 pretty comb prevented stray locks from 
 falling on my forehead. Or my hair just 
 hung loose with a lock near each ear 
 taken up and fastened together with a 
 ribbon on the top of the head. I have 
 seen American girls wear their hair in 
 similar fashion. One day my oldest sister 
 cut bangs for me. 
 
 Now I shall tell you how the women of 
 our province dressed. My mother wore 
 a helmet made of the purest, softest gold, 
 and beneath it a white muslin cap with 
 
The author's mother. 
 Wearing gold helmet with lace covering. 
 
HOW WE DRESSED 41 
 
 pretty, tightly crocheted border for the 
 back of the neck, and over this — except 
 over the border — one of black silk. When 
 visiting, going to church or to town, 
 mother covered this helmet with a beauti- 
 ful cap of old lace that had a border of 
 rounded folds standing straight from the 
 neck at an angle of about forty-five de- 
 grees. 
 
 On top of all these caps she tied an 
 ugly, modern bonnet. How would you 
 like such an elaborate head-gear? But 
 this was not all. Near the ears, and be- 
 side the silver and diamond stick-pins, 
 mother had attached to the gold cap or- 
 naments resembling miniature shields or 
 large buttons. Some of the farmers' wives 
 also had fastened on their foreheads silver 
 plates studded with diamonds. Contrary 
 to popular belief, these ornaments, caps 
 and all, were not heirlooms. The wives 
 of the carpenters, bakers, coopers, and 
 other tradesmen, and of small shopkeep- 
 ers had gold caps, which in most cases, 
 
42 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 but not necessarily, were much smaller 
 and resembled two shields fastened to- 
 gether by a chain. They wore no plates 
 with diamonds. The caps of the wives of 
 the day-laborers were made of silver and 
 their clothes were very simple and of 
 coarse, cheap material. 
 
 The helmet is called " ooryzer " by the 
 Dutch ; this means ear-iron. It took 
 many generations for this ear-iron to reach 
 its present stage. Its very beginning is 
 to be seen in the museum at Leeuwarden, 
 the capital of our province. It was a nar- 
 row strip of iron that, centuries ago, in 
 fact, more than a thousand years, was 
 worn by the Frisian women around their 
 heads, by way of a bandeau, from ear to 
 ear ; hence its name. As time went by, 
 the band was broadened and the iron re- 
 placed by silver and finally by gold for 
 those who could afford the latter. 
 
 At last, there evolved the full-fledged 
 helmet, and just when it had reached per- 
 fection, its doom was sounded. It began 
 
HOW WE DEESSED 43 
 
 to disappear. Only elderly women still 
 wear the pretty head-dress of Friesland 
 nowadays. Another generation, and there 
 will be none left. The helmet does not 
 add to one's comfort. It prevents venti- 
 lation to a great extent, and my mother 
 often had to take it off because of severe 
 headaches. 
 
 At the age of twelve, my mother re- 
 ceived her first ear-iron. It was of silver. 
 When she reached her sixteenth year, her 
 parents bought her the golden helmet 
 that to-day, at the age of sixty-eight, she 
 is still wearing. However, in the morn- 
 ing, when my mother did her work, she 
 did not wear the helmet, but a white, 
 crocheted cap only ; it was simple, pretty 
 and neat. 
 
 Once, when Queen Wilhelmina, at the 
 age of twelve, visited Friesland for the 
 first time as queen, the women of our 
 province presented her with the old- Fris- 
 ian costume, not only the helmet and ac- 
 cessories, but also the old-fashioned dress 
 
44 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 with its pretty fichu, that was worn many, 
 many years ago and now is seen only in 
 historical plays and pageants. The Queen 
 actually wore the whole costume and was 
 photographed in it, to the great delight of 
 the people. 
 
Queen Wilhelmina. of Holland. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 OUR VILLAGE SCHOOL 
 
 At the age of five, on the first day of 
 April, I entered the village school. Our 
 schoolhouse contained two rooms ; in the 
 larger the master taught the higher grades, 
 in the smaller the woman teacher the 
 lower grades. There were altogether from 
 about forty-five to fifty pupils. No one 
 teacher was ever allowed to have more 
 than forty. With me, two other new 
 pupils, a boy and a girl, were admitted. 
 We were very bashful and timid. We 
 were placed on the row of lowest benches, 
 next to the high windows and nearest the 
 big stove. 
 
 The first few days we were a sore trial 
 
 to the teacher. It was hard to teach us 
 
 to sit still and be quiet. Also, we had to 
 
 be taught a new language. Thus far we 
 
 45 
 
46 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 had spoken Frisian only ; now we had to 
 be taught Dutch. Gradually we learned 
 to make simple strokes and hooks with a 
 slate-pencil on a slate, and such truths as 
 that one and one make two, and one and 
 two make three. 
 
 One wall of our schoolroom was almost 
 entirely covered with pictures. It was 
 from the upper row of these pictures that 
 we were to learn the alphabet, and it took 
 us almost a year to do so. It went this 
 way. The teacher fetched the first pic- 
 ture, representing a rose, and fastened it 
 onto the blackboard. Rose in Dutch 
 is spelled " roos " and pronounced very 
 similar to rose in English. The teacher 
 would ask : " What do you see on this 
 picture?" We answered: "A roos." 
 Then she asked : " What sound do you 
 hear when you say l roos ' ? " And we 
 were expected to answer " oo." She 
 wrote " oo " on the blackboard and it 
 was for us to remember that this funny- 
 looking mark represented the " oo." 
 
UR VILLAGE SCHOOL 47 
 
 Next came the " r " and then " s." 
 We pronounced the consonants as they 
 sounded and not by their alphabetical 
 name. Then we had to repeat r-oo-s, 
 r-oo-s, quicker each time until the three 
 letters came rolling off our tongues in 
 such rapid succession that they sounded 
 like the word " roos." 
 
 The second picture was fetched at some 
 future lesson. It represented a pear. 
 Pear in Dutch spells " peer." Thus we 
 learned the vowel sound, " ee," and the 
 consonant, " p." The next step was the 
 making of other words, some of them 
 meaningless, with the letters we had so 
 far learned. The third picture repre- 
 sented a hat, which in Dutch is spelled 
 " hoed " and pronounced " hoot." And 
 "oe" and "d" were added to our 
 store of knowledge. Next came picture 
 number four ; I believe it was of a saw, 
 spelled " zaag " and pronounced " zahg " 
 with a long " a " as in " father," and with 
 a guttural " g." 
 
48 WHEN I WAS A QIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 By the end of the first year we not 
 only could read quite a bit, but also 
 add, subtract, and multiply with figures 
 below ten. And we had learned to sing. 
 Our school hours had been from eight to 
 ten and from one to three in the summer, 
 and from half-past eight to ten and from 
 one to three in the winter. On Saturdays 
 and Wednesdays we had the afternoon off. 
 
 In the second grade we had our first 
 reader. The books belonged to the school 
 and were returned to the teacher after 
 each lesson. We never had any spelling 
 lessons to learn. We had simple rules 
 of spelling and with these we started in 
 the third grade. But we had to learn 
 an enormous amount of grammar, with 
 which we started in the fourth grade. 
 Dutch grammar is very intricate. 
 
 In the second and third grades we 
 learned about the other rows of pictures 
 on the wall. Twice a week we were 
 asked all sorts of questions as to what 
 we saw on a particular picture which was 
 
OUR VILLAGE SCHOOL 49 
 
 fastened on to the blackboard, and about 
 the colors ; then the teacher explained at 
 length all sorts of things unknown to 
 simple village and farmers' children. 
 Afterwards we had to make a little com- 
 position about what we had learned and 
 about what we saw on the picture. These 
 rows of pictures held a great fascination 
 for me. Whenever I was through with 
 my arithmetic or writing lesson, and did 
 not feel like drawing on my slate and 
 was not in a mood to get into mischief, I 
 would look at those pictures on the wall 
 and dream of the big world outside, the 
 world I was so anxious to see, of its cities, 
 but above all, of its forests, its lakes, and 
 the sea ! 
 
 There was one other addition to our 
 second grade curriculum. That was knit- 
 ting. Every morning, from 10 : 30 to 
 11:30, except on Wednesday and Satur- 
 day, we had to knit. 
 
 Many an afternoon I had to stay in 
 after school, from a few minutes to a 
 
50 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 couple of hours, and had to fill my slate 
 with such sentences as " I must sit still " 
 and " I may not talk." Instead of being 
 humbled by all the punishment I re- 
 ceived, it made me all the more audacious 
 and the saucier, for I gloried in proving 
 to the other children that I dared to 
 defy the teacher in spite of what I knew 
 was sure to follow, such as having to stay 
 in, to stand in a corner and of having my 
 ears slapped. Teachers were not allowed 
 to administer any kind of corporal pun- 
 ishment to us, but it was only in extreme 
 cases that parents interfered. 
 
 We nicknamed our teacher " peper- 
 noot " because she was so very short. A 
 " pepernoot" is a small spiced cookie the 
 size of a marble. 
 
 In every grade we had what we called 
 sneaks. A sneak was a child who was 
 mischievous only when the teacher was 
 not looking ; one who talked and laughed 
 and giggled and stuck out his tongue, 
 made his eyes roll, pulled at the corners 
 
OUR VILLAGE SCHOOL 51 
 
 of his mouth until these corners almost 
 reached his ears or were on a level with 
 his nostrils ; who stuck a pin into other 
 children, pulled at their hair ; all this he 
 would do when the teacher's back was 
 turned, but as soon as she glanced in his 
 direction he would look as demure and 
 innocent as a saint, and the wrong child 
 was punished. Such a sneak was loathed 
 by the whole class. We had nothing but 
 contempt for him. 
 
 Though I was very saucy and mis- 
 chievous, I was very fond of my lessons. 
 There never was a time that I did not 
 like to study. I was usually at the head 
 of my class, and it was only when I had 
 earned a larger than usual amount of pun- 
 ishment that I was lowered for a while. 
 
 In the higher grades, under the man 
 teacher, our curriculum was quite large, 
 and of all the studies it was the writing 
 of compositions I liked best, and next 
 came geography. I still remember the 
 first map I drew of the United States. 
 
52 WHEN I WAS A OIBL IN HOLLAND 
 
 On the walls of the larger schoolroom 
 were the pictures of all the Dutch birds ; 
 also pictures of the human skeleton and 
 the vital organs. Of these pictures we 
 were taught in due time. And there 
 were the weights and measures ; these 
 were not pictures, they were real. We 
 were taught the metric system although 
 in daily life the old-fashioned el, kop, 
 mudde, mengel, and kan were used. We 
 had a school library of from one hundred 
 to two hundred books. 
 
 When we entered the fourth grade, 
 which was in the large schoolroom, we 
 had our lessons in knitting, sewing, 
 crocheting, darning, knitting-darning, 
 and cross-stitching from three to four 
 o'clock on four afternoons and from 
 10:30 to 11:30 on two mornings. The 
 sewing lessons consisted only in the mak- 
 ing of all sorts of seams and stitches. 
 
 When I was nine years old some of 
 my girl chums were taking more ad- 
 vanced sewing lessons, right after school, 
 
OUB VILLAGE SCHOOL 53 
 
 from four to six, from a seamstress. As 
 all my little friends were there, I asked 
 my mother permission to join the class, 
 and obtained it. We sat in a small room 
 on stools or low chairs. There was no 
 table. 
 
 We always pinned our sewing to our 
 knees. This has a decided advantage 
 over sewing over one's finger, as one can 
 keep the work much straighter. When 
 you sew two pieces together over your 
 finger, the one nearer the finger will, in 
 the end, stick out a little over the other 
 one, as with each stitch you skip with 
 the needle an infinitesimal part more of 
 the upper piece than of the lower. 
 
 We did not use sewing-machines. Un- 
 less the weather was raw, the outside door 
 of the little room was open. If it was very 
 warm, we sat outside. We were allowed 
 to talk as much as we wanted to, sing, 
 laugh, tell stories, and solve riddles. 
 And at times we quarreled. We made 
 and hemmed underclothing, aprons, bed 
 
54 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 and table linen and towels only. The 
 making of waists and dresses was sup- 
 posed to be far too difficult work for 
 children. 
 
 And we made innumerable patches, 
 Such a patch was a veritable work of art. 
 It was done very neatly ; the corners had 
 to be exactly at ninety degrees and per- 
 fect. On both sides of the material the 
 patch looked finished. I have never in 
 this country seen anybody patch the way 
 we did. It took lots of time, but then, 
 our seamstress used to say : 
 
 " When it is finished, some one who 
 sees it will ask ' Who did this ? ' and not 
 1 How much time was spent on it ? ' " 
 
 These simple people attached little 
 value to time. We never had to hurry, 
 thank goodness. 
 
 I attended this sewing class for three 
 summers until I was twelve years old. 
 
 The grading of our village school was 
 very inadequate. There were only six 
 grades, and at the age of ten I was in the 
 
OUR VILLAGE SCHOOL 55 
 
 highest. So I stayed in that sixth grade 
 for three whole years, repeating over and 
 over again lessons in Dutch history, geog- 
 raphy, botany, and grammar. Even most 
 of the readers remained the same. It was 
 only in arithmetic, writing, the reading 
 of music, rudimentary knowledge of civ- 
 ics, and a few other minor branches that 
 I advanced. It was mostly a shameful 
 waste of time. Matters were now some- 
 what aggravated by my taking private 
 lessons in arithmetic, grammar, reading, 
 geography, and composition four hours a 
 week. The result was that the book of 
 grammar I studied in the evening was 
 far more advanced than the one I had at 
 school. 
 
 An insatiable thirst for knowledge now 
 seized me. I wanted to know everything 
 that was to be known. I studied as hard 
 as I could. It was then that I sowed the 
 seeds of all my troubles of the years to 
 come. I studied too persistently, took 
 little interest in play, with the exception 
 
56 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 of skating in the winter, of course. The 
 two half-hours of calisthenics and a few 
 duties at home were nearly all the exer- 
 cise I got, and of fresh air I got less, not 
 even at night, as we slept with closed 
 windows. 
 
 One of the best features of the Amer- 
 ican public school I consider to be the 
 keeping of a staff of school doctors, 
 nurses, and dentists. The next best step 
 towards a better civilization, I believe, 
 would be the compulsory training of all 
 young women in the care of the baby 
 and the older child, such as our hospital 
 nurses receive. How much more happi- 
 ness this would produce than the ability 
 to draw pictures and to recite a poem 
 correctly I 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SOME OF OUR GAMES 
 
 One of our most popular games was 
 called "verlos," pronounced "ferl6s," with 
 the accent on the last syllable. It was 
 played by all the boys and the girls to- 
 gether. The child who was "it," whom 
 we shall call Jan, chased the others until 
 he managed to touch one of them, whom 
 we shall call Piet. Then he would run 
 to the tree or lantern pole around which 
 the game was played. If Piet reached 
 the pole first, he was free ; if Jan reached 
 it first, Piet had to stay near the pole 
 or tree, keeping either his hand or foot 
 against it. Now Jan ran after the other 
 children again. 
 
 In the meantime he had to take care 
 that none of them came near Piet, for if 
 Piet was touched by any of them, he was 
 57 
 
58 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 released, while any child touched by Jan 
 joined Piet, and they all, hand in hand, 
 formed a long row, with the pole or tree 
 at the farther end. It was a very excit- 
 ing game, for the longer the row grew, 
 the easier it became to reach it and touch 
 it, but at the same time the fewer chil- 
 dren there remained free. 
 
 Often, when nearly all were caught 
 and the game was almost finished, Jan 
 would at quite a distance from the row, 
 say, just behind the wall of the inn, suc- 
 ceed in touching one of the fleetest run- 
 ners ; at the same time, from a hiding- 
 place in another direction, another child 
 would hie and release the row before 
 Jan had returned to prevent the catas- 
 trophe. Then a loud " hoozay " would 
 fill the air. The noise we made on such 
 an occasion would have put the yells of 
 college boys to shame. Many a " verlos" 
 game was never finished. 
 
 Rope-jumping was exclusively for girls. 
 We had several different games of rope- 
 
SOME OF OUB GAMES 59 
 
 jumping. The most popular one was the 
 game of imitation. The girl who was 
 first would jump a number of times with 
 both feet, then with the left foot and 
 then hop with the right, or she would 
 hop on one side, turn about and hop on 
 the other side ; or she would drop a 
 stone, hop a certain number of times 
 and then pick it up. The game could 
 be played in an unending variety. The 
 second, the third, and if there were as 
 many, also the fourth and the fifth girl 
 all had to do exactly as she had done, 
 when their turn came. Whoever tripped 
 or made a mistake, would have to relieve 
 one of the two girls who turned the rope. 
 Sometimes a girl would jump in, hop, 
 and run out in the diagonal direction ; 
 while she ran out the second girl would 
 jump in ; while the second one ran out the 
 third would run in ; after her the fourth 
 and the fifth and then again the first, 
 who, in the meantime, had walked back 
 and was waiting at the starting-point. 
 
60 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 At other times we would jump rope 
 while all of us were running. At again 
 other times two or more girls jumped at 
 the same time. On occasion we also used 
 two ropes, turning them together but in 
 opposite directions. The same thing I 
 have seen in this country. We also had 
 short ropes for individual use. 
 
 A favorite game of the boys was roll- 
 ing hoops. Why this game is so little 
 played in America I cannot understand. 
 In some localities in the Netherlands 
 girls also rolled hoops, but such was not 
 the case in our village. 
 
 Both boys and girls played with mar- 
 bles. Some, as large as a child's fist, 
 were called backets ; others, somewhat 
 smaller, bosters ; those of ordinary size, 
 knikkers. 
 
 Shooting hazelnuts or horse-chestnuts 
 was a favorite game in its season. Each 
 child— there were from three to half a 
 dozen participants — contributed two ha- 
 zelnuts, or two horse-chestnuts, as the 
 
SOME OF OUR GAMES 61 
 
 case might be, and these were placed in 
 a row, the biggest one, called king, at the 
 end on the right-hand side ; then came 
 the next in size called queen, and then 
 the princes and princesses, all according 
 to size, the youngest princess at the end. 
 The child whose turn it was would roll 
 
 DIAGRAM FOR 
 GAME OF SHELLS 
 
 a boster towards the row. If he hit the 
 king, the whole row was his ; if the 
 queen, all except the king; if the crown 
 prince, all except the king and queen, etc. ; 
 if the little princess at the end, only her. 
 Shells of walnuts we also played 
 with. We first made the accompanying 
 diagram on the ground. From three to 
 
62 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 six children usually played. Each in 
 turn threw a nutshell in the direction of 
 the little square, called the pot, over the 
 center of the horizontal line. The one 
 who threw his shell right into the pot 
 had won the game and all the shells 
 were his. If no one was quite so lucky, 
 the one whose shell lay nearest the pot, 
 but over the horizontal line, picked up 
 and kept as his own all those that had 
 fallen over the line. Then he picked up 
 those below the line, shook them and 
 threw them up into the air. When they 
 had come down again, the shells that 
 lay flat he picked up and kept; the 
 others were picked up and tossed by the 
 child whose shell had been second near- 
 est the pot. He, too, kept those that fell 
 down flat, and the third child tossed the 
 remainder if there were any, and kept 
 those that came down flat. And thus 
 the game was kept up until all the shells 
 had come down flat and been appropri- 
 ated. 
 
SOME OF OUB GAMES 63 
 
 A game we enjoyed playing on winter 
 evenings in the moonlight or near the 
 street-lanterns, before supper time, was 
 called " ambachten," which means 
 " trades." I believe many of you are 
 familiar with a similar game, called 
 " charades." From six to twelve children 
 were necessary to play it, and they were 
 divided into two equal groups. First 
 one group would act a pantomime and the 
 other group would look on and guess its 
 meaning. Then the second group would 
 act a pantomime and the first group would 
 have to do the guessing. The game was 
 capable of an endless variety and was fine 
 exercise for our imaginations. 
 
 We also played jacks, but the jacks were 
 of a different shape from what yours are. 
 Most of them were only certain bones out 
 of the bodies of cattle. Yes, we actually 
 played with soup-bones cleaned and pol- 
 ished. Little children using their vivid 
 imaginations, filled whole stables with 
 cows, calves, horses, and pigs, which were 
 
64 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 nothing more nor less than bones out of 
 butchered cows. 
 
 Baseball was unknown to us. The boys 
 did have a certain kind of ball game, but 
 they seldom played it, as it was more for 
 young men. We girls used the colored 
 rubber balls and threw them against the 
 brick wall of the school. Sometimes one 
 just caught the ball, at other times one 
 clapped one's hands and then caught the 
 ball, or one circled one's arms around and 
 around, or caught the ball with the left 
 hand and then with the right hand, or 
 jumped while catching it, etc. All the 
 while the player and the other children 
 chanted a certain ditty that gave direc- 
 tions as to how the ball had to be caught. 
 If one missed the ball, it was the next 
 child's turn. 
 
 We had few parties, no playground, no 
 rings, no slide, no seesaw except some- 
 times a home-made one, and, part of the 
 time, a home-made swing in our orchard 
 and the cow-barn ; we had very few dolls 
 
SOME OF OUR GAMES 65 
 
 and these few had to last for years, few 
 dishes, and these were easily lost or broken 
 so that we preferred to play with the 
 broken dishes of our mothers, yet we had 
 a great deal of fun. Having few toys, we 
 made better use of our imaginations than 
 those who have many. Besides, we had 
 a very large variety of extremely inter- 
 esting and exciting games, that gave us 
 lots of exercise and for which no toys 
 whatever were needed. 
 
 At home we often played " Punch and 
 Judy/' or, as we called it, " poppenspel," 
 which means dolls' play. We tied a ban- 
 dana handkerchief around a ball of yarn 
 and called it a doll. We made many of 
 these, and made them dance on the edge 
 of an old, horizontally stretched cow- 
 blanket across a cow-stall ; it being in the 
 summer, the stalls were empty and clean. 
 Or we fastened a sheet across the stall, 
 placed a small lamp in the darkened space 
 behind it, and made ducks swim on bil- 
 lowing lakes, men chase boys, teachers 
 
66 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 punish children, etc., all cut out of paper 
 and reflected on the sheet. We especially 
 enjoyed having the ducks swim on the 
 waves. We had a ditty, which started 
 somewhat like this : " All pretty duck- 
 lings, they swim in the water, falderal- 
 deriere, falderalderare." 
 
 In the early spring jumping ditches 
 was our favorite pastime. For the small 
 ditches, called " greppels," we did not 
 need any stick or pole. We just ran 
 until we reached the edge and then 
 jumped across it and as far as we could. 
 
 At one time, when I was about ten 
 years old, several of us girls were jump- 
 ing across those greppels, one after the 
 other, and each greppel was wider than 
 the one before. One by one the girls 
 dropped out. At last only two remained, 
 of which I was one and the other a girl 
 called Antje, a year older than I was, and 
 taller. She was the leader. We came 
 to a very wide cross-greppel. She ran, 
 jumped, and landed on the other side. 
 
SOME OF OUR GAMES 67 
 
 I looked at the expanse of water and my 
 heart quailed. But I thought whatever 
 she could do, I could. So I mustered 
 up my courage. I ran, reached the edge, 
 and again my heart quailed. My feet 
 stopped. But my body, unable to stop 
 the forward motion so suddenly, fell for- 
 ward and there I stood, with my legs, 
 that had slipped, up to my knees in 
 the water, and with my arms up to the 
 elbows. 
 
 Just then the clock struck one and the 
 other children ran off to school as fast 
 as they could. Only one girl, called 
 Tjerkje, stayed with me. I sat down 
 on the damp grass, pulled off my stock- 
 ings and socks and wrung them out as 
 well as I could and put them on again. 
 I remember that I had a little hole in 
 the heel of one of my stockings ; by the 
 time I had it pulled on again the hole 
 looked as large as a saucer. Then I put 
 on my socks and stuck my feet in my 
 wooden shoes and Tjerkje and I trudged 
 
68 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 to school. There, near the door, stood 
 my sister waiting for me. " You must 
 go home and change your stockings and 
 socks," she said ; " you will get sick if 
 you don't." 
 
 But I did not want to go home and 
 entered the school. Antje had told the 
 schoolmaster that the wind had blown 
 me into the greppel. The master teased 
 me about it, and, strange to say, did 
 not send me home. So there I sat, for 
 three hours, wet to my knees. I did 
 not tell my parents of my accident, nor 
 did my sister. But two days later I had 
 to go to bed with a fever and a sore 
 throat. The old doctor was summoned 
 and he said that I had tonsilitis. I was 
 sick for five weeks, and part of that time 
 had to stay in bed, and all the time in 
 the house. 
 
 The boys leaped with poles over the 
 larger ditches, called " slooten " and the 
 small canals called " vaarten " or " grach- 
 ten," according to purpose or size. Most 
 
SOME OF OUR GAMES 69 
 
 of the girls also jumped across slooten, 
 and some even across vaarten and grach- 
 ten. We enjoyed going to the big canal 
 or " trekvaart," with a pole across our 
 shoulders, leaping over the slooten we 
 met until we stood on the dike of the 
 trekvaart. There grew such pretty flowers 
 right at the edge, and certain reeds that 
 made such queer whistles. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 OUR HOLIDAYS 
 
 Our spring vacation fell on the last 
 week of April. While we had our week 
 of play, the janitor removed the stoves 
 from the schoolrooms and held a thor- 
 ough, general school-cleaning, and the vil- 
 lage painter came and painted the floors. 
 
 Easter and Whitsuntide — the latter 
 falls on the seventh Sunday after Easter 
 — were celebrated for two days; there- 
 fore, we had vacation on Easter Monday 
 and on the Monday after Whitsunday, as 
 also on Good Friday and on Ascension 
 Day. On Whitsunday we dressed up in 
 new clothes, and put on new spring hats, 
 as you do on Easter. On Easter it is too 
 cold in Holland for spring clothes. Even 
 on Whitsunday it may hail or snow and 
 be very disagreeable. 
 70 
 
OUR HOLIDAYS 71 
 
 We village children had only two 
 weeks of vacation during the summer. 
 Just think of it. Not two months, but 
 two weeks. When I was nine years old, 
 my parents took me in our carriage to 
 Sneek, our nearest town, and there they 
 put me on one of our small canal 
 steamers. Most of the men passengers 
 on the steamer were known to my 
 parents. They were prosperous butter, 
 cheese, or cattle merchants. They prom- 
 ised that they would see to it that I 
 reached my destination in safety. We 
 very slowly steamed along canals, across 
 the Sneeker Lake, and then again along 
 other canals. It was about a three hours' 
 boat-ride, and I enjoyed every minute 
 of it. 
 
 The following summer, I again spent 
 my vacation with my grandparents at 
 Oldeboorn, which is the name of the 
 large village where they lived. Then I 
 had a little playmate who was the sole 
 possessor of eight dolls. Eight dolls ! 
 
72 WEEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 It almost took my breath away. I had 
 only one real doll. This seemed luxury 
 indeed ! 
 
 When I was twelve, I was to take a 
 somewhat longer trip. A girl of my age 
 came to stay at our house for a week, and 
 after that I went with her to stay at her 
 house for a week. She lived in a very 
 large, pretty village called De Joure. 
 There were nurseries of young trees, 
 something I had never seen before, and 
 pretty lanes with shrubbery on both 
 sides. We enjoyed wandering through 
 them. But the most interesting part of 
 De Joure was the estate of a family be- 
 longing to the nobility. Every Sunday 
 the public was permitted to walk through 
 its gardens and park and conservatory, 
 while the head gardener accompanied 
 them. 
 
 At one point in the park was a 
 low but steep, small, grass-covered hill- 
 ock, wholly artificial. It was the first 
 hill or something resembling a hill I 
 
OUB HOLIDAYS 73 
 
 had ever seen. On top of it stood 
 a tower, called an observatory. We 
 climbed up into the little room in the 
 top of this tower, and from the windows 
 had a lovely view over the surrounding 
 country. In a large register we wrote 
 our names. Then we descended. The 
 boys of the crowd tried to run down the 
 steep hillside ; it was something novel to 
 them, and while doing so, unable to re- 
 main on their feet, they fell and started 
 to roll ; they rolled over and over again 
 to the delight of the crowd, until they 
 struck the path at the foot of the hillock. 
 
 There was a sort of bower across one of 
 the paths. When we walked through it, 
 by a secret device the gardener made the 
 water most unexpectedly come down like 
 a shower all over us. We spent a whole 
 afternoon on the grounds and certainly 
 had the time of our lives. 
 
 Our Christmas vacation lasted about 
 ten days. Christmas was celebrated very 
 quietly and for two days. The first day 
 
74 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 we went to church with our parents. I 
 sat deep down in a big pew with my 
 mother, and she gave me her cushion to 
 sit on. 
 
 Under her feet mother had one of 
 the " stoven " or foot-warmers. Every 
 other Sunday — our parish consisting of 
 two villages, in each one of which a 
 service was held every other Sunday — 
 during the cold season, a woman of the 
 village placed a glowing hard turf in 
 mother's stoof just before nine o'clock, 
 when the service started. Many of the 
 women who lived in the village, them- 
 selves carried a stoof by a brass handle as 
 they entered the church. It was never 
 cold, though, for there was a red-hot 
 stove, and the church was not large, 
 though high. My mother carried a 
 " kerkboek " or hymnal to church ; it 
 had two pretty, wrought silver clasps. 
 We carried smaller ones without clasps. 
 
 Our church dated from before the time 
 of the Norsemen, who, with their Vi- 
 
OUR HOLIDAYS 75 
 
 kings, came from Norway in the eleventh 
 century and harassed the peoples who 
 lived south of them. Traces of these 
 Norsemen are still evident. At the time 
 of the Reformation, in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, the congregation became Protestant ; 
 they severed their connections with the 
 Catholic church, but kept the house of 
 worship and its property. They demol- 
 ished all interior decorations and statues 
 and ever since the walls have been white, 
 bare, and ugly. 
 
 At noon, on Christmas, we ate for des- 
 sert a lot of bread-pudding, and in the 
 evening, also with our tea and coffee, big, 
 long loaves of sweet bread so full of cur- 
 rants that you could not see anything 
 but currants. 
 
 If the ice was strong, everybody went 
 skating except those who were very 
 pious ; they considered it sinful to enjoy 
 themselves on Christmas. 
 
 On New Year's Eve we again went to 
 church. To the large congregation, the 
 
76 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 preacher, called " domine " in Dutch, 
 would review the year's events and re- 
 member those of the village people who 
 had died during the past twelve months. 
 By nine o'clock we were home and soon 
 after went to bed. 
 
 On New Year's Day we arose early. It 
 was great fun for us to hide behind a door 
 and to await the coming of mother and 
 older sisters, and sometimes of neighbors 
 and friends whom we had seen approach- 
 ing, and surprise them by crying the 
 Frisian equivalent for Happy New Year. 
 The fun came in trying to " beat the 
 others to it." However, one had to be 
 out of bed, though it was not necessary 
 to be all dressed. A little later, there 
 was more excitement. The poorest of 
 the village children would come, in twos, 
 in threes or in fours, knock at the door, 
 open it as far as the brass chain would 
 allow, and cry with loud voice : " Much 
 happiness and many blessings in the 
 New Year." That sounds like a big 
 
OUR HOLIDAYS 77 
 
 mouthful, but expressed in Frisian it was 
 rather short. One of us children would 
 sit near the door, with a cup full of pen- 
 nies, and to each child we gave a couple 
 of them. These poor urchins would go 
 to all the farmers and well-to-do villag- 
 ers, all before noon, and for the pennies 
 thus gathered, their mothers would buy 
 them a warm cap, a pair of mittens, 
 klompen, or wool mufflers. 
 
 At about twelve, we had still greater 
 fun. The postman, overworked man as 
 he was that day, but also much-treated 
 man (many people insisted upon his 
 drinking a glass of gin when delivering 
 the mail that day) brought us a stack of 
 post-cards, some for father and mother, 
 and some for each of us. All our 
 friends, though some lived next door, 
 remembered us with pretty cards, and it 
 was fun to read the little verses under- 
 neath the pictures. 
 
 And in the afternoon, if the ice was 
 strong, we went skating. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ST. MARTIN AND ST. NICHOLAS 
 
 As you have your St. Valentine and 
 your Hallowe'en, so we had St. Martin 
 and St. Nicholas. 
 
 St. Martin was celebrated on November 
 eleventh, but only in such villages and 
 towns as had preserved ancient customs. 
 On the evening of the eleventh, soon 
 after we had come out of school and it 
 was dark, we gathered a lot of dry twigs 
 and shavings, and if possible, we pro- 
 cured a tarred barrel. We toted these 
 things to a meadow right back of the 
 village. There we built a fire and we 
 danced and shouted around it as if we 
 had been wild Indians. Father used to 
 tell us of a boy who ran right through 
 the flames of a St. Martin's fire, scorching 
 his hair and clothes. I deplored the 
 78 
 
ST. MARTIN AND ST. NICHOLAS 79 
 
 degenerate days I had been born in, for 
 there was not a single boy among us 
 children who had the courage to follow 
 this hero's example. 
 
 When the fire was out, we walked two 
 or three abreast, holding Chinese lanterns 
 or a candle stuck in a turnip with a paper 
 bag around it, somewhat resembling your 
 pumpkins on Hallowe'en. Some of the 
 boys had firecrackers. We sang many 
 school songs and also a ditty about 
 St. Martin being very cold and needing 
 fire-wood, while we were serenading some 
 of the village people and the nearest 
 farmers, who rewarded us with a few 
 cents. Later we went to the baker and 
 bought cookies and sweets for the money 
 and divided this amongst ourselves. 
 Thus the fun ended. 
 
 The day of days, to us, was the sixth 
 of December, St. Nicholas Day. St. Nich- 
 olas was once a bishop in Spain and be- 
 loved by all for his good deeds. That was 
 many hundreds of years ago, but since 
 
SO WH£N I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 then he is supposed to come from Spain 
 with his black servant each December. 
 
 He is said to ride on a white horse 
 through the air, and on the eve of 
 the sixth, his feast day, to jump from 
 roof to roof, where he descends through 
 the chimney into the house. There he 
 finds, standing in a row, the children's 
 baskets with a tuft of hay for his horse 
 in each of them, and he fills them with 
 sweets and toys if the little ones have 
 been good, with a turf and salt if they 
 have been bad or are becoming too big to 
 be thus remembered by him. Then he 
 hides the baskets somewhere in the room. 
 Noiselessly, he now climbs up through 
 the chimney, mounts his waiting charger 
 and visits another house. 
 
 Several mornings before the great event 
 we would find a sort of ginger-cake 
 called " taai-taai," in the form of a woman 
 at the churn, Adam and Eve under the 
 apple-tree, of a boy or a girl, or some an- 
 imal, in our stockings as we awoke. In 
 
ST. M Alt TIN AND ST. NICHOLAS 81 
 
 the evening, especially on the eve of the 
 sixth, St. Nicholas himself, dressed in 
 a long tabard with mitre on his head, 
 followed by his black servant who carried 
 a bag, would enter the living-room. 
 Sometimes the good saint was dressed 
 up so unsaintlike, resembling more a 
 tramp-burglar than a bishop, that we 
 little ones were frightened and hid be- 
 hind mother's chair, although we quite 
 well knew there was no such thing as a 
 " Sinterklaas," as we called him in Fris- 
 ian. He would ask whether we had been 
 good or bad ; if bad, his servant would 
 take us along in the bag and carry us to 
 the attic where he was supposed to keep 
 a mill, and in this mill he would grind 
 us to pepernoten or peppernuts, the tiny 
 gingerbread cookies. Of course, mother 
 always said we had been good children, 
 and then he would open the bag and 
 throw handfuls of pepernoten on the 
 floor. We forgot our fear, and coming 
 out of our hiding-places, we picked up 
 
82 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 the cookies, finding them in every corner 
 of the room. 
 
 Early in the morning of the sixth we 
 awoke, and in our nightclothes and on 
 bare feet we would run into the very 
 cold front-room and hunt for the bas- 
 kets. They were hidden in some corner, 
 behind a piece of furniture or in a 
 closet. As soon as we had found them 
 we carried them into the warm living- 
 room and there we examined the con- 
 tents, consisting of one toy or a book for 
 each of us, and several figures, some large, 
 others small, of taai-taai, the brown, flat, 
 tough cake, of which we were so fond, 
 and which was made by the bakers all 
 through the country on this feast of St. 
 Nicholas only. There was always a girl, 
 a couple of feet tall, for a boy, and a boy 
 for a girl, and these we hung against 
 the wall and kept for weeks sometimes. 
 The others lasted only a few days. 
 
 Then there were figures and letters made 
 of a sweeter kind of cake, more peperno- 
 
ST. MARTIN AND ST. NICHOLAS 83 
 
 ten, cookies, letters of sweet chocolate, 
 and hearts of a very sweet pink or white 
 candy, and the initial of our given name 
 made of a deliciously light pastry, the 
 filling of which was made of almonds 
 and other ingredients. We called it 
 " marsepyn." It was very rich and by 
 every one considered a great delicacy. 
 We also received a flat cake, resembling 
 a pancake ; it was sweet and decorated 
 with gold tinsels. 
 
 We went to school early that morning 
 to tell other children of the treasures we 
 had received and to make comparisons. 
 Now, for years we had known the truth 
 about St. Nicholas ; I had discovered 
 it at the age of six, but the little comedy 
 was kept up each year, just as a child may 
 talk to a doll while knowing very well 
 that it is not alive and cannot hear. 
 And our fear of St. Nicholas when he was 
 dressed so disreputably and growled so 
 fiercely, was genuine, although we did 
 not believe in him. 
 
84 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 In school, the younger children sang a 
 song in his honor and the teacher also 
 gave them each a figure of taai-taai. 
 
 On the eve of St. Nicholas, many 
 grown-ups and also some of the older 
 children went to the baker to listen to 
 the results of the raffle which he had 
 been conducting. Our family usually 
 won at least one prize, and sometimes 
 two. These were several letters of marse- 
 pyn, taai-taai, big cakes, gigantic loaves 
 of bread with currants, or other sweets. 
 Small shopkeepers held raffles of toys, 
 dry-goods and other things. 
 
 The baker that evening also conducted 
 a sort of gambling hall in his bakery. 
 Young and old were throwing dice to win 
 more taai-taai and more sweets. These 
 people never gambled at any other time, 
 many never even played cards, yet at such 
 a time some of them would not stop until 
 all their available cash was gone and 
 they had nothing to show for their folly 
 but heaps of cakes and tarts and other 
 
ST. MARTIN AND ST. NICHOLAS 85 
 
 sweet stuff. It was a very good day for 
 the bakers. A few years ago, a law was 
 passed, prohibiting this raffling and dice- 
 throwing. 
 
 We children did some impersonating 
 St. Nicholas on our own account, too. A 
 couple of evenings before St. Nicholas 
 Eve we dressed up in old clothes that be- 
 longed to our mothers and older sisters, 
 and tied before our faces masks of paper 
 which we had cut out and colored our- 
 selves. We put on long gloves, and, 
 supplied with a big bag of pepernoten, 
 went to a few of the poorest homes where 
 there were several little tots, and, open- 
 ing the front door carefully, threw hand- 
 fuls of the confectionery on the floor. 
 We must have been a queer lot of 
 Sinterklaases, and I am sure that the 
 fun it gave us must have far exceeded in 
 magnitude the good and pleasure the 
 poor children derived from the few peper- 
 noten. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 FAEM LIFE 
 
 The Dutch call their country Neder- 
 land, which, translated, is Netherland. 
 Formerly it was " de Nederlanden," or 
 The Netherlands. It is divided into 
 eleven provinces, and the two most im- 
 portant ones are South and North Hol- 
 land. Hence the popular name Holland. 
 Friesland is one of the most northerly 
 as well as one of the most prosperous 
 provinces. 
 
 The Frisian fields are perfectly level. 
 They are separated from each other by 
 slooten and divided into rectangular 
 pieces by greppels. About two thousand 
 years ago the Frisians, who had just mi- 
 grated from somewhere in Germany, set- 
 tled in our province. They were barba- 
 86 
 
FARM LIFE 87 
 
 rians, in fact, little more than savages. 
 The country was very marshy, and where 
 now is the Zuider Zee, was then only 
 Lake Flevo. 
 
 For ages, when it was stormy, the sea 
 had overflown the low land. Each time 
 it had left behind a layer of decayed 
 rock that originally had come from 
 other countries, scraped from mountains 
 by glaciers and driven into the sea by 
 icebergs. These innumerable layers of 
 decayed rock formed the rich, heavy 
 clay that gives Netherland its glorious 
 meadows and makes possible its raising 
 of splendid cattle. The meadows are 
 beautifully green, full of rich clover and 
 dotted with buttercups, daisies and other 
 wild-flowers. 
 
 The barbarians, however, did not know 
 about raising cattle and growing grain. 
 They were lured hither by the abun- 
 dance of fish, fowl, wild boars and wild 
 cows, and they wanted to stay there. 
 They did not like to be driven away by 
 
88 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 the waves that came rolling in from the 
 sea. So they piled the earth into mounts, 
 they made hillocks, and they called them 
 " terpen. " These terpen still exist. They 
 are no longer hillocks, but perfectly flat 
 meadows a few feet higher than the other 
 meadows. On these terpen the barbarians 
 built their huts, and they lived unmolested 
 by the sea. 
 
 Gradually they became civilized. They 
 learned to protect the land from the sea by 
 dikes. The Romans taught them to build 
 canals and drain the fields. The terpen 
 are of the richest clay and in these modern 
 times are gradually being leveled. The 
 soil is sold at a big price and shipped to 
 other parts of the country where it fertil- 
 izes a poor soil. While digging in the 
 earth, the workmen often find queer ob- 
 jects, which are placed in the museum at 
 Leeuwarden. 
 
 The great majority of the farms in Fries- 
 land are owned by rich people, many of 
 whom belong to the nobility. The farm- 
 
FARM LIFE 89 
 
 ers pay an enormously high rent, from 
 nine hundred to fifteen hundred dollars 
 a year for seventy or eighty acres and 
 farmhouse. Besides this, they have to 
 pay wages to a lot of farm help, and yet, 
 if their rent is not too high, they manage 
 to make a good living, bring up a large 
 family and save a little fortune for their 
 old age. This is due to the fertility of 
 the soil, the excellent care they give same 
 by frequent fertilization, the strictest 
 economy, and wise management. How- 
 ever, they have to work very hard, their 
 worry is great, their pleasures are few and 
 simple, and some are forced to give up 
 their favorite occupation, sell out and go 
 to America. 
 
 Meanwhile, the owners, who do not 
 soil their hands, who do not weary their 
 brains, enjoy themselves. And the farm- 
 ers, in spite of their native pride and in- 
 dependence, for fear of losing the farms 
 and because of the demand for farms 
 always far overtopping the supply, look 
 
90 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 up to these owners and treat them as 
 demigods. I, who had always a strong 
 sense of justice, never could understand 
 why the farmers were so foolish and so ir- 
 rational. 
 
 My parents usually had about thirty 
 milch cows, nearly all black and white. 
 These Frisian-Holstein cows give much 
 more milk than the Jerseys ; their milk is 
 not so rich in butter-fat but contains 
 more of the stuff out of which cheese is 
 made. 
 
 From October to May our cows stood 
 in the barns, two in a stall. The stalls 
 were about a foot higher than the brick- 
 paved floor. In each stall was a small 
 window with four tiny panes and if the 
 cows cared to they might look out. Their 
 tails were fastened with a rope to the 
 beams, but not so that it prevented their 
 chasing the flies off their backs. The 
 idea was the prevention of the cattle 
 hanging their tails in the gutter. 
 
 Twice a week our hired man used thor- 
 
FARM LIFE 91 
 
 oughly to wash the cows' tails in a large, 
 red-painted bucket of water, and after that 
 he straightened out their hairs, one by 
 one. We often helped him with the lat- 
 ter. The tails of some cows are curly, 
 and I assure you, these looked very pretty 
 after having been washed and disen- 
 tangled. The hired man also curried the 
 cows, as one does horses, so they always 
 looked clean and sleek. 
 
 Besides hay, we often fed the cows a 
 certain cake cooked of cracked beans and 
 ground linseed, in the winter. The pigs 
 ate cooked cracked maize. 
 
 In May, as soon as the cows had been 
 led into the meadows, a man scrubbed 
 the cow-barns thoroughly clean, from top 
 to bottom ; then the womenfolks did the 
 whitewashing and the fixing up ; before 
 the tiny windows they hung lace curtains, 
 also for the larger ones at the end of the 
 barn, and the painter came and did his 
 share with red and black paint, to the 
 walls and the stalls, and he painted the 
 
92 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 large, heavy wooden buckets and other 
 wooden things. 
 
 Every morning at four o'clock and 
 every evening at four, the cows were 
 driven into the corral close to the house, 
 and there milked. Some one asked me 
 once : " Why did you not leave them 
 overnight in the corral ; then you would 
 not have to gather them so early in the 
 morning ; it would save work and time." 
 But the Frisian farmer never thinks 
 of saving time if it means less money. 
 Cows like to graze late in the evening, 
 during the night or early in the morn- 
 ing, and the more they graze the more 
 milk they give. Besides, they are more 
 comfortable in the meadow than in the 
 corral. During the fall, they were cov- 
 ered with a blanket to protect them from 
 the cold and rain. This blanket some- 
 what resembled grey burlap ; however, 
 it was heavier and much more tightly 
 woven. 
 
 In the spring and the summer three or 
 
FARM LIFE 93 
 
 four big churns half-filled with cream 
 were churned by a horse attached to a 
 mill. The butter was worked by my 
 mother. The skimmed milk with a little 
 of the cream left in was made into Edam 
 cheese by my father, and we children 
 helped. We also assisted with the col- 
 oring of the round little cheeses with 
 aniline dye or their polishing with lin- 
 seed oil. 
 
 We did not use a separator for the 
 skimming of the milk. The milk was 
 simply poured into large, flat, round- 
 bottomed copper pans, and these pans 
 stood in rows in the milk cellar against 
 the walls on brick elevations a foot higher 
 than the spacious stone floor. While 
 stooping over, my mother skimmed the 
 milk with a flat, circular brass pan, and 
 emptied the cream into a very large, 
 copper pail with brass handle and brass 
 rim, and from this into blue-painted bar- 
 rels. As all empty brass and copper 
 things were scoured each day, you can 
 
94 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 imagine what an enormous amount of 
 work this meant. 
 
 In the summer all the milking was 
 done in these big copper pails with the 
 brass rim and brass handle, and that were 
 as wide at the bottom as at the top. The 
 average farmer's daughter or milkmaid 
 carried these pails full of milk, either by 
 hand or dangling from a yoke over her 
 shoulders, as easily as if they were the 
 ordinary tin buckets one finds in this 
 country. I, however, was never able 
 even to lift them when filled. 
 
 The buttermilk was fed to the calves 
 and the pigs. The whey, left over from 
 the cheese-making, was also fed to the 
 calves and the pigs. We never wasted 
 anything, not so much as a crust of bread, 
 a tuft of hay, or a cup of buttermilk un- 
 less it was by accident. 
 
 In the fall and the winter we did not 
 make cheese. Then all the milk was 
 churned, as there was much less of it. 
 
 In the early spring I often had to help 
 
FARM LIFE 95 
 
 with the feeding of the young calves, that 
 immediately after their birth were taken 
 away from their mothers. I hated the 
 work even more than I disliked washing 
 dishes. 
 
 We usually had a dozen sheep. When, 
 in the late spring, they had been sheared 
 and their lambs taken away from them, 
 they were daily milked twice. We chil- 
 dren had to do the milking. The milk 
 of sheep is very rich, much richer than 
 cow's milk, and therefore not to be 
 recommended for drinking purposes. In 
 coffee and tea it is excellent and takes 
 the place of cream. We also fed it, mixed 
 with buttermilk, to the calves, and once 
 in a while one of my sisters made little 
 cheeses of it for home use. 
 
 Our sheep were entirely white and their 
 fleeces were nice and clean. Sometimes 
 we had one or two black sheep. Once, 
 when I was milking the sheep all alone, 
 the ram came. He was a big, strong, 
 beautiful creature and father prized him 
 
96 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 highly. But he did not like petticoats. 
 When my brother was with me, he was 
 rather respectful. Now seeing me alone, 
 he came running at me. I stood still, 
 waiting for him. It was too late for run- 
 ning away. 
 
 I knew he was many times stronger 
 than I was, but my safety lay in taking 
 hold of his horns, so that he could not 
 maul me. I waited, with both hands 
 stretched out. When he had approached 
 me, I gripped the horns. Then I yelled. 
 I yelled for help at the top of my 
 lungs. 
 
 No one in or near the house seemed 
 to hear me. In the meantime the ram 
 pushed me backwards towards the canal. 
 I yelled still louder. Just when I stood 
 at the edge of the water, desperately 
 holding on to the ram's horns, a man 
 came running across the foot-bridge. 
 With his heavy cane he chased the ram 
 away. He was a cattle merchant, and 
 while passing on the highway, had seen 
 
FARM LIFE 97 
 
 me and heard my cries. He saved me 
 just in time. 
 
 In the spring we had to drive the 
 young lambs into the schuur in the 
 evening and back into the meadows in 
 the morning, and often in the daytime 
 we had to lead them away from the 
 slooten to prevent their getting drowned. 
 
 Farm help, that is to say the young 
 men and the young women who work on 
 the farm for their board and wages, are 
 hired by the year. They may be hired 
 some time during the winter, but they 
 do not leave their old employers before 
 the thirteenth of May, when they go to 
 their new employers. 
 
 Fortunately, they have never heard 
 that the number thirteen is unlucky, or 
 they surely would not change their po- 
 sitions on the thirteenth. The Frisians 
 are singularly free from superstition. 
 However, the number eleven was our 
 hoodoo. Not that it meant bad luck, 
 but we associated it with craziness. The 
 
98 WHEN I WAS A OIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 one who in a raffle drew the number 
 eleven was laughed at and called crazy. 
 If you were eleven years old, you were 
 teased with being queer. And so in 
 every case where the number eleven ap- 
 peared. It was not really a superstition, 
 but a joke. 
 
 Then there were the day-laborers, 
 married men who went home at night 
 and sometimes for their meals also. 
 They helped with the milking, feeding, 
 hay harvest, fertilizing, ditch-dredging, 
 etc. 
 
 For many years, during the hay har- 
 vest we had two Germans from Olden- 
 burg do the mowing, and two from 
 Prussia help with the gathering. But 
 finally the Germans remained in their 
 own country, where they could find 
 enough work, and we hired men from 
 the neighboring province of Groningen, 
 or some from another part of Friesland, 
 where the soil was unproductive and the 
 people were poor. The latter were very 
 
FARM LIFE 99 
 
 independent and not nearly so good- 
 natured as the foreigners. Also, many 
 of them, as soon as they had earned a 
 little money, spent it, on the first San- 
 day, for gin and got drunk, and for the 
 next few days they would not be able to 
 work. This made them unreliable and a 
 nuisance as well. However, there were 
 good men among them, too. 
 
 The hay harvest to us children was one 
 long, lively, happy festival. It lasted 
 about four or five weeks, according to 
 the weather. Our greatest pleasure was 
 to ride on those empty wagons to the 
 meadows and on the full ones back home. 
 These wagons, like almost everything else 
 in Netherland, were painted in bright 
 colors ; they were loosely put together, 
 had no springs, and when they were 
 empty, and driven over the hard, dry 
 soil or the brick road, they so shook that 
 we children, sitting on them, with our 
 legs dangling from behind, had to hold 
 on to the sides, and it felt as if our lungs, 
 
100 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 stomach, heart, and liver were playing 
 tag in our bodies. 
 
 On the return trip it was different. 
 Unless an older person was with us, we 
 were not allowed to sit on top of the hay. 
 The driver always sat on a low seat and 
 could not possibly watch us, or even 
 see us. Then the horses always walked 
 slowly. 
 
 Every afternoon after school, and on 
 Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, we 
 helped with the hay harvest. We had 
 small rakes, specially made for us, and we 
 raked in the front rows, which were the 
 easiest. It really did not mean work to 
 us ; it was just fun. Often we would play 
 in the haystacks, roll down their sides, 
 and at times we were nearly buried under 
 the hay. Village children would come 
 and join us. 
 
 We loved to pick the flowers that grew 
 in the ditches and on the water's edge, 
 such as blue-eyed forget-me-nots, and 
 the fragrant wild mint. Sometimes we 
 
FARM LIFE 101 
 
 hunted caterpillars and lady-bugs. These 
 we put in match-boxes and gave them 
 leaves to eat, but they often escaped. 
 The lady-bugs were our favorites. My 
 brother would sometimes chase us with 
 frogs. We were not afraid of them, but the 
 contact of their cold, slimy bodies is not 
 pleasant. Sometimes we picked up all 
 the feathers we could find. Those of the 
 lapwing were most numerous ; they were 
 half black and half white. We made quite 
 a collection. We ran many races, in our 
 stocking-feet or with slippers on. 
 
 I enjoyed lying on my back and gazing 
 through my straw hat at the blue sky 
 and the white clouds. Netherland is 
 known all over the world for it3 beauti- 
 ful cloud effects, and this is one of the 
 reasons that artists of other countries like 
 to come there and paint. Out of the 
 light fleecy clouds, the heavy ones like 
 mountains of snow, those of a grey color 
 and the gloomy, dark harbingers of 
 a thunder-storm, I created castles and 
 
102 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 knights of old, the lofty Alps and the 
 low sand-dunes, ruins of ancient cities, 
 lakes, islands and even the outlines of 
 whole continents. 
 
 Our sunsets were glorious, and so 
 were the sunrises. We were often up 
 early enough to see them. Our twi- 
 lights were long and the men, during 
 the hay harvest, worked as long as they 
 could see, which meant till ten o'clock, 
 many a time. After that they had 
 supper. 
 
 By four in the morning they were up 
 again and dressed, ready to go to work, 
 before breakfast. But they did not work 
 nearly so fast, and constantly as men work 
 here. And they did a lot of talking and 
 laughing. At seven they had their first 
 meal, consisting of tea, rye bread, and but- 
 ter and cheese. No meat, no potatoes. 
 Yet the men were strong and healthy. 
 We, the children, had to go to bed early 
 until we were about twelve years old. 
 After that, we, too, were allowed to stay 
 
FARM LIFE 103 
 
 up as late as ten. I have often stood 
 aghast at the American habit of allow- 
 ing little boys and girls to stay up late 
 at night and go out with their elders. 
 
 For breakfast we children had rye 
 bread with cheese or bacon, often also 
 white bread and buns, and milk if we 
 wanted it. The bacon was clearer and 
 whiter than any bacon I have seen here ; 
 it was smoked slowly in our enormous, 
 old-fashioned chimneys, for months and 
 months. We did not fry it. We just ate 
 it as it was, for there was no danger of 
 getting the deadly parasite, trichina, so 
 often found in American pork. We cut 
 it into very small cubes, placed these on 
 the buttered, coarse rye bread (which is 
 very different from the American rye 
 bread) and we ate with great relish. 
 
 At ten o'clock the folks had coffee and 
 koek, at noon we had dinner. Though 
 our meals were very simple at any time, 
 during the hay harvest this was the case 
 more so than ever. Then we dispensed 
 
104 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 with potatoes, except on Sundays. We 
 ate green or dark grey peas, beans, pearl 
 barley, with pork or bacon or veal and 
 buttermilk porridge. 
 
 At three in the afternoon one of my 
 older sisters brought a big, brass kettle — 
 which shone like a mirror — full of tea to 
 the fields, and a basket with rye bread and 
 butter and cheese. Lying down, in the 
 shade of a stack, the men had their tea, 
 without sugar and milk. Father, usually, 
 came at about two o'clock, to join the men, 
 and had tea with them, and so had we if 
 it was Wednesday or Saturday. 
 
 At four, those who did the milking 
 went home, and the others stayed. At 
 six, they drank coffee and ate koek once 
 more, and after the day's work was over, 
 all had supper at the house. Supper 
 consisted of a dish made of milk, flour, 
 and something resembling cracked wheat, 
 only finer, and this was seasoned with a 
 sort of sweet sauce. We children were 
 very fond of it. But it was the tea at 
 
FARM LIFE 105 
 
 three and the coffee at six, out in the 
 open, that we enjoyed most of all. 
 
 The Dutch summers are short and the 
 thermometer seldom rises to eighty de- 
 grees Fahrenheit. However, at seventy- 
 five it is quite hot, because of the hu- 
 midity of the air. There is a great deal 
 of sultry weather. The Frisian evenings 
 are always chilly. 
 
 Every evening we were put to sleep by 
 the croaking of the frogs. There were 
 two kinds, the green ones, which were 
 the larger kind, and the yellow ones. 
 We used to throw pieces of brick at 
 them as they stuck their heads above 
 the water. It seems to me that they 
 were bigger than the American frogs, 
 and they had a far more agreeable way 
 of croaking ; it was not so monotonous, 
 there being a sort of tune to it. 
 
 Do you remember the words of Cole- 
 ridge's Ancient Mariner : " Water, water, 
 everywhere, and not a drop to drink "? 
 One could almost say the same of Neth- 
 
106 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 erland. Drinking-water there is poor. 
 Where we lived, good wells were scarce. 
 The water from most of them could be 
 used for cattle only, and for washing and 
 scrubbing, because of the composition of 
 the soil. If we dug the wells very deep, 
 down through the layer of clay, we were 
 almost sure to find water that was brack- 
 ish. 
 
 We therefore used rain-water for cook- 
 ing and drinking purposes. We kept it 
 in a cistern, into which it fell through 
 a pipe from the roof and gutters. The 
 tiles of the roof were cleaned once a 
 year, but that did not prevent a lot of 
 dirt from entering the cistern with the 
 water. No one, or at least extremely 
 few people, used filters. We had our 
 cistern cleaned as often as it was empty, 
 and as it was small, it was empty quite 
 frequently in the summer. In fact, often 
 we had to buy buckets full of water from 
 the neighbors, who, having larger cis- 
 terns, or two of them, were more fortu- 
 
FARM LIFE 107 
 
 nate. It was nothing unusual to find 
 dead bugs and living bugs and other 
 creeping things, especially salamanders, 
 in the copper bucket as we pulled it up 
 out of the cistern. We never boiled the 
 water before drinking it, yet none of us 
 ever had typhoid, bubonic plague, nor 
 any of the other dreaded germ diseases. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE STOEKS 
 
 The stork is a much-beloved bird in 
 Netherland. It builds its nest by prefer- 
 ence on the brick chimneys of farm- 
 houses. There are seldom more than 
 one couple of storks in one small village, 
 and the story runs that when a member 
 of a family who have storks dies, the 
 storks leave and will not return. Of 
 course, this is an old superstition. Never- 
 theless, it is true that when an old 
 farmer who lived near our village had 
 died during the winter, the storks that 
 had been making their nest on his 
 chimney for many a spring did not 
 return to his bereaved family. They 
 selected another house as their domicile 
 and that house was ours. 
 
 Storks seem to like old houses. They 
 108 
 
THE STORKS 109 
 
 alighted on our parlor chimney and 
 started to build their nest. We were all 
 very happy to have them. However, my 
 parents, though they welcomed the birds, 
 objected to their building on the brick 
 chimney. We not only often heated the 
 room in the summer, but the dust and 
 dirt that might drop out of the nest 
 would soil the parlor. 
 
 So my father had the upper branches 
 of the trunk of a high tree cut off, a 
 wagon-wheel laid flat on this tree trunk, 
 and a bundle of dry twigs placed on the 
 wheel. At the same time, the nest the 
 storks were building on the chimney was 
 destroyed. And the wise birds took the 
 hint, and built on the tree. 
 
 Still, one cannot always coerce them. 
 They have a will of their own. Our 
 mayor, who lived on a fine old estate 
 in a neighboring village, was very anx- 
 ious to have storks. So he had a high 
 pole built in front of his house, on 
 top of that pole placed a wagon-wheel, 
 
110 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 and on the wheel a bunch of twigs. 
 Each spring the storks, old ones and 
 young ones, came and flew around the 
 pole ; they hovered about it, flew back 
 and forth, but never did a couple select 
 the place for their home. 
 
 It is a very funny sight, the feeding 
 of the baby storks by their parents, and 
 their learning to fly. Mother stork and 
 father stork wade through the ditches, 
 and when they see a frog, snap ! they 
 snatch it with their long beaks and 
 swallow it. Then they fly back to the 
 nest where the three or four babies, with 
 outstretched necks, screech as loud as 
 they can, their beaks wide open. The 
 parents throw up the frogs they have 
 been safe-keeping in their crop, and let 
 them slide from out their own beaks into 
 the beaks of the young birds. 
 
 Each spring there arrived from sunny 
 Egypt our female stork alone, to await 
 the coming of her mate two weeks later. 
 But what happened one spring? Only 
 
THE STORKS 111 
 
 two days after her arrival the husband 
 came. We were surprised at his early 
 appearance. We noticed that he was 
 smaller than the female, while her mate 
 of the years before had been of the same 
 size. We concluded that the old one 
 must have died during the winter and 
 that she had chosen another. At any 
 rate, they appeared perfectly happy and 
 started to rebuild their nest. 
 
 Then, at the usual time, two weeks after 
 the coming of the female, there arrived the 
 male of the previous summer. He did 
 not scold his faithless wife, nor did he 
 beat her or desert her. No, but he did 
 fight the usurper. For days they fought, 
 and they fought bitterly. The old one 
 would hover for hours around the nest, 
 waiting for the little one to leave it, and 
 when the latter, who screamed madly, 
 did leave it and advance, there was a 
 battle royal. The female remained neu- 
 tral. 
 
 At last, after many days, the rightful 
 
112 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 owner of the nest conquered. He did 
 not kill his enemy, but he beat him so 
 severely that he left, never to return. 
 And the female welcomed the hero and 
 they lived happily ever afterward. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE WALKS WE TOOK 
 
 During the summer some of us girls 
 often took a walk to neighboring villages. 
 We had a clean, brick-laid and shaded 
 highway to walk on, or good, graveled 
 roads, and sometimes we followed a foot- 
 path or a wagon-road through the mead- 
 ows and crossed foot-bridges. 
 
 The wagon-road had once been a sea 
 dike, many centuries ago, but gradually 
 the water had receded and the land been 
 reclaimed. Now the dike was a road and 
 almost entirely overgrown with grass and 
 wild flowers. Quite a number of villages 
 were within easy walking distance, from 
 two to ten miles away. I never missed 
 one of these walks. 
 
 Once, three other girls and I walked to 
 a little village called Wieward, where, in a 
 113 
 
114 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 tomb in the church, we viewed the bodies 
 of several men and women who had died 
 three or four hundred years ago. These 
 bodies had never been embalmed ; never- 
 theless, like the Egyptian mummies, they 
 had not decayed. There was, however, 
 in appearance a vast difference between 
 them and the mummies. They were not 
 dried up ; they had kept their rounded, 
 full shape ; but the skin had taken on the 
 color of parchment. The clothes had de- 
 cayed and dwindled away to something 
 that looked like thin potato peelings. 
 The hair had disappeared. 
 
 Why these bodies had never decayed, 
 nobody seemed quite able to explain sat- 
 isfactorily. Undoubtedly the chemical 
 composition of the soil underneath, as it 
 was absorbed in the water standing in the 
 tomb, had something to do with it. For 
 it contained about a foot of water, and 
 one had to walk on boards. 
 
 Once some people decided to drain it, 
 and so they did. Then signs of decay 
 
THE WALKS WE TOOK 115 
 
 were noticed, and immediately they re- 
 filled the tomb with the same amount of 
 water as there had been previously. Also, 
 in late years, for experimental purposes, 
 a dead cat and a rooster were placed in 
 the tomb, and like the human bodies, 
 they, too, remained preserved. Of course, 
 we children — about nine or ten years old 
 — looked on in awe and wonder. 
 
 Not all our hikes ended happily and 
 merrily. In some places we were not 
 wanted. There was one village, also about 
 three miles away, where the girls gave us 
 a very cold reception. As soon as they 
 saw us they started to follow us ; we en- 
 tered a candy store and after we came out, 
 there was quite a crowd waiting. They 
 called us names, made fun of us, threw 
 pieces of brick at us, and they were all 
 ready for fist fights. But we did not want 
 fist fights. And it was useless to talk of 
 peace to them. So we ran. We ran as 
 fast as we could, through streets and alleys 
 and up the road, until we could run no 
 
116 WHEN I WAS A QIRL IX HOLLAND 
 
 more. But they still followed us. They 
 kept on following us. 
 
 And why all this animosity? You 
 could never guess. It was about the an- 
 cient feminine weakness : clothes. At 
 that time it was the fashion for women to 
 wear bustles. The daughter of our baker, 
 who was thirteen, and I, aged twelve 
 (there were about six of us that Sunday) 
 being almost young girls, wore bustles. 
 And it seems that the daughters of this 
 simpler village believed us to be too fash- 
 ionably and too well-dressed. It was the 
 old story over and over again : " Thou 
 shalt not dress better than I do." And so 
 they made us suffer. They followed us 
 and jeered us until we had almost 
 reached home. 
 
 It seems unbelievable that at the time 
 I was a girl, and perhaps this is the case 
 even now, one found many benighted 
 people, not only in out-of-the-way ham- 
 lets, but also in the big cities, who openly 
 made fun of and jeered others whose man- 
 
THE WALKS WE TOOK 117 
 
 ners and dress appeared different from 
 theirs or who showed themselves to be 
 strangers. 
 
 There was another village, in another 
 direction, and also about three miles 
 away, which village was noted for its 
 variety of religious denominations. In 
 the United States, for a town of five hun- 
 dred souls to have four churches of dif- 
 ferent creeds is no uncommon thing, but 
 in our province it most certainly was. 
 
 The people were always bickering about 
 religious matters, and " peace on earth, 
 good will to men " was a meaningless 
 phrase among them. And their fighting 
 proclivities had descended to their chil- 
 dren. There were no rougher, meaner 
 boys and girls anywhere around for miles 
 and miles. 
 
 To this village belonged a hamlet and 
 that hamlet I daily had to pass, in 
 later years, on my way to and from 
 school at Sneek, but it was always with 
 fear and trepidation in my heart, es- 
 
118 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 pecially in the winter when there was 
 snow on the ground. I dreaded the hard 
 snowballs, often containing small pieces 
 of brick. There were only a few children 
 in this hamlet, but these few were fine 
 specimens of those of the main village. 
 
 A feature of our roads was the dog- 
 cart. It was not really a cart, but a 
 wagon, drawn by a dog, or perhaps by 
 two, or four dogs, while the man usually 
 sat on the side of the wagon, with his 
 feet dangling down. This man was the 
 village errand boy. Each village had at 
 least one of these errand " boys." Some 
 went to town every week day, others 
 once or twice a week. They were express 
 men as well. For each errand they did, 
 and for each package they carried, they 
 charged from three to ten cents, accord- 
 ing to size. Some of these men were 
 good to their dogs, others treated them 
 cruelly and you could hear the beasts cry 
 and yelp a mile away. Frisian people, 
 though charitable, are no sentimentalists, 
 
THE WALKS WE TOOK 119 
 
 and it was only in extreme cases that 
 these men were arrested and condemned 
 to serve a term in prison. 
 
 On our walks, I always took a memo- 
 randum book and a pencil along and 
 wrote down everything we saw, even to 
 such details as a water-rat which jumped 
 into a ditch when he heard us. 
 
 It had become my ambition to see all 
 the world, everything there was to be 
 seen, and I therefore thought the best 
 thing I could do was to start with the 
 surrounding villages and gradually fol- 
 low this up with all the rest of the towns 
 and villages of our province. There were 
 hundreds of them. Did we not do the 
 same thing in school with our geography 
 lessons? We started with the school- 
 house, next came the village, then the 
 municipality, this was followed by our 
 province, later came the whole country 
 of Netherland, next Europe, and then, 
 one by one, the other continents. 
 
 One day, however, when thinking and 
 
120 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 thinking, I became appalled by the vast 
 number of villages, towns, and cities there 
 must be in the world. Could I ever see 
 them all, even if I had lots of money and 
 did not have to spend any time in mak- 
 ing a living? It did seem rather hope- 
 less. I feared it would take many lives 
 instead of one short life of perhaps sixty 
 or seventy years. 
 
 While moodily pondering over this to 
 me very serious problem, suddenly a 
 light shone in upon me. Would all 
 these places be worth seeing ? Were not 
 many of the villages I had seen so much 
 alike that I might have missed seeing 
 some of them and yet have missed little ? 
 I heaved a sigh of relief. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE KERMIS 
 
 Our kermis or annual fair fell in the 
 second week of October. It lasted three 
 days, and this meant three days of 
 vacation for us. It was, however, a 
 badly appointed time. It was always 
 cold, and usually stormy. The weather 
 spoiled much of the fun. Several days 
 before the kermis we lived in a continual 
 excitement. 
 
 Nearly all the kermis people, that is 
 the people who owned the merry-go- 
 rounds and the booths and stalls, lived 
 in ships and they went from kermis to 
 kermis, the whole long summer and fall. 
 During the winter and spring they lived 
 in town. 
 
 From morning till night we watched 
 the "opvaart" or canal. When, far in 
 121 
 
122 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 the distance, we discovered a sail, we 
 seriously discussed the problem whether 
 it might be a booth-ship or not. When 
 we had decided that it must be a booth- 
 ship or perhaps the merry-go-round- 
 ship, and it was not too close to school- 
 time, off we went, to meet it. To nearly 
 every one of these ships we gave a hearty 
 welcome and an escort to the village. 
 
 On the day before the kermis, early 
 in the morning, at recess and at noon, 
 we helped to erect the structures, that 
 is to say, we carried the boards and other 
 parts from the ship. The following after- 
 noon the fun started. 
 
 We rode on the gaily decorated merry- 
 go-rounds. Never in this country have 
 I seen them so gay with colors, draperies, 
 and fringes. 
 
 At times we walked along the booths 
 in which were sold toys, " oliekoeken," 
 which resemble doughnuts somewhat 
 except that they have no holes in them, 
 and "poffertjes," which are flat and much 
 
Merry-go-round at Kermis in the Village of Deersum. 
 Some of the men are dressed in women's clothes. 
 
 
 If 
 
 ¥ 
 
 "'"ftifli^t: ft 
 
 iJ \ 
 
 
 Skating-race of couples at village of Deersum, 
 It is thawing, and there are few present. 
 
THE KERMIS 123 
 
 more delicate. The oliekoeken are round. 
 There were also waffles, sweets and kermis- 
 koeken. A kermiskoek was a flat, ob- 
 long, cookie-like cake, and it had written 
 on it with white frosting: Ter kermis, voor 
 vader; voor moeder; voor Jan ; voor Anna; 
 voor Piet; voor Marie; or some other name. 
 " Voor " means for. 
 
 Then there were the organ grinders 
 and street singers. The latter were chil- 
 dren, and their nasal voices were a sore 
 trial to sensitive ears. When I was quite 
 little, a man with a Punch and Judy 
 show used to come, too. In some stalls, 
 over a hollowed place in a large block 
 of wood, was placed a very long and thin 
 piece of cake, about a foot wide, and who- 
 ever could break this cake in two with a 
 cleaver won the cake. 
 
 The most important events of the 
 kermis, for the grown-ups at least, were 
 the races. On the first day, there usu- 
 ally was a race of horses before the two- 
 wheeled carriages called tilburies. The 
 
124 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 race was held on the highway by farmers 
 and no gambling ever took place. No 
 one even thought of it. 
 
 On the second day young farmers and 
 their wives or sweethearts or sisters com- 
 peted in "ringryden." The couple, driv- 
 ing in a tilbury, would try to obtain as 
 many rings as possible while passing, in 
 a row, a pole in which rings had been 
 placed. 
 
 On the third day young men either 
 held a foot-race or a bicycle race. Some- 
 times prizes were offered to the owners of 
 the most prettily decorated bicycles. 
 
 At other times young fellows would 
 dress in women's clothes, and with a couple 
 of baskets— such as are carried by women 
 who sell bread, rolls, and cake for the 
 bakers — dangling from a yoke on their 
 shoulders, would hold foot-races, which 
 were very funny and amusing. 
 
 Sometimes men, and occasionally young 
 women, would race, each pushing a 
 wheelbarrow loaded with empty kegs. If 
 
THE KERMIS 125 
 
 a keg rolled off, the racer would first 
 have to stop, pick up the keg and place 
 it back on the wheelbarrow before he 
 was allowed to go on. Often, just before 
 he had put one back in place, another 
 would start to roll, or they would all roll 
 off at the same time. It was against the 
 rules to have them stand on end. 
 
 And then there were still other games. 
 Some years we children were remembered, 
 too, and had our games. When it came 
 to running, I was faster than any of the 
 other girls of my class, owing to my long 
 legs, undoubtedly. Usually, the grown- 
 ups were so busy with their own pleasures 
 that we were forgotten. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LEEUWAKDEN AND SNEEK 
 
 Leeuwarden is the capital of Fries- 
 land. It contains from 40,000 to 50,- 
 000 inhabitants. It is a pretty and very 
 neat little city. 
 
 During the kermis, we used to go 
 there with father and mother on Friday, 
 market day. It was a two-hours' ride. 
 Father always let his horses trot leisurely. 
 At present, my parents, having retired 
 from farming, are living there in one of 
 its quiet, peaceful streets. 
 
 Leeuwarden used to be a walled city. 
 Most of the wall has been levelled and 
 changed into pretty lanes. Near a cer- 
 tain spot of the old wall at Leeuwarden, 
 overlooking the moat, still stands a mass- 
 ive leaning tower, dated from before the 
 twelfth or thirteenth century, when the 
 126 
 
LEEUWARDEN AND SNEEK 127 
 
 waves of the sea washed as far as the 
 town, although at present it is several 
 miles inland. This tower, then, did 
 service as a lighthouse. 
 
 Once we entered the old tower and 
 climbed up its many stone stairs, grown 
 slippery and worn by the use of ages. 
 On our way to the top we passed the old 
 bell. This bell is very large and heavy 
 and when it rings the deep tones shake 
 the whole structure. In fact, its ringing 
 had become dangerous, and its melodious 
 voice was heard only on unusual occasions, 
 far and wide over the town and the sur- 
 rounding country. 
 
 When we had reached the flat top of 
 the erstwhile lighthouse, father, mother, 
 one of my sisters, and my younger brother 
 and I had a beautiful view over the whole 
 town, and many villages, farmhouses, 
 meadows dotted with cattle, shaded roads, 
 and trains that seemed like slow, creep- 
 ing animals. In a country where there 
 are no hills and no " sky-scrapers," the 
 
128 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 opportunity of getting such a view is very 
 much appreciated. 
 
 Sneek was our nearest town. It con- 
 tained 11,000 or 12,000 inhabitants, and 
 had also been a walled city. Little of 
 its old wall was left. We often visited 
 Sneek and bought things in its stores. 
 Like all Dutch towns, it has a large 
 market-place, which stands near the 
 " gymnasium " or secondary school, and 
 near the Groote Kerk or Big Church. 
 
 On Tuesdays I often saw hundreds of 
 fine, black and white cows standing 
 there in rows. Cattle merchants in long 
 blue blouses walked among and behind 
 them, and also farmers in wooden shoes 
 and with caps on. They all did a lot of 
 loud talking, and every once in a while 
 one could hear a merchant and a farmer 
 talk as if angry, and the one slap hard 
 on the palm of the other's outstretched 
 hand. Were they trying to hurt each 
 other? No, they were only driving a 
 hard bargain. When the cow had 
 
Flower-market at Sneek. 
 
 Market-day at Leeuwarden. 
 In the centre is the old weigh-house. 
 
LEEUWARDEN AND SNEEK 129 
 
 changed ownership, one could see the 
 two men, as the very best of friends, 
 enter an inn. There the farmer would 
 receive the price in hard cash. On 
 many occasions one farmer sold to an- 
 other instead of to a merchant. 
 
 Besides cattle, there were pens with 
 pigs, hogs, and sheep. They made an 
 awful noise with their squealing and 
 bleating, and I often wondered whether 
 the boys in the "gymnasium" could hear 
 their teachers speak. 
 
 In the center of the town is the weigh- 
 house, where one could see beneath an 
 immense roof or awning butter in many 
 barrels containing eighty Dutch pounds, 
 or forty kilograms, each, and cheeses 
 stacked in heaps. 
 
 Most of the cheeses were large, flat at 
 the top and bottom, and round at the 
 sides. Many of these contained clover 
 seeds, and others had anise seeds. But 
 there were also Edam cheeses, almost per- 
 fect balls. Some were colored red with 
 
130 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 aniline dye, others were yellow and pol- 
 ished with oil. 
 
 Edam is a little town in North Holland, 
 where first these cheeses were made. At 
 another part of town, in the middle of the 
 streets, on market days, one could see a row 
 of Jewish women squatted on the ground 
 with in front of them, on a piece of cloth, 
 a supply of notions, dishes, and other 
 wares that they sold. Among them were 
 also a few men merchants, while some 
 Jewesses were lucky enough to possess 
 booths and stalls. 
 
 Sometimes, one of my chums, whose 
 grandmother and uncles and aunts lived 
 in Sneek, and I went to visit her rela- 
 tives. 
 
 On one such an occasion we accom- 
 panied the maid to a little house where 
 for a couple of cents she bought a kettle- 
 ful of boiling water, and a glowing 
 hard turf. You wonder why? It was 
 tea-time in the afternoon. The fire was 
 out, and it would take quite a while to 
 
LEEUWARDEN AND SNEEK 131 
 
 start a new one and boil water. Gas was 
 used for lighting purposes, but at that 
 time had not come to be used for heat- 
 ing. It was therefore quicker just to buy 
 a kettle of boiling water and a hot coal 
 on which to keep it boiling. 
 
 Sneek was also known for its many 
 "oude jonge juffrouwen," or old maids. 
 No other town in Friesland, in propor- 
 tion, had so many. 
 
 And then there were the chimes. These 
 were beautiful. They sounded each hour, 
 each half hour, each quarter and each 
 five minutes of. At the full hour, they 
 played popular melodies with a great 
 many bells. The Dutch are very fond 
 of chimes and have them in the church- 
 towers of many towns. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 DUTCH AND FEISIAN 
 
 If Dutch were not so dreadfully gut- 
 tural, it would be a euphonious language. 
 It has a very rich vocabulary and four 
 sounds that the English language does 
 not have. The u or uu, which sounds 
 like the u in French, the ui, the eu, the 
 ei and the ij or y. The ei and ij or y are 
 so similar that most Dutch people make 
 no distinction. They sound more like 
 the i in white than like any other letter 
 in the English alphabet. 
 
 Many Americans seem to think that 
 Dutch is the same as German. Many a 
 time I have read broken English sup- 
 posed to be spoken by Hollanders, and it 
 was almost invariably the broken Eng- 
 lish of a German. The words mit, der, 
 und, schnaps are German. Their Dutch 
 equivalents are met, de, en, jenever. 
 132 
 
DUTCH AND FRISIAN 133 
 
 And so it is with the names. There are 
 Dutch boys called Hans, but they are very 
 few. The name is really German. So is 
 Gretchen ; the Dutch name for it is Grietje- 
 or Margareta. Some of the most popular 
 Dutch names for boys are : Jan, Piet or 
 Pieter, Dirk, Klaas, Karel (not Carl), 
 Frits (not Fritz), Hein or Hendrik (not 
 Heinie), Willem and Joost. 
 
 The Frisian language, spoken by the 
 people of the villages and farms of Fries- 
 land — in the towns a queer Dutch dialect 
 is spoken — is very much different from 
 the Dutch. It is somewhat related to the 
 English, as are also the characteristics and 
 the tall stature of the people. 
 
 Some words, such as green, are identic- 
 ally the same ; only, the Frisian adds to 
 the sound " ee " something like a short 
 and quickly uttered "u." Leeuwarden 
 and Sneek are Dutch names, as we learned 
 them at school. Their Frisian equivalents 
 are Ljowt (pronounce the j as y in young) 
 and Snits, 
 
134 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 While the Dutch pronounce the r al- 
 ways sharp, the Frisian, before another 
 consonant, pronounces it like the Eng- 
 lish in a similar position, that is, very 
 faintly. Cheese in Frisian sounds like 
 tseese. Many other words, like butter, 
 bread, church, field, meadow, churn, 
 house, cow, sheep, grass, grazing, stall, 
 sound in Frisian very similar. 
 
 The Frisians are very proud of their 
 language. They have their own maga- 
 zines and their own writers and poets 
 whom they esteem highly. The poems 
 are simple, and naturally, celebrate their 
 green meadows, their farms and their out- 
 door life. The Frisian old-national song 
 is beautiful, both as to melody and words, 
 and conveys much more force and strength 
 than the Dutch national song. 
 
 Many villages have their amateur the- 
 atrical clubs, and the village maidens and 
 swains, the farmers' sons and daughters, 
 give a couple of performances each winter. 
 Some of the plays are serious, others sad, 
 
DUTCH AND FRISIAN 135 
 
 but the comical ones, depicting some of 
 their own ridiculous customs, and the ig- 
 norance and stupidity of isolated stay-be- 
 hinds, are the best and are best acted. 
 They are very refreshing indeed and 
 would make you roar with laughter if 
 you could understand them. Many a 
 long winter evening, father used to read 
 aloud to us some of these old plays and 
 stories. 
 
 The Frisian people are very proud, very 
 independent and very stubborn. Yet they 
 are progressive. They have a horror of 
 sentimentality and a show of affection. 
 Parents never even kiss their children 
 after they have grown beyond the baby 
 stage. The Frisian motto of the Middle 
 Ages was : " Frisia non cantat," which is 
 Latin for " Friesland does not sing." 
 They believed singing to be an exhibition 
 of sentimentality, a weakness. Centuries 
 later, however, nearly every village and 
 town had its singing society, and so 
 had we. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 OUB OANAL-BOATS 
 
 A number of Dutoh people Live in small 
 ships on the numerous canals. One oan 
 see the skipper stand at the tiller, smok- 
 ing his pipe ; his son or hired man attend 
 
 to the sails and his wife wash the olothes 
 
 or cook the dinner on deok while the 
 
 ohildren axo playing around her, care- 
 fully avoiding the flower-pots. And in 
 the rigging, between the drying olothes, 
 sings the canary in his oage. Everybody 
 looks happy and the ship, olean as a pin, 
 gleams in the sunshine. 
 
 If the wind is against them, tho whole 
 family pulls the ship, one behind the 
 other; the wife is usually the Leader, 
 having a loop pass over her ohest, and 
 while straining forward, she pants from 
 exertion. Only the skipper himself is on 
 L86 
 
OUR CANAL-BOATS 137 
 
 board, sitting at the tiller and calmly 
 smoking his pipe. Most of the skippers 
 go to the peat fields where they buy sup- 
 plies of turf, load these into the holds of 
 their ships, and sail back to their home 
 villages where they sell the turf. They 
 make a good living. 
 
 Our little village counted among its 
 inhabitants two turf skippers. One of 
 them, during the winter, lived in a house 
 he owned and his family was therefore 
 as comfortable as any ; the other, less 
 fortunate, had the hull of the small ves- 
 sel — which, by the way, had a carrying 
 capacity of only twenty-six tons — changed 
 into a room, and the deck raised a couple 
 of feet, so that one could stand up in it. 
 
 Once the youngest girl took me into 
 this hull-room. It was quite cozy in- 
 side. The walls were like those of any 
 entirely wainscoted and painted room. 
 A heating stove kept it at an agreeable 
 temperature while the snow came whirl- 
 ing down outside. 
 
138 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 There was plenty of room for a table 
 and several chairs ; a rug covered the 
 floor, lace curtains hung before the tiny 
 windows, and the family seemed happy 
 and contented. Their summer apartment, 
 the cabin, was being used as a kitchen. 
 
 I wish you could see the cabin of the 
 average turf ship. A whole family, con- 
 sisting of father, mother, several chil- 
 dren and the hired man, or perhaps two 
 or three grown sons and daughters, have 
 to live in it. It is so tiny that it makes 
 you think of a doll's house. 
 
 You board the ship on an ordinary 
 plank, so you have to watch your feet. 
 But before doing so, if you wear wooden 
 shoes, you will have to shake them off and 
 leave them on the shore ; if it rains or 
 snows, you lay them on their sides so that 
 they will not get wet inside. You walk 
 over the shining deck to a square hole, a 
 distance of a few steps. If the weather 
 is raw, this hole is partly or entirely 
 covered. You lift up the cover, and 
 
OUR CANAL-BOATS 139 
 
 leaning on your elbows and hands, you 
 let your feet descend through the hole 
 and strike the floor below. 
 
 You are now in a room of which the 
 dimensions are no more than five feet by 
 five, and so low that grown-up folks can- 
 not stand up straight. Opposite the en- 
 trance, and in a recess in the wall, stands 
 a very small cooking-stove, which is pol- 
 ished to perfection, and so are its brass 
 handles and ornaments and the cooking 
 utensils. 
 
 At each side of the stove, built into 
 the hull, are shelves hidden from view 
 by miniature doors. They contain the 
 chinaware and the clothes of the family. 
 The table takes in most of the space of 
 the cabin, and on two sides of it stand 
 two stools. Over the stove hangs, sus- 
 pended from the ceiling, a pretty lamp 
 with porcelain shade. 
 
 The walls are painted a dark red and 
 shine with brightness and so does the 
 little window with the lace curtain. 
 
140 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 Here the family eat and drink. The 
 wife does the washing on deck, and 
 if the weather is favorable, and she has 
 an extra stove, also the cooking. Bat 
 just think of it, to live in such close 
 quarters during the whole long winter 
 when there is little work for them to do 
 and there is much rough weather. Yet 
 that is what many families have to do. 
 As soon as part of the hull is cleared of 
 turf, the available space is also used for 
 living quarters, but nowhere have I seen 
 it fixed up with boards and built into a 
 veritable room as in the ship of the 
 skipper I mentioned above. 
 
 Where, you will ask, do they sleep? 
 Some in holes or closets at the other end 
 of the ship, and others opposite the cabin, 
 just beneath the deck, the opening to the 
 hole, which during the day is closed by a 
 door, being in the entrance to the cabin. 
 There they sleep in a space not higher 
 than a couple of feet. 
 
 All the canal ships had two blades or 
 
OUR CANAL-BOATS 141 
 
 shields, one on each side in the center of 
 the ship's length. These could be pulled 
 up a little, and let down. They were 
 often washed off and tarred, like the rest 
 of the outside of the ship, and served it 
 in the same capacity as the fins do a 
 fish. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 PLAYING IN THE SNOW 
 
 Of the four seasons we liked the 
 winter best, in spite of its many dreary 
 days. We enjoyed throwing snowballs 
 into the brick chimneys. Of course, 
 mother strenuously objected to it. On 
 one chimney, however, we were allowed 
 to practise marksmanship, for underneath 
 stood only the large iron pot in which 
 food for the cows and pigs was cooked, 
 at the end of the largest cow-barn. 
 
 In the village, the boys frequently 
 threw snowballs into the chimneys of the 
 peaceful villagers. One couple was the 
 especial object of their mischief. The 
 woman was very cranky, had no chil- 
 dren, and therefore could not under- 
 stand that the normal child cannot 
 behave like an adult. 
 142 
 
PLAYING IN TEE SNOW L48 
 
 One of the boys, Jouko by name, hap- 
 pened to land ii snowball through her 
 ohimney into an unoovered pot with por- 
 ridge. Tlio woman was very angry. In 
 front of her door, in the alley, stood her 
 husband, sawing wood. Immediately, 
 with the saw in his hands, ho started to 
 run after Jouke. And the chase was kept 
 up for a long time, through the streets 
 and alloys, over and through hedges and 
 fences, through gardens and back yards, 
 over snow-laden bushes and around trees. 
 
 In his flight, Jouko lost his wooden 
 shoes and he ran in his socks, but he es- 
 caped, and tho irate man returned home, 
 muttering and scolding and all out of 
 breath, doubly angry because he had failed 
 to wreak vengeance on tho boy. 
 
 A few of tho boys — the bigger ones — 
 were vory far from chivalrous, as boys 
 should be. They not only snowballed 
 the girls, but they often would put a 
 small piece of brick within the ball, wot 
 it and let it froeze. With these danger- 
 
144 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 ous missiles they bombarded our heads, 
 shoulders, and backs. When our school- 
 master died, and a young man took his 
 place, we had more peace, for any boy 
 who hurt a girl was punished by him, 
 and he ruled us in the streets as well as 
 in school. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 ON SKATES 
 
 Our winters were not nearly so cold as 
 are those of the Eastern United States. 
 Some years there is very little oppor- 
 tunity to skate, or none at all, in other 
 years about two or three weeks altogether, 
 but when I was from twelve to fifteen 
 years old, we had three unusually cold 
 winters in succession. During the first 
 we could skate for sixteen weeks. Every 
 canal, every lake was frozen over. 
 
 One could go anywhere on skates, even 
 cross the Zuider Zee. Such a long stretch 
 of cold weather, however, may happen only 
 once in a century. Yet the thermometer 
 seldom pointed below twelve degrees, 
 Celcius, which is ten degrees above zero, 
 Fahrenheit. 
 
 145 
 
146 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 During every winter when the ice was 
 strong, every afternoon all children were 
 permitted to go home at two o'clock ; but 
 when there was any doubt about its being 
 strong, only those who brought a note 
 from their parents were allowed to go. 
 
 Don't imagine that we skated on 
 wooden shoes. Sometimes, if we stayed 
 close to the house, we did tie the skates 
 onto our socks, but at all other times we 
 first put on leather shoes. Our skates 
 were flat pieces of wood, painted yellow, 
 with iron runners underneath them, and 
 like a swan's neck, turning up gracefully. 
 We tied them on with leather strips or 
 colored ribbons. 
 
 When only three years old, we received 
 our first pair of skates, and we learned 
 the art while pushing a child's chair in 
 front of us. This prevented us from fall- 
 ing, and when we got tired we could sit 
 down and rest. 
 
 The large stretch of low meadows, 
 about half a mile from the village, which 
 
ON SKATES 147 
 
 meadows were inundated each winter, 
 were the first to freeze over. There we 
 skated, and with us were many young 
 and middle-aged people and a few real 
 old men and women. Business, then, 
 was practically at a standstill. Farmers 
 and farm-hands left the barns, mechanics 
 the shops, tradesmen the small stores, 
 and housewives with their daughters and 
 maids stopped their eternal scrubbing and 
 washing, knitting and mending. Also, 
 the sport democratized all. Although 
 otherwise there existed sharp lines of 
 distinction between the different social 
 ranks, now all mixed ; those who hired 
 help with those who were hired, those 
 who rode in carriages with those who 
 had to walk ; women who wore golden 
 helmets with others who had to be satis- 
 fied with silver ones. 
 
 The children and the men often played 
 a certain game of tag on skates. 
 
 As soon as it turned dark, in the even- 
 ing, every one went home. There was no 
 
148 WEEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 moonlight skating, at least not on the low 
 meadows. On the canals, where people 
 often had to skate hours to reach their 
 destination, it was different. Some came 
 home late. 
 
 Before the advent of the railways and 
 the bicycle, the winter was the only time 
 for many people in Friesland to visit their 
 far-off friends and relatives. 
 
 All along the canals, with short dis- 
 tances between, stood white canvas booths, 
 where men, women or big boys sold hot 
 chocolate, cake, and cigars. Thus, one 
 did not have to go hungry, and inside 
 the booths were benches on which to rest. 
 Three sides and usually the top were 
 closed, while one side was open so as to 
 let people go in and out 
 
 Father often told us the story of a cer- 
 tain man of his boyhood days. That 
 man was supposed to be the champion 
 skater of the country. One afternoon, as 
 he came flying along a canal, he failed to 
 see a booth until he was right in front of 
 
ON SKATES 149 
 
 it. It was too late for him to stop, so he 
 lifted up his legs and jumped clear over 
 it. A couple of minutes later he re- 
 turned, and seeing the woman who 
 owned the booth pack her belongings 
 together in the sleigh, all ready to go 
 home, he asked her : 
 
 " Vrouwtjej why in such a hurry ? Are 
 you all sold out ? It's still early." 
 
 She looked gloomy and troubled and 
 answered : 
 
 " No, I'm not sold out, but there is a 
 limit to my courage. Just a minute ago 
 I saw the devil himself fly over my 
 booth." 
 
 Practically every village and town had 
 its skating club. These clubs gave a 
 race every winter ; sometimes two races. 
 These were for men, for women, for 
 adult couples or for boys and girls be- 
 tween twelve and sixteen. 
 
 I'll describe to you one of these races 
 held on the low meadows behind our 
 village. At one o'clock the race started. 
 
150 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 The track was straight, about a hundred 
 feet long, and roped off. Around it was 
 a much wider track, called in Dutch the 
 " bijbaan," which means side-track. This 
 was also roped off, and for the members 
 of the club or for spectators who had paid 
 the entrance fee of twenty-five or fifty 
 Dutch cents, Children paid ten cents. 
 A couple of men, each with a broom, 
 kept the race-track and the side-track 
 clean. There were two chocolate-booths, 
 stationed near the outer ropes of the side- 
 track. 
 
 In the morning, the racers had drawn 
 lots, and according to their numbers, 
 were to them their turn and their part- 
 ners assigned. Only two raced at a time. 
 They started at the beat of the drum, 
 and raced twice or three times. The one 
 who was defeated fell out. 
 
 When all the couples had had their 
 turn, the better skater of the first couple 
 had to race against the better of the second 
 couple, and the better of the third against 
 
ON SKATES 151 
 
 the better of the fourth, and so on. The 
 defeated ones of these couples again fell 
 out, and the remaining ones were made 
 up into new couples, again according to 
 their numbers. 
 
 The one who held out longest won the 
 first prize, and the one who held out next, 
 the second prize, and number three the 
 third. Thus it often happened that the 
 winners of the second and third prizes 
 were not at all the second and third as to 
 quickness. Luck in the drawing of the 
 numbers had a great deal to do with 
 that. 
 
 In small villages, the first prize con- 
 sisted usually of from twenty to thirty 
 guilders, the second of from ten to fifteen 
 and the third of two and a half. A 
 guilder or gulden is forty cents in 
 American money. The spectators on 
 the side-track, which ran parallel with 
 the race-track, on both sides, and around 
 the start and the end, most times kept on 
 skating while watching, to keep warm. 
 
152 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 All were happy, and the scene was 
 given a touch of gayety by the flying of 
 the^Dutch flag of red, white, and blue, and 
 the orange pennant of the royal house. 
 
 The Frisians compete for speed only, 
 never for grace or agility. 
 
 One day, a couple of my friends and I 
 skated to Leeuwarden, Friesland's capital, 
 to see a race for women. Leeuwarden 
 had two ice clubs ; one had its race- track 
 on the low lands just outside the town, 
 and the other on the " gracht " or moat. 
 The latter was by far the more interesting 
 place. 
 
 When we arrived there, we took off 
 our skates and climbed the old city 
 wall in the shadow of the Oldehove, 
 the erstwhile lighthouse, of which I told 
 you in a former chapter. From there 
 we looked down on a gay scene indeed. 
 Thousands of people were skating on 
 the " bijbaan " or side-track. There was 
 lively band music, and in the brisk breeze 
 waved dozens of flags and pennants from 
 
View of moat or "gkacht" at Leeuwarden. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ M ■ 
 
 
 
 1 1 | _ , j 
 
 
 
 
 „■-.. ^ hQ*,/'^; 
 
 
 
 ■.^J"-''-'-''Vo- •'■ 
 
 
 
 '" j.- - ;i ^»/-,,- ■'; 
 
 
 
 
 
 BHHb : " 
 
 '/ ';; 'v'^ 
 
 Scene in the Village of Poppingawier. 
 
ON SKA TEH 158 
 
 the large oommittee tout., from the ohooo- 
 
 lato-booths, and from polos. 
 
 At out) ond Hlood two tiny pavilions, 
 unci presently wo saw come out of thorn 
 two rosy-cheeked young women, who had 
 used thorn for dressing-rooms. Tho girls 
 wore dark, knittod waists of hoavy wors- 
 ted, and short knittod skirts, reaching to 
 the knees, to match. Some young women 
 had those of a very heavy woolen cloth. 
 Their arms and their heads wore hare. 
 
 They slowly approached tho line that 
 marked the starting-place, placed one foot 
 on it, looked grimly and with clenched 
 tooth at each other, and at tho signal, 
 rushed oil" There was nothing slow 
 about thorn then. About a hundred 
 young women, some of them from other 
 provinces, had como to compote for the 
 four big prizes olTored by the club. Tho 
 race lasted two days, and tho victor was 
 a seventeen-year-old skipper's daughter. 
 
 The race ended, the band, followed by 
 tho committee and the prize-winners, 
 
154 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 and a large crowd in the rear, marched 
 through the quiet streets. The committee 
 treated the four girls to a fine dinner, 
 and later in the evening hundreds of city 
 and country people attended the grand 
 ball, which lasted until the early morn- 
 ing hours. 
 
 When couples skate, the man leads ; he 
 places his left hand on his back and the 
 woman puts her right hand into his and 
 thus skates behind him. Of course, their 
 strokes have to be of the same length and 
 made simultaneously. Thus the women 
 and girls are sheltered from the cold wind 
 to a great extent. 
 
 Schoolchildren, too, had their races, but 
 I never won a first prize ; just the same, 
 we all had a good time on such a day. 
 
 When I was ten years old, my father 
 took me to Harlingen to see the Zuider 
 Zee. It was my first glimpse of the sea. 
 Ever since I can remember I had a desire 
 to see it, and now I was somewhat disap- 
 pointed, for it looked dreary and forlorn 
 
ON SKATES 155 
 
 and gloomy and we could not see very far 
 because of the fog. The dyke on which 
 we walked was more interesting. Father 
 told me that it was built mostly of logs 
 that had been shipped from Norway. In 
 the harbor, and in the canals intersecting 
 the town were the funniest ships I had 
 ever imagined. Thus far I had seen only 
 canal ships — mere toys — and these looked 
 wonderfully big in comparison. They had 
 queer stems ending in carved and painted 
 figures of mermaids I 
 
 One day, four of us girls and the hired 
 man of the parents of one of us took a 
 trip on skates to the eastern part of our 
 province. There the soil is sandy and 
 unproductive, and consequently the peo- 
 ple are very poor. Many live principally 
 on rye bread and potatoes. Because of 
 the poverty, their minds have become 
 blunted. They are coarse, rough, and 
 often seek their solace in gin. 
 
 We saw many huts about four feet high. 
 They were made of mud, and grass grew 
 
156 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 on the flat roofs. They consisted of one 
 room each and had one small window, 
 and were dug a few feet down into the 
 ground. Such a hut, such a pen, was the 
 habitation of many of the poor wretches. 
 
 Yet these people, in spite of their dis- 
 advantages, in spite of many of them 
 having to exist on dry boiled potatoes 
 dipped in salt some winter months, have 
 an inherent decency which prompts them 
 to keep these huts clean and neat and 
 cozy. 
 
 At another time, our hired man asked 
 my parents permission to take me out for 
 a trip. As I was only a child, the per- 
 mission was granted. "We skated many 
 miles, and on our return trip darkness 
 overtook us while we were crossing the 
 Lake of Sneek. It was blowing hard and 
 the snow was drifting. 
 
 We skated at intervals through a few 
 feet of snow and over a few feet of the 
 shiniest of shiny ice. The path we had to 
 follow was marked off with tree branches. 
 
ON SKATES 157 
 
 It was so dark, however, that we could 
 hardly see them. 
 
 We lost our way. Once I fell, flat on 
 my nose, into a deep pile of snow, my cap 
 falling off and blowing away. The man 
 had a hard time finding and chasing it. 
 Finally we arrived at a village, far from 
 our destination. However, it was there 
 that we regained our bearings. 
 
 At last, very tired, half-frozen, and 
 hungry, we arrived at Sneek. There we 
 entered an inn, appeased our appetite, 
 warmed our hands and feet and rested. 
 By the time we arrived home, it was late 
 indeed. 
 
 Often three or four of us girls would 
 skate to different towns and villages, to 
 watch a race or more often just to see the 
 places. Sometimes as many boys went 
 with us, and we skated in couples. We 
 would leave home as early as nine or ten 
 in the morning, and take several sand- 
 wiches along. We would skate all day, 
 see numerous towns and villages, have 
 
158 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 lots of fun, and at about five or six in the 
 evening we'd be home again, very stiff 
 and tired and happy. 
 
 All along the canals, at regular inter- 
 vals, men were stationed. They had 
 been appointed by their municipalities, 
 to the job of sweeping the ice with a 
 heather broom and keeping it clean. 
 While the skaters passed, they usually 
 dropped a cent. Thus the sweepers made 
 good wages. 
 
 When the thaw had set in, it was great 
 fun to cut the ice with an ax into 
 squares of about three or four feet, and 
 we would run along the width or even 
 the length of a ditch, stepping from 
 " schots," as we called such a block of 
 ice, upon " schots." This had to be done 
 quickly, for the moment you stepped on 
 the schots, down it would go. Often the 
 ice was so soft that an ax was not nec- 
 essary for the making of schotsen. They 
 would break off while we were running 
 over them. In that case they were 
 
ON SKATES 159 
 
 irregular and many of them were very 
 small. This " schotsen loopen," or run- 
 ning over the squares of ice, was a very 
 dangerous amusement. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 1 . EG E N PS AN D A N EC DO V ES 
 
 My father was a good story-teller and 
 enjoyed very much telling as children of 
 
 the amusing happenings he had heard 
 of or seen when he was a child or young- 
 man himself. The following is one of the 
 stories he used to tell us. I shall call it 
 
 Taught by a Dog 
 
 The people of the town of Dokkum 
 were supposed to be very stupid. Once 
 upon a time a number of them were 
 seated in an inn, in a semicircle around 
 the fireplace. It was cold and many 
 turfs had been heaped upon the hearth. 
 The fire was bright and the room warm. 
 
 At last it became too warm for the men. 
 One of them placed a fresh supply of 
 turfs on the burning ones, and this, at 
 first, dimmed the glow considerably. 
 160 
 
LEGENDS AND ANECDOTES 161 
 
 After a while, however, when these, too, 
 had caught fire, it became hotter than he- 
 fore. Therefore, another man added a 
 new supply, and again they felt comfort- 
 able. Their comfort lasted hut a few 
 minutes, though, for now it was getting 
 hotter than ever. 
 
 Again a bunch of turfs was thrown on 
 the dames and once more they felt con- 
 tented. But their happiness was short- 
 lived. In a short while the heat had 
 become almost unbearable. As they 
 knew only one way of lessening it, 
 which was the way they had been prac- 
 tising, and as this appeared to give them 
 but a few moments of respite, with an 
 ever-increasing misery sure to follow, 
 they were at their wits' end what to do. 
 
 Finally one of the men, near whom a 
 dog was lying, noticed that, as the heat 
 was growing more intense, the animal 
 was moving farther away from it. 
 
 Suddenly a light went up in the man's 
 befogged brain. He smiled knowingly. 
 
162 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 After pushing his chair back, he felt to 
 his great relief that the heat no longer 
 annoyed him, and the others followed his 
 example. 
 
 The Farmer and His Ponies 
 Another story father told us is the 
 following : When he was a child there 
 lived near the same village an old farmer 
 who had two ponies of which he was very 
 proud and very fond. They drove him 
 to the market at Sneek on Tuesdays and 
 to Leeuwarden on Fridays. 
 
 One day he heard rumors of people 
 migrating to a far-off country called 
 America, where one lived in plenty and 
 luxury. To get there, he was told, one 
 had to sail for weeks in a large ship across 
 the sea. 
 
 He thought if he were twenty years 
 younger, he would have liked to go there, 
 only he did not take a fancy to water. He 
 had a talk with the old schoolmaster, the 
 oracle of the village, to whom he broached 
 
LEGENDS AND ANECDOTES 163 
 
 the idea of going to America in his car- 
 riage drawn by the two ponies. 
 
 " Why, man," said the teacher, " you 
 could not do that, for you'd have to cross 
 the Atlantic Ocean." 
 
 " I'd drive around it," said the farmer. 
 
 11 You couldn't do that either." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Well, you simply could not. It's 
 too wide." 
 
 " Huh," sneered the old man scorn- 
 fully, " for my two ponies? " 
 
 " Yes, my good man, the sea would be 
 in your way, and besides, there are the 
 mountains ; you couldn't cross them ; 
 they reach as high as the skies." 
 
 " I'd drive around them, too." 
 
 " And impenetrable wildernesses and 
 forbidden deserts." 
 
 "And I'd drive around them. It 
 might take me a long time, but I'd 
 reach America all right with my two 
 ponies." 
 
 No matter what difficulties the school- 
 
164 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 master named, our old farmer firmly be- 
 lieved that his two ponies were able to 
 drive him around any and all of them. 
 
 The German Charlatan 
 When father was a young farmer, he 
 had working for him for several years, 
 during the hay harvest, an old German 
 who was brighter, and better-educated 
 than most men of his class at that time. 
 
 He was also a queer sort of fellow. He 
 would take a pin, mutter a prayer or 
 whatever it was while rubbing his bare 
 leg, and stick the pin into it. Now, this 
 leg was of real flesh and blood and the 
 pin was thick and two inches long. Yet 
 it did not seem to hurt him at all and it 
 never caused even as much as one drop 
 of blood to flow. My father, who was 
 very sceptical, watched him closely, but 
 never could he understand how the man 
 did it. 
 
 One day father suggested : " Try it 
 on me," but the man refused, saying : 
 
LEGENDS AND ANECDOTES 165 
 
 " It is Saint Peter and Saint Paul who 
 are doing this. You don't believe in 
 them, and so they won't do it for you." 
 And that was all father ever could get 
 out of him, and until this day father has 
 been unable to see through the old man's 
 trickery. 
 
 The following is a very old legend : 
 
 The Woman of Stavoren 
 Stavoren, now a dead, or rather, sleepy 
 little town, was once one of the most 
 famous Hansa cities. The Hansa or Han- 
 seatic League was in the Middle Ages an 
 association of the merchants of eighty- 
 five towns in Northern Europe, for mutual 
 safety and the protection of their trade. 
 
 Stavoren lies on the Zuider Zee and its 
 situation for trading with other countries 
 was very favorable. It is said that its 
 merchants grew so rich that they had 
 the stoops in front of their houses made 
 of gold. 
 
166 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 There lived a wealthy widow, whose 
 ships sailed to every port and brought her 
 treasures from all over the then known 
 world. Her riches made her proud and 
 arrogant, and she tried to outdo all the 
 other merchants. 
 
 One day she told one of her captains to 
 go and procure the most precious article 
 he could find. The captain pondered 
 long and seriously. He sailed to differ- 
 ent lands and at last decided upon loading 
 his vessel with the finest wheat he had 
 seen, in a city on the Baltic Sea. 
 
 When, upon his return, his mistress 
 asked him what he had brought home, 
 he showed her the wheat with which the 
 ship was filled. She looked at him with 
 scorn and cried : " Is this the most precious 
 thing you could find? Wheat? Do I have 
 among my captains one so stupid as not 
 to be able to find anything far more val- 
 uable ? Go, throw it overboard, all of it, 
 this minute ! " 
 
 The captain looked at her in astonish- 
 
LEGENDS AND ANECDOTES 167 
 
 ment. " This wheat is the best the 
 world produces," he ventured to say. 
 " If you do not care to keep it, let me 
 give it to the poor. Many could be fed 
 with it. To throw it into the sea might 
 bring punishment on your head and re- 
 duce you to poverty." (In Netherland, 
 to throw away food, even a crust or a 
 few crumbs, is considered one of the 
 greatest sins.) 
 
 At this the widow became very angry. 
 She took a beautiful ring from her 
 fingers, threw it into the sea and said : 
 " As surely as I shall never see this ring 
 again, so surely shall I never want." 
 Then she once more commanded the cap- 
 tain to do as she had bidden, and quail- 
 ing before the anger of the powerful 
 woman, he emptied the contents of the 
 ship into the harbor. 
 
 The following day the widow was to 
 have fish for dinner. While she was 
 ordering her servants about, one of the 
 cooks came running towards her. He 
 
168 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 seemed very excited and had a large fish 
 in his hands. Tremblingly he showed it 
 to her, and what should she find in its 
 stomach? Her ring. At the sight she 
 paled. She thought of her words. That 
 same day she received the news that one 
 of her ships had been wrecked in a storm. 
 In the days and weeks to come similar 
 tidings reached her. 
 
 In a few months every one of her ves- 
 sels had been wrecked and their cargoes 
 lost. She had to sell her beautiful house 
 and costly furniture. And she died in 
 poverty. At the spot where the wheat 
 had been dumped into the harbor is now 
 a shoal which is called Vrouwenzand, 
 meaning woman's sand. On it grows a 
 strange weed resembling wheat except 
 that it never bears fruit. 
 
 The Eccentric Farmer's Wife 
 Now I must tell you about an eccentric 
 farmer's wife who lived near our village. 
 She was wealthy and very peculiar. Her 
 
LEGENDS AND ANECDOTES 169 
 
 best room was cleaned and dusted every 
 week, yet no one but herself and her 
 favorite daughter were allowed to enter 
 for fear of soiling it. One of her sons, at 
 the age of twelve, told the schoolmaster 
 that he had never even peeked into this 
 room. 
 
 Only once, on the occasion of a great 
 celebration, was it used. Then actually 
 guests were allowed to sit in it. She had 
 six rooms besides the kitchen. One 
 of them, during the winter, was used 
 as a living-room and a few others did 
 service as bedrooms. Yet, in the summer 
 time, when the cows were in the meadows 
 and their barns scrubbed and painted, 
 she had a part of the main cow-barn, or a 
 part of the "schuur" partitioned off and 
 this she used as a living-room. 
 
 Each of her daughters was presented 
 with one new dress every year. But this 
 new dress was not worn the first twelve 
 months. No, indeed. For a whole sum- 
 mer and an autumn and a winter and a 
 
170 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 spring it hung in a closet for the mother 
 to look at when she felt like it. During 
 the next year, the girl was permitted to 
 wear it a few times. By the third year, 
 when the seams and the hems had to be 
 let out, she wore it on Sundays, and in 
 the fourth year, to school. 
 
 One day we saw this farmer's wife 
 parade all around her house and yard, 
 dressed up in all her finery. Was she 
 going out ? No, she was not. Was she 
 expecting visitors ? She would not have 
 gone to such trouble for the Queen herself. 
 No, she was airing her clothes. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 BIRTHDAY PARTIES 
 
 When it was anybody's birthday, the 
 whole family was treated to an extra 
 large piece of hard koek with the coffee 
 at ten in the morning. In fact, the piece 
 of koek was a fourth of a whole koek and 
 a whole koek measured at least a yard. 
 It was, however, thin and narrow. If a 
 child, the one whose birthday it was had 
 the piece of koek tied to his arm. 
 
 My birthday being on the ninth of 
 January, on the following Sunday I was 
 usually allowed to have a party. Only 
 girls were invited, about half a dozen, 
 and they arrived early in the afternoon 
 and stayed until eight or nine in the 
 evening. 
 
 Sometimes a couple of boys came to 
 
 171 
 
172 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 fetch their sisters home and stayed for 
 an hour or so. We drank first tea and 
 ate cookies, and later had hot chocolate 
 and three kinds of bread, buns, cookies, 
 rusks, cheese, and candy. We looked at 
 picture-books (children's books were not 
 quite so plentiful then as they are now), 
 pretty prints, sang school songs, gave 
 riddles and solved them, and played va- 
 rious games. 
 
 At one time we decided to give a play in 
 the barn. I had written a little sketch for 
 two, which my girl friend and I studied 
 and rehearsed. I also outlined a couple 
 of other sketches for my younger brother, 
 his chum who was of my age, and my- 
 self. The two boys made the stage and 
 placed a few rows of seats in front of it. 
 We helped them some. We charged a 
 couple of pennies admission, I believe, of 
 the grown-ups. The children, who were 
 the guests at my party, were free, of 
 course. 
 
 Finally, when all was ready, and 
 
BIB TED A Y PAB TIES 173 
 
 the spectators had taken their seats, the 
 curtain was raised and we started. At 
 first all went well. Later came the act 
 where my brother's chum, called Marten, 
 had to creep between the floor of the barn 
 and the planks of the stage. In his 
 hands he held a cat. In the floor of the 
 stage was a false door that the audience 
 was not supposed to be able to see. I 
 was dressed in my mother's hoop-skirt, 
 taken down from the attic for the oc- 
 casion, and over it hung a very wide 
 petticoat mother had also worn when a 
 young girl. In my hand I waved a staff. 
 After much walking back and forth and 
 making a " spiel," I went to the rear of 
 the stage near the box. I lifted it, and 
 holding it up to the audience for exami- 
 nation, I proved to them that it was 
 perfectly empty. 
 
 Then I started to say : " Okus, pokus, 
 knipzak," the three words of mystery of 
 the Dutch jugglers. But before I could 
 say " knipzak," I heard from beneath the 
 
174 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 planks the cry of a frightened boy, the 
 screams of a still more frightened cat, and 
 the next moment pussy darted upon the 
 stage, unceremoniously crossed it as fast as 
 she could, jumped among the audience 
 who were glad to clear the way for her, 
 and disappeared in the recesses of the 
 barn. 
 
 A few seconds later, Marten crawled 
 from beneath the stage, his hands and 
 face scratched and bleeding and he him- 
 self muttering all sorts of imprecations 
 against my favorite cat. 
 
 We were very fond of play-acting. Yet 
 a couple of vaudeville shows, seen at the 
 time of the kermis at Leeuwarden, com- 
 prised the whole extent of my acquaint- 
 ance with real theatres. One winter, in 
 the barn-like shop of a carpenter, this 
 man's son, a mere boy of our age, was 
 kind enough to build a stage for us ; I 
 wrote a little play for four girls, and be- 
 sides, from my book with illustrated songs 
 to be delivered by children, we each 
 
BIB TED A Y BAB TIES 175 
 
 learned a tune and the accompanying 
 words. We dressed up in suitable clothes, 
 charged a couple of cents admission and 
 had a jolly time. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 MY DKEAMS OF THE FUTURE 
 
 At the age of fourteen I quit the vil- 
 lage school. My request that I might at- 
 tend the normal school at Sneek with a 
 view to becoming a teacher was not 
 granted, the principal reason for the re- 
 fusal being that the normal school hours 
 were very irregular and often late at 
 night, which would necessitate my stay- 
 ing over night in Sneek. Besides, it was 
 my parents' desire that I should follow in 
 the footsteps of the many generations of 
 farmers' daughters before me, and that I 
 should do as other farmers' daughters of 
 my village were doing, namely : learn to 
 keep house, to milk cows, to make but- 
 ter, to have a farmer boy for sweetheart 
 and to become a farmer's wife. 
 
 Now it happened that I would have 
 176 
 
MY DREAMS OF THE FUTURE 111 
 
 none of this. But I did not beg or nag 
 or anything of the kind. I had dreams 
 and ambitions. The dreams were mag- 
 nificent, the ambitions gigantic. How I 
 used to enjoy sitting in the grass at the 
 water's edge, thinking of my quiet, un- 
 changing surroundings, of the unevent- 
 ful, monotonous existences of the people 
 among whom I lived. 
 
 The lovelier the day was, the sweeter 
 the birds sang, the stronger I felt the 
 draw and pull of the wonderful, big, 
 beautiful world outside. Why should I 
 live my life as my mother was living 
 hers ? Up at four or half-past each morn- 
 ing. All day making butter, cooking, 
 cleaning, polishing, knitting, with few 
 people to see and fewer books to read. 
 Working, working, working, little respite, 
 little recreation, no variety, and with for 
 greatest pleasure the riding to town in the 
 tilbury, at the side of the husband, the 
 envy of the village women, who had to 
 trudge on foot. 
 
178 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 And the mountains and forests and 
 oceans would forever be unseen by me. 
 Others might enjoy the works of beauty 
 of nature, and the works of beauty of 
 genius, but I was to content myself with 
 a hopeless, endless, deadening longing 
 only. Was I really ? Indeed I was not. 
 Others had been able to fight their way 
 from fettering surroundings and circum- 
 stances, and so could I. 
 
 At one time I decided to become an ex- 
 plorer, like Stanley and Livingstone. I 
 wanted to go to darkest Africa, to the 
 jungles of India. Of course, I was only 
 a child and had to grow up first. But, 
 though I changed my plans occasionally, 
 the mainspring remained fixed firmly 
 and immutably ; I wanted to travel. As 
 we were not wealthy, it would mean that 
 I should have to make my living and the 
 money to travel with at the same time. 
 My parents and older sisters tried to dis- 
 courage me again and again. They told 
 me of the impossibility of my plans ; that, 
 
MY DREAMS OF THE FUTURE 179 
 
 being a child, I could not understand yet 
 what the difficulties were for a young 
 woman roaming alone through the wicked 
 world, but their advice did not in the least 
 waver my resolution. 
 
 Strange to say, often I did not seem to 
 think of myself as a girl, but as a boy. 
 For instance, I liked variety and a life of 
 sameness seemed to me dreadful, and I 
 wanted to get all out of life there was to 
 be gotten out of it. So at one time I 
 thought, when grown up I should try all 
 the trades, be a carpenter, a blacksmith, 
 a cooper, a sailor, a baker, etc., successively 
 and each one for a short time only. 
 
 I read biographies of great men and 
 wanted to emulate them. My hero and 
 example was always a man, never a 
 woman, and this has been so with me all 
 through life. Yet I was not a tomboy, 
 due perhaps to my not being very robust. 
 Neither did I regret my being a girl ; on 
 the contrary, I was proud and glad of it, 
 but I believed myself to be on a perfect 
 
180 WHEN I WAS A GIBL IN HOLLAND 
 
 equality with boys and having the same 
 rights. This was undoubtedly due to my 
 great love for freedom. 
 
 Yes, I did, once upon a time, have a 
 heroine whom I took for example. She 
 was the aunt of one of my chums. I 
 had never had the pleasure of seeing the 
 lady face to face, but I had seen several 
 photographs of her and my little friend 
 told stories of her, which, to my young 
 mind, seemed wonderful. This aunt was 
 a school-teacher in Java, Holland's most 
 valuable colonial possession and one of 
 the beauty-spots of the world. I made 
 up my mind that I wanted to become a 
 teacher or governess and laid my plans 
 accordingly. 
 
 After I left the village school, I re- 
 ceived twice a week lessons in fancy- 
 work from our woman-teacher. Besides, 
 whenever I could snatch a few moments 
 between my household duties I studied 
 French, English, and German without a 
 teacher. 
 
MY DREAMS OF THE FUTURE 181 
 
 In July my father decided to have my 
 sister Anna and me study English from 
 a private teacher. When I was only ten 
 years old, our oldest brother had gone to 
 the United States. My sister, too, was 
 anxious to go. Father said : " If you 
 want to go, very well, but being a girl, 
 you had better study English first, and 
 be prepared." So it came that we two 
 trudged five miles to Sneek, and five 
 miles back, each Wednesday and Satur- 
 day, to receive a two-hour lesson in Eng- 
 lish from a very nice lady-teacher. 
 
 On the twenty-fourth of August our 
 parents celebrated their silver wedding 
 anniversary. We had decorated our im- 
 mense front-room with evergreens and 
 flowers. Many relatives and friends 
 came for dinner and in the evening 
 nearly the whole village. Even the vast 
 room could not contain them, so that the 
 young people separated from the older 
 ones and filled the living-room. Father 
 and mother sat at the head of the long 
 
182 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 table in the front-room, in a bower of 
 green decorated with silver. 
 
 Everybody drank many cups of tea 
 and coffee and "boerejongens," which are 
 cooked raisins steeped in brandy and sea- 
 soned with spices and sweetened with 
 sugar. We ate rusks, several different 
 kinds of bread and meat and cheese, and 
 above all a great many large jelly-tarts, 
 layer-cakes and cakes filled with raisins 
 and currants. 
 
 The young people danced in the barn, 
 and the old folks talked and chattered. 
 All sang and laughed, and some of the 
 young guests added to the general hilar- 
 ity by reciting comical monologues and 
 dialogues. And the fun lasted till four 
 o'clock in the morning. 
 
 My sister and I studied English for 
 about a year. The following August she 
 went to the United States. I did not go 
 with her because I was yet too young, 
 and also because my heart was still set 
 on India. 
 
MY DREAMS OF THE FUTURE 183 
 
 About that time there was brought 
 about a great change in the conducting 
 of our dairy. We discontinued the mak- 
 ing of butter and cheese and thenceforth 
 sold our milk to one of the many cream- 
 eries, that, bright and pretty, nestled 
 among trees and were surrounded by 
 flower-beds, in many villages and towns. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE WEDDING 
 
 For many generations, for hundreds 
 of years, perhaps for more than a thou- 
 sand years, it has been the custom for the 
 young people of the villages, small towns, 
 and farms of our province to get married 
 in the month of May. Those who marry 
 in other months are the exceptions to 
 the rule. 
 
 So it happened that the following 
 spring my oldest sister married in the 
 happy month of May. Two weeks be- 
 fore the date set for the wedding, her 
 flanc6 went to the town-hall and notified 
 the magistrate of his intention to marry 
 my sister, and from that time until after 
 the wedding the two were called bride 
 
 184 
 
THE WEDDING 185 
 
 and groom. After the wedding they were 
 husband and wife. 
 
 The following Sunday, according to 
 ancient custom, the policeman in front 
 of the town-hall, with loud voice, called 
 off their names, saying that they intended 
 to get married, and he asked the good 
 people of the village whether they had 
 any objection. Of course, they had none. 
 The second Sunday the policeman re- 
 peated this. . 
 
 In the meantime, on the first Sun- 
 day, many people in our village and on 
 the farms, in honor of the bride and 
 groom, had the flag out, the Dutch 
 red-white-and-blue. Even the windmills 
 were adorned with flags. We had the 
 big front-room and the living-room deco- 
 rated with greens and flowers. 
 
 Several of the groom's nearest relatives 
 and some of our own came early in the 
 morning for the whole day. In the after- 
 noon and evening many invited friends 
 came. We had tea all afternoon, " boere- 
 
186 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 jongens " and cookies at from about four 
 o'clock until six, after that coffee and 
 11 koek " and then again more " boere- 
 jongens," with all sorts of cakes and 
 tarts, big and small. 
 
 During the night, coffee was made, and 
 there were dishes with different kinds 
 of bread, meat, cheese, and rusks, and 
 those guests who were about to leave 
 first partook of them. The tables were 
 never empty. There was singing and 
 dancing, games were played and some 
 of the guests delivered comical recita- 
 tions. The handles of the cups of the 
 bride and groom had been decorated with 
 ribbons, also the stems of their glasses. 
 
 Every boy and man present smoked an 
 old-fashioned Gouda clay pipe ; at least 
 the first couple of hours ; afterwards it 
 was no longer inconsistent with good 
 form to smoke a cigar. The pipe of the 
 groom was about a yard long — I mean 
 the stem, the bowl being of the ordinary 
 size — and it was all decorated with arti- 
 
THE WEDDING 187 
 
 ficial flowers. He was very careful with 
 it that he might prevent it from break- 
 ing all through the days of merrymak- 
 ing, and save it as a souvenir for the rest 
 of his life. Such a pipe is used only 
 during the wedding celebrations. 
 
 As you know, the Dutch are extremely 
 fond of smoking ; a man who does not 
 smoke is considered effeminate by them. 
 No young girl will accept the attentions 
 of a young man who does not smoke or 
 who turns sick in the effort. 
 
 The following Sunday the groom's par- 
 ents, who lived in another village, in- 
 vited their relatives, the young man's 
 friends, and also all of us. Father, 
 mother, my brother, and we girls all 
 went, and about the same sort of festivi- 
 ties took place there as had been enjoyed 
 at our house. 
 
 But don't think that on the other days, 
 the week-days, life was lived in its usual, 
 quiet way. Far from it. Some days the 
 groom had to spend at our home, for there 
 
188 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 were still more parties, as a number of 
 friends had been unable to come on Sun- 
 day, and therefore came during the week. 
 At all these celebrations the bride wore a 
 pretty, but colored dress, called the bride's 
 dress. Of course, most of the guests 
 brought or sent presents. 
 
 The second Thursday was the wedding 
 day. Now my sister donned her wedding 
 gown, which was black. At about ten 
 in the morning the bridal procession 
 started for our town-hall, in a neigh- 
 boring village belonging to the same 
 "gemeente" or municipality. 
 
 The bride and groom, seated in a til- 
 bury and with their horse decorated with 
 flowers and ribbons, led the procession. 
 My parents, my brother and I in our 
 carriage, followed ; then came the groom's 
 parents and several other relatives in their 
 vehicles. 
 
 Soon after we entered the town-hall, the 
 parents of both bride and groom had to 
 sign a document in token of their consent 
 
THE WEDDING 189 
 
 to the marriage. If the young people 
 had been past thirty years of age, this 
 would not have been necessary. Young 
 men and young women in Netherland 
 are not supposed to be able to choose 
 wisely as long as they are under thirty. 
 Not that they don't choose for themselves; 
 they always do, but being in love they 
 are likely to be blind and therefore are 
 not permitted to take the most serious 
 step in their lives without the consent 
 of their parents. In all other respects 
 young people became of age at twenty- 
 three, at the time I was still at home. 
 After the signing of the papers by the 
 parents, our burgomaster performed the 
 marriage ceremony, which was witnessed 
 from the open doors by an inquisitive 
 village crowd. Neither the ring nor the 
 license was part of the ceremony. Both 
 husband and wife wear a wedding ring ; 
 not a plain band but a pretty ring with 
 diamond or other stone, but these rings 
 are not used in the ceremony. 
 
190 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 To marry secretly is impossible there, 
 and it is just as impossible to deceive the 
 magistrates as to one's age. Such things 
 as elopement and bigamy are in the 
 minds of the people relegated to the 
 Middle Ages. One reads of them as one 
 reads of tales of knights and the attack- 
 ing and defending of castles ; they belong 
 to the romantic past. 
 
 After the ceremony, the whole pro- 
 cession returned to our house. There a 
 big dinner was awaiting us. The rest of 
 the day was spent quietly and early in 
 the evening the young couple went to 
 their new home. 
 
 In Netherland, weddings performed by 
 preachers and priests would not be law- 
 ful. Many do perform such ceremonies, 
 but not until after the civil marriage has 
 taken place, and they are called " benedic- 
 tions " and not weddings. In the larger 
 towns and cities, such benedictions often 
 take place in church right after the wed- 
 ding at the town-hall. In small towns 
 
THE WEDDING 191 
 
 and villages this usually happens the fol- 
 lowing Sunday, but many people, espe- 
 cially where I lived, entirely dispensed 
 with them. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 HOW I CONTINUED MY STUDIES 
 
 Our village church, which was the 
 liberal branch of the Dutch Reformed 
 Church, and similar to the American 
 Unitarian, owned a little free library of 
 fiction and more serious reading. Every 
 Saturday evening, during the winter, the 
 librarian, who was also the sexton, ex- 
 changed the books for the men, women, 
 and children who wished to make use 
 of the library, in the Bible class room, 
 where the books were kept. 
 
 With true liberal spirit, the church 
 granted the same privileges to the people 
 of other faiths as to its own members. 
 Every Saturday I used to get books for 
 my aged grandmother as well as for other 
 members of our family and myself. I 
 remember how I enjoyed reading parts 
 192 
 
HOW I CONTINUED MY STUDIES 193 
 
 of the big volumes of the Dutch edition 
 of " The Earth and Her Peoples." 
 
 I was so fond of reading that quite fre- 
 quently it happened that when my mother 
 had told me to sweep, dust and polish the 
 front-room, I would open a book and start 
 reading "just for a minute." But I would 
 keep on reading, forgetting all about the 
 work, and two or three hours later mother 
 would find me still reading and the work 
 undone. Once, after dinner, I started to 
 read instead of washing the dishes, and 
 by four o'clock the dishes were still dirty. 
 
 I also resumed my studies of French 
 and German, without a teacher, and I took 
 up a little Italian. I studied while I 
 worked, and this is what did me more 
 harm than anything else. It prevented 
 the thorough digestion of my food, and I 
 was a hearty eater in spite of the fact that 
 my stomach was weak and had given me 
 a good deal of trouble from infancy. 
 
 I read mostly French, till ten o'clock 
 at night. I often was so sleepy that I 
 
194 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 had to wet my eyes to keep them open 
 and force my mind to work though it 
 was too weary to comprehend the mean- 
 ing of the words. I had always been a 
 light sleeper, and when in bed it took me 
 about an hour to get asleep. 
 
 Yet the next morning at four I forced 
 myself to wake up, and, half-frozen, would 
 sit up in bed reading by the flickering 
 light of a single candle. 
 
 I contracted rheumatism in my arms 
 and neuralgia in my chest. But I did 
 not complain. Then one day my heart 
 started to flutter, first part of the time it 
 fluttered, later it fluttered all the time ; 
 it never seemed to stop fluttering. Yet I 
 did not complain. To drown the strange, 
 irritating sensation I continually moved 
 my toes while I was seated. I became 
 very thin and pale, but as I did not com- 
 plain, no one grew alarmed. 
 
 One night I suddenly awoke. A loud, 
 grating noise rasped through my chest 
 while my heart pounded violently. 
 
HOW I CONTINUED MY STUDIES 195 
 
 Frightened I jumped out of bed. But I 
 did not call any one. Gradually it sub- 
 sided. The following night the same 
 thing happened. After that, many, 
 many nights I dreaded going to bed. 
 Sleep had become possessed with horror 
 to me. Fortunately, the sensation was 
 never repeated in so strong a form. I 
 concluded that I had heart disease. Now, 
 I had often heard the village people say 
 that heart disease was incurable. There- 
 fore, why should I go to a doctor ? If I 
 complained to my parents, they would 
 undoubtedly put a stop to my reading, 
 and that would never do ! 
 
 By some strange reasoning I figured 
 out that I would have only three more 
 years to live. And those three years I 
 was determined to enjoy, and to enjoy 
 meant to read. I noticed, however, that 
 I could no longer study as easily and 
 quickly as I used to. And to think 
 that people had told me that pale, 
 thin children are always brighter and 
 
196 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 quicker in their studies than healthy 
 children ! Oh, the crime of ignorance ! 
 It was my nervous condition that was at 
 fault ; it made concentration very difficult. 
 I had become morose and irritable. The 
 only pleasures I still enjoyed were skating 
 and dancing, and these had become very 
 trying to my weakened body. 
 
 Yet I hungered for pleasures. I 
 longed to go to theatres and concerts, 
 the opportunities for which were lacking. 
 The simple pleasures of farmers and vil- 
 lagers, such as parties, visits, going to 
 town, the kermis, had lost all attraction 
 and interest for me. The company of my 
 former playmates now bored me. The 
 books I had read, my ambitions, my 
 dreams had estranged me from them. 
 Nearly all their thoughts and their talk 
 centered around finery and boys. There 
 were very few points of common interest 
 left between us. Also, my strong sense 
 of justice and love for freedom rebelled 
 against the domination of woman by man. 
 
HOW I CONTINUED MY STUDIES 197 
 
 Once, when I was taking a walk on a 
 Sunday afternoon with two or three other 
 farmers' daughters, one of them remarked 
 casually : 
 
 "My father and the boys often play 
 cards these long winter evenings after 
 the cows have been fed and milked, but 
 mother and we girls never play, for, as 
 father says, we can always find something 
 to do." 
 
 The way she said this proved that she 
 entirely agreed with her father. And 
 just because her mother and the girls 
 were ingenious enough to be able al- 
 ways to find socks and stockings to darn, 
 coats and trousers and skirts and dresses 
 to mend, or crocheting and knitting to 
 do, recreation was not for them. I, how- 
 ever, believed it to be best not to speak 
 my thoughts. 
 
 When I was seventeen, I passed the 
 entrance examination to the second grade 
 of the " Hooger Burger School " at Sneek 
 for the studies of French, German and 
 
198 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 Dutch literature. This meant that I had 
 a knowledge of French equal to that 
 gained in two school years, and a knowl- 
 edge of German equal to that gained in 
 one school year, and a fair knowledge of 
 Dutch grammar and literature. 
 
 A Hooger Burger School is a secondary 
 school with either three or five grades. 
 Ours had five. The studies taught are 
 Dutch, French, German, English, mathe- 
 matics, history, geography, chemistry, 
 physics, bookkeeping, drawing and a few, 
 others. 
 
 Most of the boys attending take all 
 the studies, which, in the end, entitles 
 them to a diploma. Many of them, later, 
 enter commercial life, others go to the 
 Polytechnical School at Delft, again others 
 enter the Navigation School or the Marine 
 Engineering School. Some obtain posi- 
 tions in the post-offices and again others 
 enter the school for veterinary surgeons. 
 
 Most of the girls attending the Hooger 
 Burger School take up part of the cur- 
 
HOW I CONTINUED MY STUDIES 199 
 
 riculum. Some are normal school stu- 
 dents who some day hope to become 
 teachers. 
 
 Opposite our Higher Burger School, 
 with the canal between, stood the " Gym- 
 nasium " or classical secondary school. 
 There Dutch, French, German, English, 
 Latin, Greek, and to some also Hebrew, 
 were taught, besides many other studies ; 
 and every one of these was compulsory. 
 Few girls attended the school. The boys 
 were too busy to have debating, dramatic, 
 or other clubs. Their studying meant 
 work, hard work. After six years of 
 grind, they, and also a few of the girls, 
 went to the Universities to study medi- 
 cine and surgery, theology, law, higher 
 mathematics, or science. 
 
 Well, six days a week I walked ten 
 miles to school and back, while each day 
 I had from one to three hours' instruc- 
 tion. 
 
 One day, when on my way, I stopped 
 and leisurely returned home. I now told 
 
200 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 my father, for the first time, that my heart 
 so pounded, that my body was so weary, 
 that my muscles so twitched — I, in my 
 ignorance called it the shocking of the 
 arteries — that I could no longer go on. 
 So father told me to see a doctor. The 
 result of the visit was that from now on I 
 walked each day two miles to a station, 
 took the train to Sneek and each after- 
 noon walked home the same distance 
 from the station. I was allowed to con- 
 tinue my studies. 
 
 At the end of a year I passed the ex- 
 amination to the third grade, but it was 
 deemed advisable for me to leave school, 
 as the condition of my health had but 
 little improved. 
 
 A few more years passed by. I spent 
 a great deal of my time outdoors, and I 
 never did any hard work. I could not 
 give up the books altogether. I con- 
 tinued to read English, German, and 
 French. I studied algebra and Latin. 
 With the study of Latin I was assisted 
 
HOW I CONTINUED MY STUDIES 201 
 
 by a boy friend who attended the " Gym- 
 nasium." My sister in America had been 
 sending me the " Youth's Companion " 
 and copies of the " Ladies' Home Jour- 
 nal " and other magazines. She also sent 
 me an illustrated History of the United 
 States, Tennyson's " Idyls of the King," 
 Whittier's Poems and an English-Latin 
 dictionary. 
 
 It was at this time of my life that I 
 gave up the idea of going to India. I was 
 told that it would be impossible for me 
 ever to live in a tropical country. Any- 
 way, my parents were very much op- 
 posed to my going there. I was told that 
 beautiful, unhealthy Java contained the 
 grave of many a Dutchman lured to its 
 shores by promised riches or adventure. 
 
 In one of our daily papers each week I 
 read an interesting article by a Dutch 
 journalist in Paris, and I was now seized 
 with an ambition to become a journalist. 
 As such, I thought, I could see the world 
 and make a living at the same time. I 
 
202 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 wrote a couple of short stories, which 
 were published in a monthly comic maga- 
 zine, and also a few lengthy anecdotes 
 which I had translated from the English. 
 
 My discontent grew steadily. My 
 little world had become a great deal too 
 small for me. The monotony of my life 
 had become very oppressive. 
 
 Finally, after many futile efforts, I 
 found a suitable position, and from my 
 savings was enabled to come to America. 
 I met with much opposition from my 
 parents, mainly because I was not strong. 
 
 When the day arrived for me to go to 
 Amsterdam, where I was to find employ- 
 ment, my folks said they hoped I would 
 be so seasick while crossing the Zuider 
 Zee that I would be scared into refusing 
 the position. Well, I was seasick, but it 
 did not in the least frighten me. I en- 
 joyed the visit to Amsterdam. It was 
 the first time I had ever been in a really 
 big city and on a street-car — and it was a 
 horse-car at that — and I was twenty-one. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 CKOSSING THE OCEAN 
 
 My desire to see more of the world, 
 and thoroughly to familiarize myself 
 with the English language, led me to 
 leave Holland. 
 
 I wanted to see Antwerp, and by ob- 
 servation be able to compare one large 
 city with another. After a short stay in 
 Antwerp I took passage on the steamer 
 Vaderland. 
 
 Most of the passengers were Americans, 
 especially those of the first cabin. I im- 
 mediately took a liking to them. I liked 
 the independence and democratic attitude 
 of the American women, although some- 
 times they shocked my Dutch sense of 
 propriety very much, especially by their 
 carelessness and wastefulness. 
 203 
 
204 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 What puzzled me was that quite a 
 number of first-class passengers spoke 
 incorrect English, that is to say, they 
 made grammatical errors. Why did 
 they say " don't " instead of " does not," 
 " will " when they should have said 
 " shall/' " was" for " were," " I " for " me," 
 and "me" for "I"? Dutch people of 
 wealth and refinement make no such mis- 
 takes in the grammar of their language. 
 
 Another thing that puzzled me was that 
 some first-class women passengers showed 
 by the roughness of their hands that they 
 had done menial work, and there were 
 others who washed their handkerchiefs 
 and other articles of clothing themselves 
 and hung these in their staterooms to 
 dry ; some even blackened their shoes 
 themselves. In Holland, ladies who 
 travel first-class don't wash clothes or 
 blacken shoes. 
 
 I had yet to learn that in America, 
 especially in the West, much menial 
 work is performed by women who, if 
 
GBOSSING THE OCEAN 205 
 
 living in similar circumstances in Hol- 
 land, would keep one or two servants. 
 In Holland, their social standing would 
 simply demand this, even if an insufficient 
 income might make it necessary for them 
 to do injustice to their appetites. 
 
 I loved the ocean ; I loved it in its 
 every mood. And I loved my independ- 
 ence, and the sight of the New World I 
 
 I stayed a few days in New York with 
 friends, and one day we went rowing 
 in Central Park. Miss V. R., who had 
 often rowed on a lake near Rotterdam, 
 her native city, was to handle the oars. 
 Miss H. and I disclaimed any familiarity 
 with them. But Dutch rowboats are dif- 
 ferent from American rowboats and are 
 rowed in a different way. Miss V. R. 
 simply could not manage the boat. It 
 was going forward when, according to 
 her, it should go backward, and back- 
 ward when it should go forward ; it went 
 sideways when it should go straight, and 
 it had a very unpleasant habit of getting 
 
206 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 into collision with other boats. And it 
 threatened continually to topple over. 
 
 Poor Miss V. R., crestfallen and 
 ashamed, suggested that the stout and 
 strong Miss H. take her place and do the 
 rowing, but Miss H., who had been a 
 stewardess on an Atlantic liner, flushed 
 with anger, snapped : "For goodness' sake, 
 sit still and don't try to upset the boat. 
 Do you suppose that after having crossed 
 the ocean each month for years, I want 
 to get drowned in a little bit of water 
 like this?" 
 
 Surely, the lake would have been an 
 ignoble grave for such an old salt. 
 
 In the meantime a crowd was gath- 
 ering on the opposite shore. Some of 
 the young men shouted their advice to 
 us, telling us how we should handle the 
 oars. And Miss V. R. in the excitement 
 forgot the little English she knew and 
 shouted back in Dutch that she was do- 
 ing the best she could. Finally, the 
 boatman came to our rescue. 
 
CROSSING THE OCEAN 207 
 
 We also went to Coney Island and 
 watched the bathers. We were very 
 much shocked at seeing women and also 
 men in their bathing-suits walking on 
 the beach ! In Holland one is driven in 
 a coach drawn by horses into the surf 
 and fetched back in the same manner. 
 The bather never exposes herself to the 
 public. I remember among these Coney 
 Island bathers one particularly fat 
 woman. How often we laughed after- 
 wards at the recollection of her ! 
 
 After enjoying the sights of New York, 
 I took the train for Chicago, stopping at 
 Niagara Falls for one of the happiest days 
 in my life. It was in the latter part of 
 November and the Falls had donned 
 their winter costume. The effect of the 
 sun shining on the frozen spray on the 
 bending tree-branches was marvelous and 
 bewildering. All day I walked around 
 there, all alone. The show-place of East- 
 ern United States was deserted. 
 
 I reached Chicago on Thanksgiving 
 
208 WHEN I WAS A GIRL IN HOLLAND 
 
 Day, and spent three weeks visiting un- 
 cles, aunts, cousins, and old-time friends. 
 
 On New Year's Eve I boarded the 
 Santa Fe* train for San Francisco. In 
 spite of my being car-sick, I enjoyed the 
 trip immensely and especially the big, 
 bleak desert, which held a peculiar fasci- 
 nation for me. Four days later, precisely 
 at six o'clock in the evening, I greeted 
 my sister at the Ferry Building in San 
 Francisco. I immediately took a great 
 liking to this fair city and its climate. 
 
 A few days after my arrival I was en- 
 rolled as a pupil of a prominent business 
 college. 
 
 It has never been my ambition to ac- 
 cumulate money or property, for which 
 characteristic I have been much criti- 
 cized by people to whom happiness 
 means something widely different from 
 what it means to me. Fortunately, their 
 criticism has never done any harm, as I 
 have not permitted it to interfere with 
 my pursuit of what constitutes my par- 
 
GOING WEST 209 
 
 ticular notion of happiness, to wit : the 
 humble acquisition of a little knowledge 
 and the enjoyment of the beautiful in 
 nature and all lines of art. 
 
 I have been in many places and 
 localities and have found the greatest 
 contentment where I can hear the 
 thunder of the ocean's mighty waves, 
 where the flowers always bloom, and 
 where I can wander through mountains 
 and hills and forests. That is why I 
 love California. 
 
 THE END 
 
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