The Dutchman himself never knows.

"You've plenty of time," he says

"But the train goes at ten," you say; "the station is a mile away,
and it is now half-past nine."

"Yes, but that means ten-twenty," he answers, "you have nearly an
hour."

Five minutes later he taps you on the shoulder.

"My mistake, it's twenty to ten. I was thinking it was the other way
about."

Another argues with him that his first idea was right. They work it
out by scientific methods. Meanwhile you have dived into a cab. The
result is always the same: you are either forty minutes too soon, or
you have missed the train by twenty minutes. A Dutch platform is
always crowded with women explaining volubly to their husbands either
that there was not any need to have hurried, or else that the thing
would have been to have started half an hour before they did, the man
in both cases being, of course, to blame. The men walk up and down
and swear.

The idea has been suggested that the railway time and the town time
should be made to conform. The argument against the idea is that if
it were carried out there would be nothing left to put the Dutchman
out and worry him.