more wonderful, for every day increases the marvel of its not
being washed away by the sea. Its cities have grown, and some of
its peculiarities have been washed away by contact with other
nations; but it is Holland still, and always will be--full of
oddity, courage and industry--the pluckiest little country on
earth. I shall not tell you in this letter of its customs, its
cities, its palaces, churches, picture galleries and museums--for
these are described in the story--except to say that they are
here still, just the same, in this good year 1873, for I have
seen them nearly all within a week.

Today an American boy and I, seeing some children enter an old
house in the business part of Amsterdam, followed them in--and
what do you think we found? An old woman, here in the middle of
summer, selling hot water and fire! She makes her living by it.
All day long she sits tending her great fires of peat and keeping
the shining copper tanks above them filled with water. The
children who come and go carry away in a curious stone pail their
kettle of boiling water and their blocks of burning peat. For
these they give her a Dutch cent, which is worth less than half
of one of ours. In this way persons who cannot afford to keep a
fire burning in hot weather may yet have their cup of tea or
coffee and bit of boiled fish and potato.

After leaving the old fire woman, who nodded a pleasant good-bye
to us, and willingly put our stivers in her great outside pocket,
we drove through the streets enjoying the singular sights of a
public washing day. Yes, in certain quarters of the city, away
from the canals, the streets were lively with washerwomen hard at
work. Hundreds of them in clumsy wooden shoes, with their