Chapter I

National Characteristics



There is in human affairs a reason for everything we see, although not
always reason in everything. It is the part of the historian to seek in
the archives of a nation the reasons for the facts of common experience
and observation, it is the part of the philosopher to moralize upon
antecedent causes and present results. Neither of these positions is taken
up by the author of this little book. He merely, as a rule, gives the
picture of Dutch life now to be seen in the Netherlands, and in all things
tries to be scrupulously fair to a people renowned for their kindness and
courtesy to the stranger in their midst.

And this strikes one first about Holland--that everything, except the old
Parish Churches, the Town Halls, the dykes and the trees, is in
miniature. The cities are not populous, the houses are not large, the
canals are not wide, and one can go from the most northern point in the
country to the most southern, or from the extreme east to the extreme
west, in a single day, and, if it be a summer's day, in _day-light_,
while from the top of the tower of the Cathedral at Utrecht one can look
over a large part of the land.

[Illustration: Types of Zeeland Women.]