survival of an older order of things. When they disappear another of the
few picturesque heritages of mediaeval life will have been removecl from
the hurly-burly and fierce competition of modern existence.




Chapter VII

A Dutch Village



Villages in Holland are towns in miniature, for the simple reason that
when you have a marsh to live in you drain a part of it and build on that
part, and so build in streets, and do not form a village as in England, by
houses dotted here and there round a green or down leafy lanes. The
village green in Holland is the village street or square in front of the
church or 'Raadhuis.' Here the children play, for you cannot play in a
swamp, and that is what polder land is seven months out of the year, and
so we find that a Dutch village in most parts of the country is a town in
miniature.

[Illustration: An Overyssel Farmhouse.]

Thirty years ago the 'Raadhuis' would have been the village inn, barber's
shop, and the principal hotel all rolled into one, and the innkeeper, as a
natural consequence, the wealthiest man in the neighbourhood. The farmers
would have sat at the 'Raad,' i.e. the Village Council, with their caps
over their eyes, long Gouda pipes in their mouths, and a 'Glaasje Klare'