[Illustration: An Overyssel Farmhouse.]

A village clergyman is an important person, for he is held in high honour
by his parishioners, and his larder is always well stocked free of cost.
His income also is relatively larger than that of a town pastor, for
besides his fixed salary he reaps a nice little revenue from the pastures
belonging to the 'Pastorie,' which he lets out to farmers. The
schoolmaster, on the contrary, is treated with but little consideration,
and he often feels decidedly like a fish out of water, for though
belonging by birth to the labouring class, he is too well educated to
associate with his former companions and yet not sufficiently refined to
move in the village 'society,' besides which he would not be able to
return hospitality, as his salary only amounts to from L40 to L60 a year,
and nowhere is the principle of reciprocity more observed than in Dutch
hospitality in certain classes. In very small villages many offices are
combined in one person, and so we find a prominent inhabitant blacksmith,
painter, and carpenter, while the baker's shop is a kind of universal
provider for the villagers' simple wants. The butcher is the only person
who is the man of one occupation, though he, too, goes round to the
neighbouring farms to help in the slaughtering of the cattle, and
sometimes lends a hand in the salting and storing of the meat.

The farmers live just outside the village, and only come there when they
go to the 'Raad' or on Saturday evenings when the week's work is done.
They then visit the barber before meeting at the _cafe_ for their weekly
game of billiards. Every resident of the village also betakes himself to
his 'club' or 'Societeit' on Saturday night, and just as the 'Mindere
man,' i.e. farmers and labourers, have their games and discuss their
farms, their cattle, and the price of hay or corn, so, too, the