is still a very rapid wheeled ship at Zandvoort.

But the record of Howell's other wonder is visible still. He continues:
"That wonder of _Nature_ is a Church-monument, where an Earl and
a Lady are engraven with 365 children about them, which were all
delivered at one birth; they were half male, half female; the two
Basons in which they were Christened hang still in the Church, and the
Bishop's Name who did it; and the story of this Miracle, with the year
and the day of the month mentioned, which is not yet 200 years ago;
and the story is this: That the Countess walking about her door after
dinner, there came a Begger-woman with two Children upon her back to
beg alms, the Countess asking whether those children were her own,
she answer'd, she had them both at one birth, and by one Father, who
was her husband. The Countess would not only not give her any alms,
but reviled her bitterly, saying, it was impossible for one man to
get two children at once. The Begger-woman being thus provok'd with
ill words, and without alms, fell to imprecations, that it should
please God to show His judgment upon her, and that she might bear at
one birth as many children as there be days in the year, which she
did before the same year's end, having never born child before."

The legend was naturally popular in a land of large families, and it
was certainly credited without any reservation for many years. In
England the rabbit-breeding woman of Dorking had her adherents
too. What the beggar really wished for the Dutch lady was as many
children at one birth as there were days in the year in which the
conversation occurred--namely three, for the encounter was on January
3rd. Or so I have somewhere read. But it is more amusing to believe in
the greater number, especially as a Dutch author has put it on record
that he saw the children with his own eyes. They were of the size
of shrimps, and were baptised either singly or collectively by Guy,
Bishop of Utrecht. All the boys were named John and all the girls
Elizabeth, They died the same day.

Thomas Coryate of the _Crudities_, who also tells the tale, believed
it implicitly. "This strange history," he says, "will seem incredible
(I suppose) to all readers. But it is so absolutely and undoubtedly
true as nothing in the world more."

And here, hand in hand with Veritas, we leave The Hague.

Chapter VI

Scheveningen and Katwyk

The Dutch heaven--Huyghens' road--Sorgh Vliet's
buil