hey are, the chairs seem to add to
the restlessness of the seething mass. What a visitor from Mars would
make of it is a mystery; but he could hardly fail to connect chair
and occupant. Here, he would say, is surely the abode of giant snails!

On a windy day the chairs must be of great use; but in heat they
seem to me too vertical and too hard. One must, however, either sit
in them or lie upon sand. There is not a pebble on the whole coast:
indeed there is not a pebble in Holland. Life after lying upon sand
can become to some of us a burden almost too difficult to bear;
but the Dutch holiday-maker does not seem to find it so. As for the
children, they are truly in Paradise. There can be no sand better
to dig in than that of Scheveningen; and they dig in it all day. A
favourite game seems to be to surround the parental sentry-boxes with
a fosse. Every family has its castle, and every castle its moat.

I have been twice to Scheveningen, and on each occasion I acquired
beneath its glittering magnitude a sense of depression. That leaven
of tenderness which every collection of human beings must have was
harder to find at Scheveningen than anywhere in Holland--everything
was so ordered, so organised, for pleasure, pleasure at any price,
pleasure almost at the point of the bayonet.

But on the second occasion one little incident saved the day--an
encounter with a strolling bird-fancier who dealt in Black-Headed
Mannikins. Two of these tiny brisk birds, in their Quaker black and
brown, sat upon his cane to attract purchasers. They fluttered to his
finger, perched on his hat, simulated death in the palm of his hand,
and went through other evolutions with the speed of thought and the
bright spontaneous alacrity possible only to a small loyal bird. These,
however, were not for sale: these were decoys; the saleable birds lay,
packed far too close, in little wooden boxes in the man's bag. And
Scheveningen to me means no longer a mile of palaces, no longer a
"hot huddle of humanity" on the sand among myriad sentry-boxes:
its symbol is just two Black-Headed Mannikins.

From the Curhaus it is better to return to the Hague by electric tram
along the new road. Save for passing a field where the fishwives of
Scheveningen in their blue shawls spread and mend their nets, this
road is dull and suburban; but from it, when the light is failing,
a view of Scheveningen's domes and spires may be gained which,
softened and made mysterious by t