as succeeded, and though one may
still in that city at certain seasons eat wafelen and poffertjes,
the old glories have departed, just as they have departed from so
many English towns which once broke loose for a few nights every
year. Even Barnet Fair is not what it was.

Noise seems to be the principal objection. Personally, I never saw
any drunkenness; and there is so little real revelry that one turns
one's back on the naphtha lamps in this town and that, in Leyden and
the Hoorn, Apeldoorn and Middelburg, with the sad conviction that the
times are out of joint, and that Teniers and Ostade and Brouwer, were
they reborn to-day, would probably either have to take to painting
Christmas supplements or earn their living at a reputable trade. It
is not that the Dutch no longer drink, but that they now do it with
more privacy.

The travelling temples reserved for the honour of poffertjes and
wafelen are the most noticeable features of any Kermis. They are
divided, quite like restaurants, into little cubicles for separate
parties. Flowers and ferns make them gay; the waiters may even wear
evening dress, but this is a refinement which would have annoyed Jan
Steen; on the tables is white American cloth; and curtains of coloured
material and muslin, with bright ribbons, add to the vivacity of the
occasion. To eat poffertjes and wafelen is no light matter: one must
regard it as a ritual.

Poffertjes come first--these are little round pancakey blobs, twisted
and covered with butter and sugar. Then the wafelen, which are
oblong wafers stamped in a mould and also buttered and sugared. You
eat twenty-four poffertjes and two wafelen: that is, at the first
onset. Afterwards, as many more as you wish. Lager beer is drunk with
them. Some prefer Frambozen lemonade.

To eat them is a duty; to see them cooked is a joy. I have watched
the cooks almost for hours. The poffertjes are made by hundreds at
once, in a tray indented with little hollows over a fire. The cook
is continually busy in twisting the little dabs of paste into the
hollows and removing those that are ready. The wafelen are baked in
iron moulds (there is one in Jan Steen's "Oyster Feast") laid on
a rack in the fire. The cook has eight moulds in working order at
once. When the eighth is filled from the pail of batter at his side,
the first is done; and so on, ceaselessly, all day and half the night,
like a natural law.

A woman stands by to spread butter and sugar, and