ly object, and the aanspreker is continually hurrying by; but
where are the dead? The cemeteries are minute, and the churches have
no churchyards. Of Death, however, when he comes the nation is very
proud. The mourning customs are severe and enduring. No expense is
spared in spreading the interesting tidings. It is for this purpose
that the aanspreker flourishes in his importance and pomp. Draped
heavily in black, from house to house he moves, wherever the slightest
ties of personal or business acquaintanceship exist, and announces
his news. A lady of Hilversum tells me that she was once formally the
recipient of the message, "Please, ma'am, the baker's compliments,
and he's dead," the time and place of the interment following. I said
draped in black, but the aanspreker is not so monotonous an official as
that. He has his subtleties, his nuances. If the deceased is a child,
he adds a white rosette; if a bachelor or a maid, he intimates the
fact by degrees of trimming.

The aanspreker was once occasionally assisted by the huilebalk, but I
am afraid his day is over. The huilebalk accompanied the aansprekers
from house to house and wept on the completion of their sad message. He
wore a wide-awake hat with a very large brim and a long-tailed coat. If
properly paid, says my informant, real tears coursed down his cheeks;
in any case his presence was a luxury possible only to the rich.

The aanspreker is called in also at the other end of life. Assuming
a more jocund air, he trips from house to house announcing little
strangers.

That the Dutch are a healthy people one might gather also from the
character of their druggists. In this country, even in very remote
towns, one may reveal one's symptoms to a chemist or his assistant
feeling certain that he will know more or less what to prescribe. But
in Holland the chemists are often young women, who preside over shops
in which one cannot repose any confidence. One likes a chemist's shop
at least to look as if it contained reasonable remedies. These do
not. Either our shops contain too many drugs or these too few. The
chemist's sign, a large comic head with its mouth wide open (known
as the gaper), is also subversive of confidence. A chemist's shop is
no place for jokes. In Holland one must in short do as the Dutch do,
and remain well.

Rotterdam's first claim to consideration, apart from its commercial
importance, is that it gave birth to Erasmus, a bronze statue
of whom stan