ll Mall, no Rotten Row. There
is no Bond Street or Rue de la Paix, for this is a country where
money tries to procure money's worth, a country of essentials. Nor
has Holland a Lord's or an Oval, Epsom Downs or Hurlingham.

Perhaps the quickest way to visualise the differences of nations
is to imagine them exchanging countries. If the English were to
move to Holland the whole face of the land would immediately be
changed. In summer the flat meadows near the towns, now given up to
cows and plovers, would be dotted with cricketers; in winter with
football-players. Outriggers and canoes, punts and house-boats, would
break out on the canals. In the villages such strange phenomena as
idle gentlemen in knickerbockers and idle ladies with parasols would
suddenly appear.

To continue the list of changes (but not for too long) the trains
would begin to be late; from the waiting-rooms all free newspapers
would be stolen; churches would be made more comfortable; hundreds
of newspapers would exist where now only a handful are sufficient;
the hour of breakfast would be later; business would begin later;
drunken men would be seen in the streets, dirt in the cottages.

If the Dutch came to England the converse would happen. The athletic
grounds would become pasture land; the dirt of our slums and the
gentry of our villages would alike vanish; Westminster Abbey would
be whitewashed; and ... But I have said enough.

It must not be thought that the Dutch play no games. As a matter
of fact they were playing golf, as old pictures tell, before it had
found its way to England at all; and there are now many golf clubs in
Holland. The Dutch are excellent also at lawn tennis; and I saw the
youth of Franeker very busy in a curious variety of rounders. There
are horse-racing meetings and trotting competitions too. But the
nation is not naturally athletic or sporting. It does not even walk
except on business.

In winter, however, the Dutch are completely transformed. No sooner
does the ice bear than the whole people begin to glide, and swirl,
and live their lives to the poetry of motion. The canals then
become the real streets of Amsterdam. A Dutch lady--a mother and
a grandmother--threw up her hands as she told me about the skating
parties to the Zuyder Zee. The skate, it seems, is as much the enemy
of the chaperon as the bicycle, although its reign is briefer. Upon
this subject I am personally ignorant, but I take that gesture of
alarm as