real character of the inhabitants. Yet it seemed to be a deserted
village, a place of the dead rather than of the living, an ornamental
graveyard. The liveliness of social beings was absent and was even
inconsistent with the superlative neatness of all around us. It was a
best parlor out-of-doors, where the gayety of frolicking children would
derange the set order of the furniture, or an accidental touch of a
sacrilegious foot might scratch the polish of a fresh-varnished fence, or
flatten down the nap of the green carpet of grass, every blade of which
is trained to grow exactly so.

"The grounds and gardens of a Mr. Vander Beck were, indeed, a curiosity
from the strange mixture of the useful with the ridiculously ornamental.
Here were the beautiful banks of a lake and Nature's embellishment of
reeds and water plants, which, for a wonder, were left to grow in their
native luxuriance, and in the midst a huge pasteboard or wooden swan, and
a wooden mermaid of tasteless proportions blowing from a conchshell. In
another part was a cottage with puppets the size of life moving by
clock-work; a peasant smoking and turning a reel to wind off the thread
which his 'goed vrow' is spinning upon a wheel, while a most sheep-like
dog is made to open his mouth and to bark--a dog which is, doubtless, the
progenitor of all the barking, toy-shop dogs of the world. Directly in
the vicinity is a beautiful grapery, with the richest clusters of grapes
literally covering the top, sides and walls of the greenhouse, which
stands in the midst of a garden, gay with dahlias and amaranths and every
variety of flowers, with delicious fruits thickly studding the
well-trained trees. Everything, however, was cut up into miniature
landscapes; little bridges and little temples adorned little canals and
little mounds, miniature representations of streams and bills.

"We visited the residence of the burgomaster. He was away and his
servants permitted us to see the house. It was cleaning-day. Everything
in the house was in keeping with the character of the village. But the
kitchen! how shall I describe it? The polished marble floor, the dressers
with glass doors like a bookcase, to keep the least particle of dust from
the bright-polished utensils of brass and copper. The varnished mahogany
handle of the brass spigot, lest the moisture of the hand in turning it
should soil its polish, and, will you believe it, the very pothooks as
well as the cranes (for ther