olding the Delft, and
between the squat windows--are pinned, tacked, pasted and hung--singly
and in groups--sketches in oil, pastel, water color, pencil and
charcoal, many without frames and most of them bearing the signature of
some poor, stranded painter, preceded by the suggestive line, "To my
dear friend, the landlord"--silent reminders all of a small cash
balance which circumstances quite beyond their control had prevented
their liquidating at the precise hour of their departure.

Mynheer had bowed and smiled as each new contribution was handed him
and straightway had found a hammer and a nail and up it went beside its
fellows. He never made objection: the more the merrier. The ice wind
would soon blow across the Maas from Papendrecht, the tall grasses in
the marshes turn pale with fright, and the lace-frost with busy fingers
pattern the tiny panes, and then Johann would pack the kits one after
another, and the last good-byes take place. But the sketches would
remain. Oh! yes, the sketches would remain and tell the story of the
summer and every night new mugs would be filled around the coal-fire,
and new pipes lighted--mugs and pipes of the TOWNSPEOPLE this time, who
came to feast their eyes,--and, although the summer was gone, the long
winter would still be his. No, Mynheer never objected!

And this simple form of settlement--a note of hand (in color), payable
in yearly patronage--has not been confined to modern times. Many an inn
owes its survival to a square of canvas--the head of a child, a copper
pot, or stretch of dune; and more than one collector now boasts of a
masterpiece which had hung for years on some taproom wall, a sure but
silent witness of the poverty of a Franz Hals, Wouverman or Van der
Helst.

Each year had brought new additions to the impecunious group about
Mynheer's table.

Dear old Marny, with his big boiler amidships, his round, sunburned
face shaded by a wide-brimmed, slouch hat--the one he wore when he
lived with the Sioux Indians--loose red tie tossed over one shoulder,
and rusty velveteen coat, was an old habitue. And so was dry, crusty
Malone, "the man from Dublin," rough outside as a potato and white
inside as its meal. And so, too, was Stebbins, the silent man of the
party, and the only listener in the group. All these came with the
earliest birds and stayed until the boys got out their skates.

But there were others this year who were new. Pudfut, the Englishman,
first--in from