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se we were below the sea level here, but one cannot credit the old story about the boy who plugged the dyke with his thumb, thereby saving the whole country. The dykes are many feet high and as the foundation is composed of heavy black stones, then layers of great red bricks and tiles, and finally turf and large willow branches interlaced most cunningly like giant basket work, such a story is impossible. My _vis a vis_, all the while regarding me unwinkingly, overheard me speak to A--, in English. Then he slowly took the stogie from his mouth and ejaculated, "_Ach--Engelsch!--Do it well met you?_" I replied that it certainly did. "_And met Madame?_" I nodded. "_Alst' u blieft mynheer--sir,_" he said. Then he changed his seat and thereafter related to the others that he had conversed with the strangers, who were English, and were traveling for pleasure, being _enormously rich_. I think thereafter he enjoyed the reputation of being an accomplished linguist. So, pleasantly did we amble along the narrow little steam tramway through luxurious green fields and smiling fertile landscape of the Flemish littoral in our well rewarded search for the quaint and the unusual. The Gothic Town Hall, a remarkable construction on the Grand' Place, and erected 1526, has been restored with a great amount of good taste in recent years, and the statues on its facade have been replaced with such skill that one is not conscious of modern work. The great Hall of the Magistrates on the ground floor, with its magnificent furniture, and the admirable modern mural paintings by the Flemish artists Guffens and Severts (1875) was worth a journey to see. The most noteworthy of these paintings represented the "Departure of Baldwin IX," Count of Flanders, at the beginning of the Fourth Crusade in 1202, and the "Consultation of the Flemish, before the great Battle of the Spurs" in 1302. In this chamber is a remarkable Renaissance mantelpiece, which is embellished with the arms of the Allied Towns of Bruges and Ghent, between which are the standard bearers of the doughty Knights of Courtrai, and two statues of the Archduke Albert and his Lady, all surrounding a statue of the Holy Virgin. On the upper floor is the Council Chamber, in which is another mantelpiece hardly less ornate and interesting, and executed in what may be called the "flamboyant" manner in rich polychrome. It is dated 1527 and was designed by (one of the) Kelderm
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