asse, returig," I said to the ticket office girl.

"Third class return?" she asked with a smile and gave me the ticket.

I was indignant.

It is the most humiliating thing in the world to ask a question in
Dutch and to be answered in English. In Rotterdam I had stopped a
seafaring looking man and tried to ask him in Dutch what was the way to
the Hotel de France. He listened patiently while I struggled with the
language; then he spat on my boot.

"Hotel de France?" he replied in broad Cockney, "damned if I know."

On the way to Amsterdam I got into a carriage full of farmers and one
of them made a remark to me. I shook my head.

"Engelissman?" he said.

I nodded.

Then those men began to talk about Engelissmen, and they talked and
laughed all the way to Amsterdam. Every now and then one of them would
jerk his thumb in my direction. It was a trying journey.

Arrived in Amsterdam I made for the Rijks Museum. At the door a
seedy-looking man touched me on the arm.

"Guide, sir?"

"No thank you."

"Two hundred rooms, sir! Official guide."

"No thank you."

He kept pace with me, and in a weak moment I inquired his charge. It
was three guilden (five shillings), and I saw at once that the dirty
dog had won, for he took on an air of possession.

"Righto," I said resignedly, and he led me into the building.

He began his tiresome patter.

"Thees picture was painted in 1547; beautiful ees eet not? Wonderful
arteest!"

I sighed.

"Take me to the Rembrandts," I said.

I cannot describe this incident. I hated the beast because I had been
so weak as to accept his services. The beauty of Rembrandt and Franz
Hals was lost on me; all I could see was the dirty face of that guide.
Rembrandt's _Night Watch_ made me forget the creature for a moment, but
when he began to describe it I fled in horror. We finished up in the
modern section, and as I looked at van Gogh and Cezanne and Whistler's
_Effie Deans_ his squeaky voice kept up a running commentary. I rushed
from the building after a ten minutes' tour, paid the worm his three
guilden . . . and then went back and enjoyed the gallery. But I nearly
committed murder in the Rijks Museum that day. If ever I am hanged it
will be for murdering an official guide. This particular specimen
spoiled my visit to Amsterdam. I could not get away from the thought
of my weakness, and I fled the city.

In the train going back to Amersfoort a genial Dutchman made a