appearance, character, and habits seem like a foreign tribe in
comparison with the people of their own country. They dwell but two
miles from a large city, and yet preserve the manners of a primitive
people that has always lived in isolation. As they were centuries ago,
so are they now. No one leaves their village, and no one who is not a
native ever enters it: they intermarry, they speak a language of their
own, they all dress in the same style and in the same colors, as did
their fathers' fathers. At the time of the fishing only the women and
children remain in the village; the men all go to sea. They carry
their Bibles with them on their departure. On board they neither drink
nor swear nor laugh. When the stormy seas toss their little boats on
the crests of the waves, they close all the apertures and await death
with resignation. At the same moment their wives are singing psalms,
shut in their cottages rocked by the wind and beaten by the rain.
Those little dwellings, which have witnessed so many mortal griefs,
which have heard the sobs of so many widows, which have seen the
sacred joys of happy return and the disconsolate departure of many
husbands, with their cleanliness, their white curtains, with the
clothes and shirts of the sailors hanging at the windows,--tell of the
free and dignified poverty of their inmates. No vagabonds nor fallen
women come out of these homes; no inhabitant of Scheveningen has ever
deserted the sea, and none of her daughters has ever refused the hand
of a sailor. Both men and women show by their carriage and the
expression of their faces a serious dignity that commands respect.
They greet you without bending their heads, and look you in the face
as much as to say, "We have no need of any one."

In this little village there are two schools, and it is a curious
sight to see a swarm of fair-haired children with slates under their
arms and pencils in their hands disperse at certain hours among these
poverty-stricken streets.

Scheveningen is not only a village famous for the originality of its
inhabitants which all foreigners visit and all artists paint. There
are, besides, two great bathing establishments, where English,
Russians, Germans, and Danes meet in the summer. The flower of the
Northern aristocracy, princes and ministers, indeed half the Almanach
de Gotha, come here; then there are balls, fantastic illuminations,
and fireworks on the sea. The two establishments are placed on the