I will not repeat what many have written and some Dutchmen affirm,
that in Holland cleanliness of the skin is generally neglected--that
the women are dirty, and that the legs of the tables are cleaner than
those of the citizens. But it is certain the cleanliness of inanimate
objects is infinitely greater than personal cleanliness, and the
deficiency in the last respect is made more apparent by excellence in
the first. In an Italian school perhaps those boys might have seemed
clean, but, comparing them with the marvellous purity of their
surroundings, and reflecting that they were the children of the very
women who take half a day to wash the doors and shutters, they seemed
to me, and in fact were, rather dirty. In some schools in Switzerland
there are lavatories where the boys are obliged to wash upon entering
and leaving the school. I should have been pleased to see such
lavatories in the Dutch schools too; then all would have been perfect.

I said "that poor master," but I found out afterward that he had a salary
of more than two thousand two hundred francs and an apartment in a nice
house in the village. In Holland the masters of elementary schools--the
principals, that is, for there are assistant masters--never receive less
than eight hundred francs a year. This the minimum that the commune can
legally give. No commune keeps to this sum, and some masters have the same
salaries as our university professors. It is true that it costs more to
live in Holland than in Italy, but it is also true that the salaries which
seem large to us are there considered small, and yet they propose to
increase them. It must also be considered that, owing to the difference of
national character, the Dutch masters are not obliged to expend as much of
their breath, their patience, and good-humor as are our Italian masters,
which is a consideration if it be true that health counts for something.

From Naaldwijk we went toward the coast. On the road my courteous
companion explained to me clearly the point which the question of
instruction has reached in Holland. In Latin countries persons when
questioned by a stranger answer him with a view toward airing their
knowledge and showing their conversational powers. In Holland they try
rather to make you understand the subject, and if you do not comprehend
directly, they impress it upon you until it is fixed in your mind as
clearly and as well as it is in their own.

The question of instructio