ontroversies and private discussions,
however violent, personal insults are very rare, and in parliamentary
battles, which are sometimes very vigorous, the deputies are often
exceedingly impertinent, but they always speak calmly and without
clamor. But this impertinence consists in the fact rather than in the
word, and wounds in silence.

In the conversations at the club I was astonished at first to note
that no one spoke for the pleasure of speaking. When any one opened
his mouth it was to ask a question or to tell a piece of news or to
make an observation. That art of making a period of every idea, a
story of every fact, a question of every trifle, in which Italians,
French, and Spaniards are masters, is here totally unknown. Dutch
conversation is not an exchange of sounds, but a commerce of facts,
and nobody makes the least effort to appear learned, eloquent, or
witty. In all the time I was at the Hague I remember hearing only one
witticism, and that from a deputy, who speaking to me of the alliance
of the ancient Batavians with the Romans, said, "We have always been
the friends of constituted authority." Yet the Dutch language lends
itself to puns: in proof of this there is the incident of a pretty
foreign lady who asked a young boatman of the _trekschuit_ for a
cushion, and not pronouncing the word well, instead of cushion said
kiss, which in Dutch sounds almost the same; and she scarcely had time
to explain the mistake, for the boatman had already wiped his mouth
with the back of his hand. I had read that the Dutch are avaricious
and selfish, and that they have a habit of boring people with long
accounts of their ailments, but as I studied the Dutch character I
came to see that these charges are untrue. On the contrary, they laugh
at the Germans for their complaining disposition. To sustain the
charge of avarice somebody has brought forward the very incredible
statement that during a naval battle with the English the officers of
the Dutch fleet boarded the vessels of the enemy, who had used all
their ammunition, sold them balls and powder at exorbitant prices,
after which they continued the battle. But to contradict this
accusation there is the fact of their comfortable life, of their rich
houses, of the large sums of money spent in books and pictures, and
still more of the widespread works of charity, in which the Dutch
people certainly stand first in Europe. These philanthropic works are
not official nor do the