ard about the
bridge?'" And sure enough, when we reached the scene of the accident, in
our after-dinner walk through the city, quite a crowd was collected to
watch the passage of a temporary ferry-boat, the simplest contrivance
imaginable, only an old barge pulled back and forth by ropes. Still
later we found the entrance to a narrow street choked with people,
though nothing more unusual seemed to be taking place than the bringing
out of a table and a few chairs.

Upon the outskirts of the city are pleasant tea-gardens, often attached
to club-rooms, where concerts are held Sunday evenings, attended by the
upper classes. We walked through one, over the pebbled paths, and among
the deserted tables, and then returned to see more of the town. It was
Saturday night. All the little girls upon the street had their locks
twisted up in papers so tight and fast that they could shut neither eyes
nor mouth, but seemed to be in a continual state of wonderment. All
their mothers were down upon their hands and knees, scrubbing the
doorsteps and sidewalk, in preparation for the Sabbath. The streets were
dirty and uninviting with a few exceptions, yet hardly more so than
could be expected, when you remember that nearly the whole city is a
line of wharves; but we felt no disposition to walk through it in our
slippers, as the guide book in praising its cleanliness, says you may.
What an advantage it would be to the world if the compilers of
guide-books would only visit the places they describe so graphically! We
spent a quiet Sabbath here--the fourth of July--with not so much as a
torpedo to disturb its serenity or mark the day, attending church at the
English chapel, and joining in the responses led by a clear soprano
voice behind us, which we had some desire to locate; but when we turned,
at the conclusion of the service, there was only a row of horrible
chignons to be seen, to none of which, I am sure, the voice belonged.

There is nothing to be seen in Rotterdam but its shipping. One great,
bare church we did visit--"the Lord's barn;" for these cathedrals,
stripped of altar, and image, and stained glass, and boarded into stiff
pews, without the least regard to the eternal fitness of things, are
ugly enough. There is somewhere here a collection of Ary Scheffer's
works,--in the city I mean,--but we did not see it. It is less than an
hour's ride by rail from Rotterdam to the Hague, with the same
delightfully monotonous scenery all along