- mieux pour vous, madame! Soyez con- | lids and lashes they are but a patch, of tente; c'est le peuple le plus détestable which we hardly see the color, and which au monde." This would have been too the oldest friend or most ardent lover much for a saint. So I broke out: No, would not recognize. This is why a massir, I beg your pardon; the best, the no-querade of only women is for the most blest, the wisest, the freest—you know part deficient in go and repartee. The what I mean the freest in the world." women may be divided under three heads My adversary stood speechless with aston- the shy, the bold, and the stupid. The ishment, and a slight murmur, not of disap- shy say timid things; the bold, rude probation, arose from the crowd collected things; and the stupid say nothing at all. round us as I turned away. Doubtless I sat by a good deal, and these were the some spy for these gentry are known fruits of my observation. Here and there to frequent masquerades, and to speak all a clever woman drew a crowd round her, languages made a note for future use or a couple of saucy, flirting minxes badgof a tall woman in a black domino, and ered and bantered a poor man merciwith a small foot, who endeavored to in- lessly, and shot their little pertnesses at cite the lieges against the government. the bystanders, and were followed wherThis is a specimen of the bétises which ever they moved. Of course I watched pass for wit. Many minutes had not Nicholas, and saw him accosted and elapsed before I was cross-questioned dragged about, in humiliating fashion, by again, and again affected to disown my all three varieties. With the shy, who native tongue. When a grave-looking generally bore signs of good breeding, he gentleman who stood by said: "Madame, was evidently courteous, and desirous to I will tell you one thing: you may pre- put them at their ease. With the bold he tend not to speak English, but, cependant, was evidently at his ease, and the freest you are an Englishwoman or le diable. relations were apparently quickly estabYou have betrayed yourself by your 'Oh lished between them. The stupid soon non! Oh oui !' Only the English use the let go of his arm; while the saucy minxes interjection 'oh' to everything. Oh! generally, I was told, some milliners' how nice!' Oh! how pretty!' I have apprentices who pulled him here and unmasked you here." I could only ejacu- there at their caprice, were his favorite late, as I was bound to do, "Oh, yes !" companions. Had I been a Russian this We both laughed heartily, which imme- exhibition would have sorely tried my diately attracted a crowd, glad of any loyalty. crumbs of amusement in this dullest of all places; and while he related the story I made off, followed by vociferous repetitions of " Oh, yes," Oh, no!" "Oh! how nice!" Just at this moment I encountered my double in the crowd, and immediately effaced myself by sinking on a seat; while she stalked on, and I saw my grave gentleman accost and hammer away at her, in English, of which she did not understand one word. 66 There is no place like a masquerade for convincing us of the important part played, in all social intercourse, by the human countenance. Without that titlepage to the book within we run the risk either of reading amiss or of not reading at all. How dreadful it would be, for example, for all parties, if, with woman's prerogative of saying what she does not mean with one feature, she had not the equal facility of unsaying it with another! But under a mask, however articulate the voice, the face is dumb. Generally speaking, the lips can say but little that the eyes, if they so will, cannot contradict. But through the slits of the mask the eyes are unintelligible. Without the expres. sion conveyed by the movement of the More than once I rose from my seat determined to try my chance with this impersonation of earthly power, but, after attempting to approach him two or three times, and always finding his back turned, I fancied that he really meant to avoid me, and gave up the idea. The evening had now worn away, and the time was approaching for the appointment with my double, when again Count B came up with the same question, "Avez-vous intrigué l'empereur?" and on hearing my answer urged me to accost him at once. " Courage," he added; "vous lui plairez; je le connais and don't hesitate to tell him you are an Englishwoman." "Do you keep near," I replied. We soon saw the tall figure, and I approached him, determined to be neither shy nor stupid, but feeling the strongest incarnation of both. He could not mistake my intention, nor I his scowl. "Je vous ai déjà dit, madame, que je suis fatigué." "Il se peut, sire," I ventured to say, 66 que vous vous êtes trompé." Trompé? Non, je ne me trompe pas." I took refuge in the universal answer of an inferior. "Schlussus" (I obey). He darted a quick glance at me as, with a deep curtsey, I turned away 66 Count B was at hand. He had fashioned person is not, as a rule, burwatched the little scene. "Ah! Je com- dened with political theories. Yet he has prends; but you did all right." He said an important share in local government. no more; and then added: I have seen He is free from the noisy self-assertion Madame de S― and told her I would of the newly fledged politician, and makes take you home; I am sure you must be use of his rights simply as a matter of tired. The next morning I was cross-course. As village Councils constitute questioned by my hostess and her daugh- one of the topics of the day, it may interters. Like the count, they all said, "Ah! est the English reader to hear what manJe comprends." ner of man the Dutch peasant is, and how Meanwhile the count was as usual with he acts his part on the modest stage of the emperor by ten o'clock, and the sub- village politics. It may be best to begin ject of the ball of the preceding evening with a slight sketch of peasant life. What soon came up. "I saw your Majesty I shall have to say will refer mainly to the make a great mistake. That tall mask central provinces of South Holland and would have amused you, sire." “Amused | Utrecht, and, less directly, to those of me! Why, she bored me to death. C'est Zealand (in the south) and Gelderland (in la personne la plus ennuyante au monde. the east). In the other provinces the sitI could hardly get rid of her." So then uation is, in many respects, widely differthe count related the plot that had been ent. concerted, and the emperor answered him, avec grand empressement, that he should be delighted to repair the mistake, and hoped I would give him the opportunity at the next and last ball of the season. I was assured by these kind friends that such an expression on his part (granting it to be true, of which I felt by no means sure) was no every-day occurrence, but the greatest compliment he could pay to a lady, and on this they warmly dwelt. Compliment to me personally it certainly was not, for, for aught he knew, I might be as ennuyante as Madame de S, and not so amusing as the chits I had seen dragging him about. At all events, I had no intention of being put to the test. It was not for me, however, to wound the susceptibilities of my Russian friends on this rather ticklish point. I hope, therefore, that I succeeded in convincing them how deeply I was impressed with the imperial condescension, and not less with my determination that nothing in the whole world would induce me to enter a Petersburg masquerade again to amuse any one. The night before, as my good Anderson had helped me to divest myself of my disguise, she had said in an appealing tone: "You will never go to that place again." I answered emphatically, "No, never." AUTHOR OF "BALTIC Letters." From The National Review. A BEING more conservative than the ordinary Dutch peasant can scarcely be found anywhere in Europe. This old The majority of the farmers of south Holland aid Utrecht are tenants. Many of the farms have been held by the same families for generations. The law of the sub-division of property (the same as in France) has not affected the peasantry as much as one would suppose. The son who, either as owner or as tenant, has the family farm for his share of the paternal inheritance gives an equivalent in money to his brothers and sisters, or else a share in the profits. In the opinion of an expert, tenantfarmers are better off than peasant proprietors. The same authority considers that a small farm can be managed more profitably than a comparatively large one (leaving the very large ones out of the question). The small farmer has the capital necessary for working a farm of thirty hectares (twenty-two and one-half acres) with profit. Even twenty hectares is preferable to sixty. More land entails more working expenses than can be properly met. The small farmer works on old-fashioned principles, and knows little of "scientific farming." He is inclined to be sceptical about modern improvements, and has a low opinion of the doctrines propounded by the black-coated theorists from the Agricultural College who lecture through. out the country. On the other hand, he is thoroughly hard-working and thrifty; his wife is no less so. He has none of the wants which usually accompany a higher culture. In fact, he lives much as the better-class laborer does. It is difficult for the outsider to realize the social gulf that yawns between them. For, although the gulf is sometimes crossed, as a rule, woe-betide the laborer who dares to aspire to the hand of a farmer's daughter, or the farmer's son who would fetch_his bride from the neighboring cottage. Yet, in outward appearance there is not much difference between them. They wear dresses of the same kind; only the close observer will detect that the farmer's Sunday coat is a trifle less shiny than that of the laborer, and that his wife's cap is of real lace, and her best apron a black silk one, while the humbler woman is content with imitation lace and a checked cotton apron. Both women claim no higher title than that of vrouw (the German frau, in Holland given only to women of the lower orders); the hands of both are red with honest labor, and in education and refine ment they are quite on a par. As regards character, most people, I think, would give the palm to the laboring class. The farmer is too often consumed by the love of money, and, consequently, hard and grasping. The laborer is not tempted in the same way. He can seldom make money, and must be content with his wages. On his lower scale of the social ladder there are more opportunities for the interchange of friendly offices, which foster a spirit of kindness that raises and softens the character. The manners of both classes are awk ward, gruff, and unprepossessing. All that can be said in the people's favor is that they are free from servility and insincerity. This unattractive exterior often hides true respect and attachment. Simple and unsophisticated as they are, they still acknowledge the rule of a Mrs. Grundy, and obey her unwritten laws. For example, whilst the lower orders in the towns seldom wear mourning, the poorest laborer puts his family into black after a death. It is true that the dyeing-pot has something to do with this transformation of the family wardrobe. The staple food of both classes is bread, cheese, vegetables, potatoes, and salted pork. The laborer fattens and kills one or two pigs every year; the farmer a few more, according to the size of his establishment. The farmer, usually, once a year cures the meat of one or two cows for his own use. The laborer grows his own vegetables in the small plot of ground that he always rents. The women of the family generally have the care of this; and, except in haymaking time, it is all the field labor that is usually done by them in the provinces of which we speak, in the greatest part of which the wages of a farm laborer are about 2s. or 2s. 6d. a day at ordinary times, and 3s. 4d. in haymaking. This is in the rich clay-soi! districts. In other parts of the country the rate of wages is much lower-about Is. a day in the summer, and 8d. or Iod. in winter; but living is cheaper and rents are lower there. The women in these districts do more field work, much to the detriment of their homes and families. Of course, there is a great difference between the farmhouse and the cottage. In the prosperous districts, however, both are models of order and cleanliness. There are two kinds of farmhouses - the new, which, seen from the front, resembles an ordinary dwelling house in the country towns, and is gaudy with fresh paint and red tiles; and the old, with its gabled and thatched roof which time has mellowed into a fit subject for the painter's brush. The old farmhouse usually consists of a kitchen, a large living-room, a cheeseroom, a dairy, two small bedrooms in the garret and at the back (forming part of the main building), the big cow-stable with its huge loft, and a wide space in the middle, where threshing and winnowing are still done in primitive fashion. Hayricks with movable roofs on four poles, various barns or sheds, and an outside kitchen, called the "baking-house," where the rough work is done (food cooked for the cattle, etc.), surround the main building. The "baking house" is often used as living-room in summer, and is more cheerful than the solemn apartment into which the visitor is invariably ushered. A wide chimney lined with tiles stretches nearly across one side of this room; but the open fire on the hearth has long ago disappeared and given place to an ugly stove. Quaint brass fire-irons hang behind it, and on either side is an armchair, differing from its humbler brethren only in the possession of wooden arms. If there is a baby in the family it is likely to be reposing in a cradle with green baize curtains as near as possible to the fireplace, in defiance of all laws of health. Two or three large cupboards, sometimes handsomely carved, always kept well polished, stand against the whitewashed walls. One of them generally has glass doors in the upper part; and on its shelves the family chinaoften of great value is exposed to view. Unfortunately, these heirlooms in old families have been largely bought up by enterprising Jews. Sometimes, however, sentiment has proved stronger than the love of money, and the farmer has not parted with his family possessions. In a corner of the room a chintz curtain, or sometimes a double door, shows where the big press-bed is an institution of pre-hygienic times which, to the peasant mind, has no inconveniences whatever. In the middle of the room a table stands on a carpet; and, as people take off their shoes at the door and go about in their thick woollen stockings, neither it nor the painted floor ever show signs of mud. Another table stands near one of the windows, of which there are two or three. The linen blinds so closely meet the spotless muslin curtains, which are drawn stiffly across the lower panes on two horizontal sticks, that a stray sunbeam can hardly make its way into the room, even if it has been able to struggle through the thick branches of the clipt lime-trees that adorn the front of the house. On one of the tables a tray stands, with a hospitable array of cups and saucers, teapot, etc., and is protected from the dust by a crochet or muslin cover. The huge family Bible, with its big brass clasps, has an honorable place, often on a stand by itself. Rough woodcuts or cheap prints, and a group of family photographs, which do not flatter the originals, are hung on the walls. The framed and glazed sampler, worked in wools by the farmer's wife in her young days, usually makes a dessus de porte. The alphabet is the principal part of this extraordinary work of art; but it bears various other figures, which, on patient investigation, appear to have some resemblance to certain birds and flowers. The life which is led by the inmates of these unpretending dwellings is one of much work and little, if any, play. It is difficult to say whether the austerity of the greatest part of the community in Protestant districts is a result of the lamentable coarseness exhibited in the amusements of its gayer members on such occasions as the annual fair, or kermis, still held in some country towns, or whether the latter is a reaction against the former. It is a fact that both extremes are found among the peasantry, almost to the exclusion of more healthy views of this side of life. The prose of this dull existence is often relieved by family affections. Some of the peasants, indeed, seem to be devoid of much feeling, and one is sometimes tempted to ask which are more important in their eyes the cattle that bring in money, or the children that, at first, only bring expense.* But pretty pictures of A curious instance of short-lived grief in a bereaved person, very quaintly expressed, was given by a farmer when visited by a gentleman a few hours after the death of (I believe) his wife. On the gentleman condoling with him on his loss, the man answered: bright domestic happiness, and, as their sad counterpart, instances of heart-rending grief after bereavement, are numerous enough to refute a general charge of callousness. No class of people in whose lives religion holds so much place as it undoubtedly does in those of the Dutch peasantry is utterly commonplace and uninteresting. The Roman Catholics, who are a large minority, are generally strict in their religious observances; while the Protestants are distinguished by an intensely theological bias. It is, perhaps, the strongest point of contrast between them and the rest of the world that they are as eager about subtle points of divinity as men were two or three centuries ago. They often, in their intense earnestness and intolerance, remind one of Cromwell's Roundheads, or of the characters in Mrs. Beecher Stowe's New England stories. Minds of this type are scarcely likely to be open to the various influences that are so busily at work elsewhere to make people restless and discontented. On the whole, the rural population is still in the happy condition (described by the English Catechism) of people who "learn and labor truly to get their own living, and to do their duty in that state of life into which it hath pleased God to call them." In by far the greatest part of the Netherlands there is not the faintest trace among the peasantry of that class hatred which a recent writer † in the Nineteenth Century notices in the "Hodge" of Berkshire. Social agitators cannot get a hearing among them. Only the other day we were told of a party of these mischievous busybodies being refused drink and expelled from the premises by the owner of a public house (a woman) not far from the Hague. Still, a peaceful tendency to seek a higher place in the social scale is not quite absent in the country, especially among the aristocracy in the village (as Mrs. Batson calls them), the carpenter, the mason, the house painter, and the village tradespeople. The daughters often think "Indeed, sir, it was a very heavy blow; but it is beginning to wear off!" It appears to me that a Roundhead would have act of his as that of a Dutchman of the peasant class on a certain occasion. The worthy man, a head gardener, made much the same appeal to Scripture to justify an had scarcely laid to rest his first wife, a terrible shrew, whose voice was heard all day long from his master's house scolding her poor maidservant, when he came to announce his intention of shortly marrying again (this time a farmer's widow), adding: "Scripture says you may marry again, but says nothing about the time!" Hodge at Home. By Mrs. Stephen Batson. January 7, 1892. themselves "too good" for domestic service and become schoolmistresses if they can qualify themselves. among the laboring classes, especially in the peat districts. Indeed, that province has of late been frequently called “our Ireland." There is considerable emigration to America and elsewhere from this and the adjoining provinces. Social agitators have been busily at work, and have been successful in the endeavor to sow seeds of discontent and rebellion. This class tends to migrate to the towns. There is less work for them than there used to be in the country, since so many small gentlefo.k who used to live in or near the villages have gone to towns, attracted by educational and other advantages. Also, there used to be flourishing Several years of extraordinary prosperboarding-schools in many villages, and ity (1876-85) were followed by a period of these have been swept away by the cheap agricultural depression. The last two higher schools established by government. years have been more favorable, and a Migration to towns has not yet taken very competent judge recently gave it as his serious proportions; and the nucleus re- opinion that farmers had at present little mains the steady, industrious, conserv-cause to indulge in grumbling. ative, loyal population, which is a source It now remains to be seen how these of strength and stability to the country. people manage their local affairs. The The lot of the peasantry is certainly country is divided into communities happier than that of the working-classes (French, communes); each town forms a in the towns. At least, in the central provinces there is little poverty among them. Drunkenness, the cause of so much want in the towns, is comparatively rare in the country. By thrift and good management the laborer, especially if he have a capable wife, can get on fairly well. Instead of living from hand to mouth, he has his comfortable provisions of pork and potatoes, and, in winter, of salted vegetables, and firewood to fall back upon. Old age is the most trying time. It is seldom the laborer can make sufficient, if any, provision for the days of failing strength. Still, the growing practice of putting money into the Post-Office Savings Banks proves that there are those who lay by for an evil day. It is usual to belong to a burial fund, for it is considered a dire disgrace to be buried by the parish. The aged laborer gets regular outdoor relief from the parish. If he can live with a married son or daughter, his declining years may be very comfortable. Often, however, he is boarded by the parish at a stranger's house for a small sum. His lot depends on the character of its inmates, and it is often wretched. I knew a woman who was a martyr to rheumatism. The neighbors considered her sufferings to be a judgment for her cruel treatment of an old pauper who had been confided to her care. It is necessary to repeat that all these remarks refer mainly to the central provinces. In the north, farming is on a larger scale. More use is made of machinery, and the farmers are better educated, and often very wealthy. In Friesland, certain causes such as the increasing number of absentee landlords have produced great distress single and separate commune. The size of the country communes is unequal. Sometimes two or three villages, if near each other, form one of these parishes; more often each village is the centre of a parish. The head of the parish is the burgomaster (mayor), who is named by the crown, but draws his salary from the village budget. He is often a resident country gentleman, who is glad of the additional influence and authority which the office bestows. Sometimes a superior farmer fills it. The post is much coveted by not over-ambitious university men with some private means, who are satisfied with a modest but not unimportant sphere of action. It is sometimes a stepping-stone to a seat in the Provincial States or in Parliament. The burgomaster presides over the town or village Council, but has no vote unless he be elected a member of that body. The electors are all the male inhabitants who pay a certain share in the taxes. The sum that gives one a right to vote for the Council is lower than that required for the Provincial States and for Parliament. Members of the Council (who number from seven to thirty-nine, according to population) are elected for six years. Every second year there is an election for a third part. They are unpaid; but the Council has the option of giving "presence money" for each sitting. The Council meets at least six times a year. The executive power is vested in the burgomaster and two or more wethouders (French échevins), chosen from the members. The latter office is paid, and is no sinecure in large places. Within certain limits the autonomy of the parishes is very real. Some decisions |
