FullReads

But even this oasis of a garden, hemmed about as if by the froth of Trouville and the suds of Cabourg; through which floats the gay life of Paris resplendent in toilets never excelled or exceeded anywhere–cannot keep me from Holland very long. And it is a pity too, for of late years I have been looked upon as a harmless fixture at the Inn–so much so that men and women pass and repass my easel, or look over my shoulder while I work without a break in their confidences–quite as if I was a deaf, dumb, and blind waiter, or twin-brother to old Coco the cockatoo, who has surveyed the same scene from his perch near the roof for the past thirty years.

None of these unconscious ear-droppings am I going to betray–delightful, startling–improper, if you must have it–as some of them were. Not the most interesting, at all events, for I promised her I wouldn’t–but there is no question as to the diversion obtained by keeping the latch-string of your ears on the outside.

None of all this ever drips into my auricles in Holland. A country so small that they build dikes to keep the inhabitants from being spilt off the edge, is hardly the place for a scandal–certainly not in stolid Dordrecht or in that fly-speck of a Papendrecht, whose dormer windows peer over the edge of the dike as if in mortal fear of another inundation. And yet, small as it is, it is still big enough for me to approach it–the fly-speck, of course–by half a dozen different routes. I can come by boat from Rotterdam. Fop Smit owns and runs it–(no kin of mine, more’s the pity)–or by train from Amsterdam; or by carriage from any number of ‘dams, ‘drechts, and ‘bergs. Or I can tramp it on foot, or be wheeled in on a dog-wagon. I have tried them all, and know. Being now a staid old painter and past such foolishness, I take the train.

Toot! Toot!–and I am out on the platform, through the door of the station and aboard the one-horse tram that wiggles and swings over the cobble-scoured streets of Dordrecht, and so on to the Bellevue.

Why I stop at the Bellevue (apart from it being one of my Inns) is that from its windows I cannot only watch the life of the tawny-colored, boat-crowded Maas, but see every curl of smoke that mounts from the chimneys of Papendrecht strung along its opposite bank. My dear friend, Herr Boudier, of years gone by, has retired from its ownership, but his successor, Herr Teitsma, is as hearty in his welcome. Peter, my old boatman, too, pulled his last oar some two years back, and one “Bop” takes his place. There is another “p” and an “e” tacked on to Bop, but I have eliminated the unnecessary and call him “Bob” for short. They made Bob out of what was left of Peter, but they left out all trace of William.

This wooden-shod curiosity is anywhere from seventy to one hundred and fifty years old, gray, knock-kneed, bent in the back, and goes to sleep standing up–and stays asleep. He is the exact duplicate of the tramp in the comic opera of “Miss Hook of Holland”–except that the actor-sleeper occasionally topples over and has to be braced up. Bob is past-master of the art and goes it alone, without propping of any kind. He is the only man in Dordrecht, or Papendrecht, or the country round about, who can pull a boat and speak English. He says so, and I am forced not only to believe him, but to hire him. He wants it in advance, too–having had some experience with “painter-man,” he explains to Herr Teitsma.

I shall, of course, miss my delightful William, but I am accustomed to that. And, then, again, while Bob asleep is an interesting physiological study, Bob awake adds to the gayety of nations, samples of which crowd about my easel, Holland being one of the main highways of the earth.