Illustrations by the author
A Side-Street
YOU will not have any difficulty in finding the Dam, with the Queen’s Palace for its main building, and rising back of it, the Oude Kirk, tinking out the quarter-hours with bells of sixteenth-century make, time softened, with notes blending and harmonizing like the colors of an old brocade; but, if you wish to see one of the old streets of Amsterdam, such as the burgomasters traversed before making that tempestuous voyage to settle New Amsterdam, or which were the home and inspiration of Van Dyke or De Hooge, you will have to put your guide book on one side and strike out boldly for yourself. You may accomplish this (as I did, for instance) by becoming lost in the maze of winding streets, and then finding your way back to your hotel. And now that I am safely out of it, my pleasantest recollections are of one morning spent in a little side street which ran between two canals and led down to the water front. The way was narrow, sometimes leading across little bridges over the canals, where sturdy boatmen were pushing their heavily laden boats through the water-ways—with their shoulder firmly set against the knob at the end of their long pole, how they can push!
Upon the buildings the flavor of two centuries hung heavily. Little bequirled gables, gayly colored tablets and quaint scrolls set in brickwork of by-gone days, formed the façade of the little houses, and the square-