door for admission. The fine linen is kept in Flemish oak chests, some of them heavily carved; and the beds, which are in the
A Dutch sailor. wall, are usually covered with gayly colored spreads and pillow-cases, embroidered in conventional designs, somewhat resembling a sampler of earlier days. About
the blue-tiled fireplaces were hung the well-burnished brass and copper utensils for cooking, for the Dutch house has but one main room, serving as it does for drawing-room, kitchen, and bedroom. One fire cooks the food and furnishes warmth and cheer for the household. Delft plates adorned the rafters and shelves overhead, and the flour barrel, coffee-mill, and other homely things were usually arranged in a little shrine beside the oaken chest.
It is said that the wily Jew leaves a collection of “antiques” at the houses most visited by tourists, and collects his share from the apparently simple occupant, and that the treasure hunter, bent on his mission of “picking up” rare and old pieces, often finds that it is he himself who has been ‘‘picked up”; so beware!
On the brick pavement outside the privacy of the islanders was being disturbed by camera fiends vainly following up a good subject, who in turn had decided objections to being photographed and adroitly vanished in a doorway while the amateurs were trying to fix him in the finder.
In time the steamer’s whistle sounded a warning note, and the tourists made a general move toward the landing place, leaving the islanders to resume their peaceful lives. Three little maids came down the previously invaded street with clasped hands; their throats were straight and they walked erect, almost boyish in their strength and simplicity. A fisherman emerged from an_alley-way, wearing a nor’wester of yellow oilskin. Funnel-like arrangements on his ankles to keep the water out of his wooden “shoon”’ gave him that touch of Dutch clumsiness, which distinguished him from his English-speaking brother.
Once more an atmosphere of tranquillity threw its mantle over the households of the thrifty islanders, as the hurrying tourists departed on their vibrating iron steamer, which, when it left the bay in a°cloud of purple steam, strongly contrasted with the tubby boats of the fishermen, lazily rocking and creaking, content to wait for favorable winds and tides.
Tourists at Marken.