The Municipal Orphanage of Amsterdam is
among the most interesting; and it is to this refuge that the girls
and boys belong whom one sees so often in the streets of the city in
curious parti-coloured costume--red and black vertically divided. The
Amsterdamsche burgerweesmeisjes, as the girls are called, make in
procession a very pretty and impressive sight--with their white
tippets and caps above their dresses of black and red.
This reminds me that one of the most agreeable performances that
I saw in any of the Dutch music halls (which are not good, and
which are rendered very tedious to English people by reason of the
interminable interval called the Pause in the middle of the evening),
was a series of folk songs and dances by eight girls known as the
Orange Blossoms, dressed in different traditional costumes of the
north and south--Friesland, Marken, and Zeeland. They were quite
charming. They sang and danced very prettily, as housewives, as fisher
girls, but particularly as Amsterdamsche burgerweesmeisjes.
In the music halls both at Amsterdam and Rotterdam I listened to comic
singers inexorably endowed with too many songs apiece; but I saw also
some of those amazing feats of acrobatic skill and exhibitions of clean
strength which alone should cause people to encourage these places
of entertainment, where the standard of excellence in such displays
is now so high.
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