Chapter XVII
Groningen to Zutphen
Fresh tea--Dutch meals--The Doelens--Groningen--Roman
Catholic priests--The boys' penance--Luther and
Erasmus--The peat country--Folk lore--Terburg--Thomas a
Kempis--Zwolle--The wild girl--Kampen--A hall of justice
indeed--An ideal holiday-place--The wiseacres--Urk--Sir Philip
Sidney--Zutphen--The scripture class--The wax works--Dutch
public morality.
I remember the Doelen at Groningen for several reasons, all of them
thoroughly material. (Holland is, however, a material country.) First
I would put the very sensible custom of providing every guest who
has ordered tea for breakfast with a little tea caddy. At the foot
of the table is a boiling urn from which one fills one's teapot,
and is thus assured of tea that is fresh. So simple and reasonable a
habit ought to be the rule rather than the exception: but never have
I found it elsewhere. This surely is civilisation, I said.
The Doelen was also the only inn in Holland where an inclusive bottle
of claret was placed before me on the table; and it was the only inn
where I had the opportunity of eating ptarmigan with stewed apricots--a
very happy alliance.
Good however as was the Groningen dinner, it was a Sunday dinner at the
Leeuwarden Doelen which remains in my memory.
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