These
are the differences of nations--beyond anything dreamed of in Babel.
The principal work of these ruddy-armed and wide-hipped damsels seems
to be to carry green pails on a blue yoke--and their perfect fitness
in Middelburg's cheerful and serene streets is another instance of
the Dutch cleverness in the use of green paint. These people paint
their houses every year--not in conformity with any written law,
but upon a universal feeling that that is what should be done. To
this very pretty habit is largely due the air of fresh gaiety that
their towns possess. Middelburg is of the gayest. Greenest of all,
as I have said, is perhaps Zaandam. Sometimes they paint too freely,
even the trunks of trees and good honest statuary coming under the
brush. But for the most part they paint well.
It is not alone the cloistral Gothic seclusion in which the Abbey hotel
reposes that commends it to the wise: there is the further allurement
of Long John. Long John, or De Lange Jan, is the soaring tower of the
Abbey church, now the Nieuwe Kerk. So long have his nearly 300 feet
dominated Middelburg--he was first built in the thirteenth century,
and rebuilt in the sixteenth--that he has become more than a structure
of bricks and copper: a thinking entity, a tutelary spirit at once
the pride and the protector of the town.
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