His voice is heard more often
than any belfry beneath whose shadow I have lain. Holland, as we have
seen, is a land of bells and carillons; nowhere in the world are the
feet of Time so dogged; but Long John is the most faithful sleuth of
all. He is almost ahead of his quarry. He seems to know no law; he
set out, I believe, with a commission entitling him to ring his one
and forty bells every seven and a half minutes, or eight times in the
hour; but long since he must have torn up that warranty, for he is
now his own master, breaking out into little sighs of melancholy or
wistful music whenever the mood takes him. I have never heard such
profoundly plaintive airs as his--very beautiful, very grave, very
deliberate. One cannot say more for persistent chimes than this--that
at the Abbey hotel it is no misfortune to wake in the night.
Long John has a companion in Foolish Betsy. Foolish Betsy is the
stadhuis clock, so called (Gekke Betje) from her refusal to keep time
with the giant: another instance of the power which John exerts over
the town, even to the wounding of chivalry. The Nieuwe Kerk would
be nothing without its tower--it is one of the barest and least
interesting churches in a country which has reduced to the finest
point the art of denuding religion of mystery--but the stadhuis
would still be wonderful even without its Betsy, There is nothing
else like it in Holland, nothing anywhere quite so charming in its
shameless happy floridity.
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