Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/230

 was influenced by no fads and is the real thing carried to perfection.

In Amsterdam I called on Dr. J. G. DeHoop Scheffer, the author of the History of the Reformation in the Netherlands, with whom I had been corresponding for years and spent a very pleasant evening with him talking about Mennonite literature. We attended services in the Oude Kerk where so many noted Dutchmen are buried, including the famous old Admiral Michel de Ruyter, who fought thirty-two naval battles. An invitation to his funeral is among my papers at Pennypacker's Mills. In the Rijks Museum we stayed long before Rembrandt's Night Watch and the head of the Old Woman. In going from a lower to a higher stretch of canal the boat stopped while the water rushed in to fill the enclosure. The hearty-looking Dutch skipper took advantage of the opportunity to collect the fares. I had no small change and handed him a ten florin gold piece worth about four dollars which he laid on the leaf of his open note book while he felt around in his pockets. Just then a blast of wind turned the leaves of his book and the gold piece went to the bottom of the canal. “Damn it to hell!” he exclaimed in as good English as any irritated and disappointed resident of New York could have uttered. At Broek we saw the cows with their tails tied up and the sawdust of their stalls worked into ornamental figures and at Zaandam the windmills and the house of Peter the Great. At Marken, which even then had been much spoiled by the current of visitors, we engaged Klaas De Witt to take us in his fishing boat across the Zuyder Zee to Monnikendam, from which town had come the first man to sail up the Delaware River, and where we climbed the tower, saw the church and were followed through the streets by an amazed crowd of Dutch urchins and lasses in wooden shoes. After we started from Marken, Klaas kicked off his sabots and threw them into a corner of the boat. “ Why did you do that?” I inquired. “I can swim better without them,” was the rather 216