CHAPTER V.LOCAL COLOUR.

EEN STREEPJE DOOR.

“Mijnheer,” I explained, “niet zwavel hier;zwavel niet. Ik heb een streepje door het.” Well, would you believe me, that was the most successful remark I had made as yet? I expected that he would be irritated by my mistake and apology. No such thing. He received my statement with unbounded delight. “Ja, ja,” he said, “dat geloof ik ook; dat geloof ik ook.”

“Wel zeker,” I continued pleasantly, glad to see him take it in such good part. “Een streepje door.”

With that they all turned to one another and smiled and nodded to me quite merrily, as if I had said something clever. It shows what a literary people the Dutch are, that they are pleased beyond measure when a foreigner in conversation refers to any small technicality out of the grammar. Indeed so encouraged was I by all this enthusiasm that I boldly made use of my remaining words.

“Mynheer! wilt u mij toestaan U te vragen..... verkoopt gy snavels?”

“Snavels,” I repeated as he stared,—“of snaveltjes”.

He gasped a moment, as if taken utterly by surprise; then ran behind the counter into a little dark room, where I could hear him make a succession of curious muffled sounds. The noise subsided,and he seemed to tell the story to somebody. A white face peered out from behind the lace curtains—and the chuckling was renewed. Now this was all very puzzling—but it was quite clear that ‘snavel’ was not the usual term for ‘pen’.

HOENDERHOKWAS ALWAYS DOUBTFUL.

Here the little errand-boy entered with a package which he thrust into my hand.

Sulphur!

“Heelemaal neen,” I said.

I was vainly endeavouring to get him to take it back, when the shopman reappeared from his dark den as grave as a judge, and I turned to him.

There was one word left. It might be right, though I had doubted it from the first; but I would try. It was a long word, too, and from the root of the first part, it promised to have something to do with fowls. Thus I conjectured that its meaning might be ‘quill pen’; but my confidence in the dictionary was by this time much shaken.

“Wilt gij my toestaan”, I said, “U te vragen?” “Ja, mijnheer!” he replied expectantly.

Then I got a little confused, and no wonder. “Durf ik zoo beleefd te kunnen zijn!... om mij mede te deelen en ... mij te verwittigen?” I lost myself again. It’s easy to begin a Dutch conversationbut hard to get out of it with honour. Like a drowning man clutching at a straw I grasped at something: “Verkoopt jullie hoenderhokken ... of hoenderhokkjes?”

THE UMBRELLA TO THE RESCUE.

He said nothing—did not even look at me—but moved his hands helplessly, as if subduing some strong emotion. I did not press this word on him, as I scarcely ever use quill pens; and it was as likely as not that the dictionary had failed me again.

I set him at his ease by a courteous phrase or two. “Het geeft niets—het hindert niet—het komt er niet op aan.” Then refraining from further speech, I pointed out some nibs with my umbrella, and, having secured a box of excellent J pens, made good my retreat under cover of a friendly phrase or two: “Mijnheer! het spijt mij zeer; maar ik moet afscheid nemen. Vaarwel.”

It had been rather a strain, and I was glad to get out again into the open air. On the way home I could think it all over calmly, and at leisure I deduced that most useful principlenever to use more than one word out of the dictionary for one word of English.

After these efforts I judged it wise to take a day or two’s rest from the actual practice of Dutch conversation till my nerves had recovered their tone, and until I had mastered more of the grammar and the idiom. I was the more concerned to do so as Enderby, to whom I had related my purchase of the pens, told me that my language on that occasion had been much too stiff and formal. For the purpose then of acquiring an everyday vocabulary I listened attentively to the talk in the streets and tram-cars. Most of it was unintelligible to me, but I caught up some vigorous and happy phrases here and there. These I soon learned to pronounce in a kind of way, but it was difficult toget at their exact meaning, for many popular idioms did not appear in my dictionary at all.

SCHEI UIT! SCHIET OP! TOE DAN!

There was a vocable that occasioned me some perplexity—indeed a haze envelopes it still. It sounded likeEris, but had nothing to do with the Goddess of Strife. It doesn’t seem to have any particular signification, and you can introduce it anywhere to give a finish to your style. Some people were fond ofevetjes, a word of the same class, on which none of my books shed the least light. Though my authorities were likewise silent aboutToe! toe dan, I perceived that this was the proper expression for courteous appeal, and as such I have always used it, with confidence and success.

Two curious imperative moods, which were popular at the street corners, I did find in my grammar. They belong to that provoking category of words that, as you touch them carelessly, break up into smaller verbs and prepositions. I used to compare them mentally to those lizards that drop their tails when you handle them roughly. Only instead of tails thesewerkwoordendrop theirvoorzetsels, which turn up again unexpectedly in distant parts of the sentence. One of these “lizards” wasschei uit, which means indifferently, ‘stop talking now’, ‘analyse it’and ‘go away’. It was pleasant to hear so scientific a term asschei er uitorschiet nouw op(shoot up now, aim high) used so often. I soon became quite dexterous in employing them myself. On the whole I got little help from my dictionary in tracing out the idioms of everyday live. Two interrogative particles, for example, without which the lower classes, when excited, could hardly ask a question, were quite ignored both by Boyton and theWoordenboek. The wereZalikuandWoujeme. I was left to conjecture the force of these particles—that they were forcible I could see—might remotely resemble that of the familiarnumornonneof Latin.

GUNST! HEUS! MIS!

Occasionally animated interlocutors became suddenly oracular: their flow of language stopped and they uttered some one solitary syllable such asGunst!orheus!ormis!orraak!These single shots were often most effective, but I never could imitate them successfully.Ach!was safe mostly for “I’m sorry”;Och!for “I don’t care”; and I discovered a treasure inHé!That is a contraction for “Do you really mean it?” On the other handHè!I found was “Shocking!” “How very dreadful!” When I used these little words I seemed never quite to hit the bull’s eye, however. Invariably Isaid either more or less than I intended. But I made very good play with pretty triplets like’t zal wel, andschei er uit, and with expressions of approval:da’s leuk,aardig hoor,och kom. It gives a vivid local colour to your conversation if you drop in now and again a homely fresh idiom caught from the lips of the people. That prevents one’s vocabulary becoming too bookish. You can give quite a realistic flavour to your remarks by interjecting occasionallywaarempeltjesorWel van mijn leven!Among the encouraging ejaculations of every day I soon concluded that none was more likely to prove useful than “Zanik nou niet”, a popular favourite which one may render roughly by “Pray, don’t mention it”, “Don’t trouble about it”. This idiom has been simply invaluable.

ZANIK NOU NIET.

Anomalies of pronunciation were not numerous, but they existed.Nouw, a common word, must be speltnu; and the adviceduwen, which was printed up on the inner door of the Post-Office, was pronounceddouwe. Most enigmatical perhaps was the contrast between the barber’s notice on the window of his establishment, and what he said to you when you entered. Outside it washaarsnijdenand never anything else. Thatis the printed form; inside, however, you must pronounce ithaarknippen.

THE WORD FOR LIGHTNING.

Still these are trifles compared with the real puzzles. I witnessed a street dispute one evening. It was about herring, I think, but I really couldn’t follow the one thousandth part of the vigorous debate. Picturesque idioms were bandied to and fro; happily no harm was done. One could not help noticing that the Grammar-book was right.Jijandjouwere freely employed, and the disputants did not once address each other asUorUEdele. On that occasion there was another epithet or pronoun or interjection, which none of my previous studies had at all prepared me for. Turning it up in the dictionary as well as I could, I learnt that it might be translated by ‘lightning’, and that it was an ordinary noun. Next day I enquired of Enderby if the word for lightning could ever be employed as an interrogative particle or a pronoun. He was horrified and said “Please don’t be vulgar”.

“All right,” I replied, “I don’t intend to be, but what about that personal pronoun?”

“Hush!” he said. “Stop; it’s not a pronoun.”

“Well whatever it is,” I told him, “noun or pronoun,if you had heard it used as I did, you would admit that it was verypersonal.”

IS TO BE ESCHEWED.

“Don’t be frivolous,” he retorted solemnly, “and let me give you a piece of advice. As long as you are in Holland never let anyone hear you utter that word. Sayonweerorweerlicht. The other word is not decent, it is almost wicked.”

“There now; don’t be surly”, I reasoned, “the thing is in the dictionary.”

“Never mind. That’s for science or for poetry. Then it’s all right. Butyouhad better have nothing to do with it. Try and forget it.”

I did try. But I didn’t succeed.

For the more trouble you take to forget a thing, the better you remember it. At least that’s my experience, and if I strain every nerve to get a word out of my head, it simply never goes! So if there be a Dutch noun that I recall accurately and without effort, it is just the scientific and poetical term for ‘lightning’.

It was a day or two after the purchase of the pens and I was beginning to feel my zeal for Dutch returning, when the landlady entered the sitting-room and fired my enthusiasm. She had a collar and a pocket-handkerchief in her hand; she waved them in the air and said “Voor de waschvrouw.”

I caught the idea at once, banished the landlady, and sat down to make out a wash-list with the help of the dictionary and by the light of nature.

HOETO SELECT YOUR WORD.

In bold characters I headed my document ‘Lijst voor de Waschvrouw’; and turned up the word ‘collar’. The usual thing, of course, met my gaze—a bewildering supply of equivalents—boordje, rollade, kraag, halsband, halssieraad. Now for thecrucial question—on what principle am I to make my selection? For I was quite determined to stick by the principle I had learnt in the pen-shop, and use only one Dutch word for one word in English. But which one? The dictionary had a second part to it, Dutch into English. So I felt sure in my innocence that I could hunt down anything and get its exact signification.

I tried ‘boordje’.

It was a bad omen that ‘boordje’ didn’t figure in the Dutch-English part at all. Naturally a man reasons that ifboordjereally means a common thing like collar—an article of attire in daily use—it would surely be given a place in a Dutch-English lexicon. It wasn’t there; and to confirm me in my determination to reject ‘boordje’, my eye caught ‘boord’. ‘Boord’ was of fairly catholic application; for it included things as dissimilar as border, rim, shelf, seam, bank and hem. To make a diminutive of this,—‘little border’, ‘little rim’, ‘little bank’,—wouldn’t bring one measurably nearer ‘collar’.Boordjetherefore was rejected absolutely. So far good.

Rolladewas more promising. It suggested somehow a turn-down collar, and sounded courtly. Butthere was against it the strong objection that it didn’t appear in the Dutch-English lexicon.Rolladetherefore was set aside provisionally.

Kraagagain offered well, but on inspection proved far too vague, for it included the ideas of cape, neck, nape and hood. That wouldn’t do. It was far too uncertain. Therefore ‘Kraag’ was marked as ‘doubtful.’

ETYMOLOGY AN UNSAFE GUIDE.

Diligence however is its own reward, and I found a prize in the next word.Halsbandanswered every reasonable expectation. It stood every test I could apply to it.

The Dutch-English lexicon said it was ‘collar’, and nothing more.

Etymology confirmed the dictionary:hals, the neck;band, a band—a band for the neck—what could be clearer? If that wasn’t collar, nothing was.

So I wrote down with much confidence, as my first item,6 halsbanden. I felt that this was an excellent beginning and that Dutch was not such a difficult language after all.Gunst!I said to myself; for I felt so elated at my success, that in a way I was almost thinking in Dutch.Gunst, uitstekend!now for the next article.

That wascuff. Cuff said the dictionary wasslag,manchet, oorveegandhandboei. Which would I take? I examinedslag, and learnt it was the proper term for battle, fight, or opportunity.

COMMON-SENSE MISLEADING.

This gave me much food for thought. I turned the matter over in every possible way, yet to no purpose. It was impossible to detect any necessary connection between a ‘battle’ or an ‘opportunity’, and ‘a pair of cuffs’; so I dropped ‘slag’ without regret.

‘Oorveeg’ at first looked more attractive.

Its derivation, however, showed that it was something that ‘skimmed along’ the ear, or ‘touched it lightly’!

Now it was conceivable that the sleeves or cuffs of ancient times had proved inconvenient; but that they had ever been so large as to flap about one’s ears, I positively refused to believe.

It was quite a comfort to discover, as I did somewhat by accident, that ‘oorveeg’ meant a ‘box on the ear.’ Thus I could reject it without scruple—which I did.

Manchetwas so obviously French that I never looked at it twice. My grammar was most stringent in banishing all foreign words. Especially avoid French terms, it insisted. That was an easy rule.Geen Fransch woordje bij!So I avoidedmanchet.

ZIE-BENEDEN.

I had now only one word left, which of course must be right.Handboei, moreover, defined its own functions with welcome precision. It obviously meant something tofitclosely round thehand; and with a sense of having achieved an intellectual victory, I set down on my list below the ‘halsbanden’, ‘4 paar handboeien’.

After this discipline in the art of ‘rejections and exclusions’ it seemed child’s play to fix on the proper rendering forsock.

Sok—blyspel—vilten binnenzool—ploegschaar,—that was what the front part of the dictionary gave me to work upon. ‘Blyspel’ and ‘ploegschaar’ I dropped overboard without qualm, for I found they meant ‘comedy’ and ‘ploughshare’; and when it came to choosing betweensokandvilten binnenzool, I gave the first the preference, as my book shed no light whatever onvilten binnenzool.

I regretted this rather, as there was a fine air of dignity about the latter.

But I put down ‘4 paar sokken,’ with a note of interrogation, and added ‘vilten binnenzolen’ in brackets—to make all clear.

THE KERCHIEF OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.

There were seven ‘handkerchiefs’ to be translatedinto Dutch; and for ‘handkerchief’ the little fat Dictionary became more than usually oracular.

Opposite the English word it had two Dutch words without a comma between, so that I felt morally certain it was a case ofvilten binnenzoolagain—a sort of euphonious compound which you must take in its entirety or not at all.

This compound word was ‘Zie beneden’.

I soon detected that the primitive meaning of this curious name was ‘look below’. At first indeed it struck me that it might refer to a footnote; but there was no footnote in the Dictionary, good or bad, from cover to cover, except B* on page 91, so I soon abandoned this idea as fanciful.

It was certainly hard to trace any connection between the advice (imperative mood, if you please) ‘see below!’ and what we usually understand by a ‘handkerchief’.

The mystery seemed to clear a little when I remembered that a ‘handkerchief’ was a ‘kerchief’ for the hand; and that in the Tudor age ‘kerchiefs’ used to be worn round the neck. In fine old historical portraits that I had seen of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, their Majesties were always represented with elaborate cambric things about theirshoulders. It was quite a feature of the period. Thus ‘zie beneden’ was no doubt the original word corresponding to ‘kerchief’; and it would take its name from the fact that when the wearer in ancient times glanced down, he could easily see it on his chest. He would call it a ‘look below’ quite naturally. Then the name would remain unaltered, while the article would become first a kerchief for the hand, then finally a pocket-handkerchief.

A WORK OF ART.

As there were plenty of analogies in English for that sort of word formation, I became quite sure of my ground, and at the end of my list wrote with the pride of a philologist, ‘7 ziebenedens’.

A few other words I got with comparative ease, and jotted down in their places.

The more I looked at my finished document, the better I liked it.

This is how it ran:—

Ik bid de waschvrouw gauw de voorwerpen terug te zenden.

Aug. 5.J. O’Neill.

VOOR EEN HOND.

I was quite unprepared for the effect which my manuscript had on the landlady. When she came up presently for the wash-list, I said to her carelessly, as if I was in the habit of writing Dutch every day, “Voor de waschvrouw,—klaar”.

She took the document in her hand and glanced at it; then suddenly sat down in my best arm-chair!

Now you must know that she is very respectful, always stands deferentially in my presence, and never dreams of taking liberties. Her conduct now was unaccountable. There she sat in the chair, rocking to and fro, her face hidden with both hands. Her agitation increased till finally she gave a kind of snort, for which she immediately apologised: “Neem me niet kwalijk, mijnheer! neem me niet kwalijk!”

Having regained a momentary composure, she dried her eyes with the corner of her apron and allowed her gaze to wander round the room. It fell upon my paper, and off she went again in a sort of suppressed shriek.

“O mijnheer! mijnheer!” she stammered convulsively. “Het is—voor—voor een hond!”

MOET MIJNHEER NAAR DE GEVANGENIS?

She ended with a hysterical sob as if she feared her emotions would choke her utterance.

All this naturally raised my suspicions as to the purity of my Dutch, though it seemed incredible that there could be much amiss with it. “Voor een hond” sounded like an expression of contempt, just as we dub ill-composed Latin, ‘Dog-Latin’, or pronounce poor food to be ‘not fit for a dog.’

She surely couldn’t imply that my Dutch would make a dog laugh?

It was clear now that she was highly amused at something I had written. At this I was just a little indignant, having spent all the morning hunting up equivalents in the dictionary and debating with myself about them.

To discourage her levity I answered quite coldly: “Wat is voor een hond? ik zie geen hond. Waar is hij?”

“O mijnheer”, was the spasmotic reply, delivered in jerks, “halsband,—hals—band—is altijd voor—voor een hond! Ik lach me dood!”

I could not argue the point with her or convince her by reasoning that my choice must be correct.

So I just said “Hé!” and waited for her torecover. Presently she dried her eyes again, rose from the arm-chair, and tried to get away; but once more her eye fell on the fatal manuscript—this time onHandboeien—and again she dropped back with a smothered yell.

QUEEN ELIZABETH IS UNKNOWN.

Then she apologized, then cried, then laughed, then finally gathered breath to say, “Voor een gevangene! Moet mijnheer naar de gevangenis?”

“Ik weet het niet,” I protested in perplexity; “ik weet er niets van. Wat is gevangenis?”

She rose, and silently picking up my little dictionary, with an unsteady hand turned over to ‘gevangenis.’ She pointed to the English and I read ‘prison’. Thus the ‘handboeien’ were ‘handcuffs’!

I couldn’t say she was mistaken. So I merely drew my pen through this item and said “Hè!” letting the matter rest.

Now she laughed at everything, atnachtgewaden, atvoorwerpen, at my message to the washerwoman, even atsokken, though since I have never been able to discover why, except that it was the only proper word on the list.

But nothing could make her understand what I meant byZie-benedens.

I couldn’t explain to her all about QueenElizabeth and Queen Mary and the parallel historical development of cognate languages; I hadn’t Dutch enough for it.

DON’T REASON.

Pulling a handkerchief out of my pocket, and showing it to her, I said, “Dit—dit is een zie beneden!”

But at that she only laughed the more.

Then she chuckled and tittered and coughed and said “Oh! Oh!” and held her sides and stumbled all the way down those steep stairs to the imminent danger of her life. Half way down she had stopped for breath; distinctly I could hear her panting and muttering: “Oh mens! mens! Ik kan nie meer. Ik stik!” For the rest of the day bursts of jovial laughter kept rising from the kitchen, and an air of hilarity hung about the lower storey for a whole week.

Sir, said O’ Neill, that is the deplorable result of bringing reason to bear on the material the dictionary gives. For here is another general principle I have discovered about languages:The more arguments you find in favour of any given word the more certain it is that that word is totally wrong.

Next evening Jack O’Neill resumed his narrative to myself alone, on the understanding that our friends would drop in if they could.

“Where was I?” he said. “Ah, yes, I had just told you about the wash-list.

“Well; I learnt many things in the next few days, said he,—especially grammar. Rules and exceptions I committed to memory and could rattle you offwerkwoordenandvoortzetsels,bijvoegelijke naamwoorden, verleden deelwoordenandonbepaalde wijzenwith vigour and promptitude.

In walking about the town and neighbourhood, too, I caught up more and more of those native idioms that give colour and fragrance to one’s speech. Of course I was at a lossnow and again to explain what I heard and saw.

The notice boards, for example, of some inn such as “De Nieuwe Aanleg” remained somewhat mysterious; and on enquiry a satisfactory translation was never forthcoming. “The New Genius” was very wide of the mark, evidently. “The New Tendency” was equally obscure.

WHAT’S PUT IN DUTCH?

Two common English verbs I found very difficult to render exactly. These were ‘drive’ and ‘put’.

‘Put’ you have to use so often that it is certainly provoking to hunt for a new verb almost every time you have a fresh order to give. ‘Put it down’, ‘put it in the cupboard,’ ‘put it in the hall’—well, I managed these somehow. But when it came to having letters posted, I was a long time at sea.

I wrote a good deal; and ‘put that letter in the box’ was a common order I had to give. Now ‘box’ was easy enough, for the receptacle in the street was duly called ‘Brievenbus’. But when I said, ‘Plaats dien brief in de brievenbus,’ the maidservant stared at me as if I was hardly human.

‘Zet’ and ‘werp’ were not much clearer, apparently. ‘Gooi’, I must admit, always made her perform the task with alacrity, but with an air that plainly said the matter was not very serious.

By a happy accident I became aware that all you need say for ‘put’ is ‘doe’; but alas! it will only help you for a few of the simplest ‘puts’.

Two functionaries called about orphans one day, and I said “Put me down for five guilders”. “Doe mij beneden voor vijf gulden”. It wasn’t idiomatic, but they caught the idea when they saw the coins.

THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT.

Of course the long and the shortaare notorious, and they perplexed me nearly every time I worked with them. You can’t be always sure that you have hit the right one.

An important letter had to go off one evening, and I impressed on the domestic that she must be careful.

‘Voorzichtig hoor!—voorzichtig!’ I repeated, ‘want dit is een gewichtige zak’.

I might have spared myself the trouble, for she tossed it in one hand and said, “Een zak, mijnheer, ha!” and departed with a gaiety of manner that augured ill for the safety of my missive. All the while I imagined I had saidzaak,—but myawas too short.

THE BEAUTIFUL MAN.

One night when the landlady’s son—a promising youth of thirteen—brought up the supper, he appeared playful and excited. He urged me, as I understood it, to come downstairs and admire a man that was in the street. Surely it must be a finespecimen of manly grace that could elicit this interest! Yes, the man there was ‘erg mooi’, he assured me.

‘U moet es eve kome kijke, mijnheer.’

The request was odd, and I refused at first. As he persisted, however, I accompanied him downstairs, wondering whether there was an acrobat performing in the market-place or if a statue had been erected whilst I was at dinner.

When we came outside, there was nothing remarkable to be seen in the street. My guide, however, didn’t mind that, but pointing triumphantly to the sky where the full moon was shining, he exclaimed with delight: “Daar, mijnheer, kijk nou is, nietwaar?”

It looked like boyish chaff, getting the foreigner to leave his room to gaze at the ‘man in the moon’, and I was dumb with indignation at his audacity. Gradually, however, the facts of the case emerged. The youth was only considerately anxious that I should not miss seeing the big Dutch moon itself, which was indeed that evening particularly fine. It was a ‘mooi maan’ not “man”.

Yes; the long and the shortaare not to be trifled with, and you’ll get into no end of trouble if you ever mix them.

Starting one morning for a long ramble in the country I took the first stage by tram. It was very early, and as there were no other passengers, the conductor was disposed to be communicative. He was absolutely eager to talk, and he came up to me at once.

Now I have noticed that at one time it is much easier to express oneself in a foreign language than at another.

Sometimes the grammar you have mastered becomes positively oppressive, and your tongue refuses to lend itself to the task.

I cannot tell whether it may be due to barometric pressure or to some electrical condition, but on certain days I cannot—to put it mildly—comeup to my normal standard, either of perspicuity or ease.

NAAR HET EINDE.

This was one of my bad days, and I was little inclined to respond to the conductor’s advances. Fate was against me, however, for I didn’t know the name of the place I was bound for. Enderby had several times taken me to a pretty village some few miles from the Hague. It was the terminus of the tram-line, and I purposed to tram there first and then to start out on my country walk.

I had never troubled much about the geography of the district, and consequently was quite in the dark now as to what the village was called. This was awkward, for the talkative conductor was already at hand trying to open conversation.

He made a first essay by producing his bunch of tickets and asking me, “Hoe ver, mijnheer?”

I waved my hand and said, “Den geheelen weg.” Seeing he was not satisfied with this, I amplified the remark by adding “Naar het einde.”

As he was still slightly bewildered, I glanced up to the tram-car itself to ascertain, if possible, its destination. The designation of the village would surely be printed somewhere on the vehicle.Happily I could just make out at the end of a long series of hard words the name ‘Simplex’. Pointing to this with a careless flourish of my stick I said “Ja; ik ga even naar Simplex.”

A ONE-SIDED CONVERSATION.

“Net, mijnheer,” he laughed, “ha! ha!, overal reclame!”

Before he had recovered from my unconscious wit, I perceived the error into which I had fallen. Simplex was merely a cycle-advertisement.

Then I laughed as heartily as he, saying “Gunst ja; overal”—which emboldened him to be still more familiar.

He fancied that I was a perfect master of Dutch, and could even joke in it. He talked most volubly; and,—my reputation as a linguist being now at stake,—whenever he made a slight pause I was obliged to say something to show I understood.

I didn’t understand. But I started him off always when he was inclined to stop, and I kept him going by a careful use of ‘ja’ and ‘neen’. If he appeared to expect agreement, I threw in a hearty ‘natuurlijk’, ‘ja zeker’, or ‘wel van mijn leven.’ At other points, and for variety’s sake, I interjected indignant negatives: ‘Wel nee!’ ‘schei er uit!’ ‘Hoe heb ik het met je?’—and now and then even‘och kom!’ with the peculiar shake of the head that accompanies this phrase.

KOLOSSAAL MOOI.

The plan was brilliantly successful. True, he stopped sometimes and took a long queer look at me; but he was one of those garrulous people that require little encouragement, and the flood of his reminiscences always poured forth again as freely as ever.

We got along famously together—though I didn’t know one word he said—till we came opposite a tall church. Nodding patronisingly towards this building he said, “Pracht van een Kerk”, adding something about a ‘hooge toren’.

Here I felt on solid ground,—I understood him thoroughly. My natural wish to take an intelligent part in the conversation would be gratified if only I could say something about that edifice; and, one of the fresh idioms that I had recently acquired occurring to me, I promptly gave it to him by way of reply: “Ja, prachtig; het is kolossaal mooi.”

This choice idiom I had got just the day before from a policeman. We had been standing in front of a florist’s window—the policeman and I—admiring the tiny vases of lilies of the valley that were displayed there, when I heard him murmur half to himself and half to me “kolossaal mooi!” Thecombination so captivated my fancy that I added it without delay to my working stock.

THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR.

The tram-conductor emphatically agreed with my criticism. “Kolossaal!” he repeated.

Thus encouraged I attempted to contribute something further to the conversation, and catching sight of a lofty lightning-conductor, on the church-steeple, I tried to draw his attention to it by an easy grammatical remark.

The word ‘lightning-conductor’ did not seem to present difficulties.

‘Lightning’ of course I remembered, though I ought to have forgotten it long ago. No doubt it was to be approached with caution; but as this was a matter of pure science I felt tolerably safe. As for ‘conductor’, there could be little doubt as as to the way to render that, for ‘conducteur’ was stamped on the tram-man’s buttons, and had been staring me in the face for the last half-hour. Those buttons were as good as a dictionary.

Putting together then the component parts of ‘lightning-conductor,’ I hazarded a bold guess, and waving my hand towards the steeple I said cordially, “Ja, de toren is mooi—kolossaal mooi. Gunst; ja.—Zoo is ook die bliksem-conducteur! Vind U niet?”

TAKE CARE OF YOUR WORDS.

Well, he stopped as if I had struck him; his face got fiery red, and he walked away without a word!

What had I done? There was no denying something had gone wrong. Evidently the man was choking with rage, and he didn’t as much as glance at me for the rest of the journey.

That same afternoon I reported the affair to Enderby, who grew quite gruff and crusty before I had finished the narration.

“Didn’t I warn you”, he grumbled, “against those horrid expressions that you seem so fond of? You must really take care, O’Neill,—or I won’t speak to you as long as you stay in Holland.”

It was useless to assure him that I had referred to the ‘lightning-conductor’ merely in its permissible and scientific sense. He would listen to no explanations. “You simply can’t imagine how shocking all that talk of yours sounds, or you wouldn’t attempt to justify your vulgarity.”

“Begging your lordship’s pardon”, I retorted ironically, “for all my unseemly conduct, may I enquire humbly what the dignified term is?Onweersconducteur, perhaps? Orweerlichtsconducteur?”

“Nonsense!” he almost shouted. “The thing’s quite easy—‘bliksemafleider’.”

A CHARMING WALK.

“Aha,” I could not help retorting, “you see after all you are in the wrong. You warned me againstlightning—quite needlessly, you now admit—but you never said a syllable about that really dangerous wordconductor.”

But to return to my trip that lovely morning. The tram duly reached ‘Simplex’, and the conductor was unfeignedly relieved to see me alight.

It was perfect weather, and my annoyances were soon forgotten. There was such a shimmer and haze and play of light over the wide landscape as I have seen only in Holland.

I was delighted. Such a scene is an inspiration. It makes one wish to be a painter or a poet or something. Subtle and delicate shades varied the long stretches of green meadow; clumps of trees, church towers, tiny red-roofed villages dotted the landscape; while here and there as far as the eye could reach, wide canals—the very pictures of tranquillity—reflected the great white clouds sailing overhead.

“Splendid, splendid!” I exclaimed to myself. And charming indeed did my ramble prove to be.

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