stepped boldly out, up a street, down a
street, over a bridge, down a canal, up a
street, over a bridge, down a street, until he
stopped at a small door, rang a bell, talked a
great deal of Dutch with the genius of the
bell, and then, turning round to me as the
door closed upon us, shook his head and
trotted up the street again. He had made
a mistake evidently, but he did not look
chagrined. "Van der Tabak," I cried in his
ear, and pulling the letter out of my jacket
pocket, at the same time held before his eyes
the superscription. He then paused and by
words and signs deliberately explained to me:
"There are seventeen Van der Tabaks."

The seventeen did not appear to constitute
a loving clan, for they had all carefully
established themselves in places very remote from
one another. If I showed the address on my
letter with an inquisitive look to a passer-by,
he either shook his head, or pointed off in
some new direction, saying a few words to the
porter, who then added a branch line to the
main trunk along which we travelled. We
commenced our stradametrical survey of
Rotterdam at about half-past one o'clock, and
at about five o'clock—at which time, I judged,
the porter might begin to want his tea—I
was left with my little portmanteau at the
proper house, distant about a quarter of a
mile from the spot at which the boat had
landed us. As I had no Dutch money, my
friend the porter very kindly consented to
receive his hire in English half-crowns, two
of which satisfied him after much biting of
their edges, and a growl or two. I thought I
had been cheated. Probably the fact that I was
a little tired and hungry will account for the
uncharitable suspicion. However, I had only
paid five shillings for a walk through all the
streets of Rotterdam with a real Dutchman;
after all it was cheap. I felt for the hard
lumps in my waistband, found them there,
and mounted two flights of dark stairs to the
chamber of Mynheer Van der Tabak, with the
boldness of a true whelp of the British
Lion.

But Mynheer was out. Three women,
wonderfully oily for their age, sat at work
in a horribly close room, with their feet upon
abominations that I then saw used for the
first time—hot chauffe-pieds, though it was a
July afternoon. Methought, if these are
ordinary Frows, I know how we come by the word
frowsy. Clotho Van der Tabak held her
hand out for my letter, looked at it, and put
it into the big pocket at her side. Lachesis
asked me eight or ten questions in Dutch,
and Atropos pointed to a wooden stool, at
some distance in front of the dread sisters,
upon which I was to sit. The distance pleased
me. It was evident that I was to wait until
their father, husband, or son, the Van der
Tabak himself, should return; and I did
wait for an hour, in silence. During that
hour the sisters talked but little to each
other, but sat stewing gently on their chauffe-
pieds, following their work with their fingers,
and watching me a little pitifully with their
eyes. At last one of them, after a long search
with her hand among the articles concealed
within her pocket, brought to light a soft
cake in a state of perspiration, which, with
a word or two expressed in a kind tone,
she offered to me. They mistook me for
a child, those Dutch women.

I declined the cake, upon which its owner,
having first taken a bite out of it, returned it
to her pocket. After another pause there
was a short discussion among the women, and
Clotho, stooping a little, drew from under her
chair, where it lay hidden by her ample skirts,
such a stone bottle as I should in England
have supposed to contain Seltzer-water. From
the same handy cupboard she produced a
glass, having the mark of her own fair lips
upon its rim, impressed in at least three places.
Into this she poured for me some beer out of
the stone bottle. I drank that, and thought
it good. But very soon my head began to
ache while I was wondering at what time
Mynheer Van der Tabak would come home
to tea.

The Dutch women worked and the light
waned. I stared at them through the
twilight and the thick hot atmosphere, while my
mind ran in a melancholy way to the tune of
Mynheer Van Dunk. Was Van der Tabak
like his countryman given to sipping "brandy
and water gaily;" and was there no tea to be
hoped for; but would he come in presently
and ask me to play at cards with him by the
light of a flaring candle, getting my nose red,
and my body stout, and my trousers wrinkled
like his own? Should we, in fact, go to work
in the true Dutch way, as I had seen it
represented in old pictures. Was the unwholesome
Lachesis to lean over my shoulder as I
deliberated whether I would play the ace or
ten of spades, and was I—longing for tea or, to
speak honestly, even a draught of milk and
water—to imitate my host who was
accustomed to sip brandy and water gaily, quenching
his thirst with two quarts of the first
and a pint of the latter daily.

There was a creaking on the stairs. It was
not Van der Tabak. Under the weight of a
true Dutchman they would have groaned more
heavily. A tall, spare, yellow man with a
long hooked nose, entered. The women in a
few quiet guttural words acknowledged his
presence and indicated mine. He read my
letter, looked at me, and said, "Very goot, I
will take you to a bed." We went
downstairs; my little portmanteau was again
placed on the shoulder of a porter, and I
trotted out into the lamplighted streets beside
the hospitable Zamiel to whom I had been
consigned. "I will show you" he said, " a
very goot hotel." I did not talk to him and
I was glad to get out of his close room into
the summer twilight. As my guide stalked
on, I fell into a reverie beside him, and
forgot my hunger. I should be soon again an