A COW'S PARADISE. 13 



in canvas covering. The costly creatures, lately freed from their warm winter 

 quarters, are apt to take cold from the inclemencies of the early spring, hence 

 their blankets are not removed until the weather becomes safely warm. The 

 cattle remain under the blue vault of heaven day and night from the first of 

 May until the first of November, then they are taken into the cow-houses to 

 remain through the cold Holland winter. During the summer the cows are 

 milked twice a day in the field. 



" Cow stable is to us a name for an humble and unclean edifice, but a cow 

 stable in Holland has another meaning. No parlor is purer nor more carefully 

 tended than the habitation of the much loved kine. The busy Dutch farmer 

 does not usually care to give any of his time to curiosity seekers, and it is not 

 always easy for the stranger to gain admission to his household, but we secured 

 a letter to a farrner near Broek, in North Holland, which admitted us to his 

 cow-house and to his residence at the same time. Both were under one roof. 

 Cow stable and parlor adjoined, and one was quite as clean as the other. We 

 were conducted to the stable first, which in reality, was a wide hall with a strip 

 of oilcloth down the centre. Rows of tiny square windows, high up on both 

 sides, were curtained with spotless lace or thin white net tied back with 

 ribbon ; pots of blooming flowers were set on the sills of the windows looking 

 south. Beneath each curtained window was a cow-stall, there were twenty-six 

 in all such luxuriant and dainty little places ! On the floors, which were of 

 porcelain, a thick layer of clean white sawdust had been placed, and this was 

 stamped into patterns of stars and wheels and various geometrical designs. 

 Of course the return of the cows from the fields to their winter quarters breaks 

 these pretty sawdust designs into a confused mass, but during the summer they 

 are carefully preserved thus. Before and behind each row of stalls runs a 

 trough of clear water the first for the cow to drink from, the second to wash 

 away all impurities. In the ceiling behind every stall is fixed a kind of iron 

 hook, whose strange and ludicrous office is to hold high in the air the cow's tail 

 that she may not soil that carefully combed member. One wonders that the 

 cows' tails after many generations of this tying up process do not grow straight 

 up. One extravagant book of travels tries to make us believe that the tails are 

 often tied with blue ribbon, but this we found to be an exaggeration. 



"It is not, however, an exaggeration that the cattle every day during the 

 winter are washed off with warm soap suds, dried, rubbed, coddled and talked 

 to as if they were children, that the air of the stable is as pure as the 

 atmosphere outside, and that no pains are spared to keep them healthy and 

 comfortable. Under such kind treatment they become such plump, glossy and 

 gentle animals that they repay their owners by an enormous quantity of milk. 



"Leading us from the cow stable into an adjoining apartment, the farmer's 

 wife showed us long rows of cheese presses containing round, firm Edam 

 cheeses which would be ready to remove from their moulds after thirty-six 

 hours of pressure. Every press, every bowl, every churn, every linen cloth, 

 every pot and pan used in the making of this cheese spoke of the most absolute 

 cleanliness and told of the hours of washing and scrubbing and rubbing. After 

 seeing the sweetness of the cheese-making process in Holland, I made a vow to 

 eat Dutch cheese whenever I could get it. In cleanliness and purity it can be 

 excelled by no manufactured article of food in the world. ' Clean, clean, clean,' 

 we repeated again and again, and the rosy little farmer's wife smiled with 

 pleasure. Clean was only the one English word she could understand. She 

 invited us into the living-room, just in front of the cows' apartment, and 

 offered us milk. As we drank we looked around the room and sniffed tne air 

 suspiciously, but although the stable was adjoining, not the slighest odor of 

 cows could we detect in that clean little room. 



"The one elegant piece of furniture here was a tall, carved Dutch chest. 

 Our hostess opened the doors of this and displayed piles of white linen therein 

 enough to start a shop. Opening another door, which we had supposed led into 

 another room, we saw it was simply the door to the bed, which was just a shelf 

 in the wall piled high with feathers and linen. Whether the Hollanders shut 

 themselves in entirely in these curious beds, or leave the doors ajar while 

 asleep, I could not learn. ' Perhaps they are the cows' beds,' suggested the 

 giddy one of our number : ' ask her.' The smiling little woman shook her head 

 in reply to the question, though after what we had just seen we should hardly 

 have been surprised if she had told us that on cold winter nights the cows 

 curled themselves in these downy niches in the wall." 



