ON GETTING THERE 5 



The national virtue of Holland, the Holland 

 one sees from the canal, is industry ; not energy 

 exactly, certainly not ' hustle ' or any kindred thing, 

 but industry, coupled with a neatness which keeps 

 even the ditches tidy, and does not allow of that 

 inalienable right of the English rural dweller, the 

 garden rubbish-heap. The Dutch strike one as 

 more industrious than anything else in the world, 

 unless perhaps ants, to a community of which, it 

 must be admitted, they bear some resemblance. 

 The national ideal, at least in the" bulb district, is 

 cleanliness. About the highest praise to be be- 

 stowed on anything is that it is clean. A fine 

 tulip bulb in its shining yellow-brown skin is 

 extolled as " so clean " ; the curious sandy soil in 

 which the bulbs grow is spoken of with pride as 

 always clean ; the great compliment to be paid to a 

 bulb barn is that it is clean. Possibly one of the 

 advantages of the growers' work is that it is clean. 



It is, I believe, customary to speak of Amsterdam 

 as the Venice of the North. For one who has not 

 seen Venice it is impossible to draw a comparison, 

 but it seems difficult to imagine much resemblance 

 between them — beyond the fact that both possess 

 canals and houses and history. Amsterdam some- 

 how reminds one of Dickens' novels, it is immensely 



