It is further declared that the robber was Faust of Mayence, the partner of Gutenburg, and that it was thus that the honor of the invention passed from Holland to Germany where Gutenberg produced his invention of movable type twelve years later.  There is a statue of the Coster in front of the church, and, on its north side, his house is preserved and adorned with his bust.

Among a crowd of natives with their hats on, talking in church as in the market-place, we waited to hear the famous organ of Christian Muller (1735-38), and grievously were we disappointed with its discordant noises.  All the men smoked in church, and this we saw repeatedly; but it would be difficult to say where we ever saw a Dutchman with a pipe out of his mouth.  Every man seemed to be systematically smoking away the few wits he possest.

Opposite the Groote Kerk is the Stadhuis, an old palace of the Counts of Holland remodeled.  It contains a delightful little gallery of the works of Franz Hals, which at once transports the spectator into the Holland of two hundred years ago—­such is the marvelous variety of life and vigor imprest into its endless figures of stalwart officers and handsome young archers pledging each other at banquet tables and seeming to welcome the visitor with jovial smiles as he enters the chamber, or of serene old ladies, “regents” of hospitals, seated at their council boards.  The immense power of the artist is shown in nothing so much as in the hands, often gloved, dashed in with instantaneous power, yet always having the effect of the most consummate finish at a distance.  Behind one of the pictures is the entrance to the famous “secret-room of Haarlem,” seldom seen, but containing an inestimable collection of historic relics of the time of the famous siege of Leyden.

April and May are the best months for visiting Haarlem, which is the bulb nursery garden of the world.  “Oignons a fleurs” are advertised for sale everywhere.  Tulips are more cultivated than any other flower, as ministering most of the national craving for color; but times are changed since a single bulb of the tulip “L’Amiral Liefkenshoch” sold for 4,500 florins, one of “Viceroy” for 4,200, and one of “Semper Augustus” for 13,000.

SCHEVENINGEN[A]

[Footnote A:  From “Holland of To-Day.”  By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the author and of the publishers, Moffat, Yard & Co.  Copyright, 1909.]

BY GEORGE WHARTON EDWARDS

Let us go down to the North Sea and see how the Dutch people enjoy themselves in the summer.  Of course the largest of the watering-places in the Netherlands is Scheveningen, and it has a splendid bathing beach which makes it an attractive resort for fashionable Germans and Hollanders, and for summer travelers from all over the world.  At the top of the long dyke is a row of hotels and restaurants, and when one reaches this point after passing through the lovely old wood of stately trees one is ushered into the twentieth century, for here all is fashion and gay life, yet with a character all its own.