The larger room is similiar but more costly.  On the wall are fine Delft plates, and seated at the table are wax Hindeloopeners:  a man with a clay pipe and tobacco box, wearing a long flowered waistcoat, a crossed white neckcloth and black coat and hat—­not unlike a Quaker in festival attire; and his neat and very picturesque women folk are around him.  In the cradle, enshrined in ornamentations, is a Hindeloopen baby.  More old silver and shining brass here and there, and the same resolute cheerfulness of colouring everywhere.  Some of the houses in which such rooms were found still stand at Hindeloopen.

The Dutch once liked puns, and perhaps still do so.  Again and again in their old inscriptions one finds experiments in the punning art, On the church of Hindeloopen, for example, are these lines:—­

    Des heeren woord
    Met aandacht hoort
    Komt daartoe met hoopen
    Als hinden loopen.

The poet must have had a drop of Salvationist blood in his veins, for only in General Booth’s splendid followers do we look for such spirited invitations.  The verses call upon worshippers to run together like deer to hear the word of God.

Within the great church, among other interesting things, are a large number of biers.  These also are decorated according to the pretty Hindeloopen usage, one for the dead of each trade.  Order even in death.  The Hindeloopen baker who has breathed his last must be carried to the grave on the bakers’ bier, or the proprieties will wince.

After Hindeloopen the first town of importance on the way to Leeuwarden is Sneek; and Sneek is not important.  But Sneek has a water-gate of quaint symmetrical charm, with two little spires—­the least little bit like the infant child of the Amsterdam Gate at Haarlem.  In common with so many Frisian towns Sneek has suffered from flood.  A disastrous inundation overwhelmed her on the evening of All Saints’ Day in 1825, when the dykes were broken and the water rushed in to the height of five feet.  Such must be great times of triumph for the floating population, who, like the sailor in the old ballad of the sea, may well pity the unfortunate and insecure dwellers in houses.  What the number of Friesland’s floating population is I do not know; but it must be very large.  Many barges and tjalcks are both the birthplace and deathplace of their owners, who know no other home.  The cabins are not less intimately cared for and decorated than the sitting-rooms of Volendam and Marken.

We saw at Edam certain odd characters formed in Nature’s wayward moods.  Sneek also possessed a giant named Lange Jacob, who was eight feet tall and the husband of Korte Jannetje (Little Jenny), who was just half that height.  People came from great distances to see this couple.  And at Sneek, in the church of St. Martin, is buried a giant of more renown and prowess—­Peter van Heemstra, or “Lange Pier” as he was called from his inches, a sea ravener of notable ferocity, whose two-handed sword is preserved at Leeuwarden—­although, as M. Havard says, what useful purpose a two-handed sword can serve to an admiral on a small ship baffles reflection.