The introduction into England of dogs as beasts of draught would I suppose never be tolerated.  A score of humanitarian societies would spring into being to prevent it:  possibly with some reason, for one has little faith in the considerateness of the average English costermonger or barrow-pusher.  And yet the dog-workers of the Netherlands seem to be cheerful beasts, wearing their yoke very easily.  I have never seen one, either in Holland or Belgium, obviously distressed or badly treated.  Why the English dog should so often be a complete idler, and his brother across the sea the useful ally of man, is an ethnological problem:  the reason lying not with the animals but with the nations.  The Flemish and Dutch people are essentially humble and industrious, without ambitions beyond their station.  The English are a dissatisfied folk who seldom look upon their present position as permanent.  The English dog is idle because his master, always hoping for the miracle that shall make him idle too, does not really set his hand to the day’s work and make others join him; the Netherlandish dog is busy because his master does not believe in sloth, and having no illusions as to his future, knows that only upon a strenuous youth and middle age can a comfortable old age be built.  Countries that have not two nations—­the idle and rich and the poor and busy—­as we have, are, I think, greatly to be envied.  Life is so much more genuine there.

England indeed has three nations:  the workers, the idle rich who live only for themselves, and the idle rich or well-to-do who live also for others—­in other words the busybodies.  The third nation is the real enemy, for an altruist who has time on his hands can do enormous mischief between breakfast and lunch.  It is this class that would at once make it impossible for a strong dog to help in drawing a poor man’s barrow.  The opportunity would be irresistible to them.  The resolutions they would pass!  The votes of thanks to the lieutenant-colonels in the chair!

It was on this little journey to St. Jacobie Parochie that I saw my first stork.  Storks’ nests there had been in plenty, but all were empty.  But at Wier, close to St. Jacobie Parochie, was a nest on a pole beside the road, and on this nest was a stork.  The Dutch, I think, have no more endearing trait than their kindness to this bird.  Once at any rate their solicitude was grotesque, although serviceable, for Ireland tells of a young stork with a broken leg for which a wooden leg was substituted.  Upon this jury limb the bird lived happily for thirty years.

The stork alone among Dutch birds is sacred, but he is not alone in feeling secure.  The fowler is no longer a common object of the country, as he seems to have been in Albert Cuyp’s day, when he returned in the golden evening laden with game—­for Jan Weenix to paint.

St. Jacobie Parochie on a fine Sunday morning is no place for a sensitive man.  The whole of the male population of the village had assembled by the church—­not, I fancy, with any intention of entering it—­and every eye among them probed me like a corkscrew.  It is an out of the world spot, to which it is possible no foreigner ever before penetrated, and since their country was a show to me I had no right to object to serve as a show to them.  But such scrutiny is not comfortable.  I hastened to the sea.