This is the second banquet, for when the precise preliminaries of a Dutch engagement are settled a betrothal feast is held.  Friends are bidden to the wedding by the receipt of a box of sweets and a bottle of wine known as “Bride’s tears”.  For the wedding day itself there is a particular brand of wine which contains little grains of gold.  The Dutch also have special cake and wine for the celebration of births.

The position of the Dutch wife is now very much that of the wife in England; but in Holland’s great days she ruled.  Something of her quality is to be seen in the stories of Barneveldt’s widow and Grotius’s wife, and the heroism and address of the widow Kenau Hasselaer during the siege of Haarlem.  Davies has an interesting page or two on this subject:  “To be master of his own house is an idea which seems never to have occurred to the mind of a genuine Dutchman; nor did he often commence any undertaking, whether public or private, without first consulting the partner of his cares; and it is even said, that some of the statesmen most distinguished for their influence in the affairs of their own country and Europe in general, were accustomed to receive instructions at home to which they ventured not to go counter.  But the dominion of these lordly dames, all despotic though it were, was ever exerted for the benefit of those who obeyed.  It was the earnest and undaunted spirit of their women, which encouraged the Dutch to dare, and their calm fortitude to endure, the toils, privations, and sufferings of the first years of the war of independence against Spain; it was their activity and thrift in the management of their private incomes, that supplied them with the means of defraying an amount of national expenditure wholly unexampled in history; and to their influence is to be ascribed above all, the decorum of manners, and the purity of morals, for which the society of Holland has at all times been remarkable.  But though they preserved their virtue and modesty uncontaminated amid the general corruption, they were no longer able to maintain their sway.  The habit which the Dutch youth had acquired, among other foreign customs, of seeking amusement abroad, rendered them less dependent for happiness on the comforts of a married life; while, accustomed to the more dazzling allurements of the women of France and Italy, they were apt to overlook or despise the quiet and unobtrusive beauties of those of their own country.  Whether they did not better consult their own dignity in emancipating themselves from this subjection may be a question; but the fact, that the decline of the republic and of the female sex went hand in hand, is indubitable.”