Mynheer Harmen Gerritszoon’s windmill ground exceeding small, and the product found a ready market.  There were no servants in the miller’s family—­everybody worked at the business.  In Holland people are industrious.  The leisurely ways of the Dutch can, I think, safely be ascribed to their environment, and here is an argument Buckle might have inserted in his great book, but did not, and so I will write it down.

There are windmills in Holland (I trust the fact need not longer be concealed) and these windmills are used for every possible mechanical purpose.  Now the wind blows only a part of the time—­except in Chicago—­and there may be whole days when not a windmill turns in all Holland.  The men go out in the morning and take due note of the wind, and if there is an absolute calm many of them go back to bed.  I have known the wind to die down during the day and the whole force of a windmill troop off to a picnic, as a matter of course.  So the elements in Holland set man the example—­he will not rush himself to death when not even the wind does.

Then another thing:  Holland has many canals.  Farmers load their hay on canal-boats and take it to the barn, women go to market in boats, lovers sail, seemingly, right across the fields—­canals everywhere.

Traveling by canal is not rapid transit.  So the people of Holland have plenty of precedent for moving at a moderate speed.  There are no mountains in Holland, so water never runs; it may move, but the law of gravitation there only acts to keep things quiet.  The Dutch never run footraces—­neither do they scorch.

In Amsterdam I have seen a man sit still for an hour, and this with a glass of beer before him, gazing off into space, not once winking, not even thinking.  You can not do that in America, where trolley-cars whiz and blizzards blow—­there is no precedent for it in things animate or inanimate.  In the United States everything is on the jump, art included.

Rembrandt Harmens worked in his father’s mill, but never strained his back.  He was healthy, needlessly healthy, and was as smart as his brothers and sisters, but no smarter, and no better looking.  He was exceedingly self-contained, and would sit and dream at his desk in the grammar-school, looking out straight in front of him—­just at nothing.

The master tried flogging, and the next day found a picture of himself on the blackboard, his face portrayed as anything but lovely.  Young Rembrandt was sent home to fetch his father.  The father came.

“Look at that!” said the irate teacher; “see what your son did; look at that!”

Mynheer Harmen sat down and looked at the picture in his deliberate Dutch way, and after about fifteen minutes said, “Well, it does look like you!”

Then he explained to the schoolmaster that the lad was sent to school because he would not do much around the mill but draw pictures in the dust, and it was hoped that the schoolmaster could teach him something.