AT three o’clock I left these pleasant people to visit the Ryks Museum and the next morning ran over to Haarlem, a half-hour away, to look at the Frans Hals in the Stadhuis. Haarlem was the city, I remember with pleasure, that once suffered the amazing tulip craze that swept over Holland in the sixteenth century—the city in which single rare tulips, like single rare carnations¹ to-day, commanded enormous sums of money. Rare species, because of the value of the subsequent bulb sale, sold for hundreds of thousands of gulden. I had heard of the long line of colored tulip beds that lay between here and Haarlem and The Hague and I was prepared to judge for myself whether they were beautiful—as beautiful as the picture post-cards sold everywhere indicated. I found this so, but even more than the tulip beds I found the country round about from Amsterdam to Haarlem, The Hague and Rotterdam delightful². I traveled by foot and by train, passing by some thirty miles of vari-colored flower-beds in blocks of red, white, blue, purple, pink, and yellow, that lie between the several cities. I stood in the old Groote Kerk of St. Bavo in Haarlem, the Groote Kerk of St. James in The Hague—both as bare of ornament⁴ as an anchorite’s cell—I wandered among the art treasures of the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam and the Mauritshuis and the Mesdag Museum in The Hague; I walked in the forests of moss-tinted⁵ trees at Haarlem and again at The Hague; my impression was that compact little Holland had all502 the charm of a great private estate, beautifully kept and intimately delightful.
 
But the canals of Holland—what an airy impression of romance, of pure poetry, they left on my mind! There are certain visions or memories to which the heart of every individual instinctively⁶ responds. The canals of Holland are one such to me. I can see them now, in the early morning, when the sun was just touching⁷ them with the faintest pearls, pinks, lavenders, blues⁸, their level surfaces as smooth as glass, their banks rising no whit³ above the level of the water, but lying even with it like a black or emerald frame, their long straight lines broken at one point or another by a low brown or red or drab cottage or windmill! I can see them again at evening, the twilight⁹ hour, when in that poetically¹⁰ suffused¹¹ mood of nature, which obtains then, they lie, liquid masses of silver, a shred¹² of tinted cloud reflected in their surface, the level green grass turning black about them, a homing bird, a mass of trees in the distance, or humble¹³ cottage, its windows faintly gold from within, lending those last touches of artistry which make the perfection of nature. As in London and Venice the sails of their boats were colored a soft brown, and now and again one appeared in the fading light, a healthy Hollander smoking his pipe at the tiller, a cool wind fanning his brow. The world may hold more charming pictures but I have not encountered them.
 
And across the level spaces of lush grass that seemingly stretch unbroken for miles—bordered on this side or that with a little patch of filigree¹⁴ trees; ribboned and segmented by straight silvery threads of water; ornamented¹⁵ in the foreground by a cow or two, perhaps, or a boatman steering¹⁶ his motor-power canal boat; remotely ended by the seeming outlines of a distant city, as delicately penciled as a line by Vierge—stand the windmills. I503 have seen ten, twelve, fifteen, marching serenely¹⁷ across the fields in a row, of an afternoon, like great, heavy, fat Dutchmen, their sails going in slow, patient motions, their great sides rounding out like solid Dutch ribs,—naïve, delicious things. There were times when their outlines took on classic significance. Combined with the utterly¹⁸ level land, the canals and the artistically¹⁹ martialed trees, they constitute the very atmosphere of Holland.
 
Haarlem, when I reached it, pleased me almost as much as Amsterdam, though it had no canals to speak of—by comparison. It was so clean and fresh and altogether lovely. It reminded me of Spotless Town—the city of advertising²⁰ fame—and I was quite ready to encounter the mayor, the butcher, the doctor and other worthies²¹ of that ultra-respectable city. Coming over from Amsterdam, I saw a little Dutch girl in wooden shoes come down to a low gate which opened directly upon a canal and dip up a pitcher²² of water. That was enough to key up my mood to the most romantic pitch. I ventured forth²³ right gaily²⁴ in a warm spring sun and spent the better portion of an utterly delightful day idling about its streets and museums.
 
Haarlem, to me, aside from the tulip craze, was where Frans Hals lived and where in 1610, when he was thirty years of age, he married and where six years later he was brought before the Burgoma............