The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 3, 1904, Page 15

ght 1904, by Central News and Press Exchange.) LKS suffering from Jingolsm, spread-eaglelsm, chauvinism—all ke isms, to whatever coun- they belong—would be well take 2 tour of Holland. It of the moment that size ness. The bigger the coun- he better one is for living there. Frenchman cannot possi- ¥ as the most wretched for the reason that Eng- y more thousands of France possesses. _( dea en he looks at Asia, feel him- a mis creature. The hat everybody in America Is s to be explained by rica has an area e entire moon. The who has backed the ssed his train and lost ers this and feels According to this ar- d be the happiest e sea consjsting—at least n atlas, 1 have not measured yeelf—of 144,000,000 of square miles. e, the sea is also divided in t t of. Posi the sar- es near the Brittany coast is i because the Nor- proud inha haps that is why ast. Ashamed If with the ets on the . es mot often see s but a mere detail. He the th the it so, To all seeming, smoking his great the White- moocher. of the streets to have a first_seemed work or the docks—until something better to do— English money to y. I inquired back through told he zet was is not the country for Holland work is easily s away the charm of i A farm laborer in 1 & brick built house of h generally belongs to so of ground; meat once & @ay. The we fills up on eggs and cese 2nd beer. But you him grumble. His wife y be seen on Sundays i silver jewelry worth and there is gener- delft and pewter in the house to start a local museum anywhere outside of Holland. On high days and holidays, of which in Holiand there are plenty, the aver- age Dutch vrouw would be well worth running away with. The Dutch peas- ant girl has no need of an illustrated Journal once a week to tell her what the fashion is; she has it in'the por- trait of her mother, or of her grand- mother, banging over . the glittering chim: piece. When the Dutch woman builds a dress she builds it to last; it descends from mother to daughter, but it is made of sound material in the beginning. A lady friend of mine thought the Dutch costume would serve well for a fancy dress ball, go set about buying one. But she abandoned the no- tion on learning what it would cost her. ADutch girl in her Sunday clothes must be worth fifty pounds before you come to ornaments. In certain provinces she wears a close fitting helmet, either of solid eilver or of solid gold. The Dutch gallant, before making him- self known, walks on tiptoe a little while behind the loved one and looks at himself in her headdress just to make Sure that his hat is on straight and his front curl just where it ought to be. In most other European goun- trice national costume is dying out. The slop shop is year by year entending its leous trade. But the country of Ru- and Rembrandt, of Te erard Dow, remains still tr The picture postcard does pot exagger- ate, The men in those wondrous knickerbockers, from the poc which you sometimes see a. c chickens’ heads protruding: mighty sabots, smoking their pipes; the women in their pettic many hues, in gorgeously embr vest, in chemisette of dazaling white, crowned with a hala of many fril ring in gold and silver creatures of an artist’ meet them In their th day afternoons, walk in arm, flirting with s ldfty On bright colder davs the women wear tie hood with pre the toylike without, the back into As for the ¢ en—women e, the single difference in dre gay pinafore—you can only regards thoughtfulr say of them that they look like Dutch dolls. But such_ plump, contented, cheerful little dolfs! You remember the =d, pale-faced dolls you see swarming in the great big and therefc countries, e should-be happy and wish that more d of less importance to our statesmen and our able editors, and the happiness and well-being of the mere hun items worth a little more thought. The Dutch peasant lives d by canals and reaches his co a drawbridge. 1 suppos od of the Dutch child n o the canal, and the Dutch r appears to anticipate One can imagine the glish mother trying to bring v in a house surrounded by She would never have a peace until the children were But then the mere sight of a c: nal to the English child sugge: the delights of a sudden and unexpected bath. I put it to a Dutchman once, “Did the Dutch child by any chance ever fall into a canal?” *“Yes,” he re- plied, “cases had been known.” “Don’t you @ ything for it?” I inquired. “Oh, he answered, “we haul them out again “But what I mean is,” I explained, “don’t you do anything to prevent their falling in—to save them from falling in again?” *“Yes,” he an- swered, “we gpank 'em.” There is al- ways a wind in Holland. It comes from over the sea. There is nothing to stay its progress. It leaps the low dykes and sweeps with a shriek across the sad soft dunes, and thinks it is go- ing to have a good time and play havoe in the land. But the Dutchman laughs behind his great pipe as it comes to him shouting and roaring. “Welcome, my hearty, welcome,” he chuckles, “come blustering and bragging; the bigger you are the better I like you.” And when It is once in the land, be- hind the long, straight dykes, behind urface were made. THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. = the waving Jine of sandy dunes, he seizes hold of it, and will not let it go till it has done its tale of work. The wind is the Dutchman's servant; be- fore he lets it loose again it has turned ten thousand mills, has pumped the water and sawed the wood, has light- ed the town and worked the loom, and forgad the iron, and driven the great, slow, silent wherry, and played with the children in the garden. It is a sober wind when it gets back to sea, worn and weary, leaving the Dutch- man laughing behind his everlasting pipe. There are canals in Holland down which you pass as through a field of wind-blown corn; a soft, low, rustling murmur even in your ears. It is the ceaseless whirl of the great mill salls. Far out at sea the winds are as fool- ish as savages, fighting, shrieking, tearing, purposeless. Here, in the streets of mills, it is a civilized wind, ' STRONG ON MORALITY Fables for the Foolish by Nicholas Nemo R. J. L. FARRYSEE was £ on morality. It didn’t wake any difference to him other people thought or was convinced that he roprietor and manufac- pure brand of moral- . All others were base it up with intent to de- ople are fairly scrupu- reat things of moral- £ to commit mur- der that it is ab- and they will not *ast not unless they ally connected with ere is also a preju- ty against throwing y-haired father out in the at least as long as he can pay rd and help take care of the dren. All these things and many more the average citizen attends to with more ss care and without taking to him- #elf much more than a due amount of pride. But Mr. Farrysee wasn't sat- isfied with any such outline study of a moral system as that. What he cried eloud for with the volce of a sewing machine agent in the wilds of Mich- igan was a system of ethics that should be wind, water and dust proof, varnished inside and out, guaranteed sound in wind and limb, and safe in all wegthers. Most people are honest in the rough—and the rougher the bet- ter—but they can’t always be counted on to go out of the way to return an umbrella or to tell the other man about the jump in the stock market that he can expect the day after to-morrow. Mr. Farrysee regarded these average individuals as perhaps a shade better than ordinary assassins, but he was in- clined to the belief that the difference was scarcely perceptible to the naked conscience. The theory on which Mr. Farrysee regulated his comings and goings and likewise his stayings was that an hon- est man is the noblest work of God, and he was accustomed to supplement this idea with the further statement that he was about the only perfect specimen of that rare work now ex- tant. Not only was he strong on hon- esty and the other virtues, but he held very firmly to the belief that the chief duty of man is to help his fellow men. To this end he permitted his name to parade In large type at the head of every list of contributors to the fresh air fund and the free coal fund and the fund for the assistance of all the deserving who can prove that they have been respectable for at least two consecutive years. It was nothing to him—except as a source of sadness— that the majority of men are occupied principally with the effort to corner the world's visible supply of hundred- dollar bills. Let those who would give their minds to the accumulation of sordid although useful and more or less necessary bank accounts. He would be satisfied with the modest competence that he had received from his father. Be that as it may, it remains that, barring attendance at directors’ meet- ings and brief sojourns with a stack of coupons and a pair of scissors at his banker’s, his time was taken up for the most part with seelng whom he could assist. He was g0 tender hearted that he couldn’t bear to even think of suf- fering - without dashing out with his checkbook and a sterilizing apparatus to relieve it. Whenever there was a meeting of the Society for the Prom tion of Butting In, Mr. Farrysee was sure to be on hand with a long speech concealed somewhere about his person, which he would unfold on the slightest provocation, copy having been fur- nished to all the newspapers before- hand. Then he would tell the assem- bled millionaires that he who died rich died disgraced, although disgrace was not necessarily a thing that an honest man should fear. “What we want is more public spirit,” he would say, and the millionaires with their eyes on the decanters would applaud wildly, and immediately annex some more of the spirit in order to show their full accord with what had been said. About the time that the old man was ready for the crown that posterity was carefully preparing for his vener- able brow two or three impertinent in- vestigating committees began to get busy with other people’s affairs with the general result that Mr. Farrysee's mental equilibrium turned several com- plete somersaults without stopping for breath. It seemed from the returns that while he was holding himself up crooning softly while it labors. charms one in Holland is the neatness and the cleanliness of all about one. ‘What Il i Maybe to the Dutchman there are drawbacks. In a Dutch household life must be one long spring cleaning. No before the youth of the land as a shin- ing example of all that a man should be he was also holding stock in two or three eorporations that were care- fully and elaborately robbing the Gov- ernment, the public and every one else in sight. All the railroads that he was interested in were charging three prices for the mail contracts and knocking the spots off the anti-trust law at every opportunity. His pet telegraph com- pany was busily engaged in furnishing the news of the latest happenings at all the tracks on the circuits to the institutions whose principal function in lif2 is to separate sporty young men from their fathers’ money. Most of the city property that he owned was cov- ered with tenements that would have made a pig sty look Itke the Moorish room at the Waldorf., To make matters worse, Mr. Farry- see knew all about these things and ‘was highly indignant when it was put up to him to inform the general public what he was going to do about it. To all inquiring friends—from the newspapers—he replied that these were private matters and had nothing to do with him in his public capacity. When the Grand Jury camped on his trall, however, and the District Attorney started out to make a little call on him with a fire ladder and an ax he suddenly acquired an overdose of ap- oplexy and departed immediately for the land where the coupon clips no longer and the water stock is furled. ‘The point that should be emphasized by Mr. Farrysee's career is that he not only.refused to let his right hand know what his left hand was up to, but he also withheld that very interesting in- formation from the rest of the world. This leads us to the valuable conclu- sion that the reason for the soulless- ness of corporations is to be found in the fact that the directors use up all of their souls outside of business (Copyright, 1903, by Albert Britt.) o+ - THOSE GRADUATES H, yes, there is a good deal of fuss and feathers about the modern commencement. Fond papas and adoring mammas are hurried from one function to an- other. The brass bands and the orators from abroad vie with one another for a hearing. The floral offerings are weighty and impressive and all the minor accessories of the occasion help to make it the biggest event of the month. The custom of celebrating the closing of an academic year has spread from the higher Institutions down through the high and even into the grammar and intermediate schools and sometimes the tots in the kinder- garten are made to have a dim reali- zation of the fact that they are on the threshold of a new epoch in their educational career. And yet these royal June days would be robbed of half their glory if it were not the month par excellence of com- mencements, It is for our adorable ‘graduates that roses bloom in profu- sion and ovérarching skies take on a blue not less beautiful than the firma- ment above Italian plains and mead- ows are adorned in garments of living green. So give the fair young grad- uates the center of the stage and let us listen attentively while Augustus discourses _attentively upon “The Causes of Decay in Nations” and the milk pall is considered fit that cannot just as well be used for a looking-glass. The great brass pans hanging under the penthouse roof outside the cottage door flash like burnished gold. You could eat your dinner off the red-tiled floor but that the deal table, scrubbed to the color of cream cheese, is more convenient. By each threshold stands a row of empty sabots, and woe betide the Dutchman who would dream of crossing it in anything but his stock- inged feet. There is a fashion in sabots. Every spring they are freshly painted. One district fancies an orange yellow, another a red, a third a white, sug- gesting purity and innocence. Mem- bers of the smart set indulge in orna- mentation—a frieze in pink, a star upon the toe. Walking in sabots Is not as easy as it looks. Attempting to run in sa- bots I do not recommend to the be- ginner. “How do_you rum in sa- bots?” I asked a Dutchman once; I had been experimenting and hurt my- self. ‘“We don’t run,” answered the Dutchman. And observation has Yo d JEROME K. JEROME > 5""“ to be that he was right. The utch bay, when he runs, puts them for preference on his hands and uses them to hit other Dutch boys over the head as he passes. The roads in Hol- land, straight and level and shaded all the way with trees, look from the rallway carriage window as if they would be good for cycling, but s is delusion. I crossed in the boat from Hawwich once with a well known black and white artist and an equally well known and highly respected hu morist. They had their bicycles with them, intending to tour Holland. I met them a fortnight later in Delft, or, rather, I met their remains. I was horrified at first; I thought it was drink. They could not stand still, they could not sit still, they trembled and shook In every limb, the 2 chatteréd when they tried to t humorist hadn't a joke in ertist conld not have drawn salary. He would have dropped it on the way to his pocket. The Dutch roads are paved their entire length with cobbles—big, round cobbles, over which your bicy leaps and springs and plunges. If you see Holland out- side the big to Dutch i3 necessary man there is not much 4d Dutch—I speak as an amateu pears to be very bad German, nounced. Myself I ind my German goes well in Holland, even better than in Germany. The Anglo-Saxon should not attempt the Dutc It is hope- less to think of su tempt has been k ternal rupture. pears to keep his G in h and to haul it up when wanted. self, I find the ordin G preceded by a hiccough and fol ed by a sob the nearest I can get to it. But they tell me it is not quite right yet. One needs to save up beforehand if one desires to spend any length of time in Holland. One talks of dear old England, but the dearest land in all the world is little Holland. The florin thers is equal to the franc in France and to the shilling in England. They tell you that cigars are cheap In Holland. A cheap Dutch cigar will last you a day. It is not until you have forgotten the taste of it that you feel you ever want to smoke again. I knew a man who reckoned he had saved hundreds of pounds by smoking Dutch cigars for a month steadily. It was years befors he smoked again ‘Watching building operafions in Hol- land brings home to you forcibly what previously you have regarded as a meaningless formula, namely, that the country is bullt upon piles. A dozen feet below the level of the strest one sees the laborers working In fisher- men’s boots, up to their knees in water, driving the great wooden blocks inte the mud. Many of the older houses slope forward at such an angle that you almost fear to pass beneath them. I should be as nervous as a kitten live ing in one of the upper stories. But the Dutchman leans out of a window that is hanging above the eet six feet be- yond the perpendicular and smokes contentedly. They have a merry custom in Holland of keeping the railway time twenty minutes ahead of the town time—or is it twenty minutes behind? I can never remember when I'm there and I am not sure now. The Dutchman himself never knows. ve plenty of time. he says, “the stal is a mile away, and it is now haif-past nine.” “Yes, but that means ten-twenty,” he answers, “you have nearly an hour.” Five min« utes later he taps you on the shoul« der. “My mistake; it's twenty to ten. I was thinking the other way about {t.”™ Another argues with him that his firs¢ idea was right. They work it out by scientific methods. Meanwhile you have dived into a cab. The result is always the same; you are either forty minutes too soon or you have missed the train by twenty minutes. A Dutch platform is always crowded with wom- en explaining volubly to their husbands either that there was not any need to have hurried, or else that the thing would have been to have started half an hour before they did, the man in both cases being, of course, to blame. The men walk up and down and swear. The I|dea has been suggested that the rallway time and the town time should be made to conform. The argument against the idea is that If it were car- ried out then there would be nothing left to put the Dutchman out and worry him. By The Parson ——t | | blushing Stella reads her essay on the “Poetry of Everyday Life.” June be- longs to the outgoing seniors and there will never be another day in all their future history which will quite com- pare with the one on which they stand up in the hot crowded hall and re- ceive diplomas. They may wander far and wide In the world, but it will be a long time before the words, “mem- bers of the graduating class,” will be forgotten or the thrill of pride with which they arose to receive their final monitions and exhortations. Ah, you bald-headed old fellow, and you, stald matron with silvery hair, do not grow cynical in your old age as you gaze at the spectacle and say un- der your breath, “Oh, pshaw! what does it all amount to, anyway? It will be soon over and they will find the world cold enough when they take their first plunge.” Rather let your thought fly back to your own callow yet glorious school days, to the little red building where you learned your A B C's, to the academy where you frolicked and studied, to the college or university around which gather some of the most precious memories of your life. Try to recall, if you can, the impulses and the high ambitions that were yours when you were in your teens or your early twenties. So shall the annual recurrence of the commencement season exhilarate and inspire you anew. And it does mean something to the youngsters. That meaning lies beneath G the externals of the celebrations, in the glad consciousness that a certain round of study has been accomplished and certain just rewards earned. It Is a great thing to go through even one school or one prescribed course, to have avalled one's self of a certain set of opportunities, and now to be ready to move on to the next stage of study or of action. Make all you can, then, Mr. Senior and Miss Senior, of this golden moment. Exalt the loyalties to your school, to your class and to your ideals of the scholarly life. How poor the world would be with- out the pouring Into its depleted life of the fresh enthusiasm of these fair young graduates the country over. Their contribution to the body politic cannot easily be calculated. Before the advance of this shining host stretching from Maine to California, it seems as if all the evils of the world would have to 8o down. How can shams and cerrup- tions and Intrenched wrongs resist the onset of the energy, the knowledge and consecration to be found in the boys and girls, the young men and the young women who are going out dur- ing these passing weeks from our edu- cational institutions? The world needs them sorely and they will not disap- point our hopes. Only let them realize as they go that knowledge must be yoked with faith, learning with loving. If they are to make themselves tell and attain true success. For there is only one fhing better than a thoroughly disciplined, well-informed mind, and that is a pure,