The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge

Author:Mary Mapes Dodge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alma Books
Published: 2018-11-14T15:41:28+00:00

Chapter 28

Through The Hague

The picture gallery in the Mauritshuis, one of the finest in the world, seemed only to have flashed by the boys during a two hours’ visit, so much was there to admire and examine. As for the royal cabinet of curiosities in the same building, they felt that they had but glanced at it, though they were there nearly half a day. It seemed to them that Japan had poured all her treasures within its walls. For a long period, Holland, always foremost in commerce, was the only nation allowed to have an intercourse with Japan. One can well forgo a journey to that country if he can but visit the museum at The Hague.

Room after room is filled with collections from the Hermit Empire* – costumes peculiar to various ranks and pursuits, articles of ornament, household utensils, weapons, armour and surgical instruments. There is also an ingenious Japanese model of the island of Dejima, the Dutch factory in Japan. It appears almost as the island itself would if seen through a reversed opera glass, and makes one feel like a Gulliver coming unexpectedly upon a Japanese Lilliput.* There you see hundreds of people in native costumes, standing, kneeling, stooping, reaching – all at work, or pretending to be – and their dwellings, even their very furniture, spread out before you, plain as day. In another room a huge tortoiseshell baby house, fitted up in Dutch style and inhabited by dignified Dutch dolls, stands ready to tell you at a glance how people live in Holland.

Gretel, Hilda, Katrinka, even the proud Rychie Korbes, would have been delighted with this, but Peter and his gallant band passed it by without a glance. The war implements had the honour of detaining them for an hour – such clubs, such murderous krits* or daggers, such firearms and, above all, such wonderful Japanese swords, quite capable of performing the accredited Japanese feat of cutting a man in two at a single stroke!

There were Chinese and other oriental curiosities in the collection. Native historical relics, too, upon which our young Dutchmen gazed very soberly, though they were secretly proud to show them to Ben.

There was a model of the cabin at Zaandam in which Peter the Great lived during his short career as a shipbuilder. Also wallets and bowls once carried by the “Beggar” confederates who, uniting under the Prince of Orange, had freed Holland from the tyranny of Spain;* the sword of Admiral van Speyk, who about ten years before had perished in voluntarily blowing up his own ship; and Tromp’s armour with the marks of bullets upon it. Jacob looked around, hoping to see the broom which the plucky admiral fastened to his masthead, but it was not there. The waistcoat which William III of England wore during the last days of his life possessed great interest for Ben, and one and all gazed with a mixture of reverence and horror worship at the identical clothing worn by William the Silent when he was murdered at Delft by Balthasar Gérard.

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