Dutchman

“ Such is the effect of early prejudices, that, under the muzle of the sun, a Dutchman cannot exist without snuffing the putrid exhalations from stagnant water, to which they have been accustomed from their infancy. ”

“ With regard to the affairs of his country generally, the state of mind of the average Dutchman has been well described as that of a man well on in years, who has amassed a fair fortune, and now takes things easily, and loves to talk over the somewhat wild doings of his youth. Nothing is more common than to hear the remarks from both old and young, 'We have been great,' 'We have had our time,' 'Every nation reaches a climax;' and certainly Holland has been very great in statesmen, patriots, theologians, artists, explorers, colonizers, soldiers, sailors, and martyrs. ”

“ If we Americans, who after all are homeopathic preparations of Holland stock, can laugh at the Dutch, and call them human beavers and hint that their country may float off any day at high tide, we can also feel proud, and say they have proved themselves heroes and that their country will not float off while there is a Dutchman left to grapple it. ”

“ The Dutch are still notorious for their partiality to them, and continue to pay higher prices for them than any other people. As the rich Englishman boasts of his fine race-horses or his old pictures, so does the wealthy Dutchman vaunt him of his tulips. ”

“ But I do not find that in any department of enterprize, of commercial integrity, and of intellectual vigour, the Dutchman of to-day is behind any European nation whatever, or even the race which achieved so remarkable a position in the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. ”

“ Deliberate as the Dutchman is, he knows when time is precious; the heavy roer is steadily aligned, and, if the aim be true, the monarch of the forest falls dead upon the spot, or, collecting his last energies, springs upon the horses. ”

“ For the rest, this Country is as charming in some Things, as it is disagreeable in others. ’Tis certain, that the People are now and then too insolent; yet a Dutchman does not care to be the first to give an Affront; and unless a Foreigner provokes him by his Pride, or his Pertness, he will indulge himself in his Phlegm. ”

“ To-day we have some representatives of the Charles II courtiers, who affect to ape the English, and would, no doubt, despise the Dutch. But he who appreciates the genuine meaning of a man, born in the image and living in the fear of his God, has nothing but direst disgust for a dude, nothing but the rarest respect for a Dutchman. ”

“ Though a veritable Dutchman, he entirely lost the Dutchman’s slowness upon this memorable occasion. He relied more upon energetic effort for success than upon tedious perseverance and plodding patience, and the soft earth [Pg 34] was made to fly in every direction. The excitement of the employment soon brought back his usual complexion, and gave his plump face a greasy and shining appearance; when off went hat and coat, and every other article of apparel which generally encumbers a Dutchman whilst at labor. ”

“ The Dutchman seldom owns an acre of land without having a fish-pond. He so delights in still and semi-stagnant water that, not content to be surrounded on every side by canals, ditches, and sluices, he must have an additional pool as impure as odorous under his very nose. In the neighborhood of all the large towns the tradesmen and merchants, having their shops and counting-houses in narrow streets, own a little garden in the outskirts, where, if they have no house, they can at least retire after business and spend a few hours with their families. ”

“ A Dutchman ought to have more sense than to load up with a lot of cursed patois. Nothing but French and Indian! We'll have to put the precious dears in the sleeping-tent, and bunk down ourselves with blankets in the other. ”

“ While the Englishman is naturally a social body, liking company and the general gossip heard among his own people, the Dutchman is rather solitary in his tastes. He cares for no neighbors, and would resent the sight of smoke rising from any chimney within sight [Pg 240] of his own. ”

“ The Dutchman, while inheriting from the same ancestry the strong traits of courage, tenacity and the willingness to surrender individual inclinations in order to combine with his fellows, has a leaven of good humor which is a great saving grace. ”

“ After this, I went on shore myself with Captain Merlotte, and some of the men whom I could trust; and we found it true as the Dutchman had related. The Dutchman gave us a long history of his adventures, and how he came to be left there by a ship he came in from Europe, which, he running up into the country for sport with three more of his comrades, went away without them, and left them among the natives, who, however, used them extremely well; and that now he served them for an interpreter and a broker, to bargain for them with the European ships for provisions. ”

“ A Dutchman is not a greater smoker than a French Canadian.
"The visage of the Habitant is long and thin, his complexion sunburnt and swarthy, and not unfrequently of a darker hue than that of the Indian. His eyes, though rather small, are dark and lively ”

“ Amongst themselves, even in circles where a taste for art and science was well developed, coarse festivals, excessive meals, and gross humour was often met with, peculiarities, however, which the Dutchman had in common with Anglo-Saxons, Germans, and other Northern races at that time. ”

“ There is a great lack of faith in everything, in secular as well as religious matters, the Dutchman will risk nothing, for four cents' outlay he must be quite certain of six cents in return. As long as he is in this mood the country will 'mark time,' but not advance much. ”

“ A Dutchman will save any thing; and this rich place has all come out of saving the Mud, and starving the Fishes. Here Traffic is wooed as though she were a Woman, and Gold is put to bed with Time, and there is much joy over their Bantling, which is christened Interest. A strange, cleanly, money-grubbing Country of Botanic Gardens and Spitting-pans, universal Industry and Tobacco-pipes, Gingerbread and [118] Sawing-mills, Tulip-roots and the Strong Waters of Schiedam, Cheese, Red Herrings, and the Protestant Religion. ”

“ They became, like Switzerland, and unlike Poland and Hungary, a neutral region, which it was for the interest of Europe at large to let alone. None cared to meddle with them; and, on the other hand, they had native virtue and force enough to resist being absorbed into other peoples; the character of the Dutch is as distinct to-day as ever it had been. Their language, their literature, their art, and their personal traits, are unimpaired. They are, in their own degree, remarkably prosperous and comfortable; and they have the good sense to be content with their condition. ”

“ Of the white races in the Colony the French element has been completely absorbed in the Dutch. They and the German settlers are mainly pastoral people. The Dutch, who have retained in a debased form their own language, also engage largely in agriculture and viticulture. Of fine physique and hardy constitution, they are of strongly independent character; patriarchal in their family life; shrewd, slim and courageous; in religion Protestants of a somewhat austere type. Education is somewhat neglected by them, and the percentage of illiteracy among adults is high. ”

“ When one thinks of it, the Dutch habit of staring at the visitor until he almost wishes the sea would roll in and submerge him, argues a want of confidence in their country, tantamount to a confession of failure. Had they a little more trust in the attractive qualities of their land, a little more imagination to realise that in other eyes its flatness and quaintness might be even alluring, they would accept and acknowledge the compliment by doing as little as possible to make their country’s admirers uncomfortable. ”

“ No doubt the Dutch may have many faults; but looking at them, no one can deny that some of the finest types of humanity are to be seen among them. Watching their faces you can see and better understand the natures which braved so much. ”

“ Thanks to one thing or another, — to their temperament, to their climate, to their having located themselves in an out-of-the-way corner of Europe, — the Dutch have changed but little, unless when change has been indispensable to their well-being. No doubt they have been kept moving by the irresistible forces of civilization, competition, and invention; and sometimes, being far-sighted men of business, they have even anticipated the pressure. ”

“ So that we may truly say of the Dutch, that although they are amongst us, yet certainly they are not of us, no not they who are born and bred here in our own Countrey, for stil they will be Dutch, not having so much as one drop of English bloud in their hearts. ”

“ The endeavours of the industrious Dutch do give sufficient testimony of this truth, to our great shame, and no less perill, if it have not a timely prevention: for, whilst we leave our wonted honourable exercises and studies, following our pleasures, and of late years besotting our selves with pipe and pot, in a beastly manner, sucking smoak, and drinking healths, until death stares many in the face; the said Dutch have well-neer left this swinish vice,The Netherlanders ingratitude. ”

“ The English are a great nation, and they despise the Dutch because they are smaller. The French are a greater nation still, and therefore they despise the Dutch because they are still smaller in comparison to them. But I doubt much whether there is any nation of Europe more estimable than the Dutch in proportion. Their industry and economy ought to be examples to the world. They have less ambition, I mean that of conquest and military glory, than their neighbors, but I don't perceive that they have more avarice. ”

“ Practically everything that we recognize to-day as characteristic of the modern spirit in politics, religion, science, society, industry, commerce, and art has its prototype amid that sturdy people; being either the cause or the product of their struggle for independence and their self-development. Nor, in paying honor to the Dutch, need we attempt to suggest that they were the inventors of these characteristics. Most of the latter were, so to say, in the air. ”

“ But keen as the Dutch were after the profits to be obtained by trade, by manufactures and husbandry, diligent as they were in working out any expedient which might add to the material resources of their country, and the citizens who governed the republic, they were as distinguished in the pursuits of literature and science. ”

“ The Dutchesses Rotterdam, July 24.
The secret of the success of the Dutch is no secret at all. Everybody works, not excepting father, grandfather and grandmother. I suppose this habit began with the unceasing fight against the sea, the building of the dikes, the pumping out of the water, and the construction of a soil. It has continued until there is no other people more persistently industrious. They rise early and get busy. ”

“ Finally that most awful and most despondent of all sentimental meditations, that "we have been a great country once," that "we have had our time," has begun to make place for the conviction that at this very moment no other nation of such a small area and insignificant number of people is capable of performing such valuable service in so many fields of human endeavour as is the modern Dutch nation. ”

“ The Dutch, like the English, do not possess the genius of outdoor refreshment. The cafés and beer-houses are mostly under cover, and in all but the larger establishments you sit close, and are not over-burthened with light; but the Dutch enjoy themselves, and cling to old customs and old costumes with a conservatism which is part and parcel of the national character. They have had to fight the ocean for every inch of Holland, and they are a brave and a grand people who have triumphed over difficulties which might have caused Hercules to throw up the sponge. ”

“ The Dutch appear to me to be sincere and honest; they have the politeness of the French without their levity. Their peasantry and mechanics are the most industrious set of people I have ever seen, and so honest, that it is as safe in the evening and night in the streets as in the houses. We hear of no duels, murders, or robberies ”

“ They are all here as advertised, and they color the lives of the people as they do the landscape of the country. To the eye they are artistic and beautiful, but in practice they are common, plain necessities, and in these signs the Dutch have conquered. ”

“ The Dutch are like a knot of sharpers among a parcel of honest gentlemen, who think they understand play, and are bubbled of their money. I love them for the love they have to their country; which, however, is no virtue in them, because it is their private interest, which is directly contrary in England. ”

“ A very shrewd woman-observer, writing in the middle of the eighteenth century of the Dutch, gives what seems to me a very just estimate and good description of one of their traits. She says: “Though they have no vivacity, they are smarter, a great deal smarter, than the English, that is, more uptaking.” ”

“ As the Dutch have made their country what it is, so the country has made the Dutch what they are. No wonder that men who, like their fathers before them, have been trained in such a school of self-reliance, should be good soldiers and good sailors, good traders, good farmers, and, above all, good patriots. ”

“ It is the rarest thing in the world to meet with a gentleman in Holland. The Dutch are equally devoid of that acquired good breeding which distinguishes the well educated English, and that native politeness and winning courtesy which is so irresistibly engaging among the French, and even the Belgic people. ”