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Show IMPRESSIONS OLD AND NEW j Amsterdam First Impression of the City t Jewish Quarter The Port Royal f Palace Churches Museums - t Charitable Institutions Orphans and , J Their Dress. 1 Amsterdam, the Venice of the North, is the mosft I curious city in Europe. As you approach it from Halfweg (the only station between Haarlem and .; ; Amsterdam) you see open out before you a regular ; forest of windmills, steeples, towers, factory chim- , neys and masts of ships, and you begin to won? der what kind of a city this is. You enter it and , ! the first thing that strikes your eye after the high ! black houses .is the almost infinite number of bridges and canals. Everywhere you go there is a . ' bridge. Everywhere you turn there is a canal, but ; this is not to be wondered at when you consider that Amsterdam is built upon ninety islands, and ; these islands are joined together by as many aa I three hundred and fifty bridges. The whole of tha ; city i3 built upon piles and the foundations of tha : houses cost more than the houses themselves. The : houses, like the tower of Pisa, bend in such a way as to give you the creeps, and the roofs of thosf adjoining seem to be whispering to each other. In the poorer parts of the city, theTe is dirt, rags, wheelbarrows, fishing nets, spars and paraphernalia of such kind thrown before the doors, and in th Jewish quarter of the city the ghetto you will find squalor and dirt such as you never even dreamed of. Everything that soils and stink3 is there. The streets of this quarter are dark and narrow and cords and ropes stretch from door to : door, from window to window and hanging upon these ropes and cords you have every kind of half ' washed evil smelling old clothes that are all a patch. If you have the hardihood to enter one of these' " : houses you will have to pick your steps over old irons, broken pieces of furniture, pots, pans, everything that breathes moth and rust and dirt. ' ,: Here you come upon a woman frying fish on a little lit-tle stove in the middle of the street, and her haj, , ' and her garments and her long bony fingers arf.'h ' sight for the gods. Around her are hungry hi naked children and her husband with lhe hookiS nose, sunkeneyes and bent shoulders sits upon . .' broken chair one mass of petrified dirt. I have seen the poor in squalid quarters of London and Paris and many more cities, but the most miserable and the most wretched of them were a Paradise compared com-pared to the Ghetto of Amsterdam. How do these people live? you ask me. A great many of them, are employed in the diamond polishing factories, for which Amsterdam is famous, and the trade accruing ac-cruing from this industry amounts to something -like one hundred million francs yearly. (A franc contains about 10 pence English money). The principal part of the city is about the New Market. Mar-ket. Here the principal streets converge and here, too, you have crowds of people of all nationalities. From the Xew Market you get a good view of the port, but you see no harmony about it, for it presents pre-sents nothing only a confused medley of basins, dykes, bridges and locks with forests of masts, funnels fun-nels and flags. The finest building in Amsterdam is the Royal Palace, erected between the years 1643-55. 1643-55. It is a black, heavy building, and stands on a ! foundation of 13,659 piles. The tower of thi building rises to a height of 190 feet. The best place to see Amsterdam and the surrounding coun- -try is this tower. In the distance is Haarlem, with its beautiful tulip gardens, and the red roofs of ' Zandam and the tall towers of old Utrecht and beneath be-neath you is every variety of boat, mill, bridge and steeple. The interior of the Palace is very beauti- l ful, and it owes a great deal of its magnificence of decoration to King Louis Bonaparte, who resided here in 1808. The reception hall is the finest in Europe, Eu-rope, being' 120 feet in length and 58 feet broad. Amsterdam is remarkable, too, for the many churches you see in all directions, and each is bo different in construction, with but one thing in common the everlasting steeple. The Jewish syn- agogues are here with the strict Lutheran and Reformed Re-formed Calvinist, the Kirk of Scotland, the Anglican, An-glican, the Mennonite. the Walloon, the Greek Schismatic, the Roman Catholic and a hundred 5 and one more, all dissimilar in creed and structure. The Exchange, a curious building, with a porch sustained by seventeen columns, faces the Royal jj Palace, and during the Kermese, which is the name the Dutch and Belgians give their carnival, . its halls are thrown open and the youth of the city ? hold merry revel here for a period of seven days. i Standing on the harbor is a Tower called the Tower of Tears. It is so called because here the sailors bid I good-bye to their wives and children before they ' embark on their voyage. This tower certainly was I oftentimes the scene of many a heart-rending spec- i, tacle, and here many a sturdy sailor said his last ; farewell to the partner of his joys and sorrows and i to the little ones that called him father. But this ' world is only a meeting and a parting place. Alongside the harbor you have the zoological gar- j dens, and these gardens are the richest in Europe. It is the property of a company which comprise ' fifteen thousand subscribers. The pride of Am- ? sterdam is its museum, and it contains a magnif- ? icent collection of pictures, the gem of the collec- f tion being Rembrandt's Xight Watchman. It was f this painting that made Rembrandt famous. There f are also many fine paintings from the hand of Ru- I bens, Anthony Van Dyck, Paul Potter and eight ; pictures from the brush of the gifted but unfortu- ! nate Steen. Close beside the museum is a rather 1 f curious building called the Palace of Industry. It ' is constructed of iron and glass, something like the Crystal Palace in London, and it is. I believe. j capable of holding 13,000 persons. Amsterdam' is , i famous the world over for its charitable institu- ! tions, the chief being the Asylum for Orphans. These orphans wear a curious dress. One side of the dress is red and the other side black. I asked ' the porter of the hotel where I stopped why this peculiar dress, and this was the answer he gave me : These orphans are forbidden to enter a tavern, and they cannot travel on our railroads without per- . .Continued on Pajp 5 , f, IMPRESSIONS OLD AND NEW (Continued from nacre 1.1 mission from the directors, and that the tavern keepers and railroad officials may recognize them , they arc obliged to wear that peculiar dress. The ' Hollanders love these children, and they are seen in all parts of the city, clean and seemingly well fed, and well cared for. They occupy the first place in all public festivals and the first stone of the national na-tional monuments is laid by their hands. I hope T have given my readers some little notion of Holland and the Netherlands and next week I will ask the reader to accompany me to Cologne and beginning there see a little of that great country of the Fatherland. Fa-therland. XAPPER TAXDY. |