Between Showers in Dort

My room at Heer Boudier's commands a full view of the Maas, with all its varied shipping. Its interior fittings are so scrupulously clean that one feels almost uncomfortable lest some of the dainty appointments might be soiled in the using. The bed is the most remarkable of all its comforts. It is more of a box than a bed, and so high at head and foot, and so solid at its sides, that it only needs a lid to make the comparison complete. There is always at its foot an inflated eider-down quilt puffed up like a French souffle potato; and there are always at its head two little oval pillows solid as bags of ballast, surmounting a bolster that slopes off to an edge. I have never yet found out what this bolster is stuffed with. The bed itself would be bottomless but for the slats.

When you first fall overboard into this slough you begin to sink through its layers of feathers, and instinctively throw out your hands, catching at the side boards as a drowning man would clutch at the gunwales of a suddenly capsized boat.