The Courier of the Hague

He is an elderly amiable little Dutchman in a soft felt hat; his name is BOSCH, and he is taking me about. _Why_ I engaged him I don't quite know -- unless from a general sense of helplessness in Holland, and a craving for any kind of companionship. Now I have got him, I feel rather more helpless than ever -- a sort of composite of SANDFORD and MERTON, with a didactic, but frequently incomprehensible Dutch BARLOW. My SANDFORD half would like to exhibit an intelligent curiosity, but is generally suppressed by MERTON, who has a morbid horror of useful information. Not that BOSCH is remarkably erudite, but nevertheless he contrives to reduce me to a state of imbecility, which I catch myself noting with a pained surprise. There is a statue in the Plein, and the SANDFORD element in me finds a satisfaction in recognising it aloud as William the Silent.

It is -- but, as my MERTON part thinks, a fellow _would_ be a fool if he didn't recognise William after a few hours in Holland -- his images, in one form or another, are tolerably numerous. Still BOSCH is gratified. "Yass, dot is ole Volliam," he says, approvingly, as to a precocious infant just beginning to take notice. "Lokeer," he says, "you see dot Apoteek? " He indicates a chemist's shop opposite, with nothing remarkable about it externally, except a Turk's head with his tongue out over the door.