(My brush is my sword, my besom is my weapon. I know no rest, I know no sleep. I don’t think of my room, I don’t think of my throat. No labour is too heavy, no care I think too much To make everything smooth and without blemish. I will not let the maid touch my pretty things; I, myself, will rub and polish, I will splash and scrub; I hunt the speck of dust, I do not fear the tub Like a fine lady.) These are samples of many speeches in the old comedies, where the women constantly talk about housecleaning and scrubbing. English travellers of this period unanimously praised the way the Dutch houses were kept. One wrote: “They are not large, but neat, beautiful outside and well furnished inside; and the furniture is so clean and in good order that it appears to be more an exhibition than for daily use.” The farms also attracted the attention of the stranger. Another traveller said: “The Dutch farmer keeps his land as neatly as a courtier trims his beard; and his house is as choice as a lady who comes out of her dressing-room. A well-dressed lady cannot look neater than the fine gable and the thatched roof of a Dutch farmhouse.” In his _Brief Character of the Low Countries_, Owen Feltham describes an Amsterdam house of the middle of the seventeenth century. “When you are entered the house,” he writes, “the first thing you encounter is a Looking-Glasse. No question but a true Embleme of politick hospitality; for though to reflect yourself in your own figure, ‘tis yet no longer than while you are there before it. When you are gone once, it flatters the next commer, without the least remembrance that you were ere there. “The next are the vessels of the house marshalled about the room like watchmen. All is neat as you were in a Citizen’s Wife’s Cabinet; for unless it be themselves, they let none of God’s creatures lose anything of their native beauty. “Their houses, especially in their Cities, are the best eye-beauties of their Country. For cost and sight, they far exceed our English, but they want their magnificence. Their lining is yet more rich than their outside; not in hangings, but pictures, which even the poorest are there furnisht with. Not a cobler but has his toyes for ornament. Were the knacks of all their homes set together, there would not be such another Bartholomew-Faire in Europe.... “Their beds are no other than land-cabines, high enough to need a ladder or stairs. Up once, you are walled in with Wainscot, and that is a good discretion to avoid the trouble of making your will every night; for once falling out else would break your neck promptly. But if you die in it this comfort you shall leave your friends, that you dy’d in clean linen.