The barge is in the first place a conveyance. The whole of the front part of the boat represents the hold in which the cargo is placed. This is generally represented by cheese or vegetables, timber, peat, and stones, the last-named being a return-cargo for the repairing of dykes and the construction of quays. But in the second place it is a house or place of residence, and the stern of the boat is given up for that purpose. The living room is the raised deck or poop, on which is not only the tiller, but the cooking-stove. The sleeping-room forms the one covered-in apartment. It is easily divisible into two by a temporary or removable partition, and it always possesses the two little windows, one on each side of the tiller, which give it so great a resemblance to a doll's house. This resemblance is certainly heightened by the custom of colouring the barges, which are always painted a bright colour, red or green being perhaps the most usual. As ornament there is usually a good deal of brasswork; the handle of the tiller is generally bordered with the metal, and the owner seems to take pride in nailing brass along the bulwarks of his boat where it is not wanted and is even little seen. It has been suggested that the polishing of these brass plates or bars provides a pleasant change from the dull routine work of towing. The brightness of the paint and the brasswork constitutes the pride of the barge-owners, and supplies a standard of comparison among them. To increase the homelike aspect of this water residence, birds and plants, always in more or less quantity and variety, are to be seen either in the windows or on the deck. The poorest bargee, which generally means the youngest or the beginner, will have one song-bird in a gilt cage, and as he accumulates money in his really profitable calling, he will add to his collection of birds a row of flowers and bulbs in pots. Thus he says, with a glow of satisfaction, 'I possess an aviary and a garden, like my cousin Hans on the polders, although my home is on the moving waters.' To strengthen the illusion what does he do but fix a toy gate on the poop above his sleeping-cabin, and thus cherishes the belief that he is on his own domain? In the evening, when the towing is over for the day, the women bring out their sewing, the children play round the tiller, and the good man smokes his immense pipe with complete and indolent satisfaction. And so day passes on to day without a variation, and life runs by without a ripple or a murmur for the canal population, while the mere landsmen look on with envy at what seems to them an idyllic existence, and even ladies of breeding and high station have been known to declare that they would gladly change places with the mistress of the bargee's quarter-deck. That was no doubt in the days before women had to take on themselves the brunt and burden of the towing. [Illustration: A Canal in Dordrecht.]