Sir William Temple, in his Memoirs of "What passed in Christendom from 1672 to 1679," tells a story of a pompous magistrate going to visit a lady of Amsterdam. A stout Holland lass opened the door, and told him in a breath that the lady was at home and that his shoes were not very clean. Without another word, she took the astonished man up by both arms, threw him across her back, carried him through two rooms, set him down at the bottom of the stairs, seized a pair of slippers that stood there and put them upon his feet. Then, and not until then, she spoke, telling him that her mistress was on the floor above, and that he might go up. While Ben was skating, with his friends, upon the crowded canals of the city, he found it difficult to believe that the sleepy Dutchmen he saw around him, smoking their pipes so leisurely, and looking as though their hats might be knocked off their heads without their making any resistance, were capable of those outbreaks that had taken place in Holland--that they were really fellow-countrymen of the brave, devoted heroes of whom he had read in Dutch history. As his party skimmed lightly along he told Van Mounen of a burial-riot which in 1696 had occurred in that very city, where the women and children turned out, as well as the men, and formed mock funeral processions through the town, to show the burgomasters that certain new regulations, with regard to burying the dead, would not be acceded to--how at last they grew so unmanageable, and threatened so much damage to the city that the burgomasters were glad to recall the offensive law. "There's the corner," said Jacob, pointing to some large buildings, "where, about fifteen years ago, the great corn-houses sank down in the mud. They were strong affairs, and set up on good piles, but they had over seventy thousand hundred-weight of corn in them; and that was too much." It was a long story for Jacob to tell and he stopped to rest. "How do you know there were seventy thousand hundred-weight in them?" asked Carl sharply--"you were in your swaddling clothes then." "My father knows all about it," was Jacob's suggestive reply. Rousing himself with an effort, he continued--"Ben likes pictures. Show him some." "All right," said the captain. "If we had time, Benjamin," said Lambert van Mounen in English, "I should like to take you to the City Hall or _Stadhuis_. There are building-piles for you! It is built on nearly fourteen thousand of them, driven seventy feet into the ground. But what I wish you to see there is the big picture of Van Speyk blowing up his ship--great picture." "Van _who_?" asked Ben. "Van Speyk. Don't you remember? He was in the height of an engagement with the Belgians, and when he found that they had the better of him and would capture his ship, he blew it up, and himself too, rather than yield to the enemy." "Wasn't that Van Tromp?"