Only a few carriages and pedestrians enliven the beach and the streets. Scheveningen is indeed for all the residents of The Hague, and now specially for the members of the Conference, a general goal for promenading. We exchange greetings with many acquaintances. Our fellow-countryman, Count Welsersheimb, has come down on his bicycle, and chats with us as he wheels for some distance beside our carriage. Herr von Okoliczany, accompanied by his slender daughter, rides by. The Chinese flag is seen waving over the Hotel Oranje; Yang-Yü, with his family, is the only delegate who has already left The Hague and taken up his residence at Scheveningen. All those dikes, those structures! How painstaking and courageous the Dutch people have been in rescuing their land from the waters! _Those_ are battles worthy of men—against the weight and the wrath of the elements. Should the dike-building against the wrath of our fellow-men be alone unaccomplishable? We gave a small dinner, the party consisting of Rahusen, president of the Chamber; Von Khuepach, the Austrian military delegate; the second Russian delegate, Vasily[36]; Novikof, Bloch, and we three,—a small circle at a round table, the most advantageous arrangement for general and animated conversation. When the coffee was brought, we were joined by the correspondent of the _Neue Freie Presse_, Dr. Frischauer, whom I had invited, but who was prevented from coming sooner. After dinner a soirée at the Karnebeeks’. Frau von Staal tells me, in the course of a conversation, how her husband is besieged every day with addresses, memoranda, pamphlets, and deputations from all parts of the world. “And I suppose with numberless letters also, many of them right crazy ones?” “Oh, yes, even with threatening letters! Anonymous warnings that there is a plan on foot to assassinate him.” “Why! that is horrible! How does Herr von Staal take that?” “He smiles at it!” The artist Ten Kate to-day gives us a jolly dinner at the hotel Twe Steeden, where he lives during his sojourn at The Hague—his own home is the estate Epé. His lovely wife does the honors. Among the guests are Mesdames von Waszklewicz and Selenka, Herr von Bloch, Novikof, Dr. Trueblood, and A. H. Fried,—in short, a little Peace Congress in itself; and it is still more a Peace Congress when after dinner the door opens and in comes the Chevalier Descamps. “Excuse the intrusion,” he exclaims; “my rooms are situated above this dining-room. Your jolly voices reached me up there, and when I asked who were celebrating a wedding downstairs I learned who were here, and so I come, uninvited, but as the bringer of good tidings; we had a splendid session to-day.”