"We visited the residence of the burgomaster. He was away and his servants permitted us to see the house. It was cleaning-day. Everything in the house was in keeping with the character of the village. But the kitchen! how shall I describe it? The polished marble floor, the dressers with glass doors like a bookcase, to keep the least particle of dust from the bright-polished utensils of brass and copper. The varnished mahogany handle of the brass spigot, lest the moisture of the hand in turning it should soil its polish, and, will you believe it, the very pothooks as well as the cranes (for there were two), in the fireplace were as bright as your scissors! "Broek is certainly a curiosity. It is unique, but the impression left upon me is not, on the whole, agreeable. I should not be contented to live there. It is too ridiculously and uncomfortably nice. Fancy a lady always dressed throughout the day in her best evening-party dress, and say if she could move about with that ease which she would like. Such, however, must be the feeling of the inhabitants of Broek; they must be in perpetual fear, not only of soiling or deranging their clothes merely, but their very streets every step they take. But good-bye to Broek. I would not have missed seeing it but do not care to see it again." Holland, which he had never visited before, interested him greatly, but he could not help saying: "One feels in Holland like being in a ship, constantly liable to spring a leak." Hamburg he found more to his taste:-- "_September 26._ Hamburg, you may remember, was nearly destroyed by fire in 1842. It is now almost rebuilt and in a most splendid style of architecture. I am much prepossessed in its favor. We have taken up our quarters at the Victoria Hotel, one of the splendid new hotels of the city. I find the season so far advanced in these northern regions that I am thinking of giving up my journey farther north. My matters in London will demand all my spare time." "_September 30._ The windows of my hotel look out upon the Alster Basin, a beautiful sheet of water, three sides of which are surrounded with splendid houses. Boats and swans are gliding over the glassy surface, giving, with the well-dressed promenaders along the shores, an air of gayety and liveliness to the scene."