At the southeastern terminus of the Kalverstraat stands the old Mint Tower of 1620, and still farther to the east is the Rembrandtplein, a small, park-centered intersection of streets named in honor of Holland’s painter _par excellence_, who lived for sixteen years at No. 4 Joden-Breestraat in Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter, the house having been since marked with a small memorial tablet. Here bordering the Rembrandtplein are the larger sidewalk cafés, jammed of a summer’s evening with pleasure-seeking Amsterdamers, each with a cup or a glass of something in front of him. Like those found in the ordinary German cafés these crowds seldom change. Here you may find the same people at eleven that you have seen at seven, and in exactly the same positions. A cup of coffee followed by a cordial is the usual evening’s refreshment programme, the consuming time of which the Amsterdamer will expand into a couple of hours by the assiduous perusal of every newspaper and periodical he can inveigle the waiter to bring him, interrupted only by an occasional sip of his beverage. Even the persistent street singers, who come one at a time to prolong the agony and stand but a few feet away from his table, yelling triumphantly into his ear, fail to disturb him in the least. If, unthinkingly, he finishes his refreshment before he considers the time has arrived to go home to bed, he will calmly smoke out the remainder of the engagement. The expenditure of half a _gulden_ or less will buy his contentment until the following evening. Many of the indoor cafés charge a small admission fee for the privilege of listening to a “lady orchestra.” In each of these that part which is adjacent to the street will be partitioned off by a dark curtain, so that the patrons of the place may choose, if there be any choice, between the crowds on the street and the vaudeville turns that may be scheduled to follow the sufferings of the musicians. On the Rembrandtplein stands also the Rembrandt theater, Amsterdam’s principal playhouse, which, by way of information, is closed in summer. But, by way of further information, there are in the city a number of vaudeville theaters that cater to the less exacting in the matter of histrionic art and are open throughout the year, offering more or less respectable performances. To one of these near the Rembrandtplein I wended my way upon a certain evening, desirous of being amused, no matter what the consequences. I obtained my money’s worth, and more. It cost me one and a half _gulden_ to get in, and it might have cost me an ear, or other projecting appendage, to get out if I had not slipped through a side exit as inconspicuously as I could during the height of the mêlée and commenced forthwith to accelerate my gait toward the hotel. I think the disturbance was inaugurated by an American protégé of His Pugilistic Highness, John Johnson, but I did not consider it exactly safe at the time to tarry longer in order to ascertain definitely.