It so happened that this particular vaudeville house was in the habit of concluding its performance each evening with a series of international wrestling matches, offering a considerable monetary reward to the winner of the finals. The first bout of the evening of my visit was between an Englishman and a Dutchman, which terminated satisfactorily for the latter and with no casualties. The crowd went rampant; whereupon I became imbued with the spirit of the thing, ordered another cup of coffee--which, by the way, was served gratis by the management--and settled myself more comfortably to enjoy the next tilt between a Frenchman and a Swede. The gougings and hair-pullings resorted to by the Latin were not received with complacency on the part of the audience, and when he lost the match, he made his exit with ruffled temper, together with his full share of hisses and catcalls. Then the promoters of the scheme made a managerial mistake. They pitted a bloated Belgian wrestler against the champion of Amsterdam. A brief reference to the pages of any volume reciting the incidents of 1830–31 will convey the correct impression that the Belgians and the Dutch are not the intimate playmates they used to be--a fact which in itself precluded the possibility of any amicable settlement of the forthcoming athletic imbroglio. The Belgian proved to be a past master in the science of hair-pulling and eye-gouging. When the even tempered Dutchman finally turned him on his back he felt called upon to challenge the referee, the score keeper, the orchestra, the audience, or any other single individual or group of them that happened to be within reach. The crowd hooted the villain and applauded the hero. Just at this inopportune moment a dark, ominous cloud, of African parentage, wrapped in a true Alabama grin and peg-top trousers, blew in from the wings and commenced to congratulate the victor hilariously. In order that the peace respecting reputation of the house might be preserved, a brigade of stage hands and ushers rushed in double phalanx upon the scene, and, with rather generous turn of mind, attempted to distract the negro’s attention and keep him from maiming the Belgian. Ultimately they tried to put the negro out--an inconsiderate procedure, to say the least. I once saw the same thing attempted during fair week in Albuquerque, to the demolition of several plate glass windows and the necessary services of half a dozen local surgeons. The last I remember they were enticing the negro toward the front door in a none too gentle manner, while the more enthusiastic half of the audience was making for the stage, and the other half, among whom was the writer, for the exits. On my way to the hotel there passed two police vans loaded to the gunwales with a blur of arms and legs. [Illustration: Diamond workers in Amsterdam. In a single year over $13,000,000 worth of the gems were exported from this district to the United States]