As early as daybreak the Friday visitor--for Friday is cheese day in Alkmaar--will find plenty of activity in the vicinity of the town weigh-house. It is therefore advisable to reach the place the previous Thursday evening, because the unloading of the cheeses and the stacking of them upon the stone pavement of the market square during the early hours of the following morning are among the most interesting phases of the whole proceeding. And so, by daylight on Friday, gayly painted farm wagons from the surrounding country already fringe three sides of the market, and every one of them is disgorging, two at a time, its load of golden cheeses. On the canal that bounds the fourth side of the square lie berthed a double row of long, narrow boats, also loaded from keel plate to hatch cover with the product of the district. From every point of the compass cheeses are being tossed through the air from the wagons and boats, only to have their flight checked with a smack by the men who catch them and pile them upon the pavement in long, double-decked rows, ten cheeses in width. Later, canvas is thrown over the piles to protect the cheeses from the rays of the sun until it is time for the cheese makers and the wholesale commission merchants from the cities, soon to descend upon the scene, to commence their dickerings. All through the early morning this unloading continues, its accompanying smacks to be heard half a block away, until perhaps 250,000 cheeses have been piled up in neat rows with alleyways between them, across the market square from one edge to the other. At half-past nine, half an hour before the market opens, the weighmen, all garbed in immaculate white, meet in executive session in the weigh-house and absorb a ceremonious talking-to by the superintendent of the market--probably upon the subject of honest weights and the penalties to be imposed upon the unfortunate man caught trifling with the rules and regulations of the game. [Illustration: Friday is cheese day in Alkmaar, and by daylight gaily painted farm wagons are disgorging their loads of golden cheeses on the pavement in front of the Town Weigh-house]