These weighmen constitute a distinct feature of every cheese market in Holland. Their dress may seem ludicrous and their duties a bit undignified, but they go about their calling with all the seriousness of statesmen. Until recently they were divided, one might say, into four colors: red, blue, green, and yellow, as distinguished by their hat bands. Latterly, a fifth color, orange, has been added. In the weigh-house there are five pairs of scales, each pair painted a different color corresponding to the colors of the weighmen. The “red” weighmen must weigh their barrowfuls of cheeses upon the “red” scales; the “blue” weighmen, upon the “blue” scales, and so on. An Alkmaar cheese weighman holds a life position, is elected by the community, and receives in commissions a certain percentage, determined by the value of the cheeses, of each hundred kilos weighed, or fraction thereof. At ten o’clock promptly the heavy sheets of canvas are dragged from the piles. The market is thus officially opened, and for the ensuing two hours the visitor will be treated to some of the shrewdest of shrewd Dutch bargaining. The stolid, unemotional makers of cheeses stand doggedly by their respective piles, while the crafty wholesale merchants flit hither and yon testing. Not a word passes between them other than a surly “how d’ y’ do” in Dutch. The merchant selects a cheese at random, jams into it an instrument that any competent housewife might mistake for an apple corer, gives it a twist, pulls it out slowly, and tastes the end of the sample thus taken. What remains of the sample is drawn from the instrument, slipped back into the parent cheese, and the tester moves along to attack another pile.