One seldom hears of British merchants thus keeping alive the remembrance of early meanness of circumstances." At one of Rotterdam's stations I saw the Queen-Mother, a smiling, maternal lady in a lavender silk dress, carrying a large bouquet, and saying pretty things to a deputation drawn up on the platform.

Rotterdam had put out its best bunting, and laid six inches of sand on its roads, to do honour to this kindly royalty.

The band played the tender national anthem, which is always so unlike what one expects it to be, as her train steamed away, and then all the grave bearded gentlemen in uniforms and frock coats who had attended her drove in their open carriages back to the town.

Not even the presence of the mounted guard made it more formal than a family party.

Everybody seemed on the best of friendly terms of equality with everybody else.
Tom Hood, who had it in him to be so good a poet, but living in a country where art and literature do not count, was permitted to coarsen his delicate genius in the hunt for bread, wrote one of his comic poems on Rotterdam.