It is therefore settled I shall give the hundred thousand guilders of the Haarlem prize to-the poor.

And yet----" Here Cornelius stopped and heaved a sigh.

"And yet," he continued, "it would have been so very delightful to spend the hundred thousand guilders on the enlargement of my tulip-bed or even on a journey to the East, the country of beautiful flowers.

But, alas! these are no thoughts for the present times, when muskets, standards, proclamations, and beating of drums are the order of the day." Van Baerle raised his eyes to heaven and sighed again.

Then turning his glance towards his bulbs,--objects of much greater importance to him than all those muskets, standards, drums, and proclamations, which he conceived only to be fit to disturb the minds of honest people,--he said:-- "These are, indeed, beautiful bulbs; how smooth they are, how well formed; there is that air of melancholy about them which promises to produce a flower of the colour of ebony.