The rail runs at first through flat and very verdant meadows, where thousands of cows that supply Amsterdam with milk are grazing; and one notices again the suddenness with which the Dutch city ends and the Dutch country begins.

Our English towns have straggling outposts: new houses, scaffold poles, cottages, allotments, all break the transition from city to country; the urban gives place to suburban, and suburban to rural, gradually, every inch being contested.

But the Dutch towns--even the great cities--end suddenly; the country begins suddenly.
In England for the most part the cow comes to the milker; but in Holland the milker goes to the cow.

His first duty is to bind the animal's hind legs together, and then he sets his stool at his side and begins.

Anton Mauve has often painted the scene--so often that at milking time one looks from the carriage windows at a very gallery of Mauves.