A very favourite Dutch picture represents "The Cutting of the Cake".

I have heard that the Dutch wife takes her husband's left arm; the Dutch fiancee her lover's right.
Monnickendam, on the shores of the Zuyder Zee, is now a desolate sleepy spot; once it was one of the great towns of Holland, at the time when The Hague was a village.

I say Zuyder Zee, but strictly speaking it is on the Gouwzee, the name of the straits between Monnickendam and Marken.

It is here, in winter, when the ice holds, that a fair is held, to which come all Amsterdam on skates, to eat poffertjes and wafelen, Monnickendam affords our first sight of what are called very misleadingly the "Dead Cities of the Zuyder Zee," meaning merely towns which once were larger and busier.

Monnickendam was sufficiently important to fit out a fleet against the Spanish in 1573, under Cornelius Dirckszoon (whose tomb we saw at Delft) and capture Bossu in the battle of Hoorn.
To-day Monnickendam suggests nothing so little as a naval engagement.