CHAPTER VI.
Scheveningen and Katwyk The Dutch heaven--Huyghens' road--Sorgh Vliet's builder--Jacob Cats--Homely wisdom--President Kruger--A monstrous resort--Giant snails--The black-headed mannikins--The etiquette of petticoats--Katwyk--The old Rhine--Noordwyk--Noordwyk-Binnen.
Good Dutchmen when they die go to Scheveningen; but my heaven is elsewhere.

To go thither is, however, no calamity, so long as one chooses the old road.

It is being there that so lowers the spirits.

The Oude Scheveningen Weg is perhaps the pleasantest, and certainly the shadiest, road in Holland: not one avenue but many, straight as a line in Euclid.

On either side is a spreading wood, among the trees of which, on the left hand, as one leaves The Hague, is Sorgh Vliet, once the retreat of old Jacob Cats, lately one of the residences of a royal Duke, and now sold to a building company.