holiday; Judge Benson gives an account of it. It was called Vrouwen-Dagh, or woman's day. “Every mother's daughter,” says the Judge, “was furnished with a piece of cord, the size neither too large nor too small; the twist neither too hard nor too loose; a turn round the hand, and then a due length left to serve as a lash.” On the morning of this Vrouwen-Dagh, the little girls—and some large ones, too, probably, for the fun of the thing—sallied out, armed with just such a cord, and every luckless wight of a lad that was met received three or four strokes from this feminine lash. It was not “considered fair to have a knot, but fair to practice a few days to acquire the sleight.” The boys, of course, passed the day in a state of more anxiety than they now do under the auspices of St. Valentine; “never venturing to turn a corner without first listening whether no warblers were behind it.” One can imagine that there must have been some fun on the occasion, to the lookers-on especially; but a strange custom it was. We have never heard of anything like it elsewhere. The boys insisted that the next day should be theirs, and be called Mannen-Dagh, man's day, “but my masters were told the law would thereby defeat its own purpose, which was, that they should, at an age, and in a way most likely never to forget it, receive the lesson of Manliness, never to strike.” As the lesson has been well learnt by the stronger sex in this part of the world, it is quite as well, perhaps, that the custom should drop, and Vrouwen-Dagh be forgotten. But after this, who shall say that our Dutch ancestors were not a chivalrous race?
Thursday, 15th.—Very cold. Still, bright day; thermometer 8° below zero this morning at sunrise. The evergreens feel this severe weather, especially the pines; when near them, one ob-
