The Botor Chaperon - 1907 Author:C. N. Williamson, A. M. Williamson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: XV A MSTERDAM was in full glory that evening, in the strange radiance that shines for her, as for Venice, when red wine of sunset and purple wine of night mi... more »ngle together in the gold cup of the west. At such a time she is a second Venice, not because she is built upon piles and stands upon many islands linked by intricate bridges, but because of her glow and dazzle, her myriad lights breaking suddenly through falling dusk, to splash the rose and violet of the clouds with gilded flecks, and drop silver into glimmering canals, as if there were some festive illumination; because of her huge, colourful buildings, and her old, old houses bowing and bending backward and forward to whisper into each other's windows across the darkness of narrow streets and burning lines of water. The fierce traffic of the day was over, but the dam roared and rumbled, in vast confusion, with its enormous structures black against the mouldering ashes of sunset. " A cathedral without a tower; a palace without a king; a bishop's house without a bishop; a girl without a lover," is the saying that Amsterdammers have about the dam ; and I repeated it as we drove through, while my friends searched the verification of the saw. All was plain enough, except the " girl without a lover;" but when they learned that she was a stone girl on a pedestal too constricted for two figures they pronounced her part of the distich far-fetched. Undaunted by all they had done that day, they would go out again after dinner, when Amsterdam was blue and silver and shining steel in the quiet streets, with a flare of yellow light in the lively ones, where people crowded the roadways, listening to the crash of huge hand-organs, or shopping until ten o'clock. We supped at the biggest cafe in Europe; and then forcontras...« less