An Indiscreet Itinerary Or How The Unconventional Traveler Should See Holland

AN Indiscreet Itinerary OR HOW THE UNCONVENTIONAL TRAVELER SHOULD SEE HOLLAND BY ONE WHO WAS ACTUALLY BORN THERE AND WHOSE NAME IS Hendrik Willem van Loon HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1933, BY IARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. first edition f n BY QUINN ft BODEN COMPANY, INC., RAHWAY, N. J. Typography by Robert S. Josephy 7HB471 Janet darling, You might as well read this little book. For even if you should never again leave your beloved Vermont, you will have to live with part of this ancient background for the rest of your days, and may they be many. FATHER Nieuiv Amsterdam 4 April xxocm A PERSONAL CONFESSION TO THE READER THIS little book is not at all what it set out to be and I might just as well make a clean breast of it and tell you the whole story. The Netherlands Railways maintain an office in New York at 405 Lexington Avenue and one day their representative came to me and said cc We have had endless folders about Holland and some were good and some were not so good, but anyway we thought we ought to have one written by you. Whether you like it or not, you were a Dutchman yourself once and you know the coun try inside out and outside in. Just to please us About six pages and a few of those funny little pictures. You know what we mean quot And in an unguarded moment I said quot Yes quot for I know pretty well what my beloved fellow vii countrymen think of my work, and I started to write this pamphlet, but then, to my great surprise, it started to write itself. Now having spent most of my life traveling, I had long since realized that the time had come for a newsort of guide-book, but I had never paid much attention to the problem, having a sufficient number of other things to worry me, and here, without quite knowing what I was doing, I found myself writing exactly that new sort of guide book about which I had been thinking for years. When it was finished I went to my friends of the Netherlands Railways and I said quot Look here You wanted a shrimp and I am giving you a whale. If you print this as a mere pamphlet, you know what will happen to it. Our dear public has had so many things given to it during the fat years of the last decade that now, whenever it suspects a given horse it no longer bothers to take it to the stable but deposits it straightway in the nearest ash-can. And be it said in all hu mility, this is really too good to be thrown away, so why don t you let me publish it as a regular guide-book, at so much per copy. If the est. pub viii lie should like it sufficiently well to drop every thing in hand and make straightway for the terrestrial Paradise I describe, so much the better for you, but if it proves a flop, then you merely say, Oh, well, just another one of those little van Loon books and you know what we think about them l y and no harm is done. quot Well, after some very pleasant discussions and a little cabling and a few more cigarettes, all the difficulties were straightened out and quot Pamphlet XY 471 1 sub. B, series 9 to 1 1 7 amp gt 3 became this quot Indiscreet Itinerary quot now published by Messrs. Harcourt, Brace and Co. That is the way this little pamphlet, that be came quite a book, had its origin, and here are the people in that country and this is the way they grew to be what they are and this is why theyeat what they eat and drink what they drink and generally speaking, why they behave the way they behave a short, personally conducted tour through unknown territory, together with a few handy hints for those who want to see strange lands, whether at home and in their own arm chair, or from the windows of the Netherlands be Railways, of whom I remain, with gratitude for their suggestion, the very humble and obedient servant, HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON Nieuw Amsterdam . March xxocm. An Indiscreet Itinerary