populous even than Kalverstraat. This is the Jews' quarter, which
has, I should imagine, more parents and children to the square foot
than any residential region in Europe. I struggled through it at
sundown one fine Saturday--to say I walked through it would be too
misleading--and the impression I gathered of seething vivacity is
still with me. These people surely will inherit the earth.

Spinoza was a child of this Ghetto: his birthplace at 41 Waterloo
Plein is still shown; and Rembrandt lived at No. 4 Jodenbree Straat
for sixteen years.

A large number of the Amsterdam Jews are diamond cutters and
polishers. You may see in certain cafés dealers in these stones turning
over priceless little heaps of them with the long little finger-nail
which they preserve as a scoop.

Amsterdam may be a city builded on the sand; but none the less will it
endure. Indeed the sand saves it; for it is in the sand that the wooden
piles on which every house rests find their footing, squelching through
the black mud to this comparative solidity. Some of the piles are as
long as 52 ft., and watching them being driven in, it is impossible to
believe that stability can ever be attained, every blow of the monkey
accounting for so very many inches. When one watches pile-driving in
England it is difficult to see the effect of each blow; but during
the five or fewer minutes that I spent one day on Damrak observing
the preparation for the foundations of a new house, the pile must have
gone in nearly a foot each time, and it was very near the end of its
journey too. In course of years the black brackish mud petrifies not
only the piles but the wooden girders that are laid upon them.