debtedness and 20 cents on the school fund. This is to be compared with an average rate of about $2.10 in one hundred leading cities of the country, and with an average of upward of $2.35 for two dozen places about the size of Galveston, selected entirely at random.

Houston had been badly governed for years before it adopted the commission system. Not every administration had been corrupt, but the good officials had found it impossible to entirely overcome the effects of the widespread graft and corruption permitted or encouraged by the bad ones. The tax rate was $2.93, the public debt large and not diminishing, the general financial condition unsatisfactory and the administrative machinery not in keeping with the city's rapid growth and development. The Galveston plan naturally appealed to the reform element and after a vigorous and acrimonious campaign that plan was adopted by a small majority at a general election. The old "ring" element opposed the innovation and is still opposed, for obvious. reasons. It has tried to enjoin the commission from acting, and to have the former board of aldermen reinstated, but all such efforts have been futile.

Seven months after it assumed control the commission announced an achieve

ment that completely vindicated those responsible for its creation. That was the payment of the last cent of the city's floating debt and the establishment of a cash basis for all municipal business, for the first time in nearly half a century. The floating debt was almost $400,000 when the commission went into office last July, and on February 15 of this year the amount had been paid in full. While liquidating this indebtedness and making it possible to meet all bills with cash on the first of each month, the commission kept up the payment of interest on the bonded debt, expended considerable money for improvements, corrected the errors and the results of the criminal practices of some former administrations, and defrayed the cost of an expensive quarantine during the outbreak of yellow fever in Louisiana last year. Furthermore, it brought about a decrease in the rates charged by the local gas company and took steps to compel the water company, long a delinquent, to live up to its contract. Now a decrease in the tax rate is being talked of, with an apparently bright prospect of accomplishment.

Nothing is so convincing as results. It might be to the interest of many another city to take advantage of the experience of these two in Texas.

"

T

HE Dutchman appreciates the men who have made his country famous at the ends of the earth and of the ages. On first visiting Holland in 1869, I found the Netherlanders were getting ready to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the victory of the "Beggars of the Sea" at Brielle. There the colors of the Prince of Orange were

hoisted in triumph on the high church tower, visible over most of South Holland. Thus, with "Orange Boven"-a phrase which originated among the sea captains who ordered the orange colors boven (above) those of Spain - the War of Independence, which resulted in the United States of the Netherlands, was ushered in. In 1872 the long and glorious line of national anniversaries was inaugurated. Since that monumental year among the seventies, the Dutch have

been enjoying one long celebration. They let not one occasion escape them. The national consciousness has awakened and patriotism has rekindled its fires all over the eleven provinces. An outburst of historical literature and a hurricane of popular fiction illuminating the past have accompanied the fun, frolic and permanent decoration. In both the growing maritime and the inland cities one sees in the naming of the new streets how well Holland remembers her great sons and daughters.

When it comes to outdoor celebrations, the normal Dutchman is in his element, for the young folks love fun and frolic fully as much as is good for them, while mynheer and his vrow are but children of a larger growth.

So, while the festivities at Leyden, city of Rembrandt's birth, and at Amsterdam, the municipality in which his honors were won, arranged for the visit of the Queen Mother and Crown Princewhile the beloved and much-prayed-for Queen waited for the stork and abode at home-the plain people were not forgotten. In the university town the water pageant-flowers by day and lanterns by night-turned the "old Rhine" and the canals into mirrors of glory. In the old "Burg," which from prehistoric aeons. has witnessed so much of real war, siege and famine, but also continual feasting and frolic, the fun on Rembrandt day and night was fast and furious, for kermiss had come.

There was no silence in the land of wooden shoes until 4 A.M. The maid-servant who, for at least three hundred and sixty days of the year, walks a chalk line of propriety even to prudery, forsakes her Delft-blue work-dress and ruff-cap and on kermiss night puts on her finery. But look out for her and her Jan or Willem, when she and twenty more of him and her-all alike in roystering abandon-swing a line across the street! Other lines of swinging humanity follow. In boisterous song and hig gledy-piggledy advance, with occasional eddying circles for dancing, the noisy battalions compel the peaceful pedestrian to take some other street. Not always, indeed, but with sufficient frequency, the next morning, if in summer, reminds one of a battlefield. Slain, not in war, but driven to sleep in unconsciousness that

makes even bricks soft for many hours, the victims of John Barleycorn lie till the sun is well up. It is too true of many that on such a day they have "spoken to the Prince.”

Yet most of the fun of Rembrandt day was innocent enough. I saw the Queen Mother and the Prince Consort in the same room, and on great and beautiful public functions, repeatedly, in July. 1906; but I enjoyed being also where was "the greatest good to the greatest number."

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So, on great Rembrandt's birthday celebration, July 16, 1906, I went first into the hall of golden inscriptions in the Rijks, or National Museum, where so long the Night Watch" hung, and where Saskia is equally remembered with her husband. At the hour of 2 P.M. the waiting choir burst forth in a seventeenth-century anthem. The strains of the Wilhelmus Lied had already announced the coming of royalty. The hall was ablaze with decorations, uniforms, brilliant toilets and bizarre costumes, for the élite of the nation and the foreign ministers were there. Admirals, generals, ministers of state, the diplomatic corps and men and women whose names in art, literature and the achievements of life are known beyond their dikes graced the grand occasion. Amid the silver and gold embroidery and breast ornaments of those who had won favor and fame are noted the young Chinese minister. He looked like a flaming poppy in crimson and black. The Paul Kruger type of face was not absent from the assembly. Indeed, one could not forbear comparing (and not to the discredit of the living, either), the countenances on the immortal canvases of Van der Helst and Franz Hals with those in life. There were speeches by the Burgomaster, Commisaris (province governor) and the Prince Consort-by which this muchslandered man gained new popularity with the Dutch. Then we all went into the new Rembrandt rooms, where the "Night Watch" and the "Cloth Syndies" will wait on admirers for another century, and, let us hope, for a millennium of further fame. In the morning of this same day I saw his unmarked and unknown grave in the Wester Kerk was remembered in marble and gold.

Making as straight a bee-line as the

human jam would admit to the Rokin, I was in good season on this July 16 to see most of the optocht, or historical costume procession. How the Dutch do enter into. the spirit of their picturesque ancestors! The night before, with flambeaux and searchlight shedding their beams, I beheld a mighty glitter of steel, yellow leather, orange-colored sashes, plumes, slashed velvet and banners. These and the men in them represented the heroes of Rembrandt's time, but the fat mud of Amsterdam that churns up richly after a rain had spoiled the ladies' skirts. Bravely the women artists, as well as the men walked, yes, "loping" it (to use New York English) all the way. Bravely they laid their floral tributes before the artist king of shadows who stood in bronze, a silent conqueror. To-day, in the sunlight, fair virgins feared no drop from their native skies. They start from the street on Ruysdael Quay, behind the Rijks Museum, named after Jacob van Campen, the architect of the City Hall of 1648, made for republicans, and hence without a chief portal, all the doors being plain and of the same width and height. Now, as the Frenchman noted, it

In

is a "palace without an entrance." the noisiest part of Amsterdam, one can scarcely envy the quondam royal sleepers there. Thoughtfully, at inauguration time in 1898, the people condoned the Pallis with whisperers, putting fingers of warning on mute lips. The peasants even took off their wooden clomps and the citizens their leather shoes, to dance in soundless joy around the monument of 1830 on the Dam. It is said that, to some Vollendam fishermen of saturnine face and timeless smoking capacity, this wordless joy was a glimpse of heaven.

But no silence poulticed the skies on Rembrandt day in Amsterdam. How the welkin rang as the pikemen in hats which, if reversed, would have served admirably as coal scuttles, marched by. It was with sixteen feet of timber and iron that Prince Maurices's men loved to push and spit the Spaniards. What wonderful hair fashions were then in vogue! Verily, the wigmakers of 1906 must have quickly sold out their stock! What amazing stripes on the sleeves-as if Sing Sing or Joliet had broken loose! What longhandled meat axes the halberdiers ried! As for the muskets and every

car