DUTCHMEN ON CHANGE.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 10, Issue 678, 17 June 1887, Page 7

DUTCHMEN ON CHANGE.

'■ Opposite the Palace is the Exchange i - — a handsome modern buildirjg, resting , on a foundation of 3469 piles. It has ' on the outside a fine lonic colonnade, and the interior hall is -covered with - glass. Between one and three daily a 4 busy crowd may be seen in this hall, j and it is interesting to watch the charac- , teristics of the people as they transact their busines. There is pleDty of excitement, but it differs altogether from that to be witnessed at the Bourse 3 in Paris, or in any other Continental , ..city. Instead of the shouting and gesticulating to be found there, only low 8 murmurs and quitt whispers are to be ' heard in Amsterdam ; the eagerness, the hard bargain driving, are just as great ; but business is conducted with P that stolidity which characterises ® Dutchmen. . A story is told of a Dutchman who was walking in one of the shady streets of his own city one day, when a keg of gunpowder exploded at ... a short distance behind him. He held a pinch of snuff between the thumb and fore finger of the light hand, and his d spectacles in his left hand, and it is ;- recorded that he duly sniffed the snuff c and adjusted the spectacles on his nose I before turning round to see the cause ' of the uproar behind him. A panic on 'Change in France reminds you of

" Bedlam broke loose ;" a panic od 'Change in Amsterdam reminds you oi a Quaker's meeting, /There is an old Dutch joke concerning the Palace and the Exchange. The former has no handsome entrance-door, a conspicuous defect in the building ; the latter has a large porch sustained by 17 columns; hence the Palace is generally called "the house without a door," and the Exchange "the door without a house." — From Cities of the World.