as many as 3000 hands. The chief customers of this establishment are our great west-end firms, such as Lewis and Allenby, Howell and James, Marshall and Snelgrove, and others, whose agents come over here once a year, or oftener, to make purchases.
Hôtel de Ville, Ypres.
Ypres is essentially a place of business, and nothing else. The people are thrifty, orderly, and industrious, after the most exemplary fashion. Their way of life is much the same as it was with us in Elizabeth’s time, leaving out the show and finery. The whole town is up by five o’clock in the morning, and has done breakfast by half-past six; dinner oscillates between half-past eleven and one; an hour or two later early rising is rewarded with a cup of coffee; and, at seven or eight, the day is wound up by the most moderate of suppers. The entire population, with such dissipated or vagrant exceptions as are to be found in all towns, are a-bed by ten; half an hour afterwards, the dreamy music of the carillons rings out from the lofty belfry over the squares and streets, which are as fast asleep as the inhabitants.
Society and amusements are the only wants of Ypres; but they are wants which are felt only by strangers. Residents are accustomed to do without them, and have become moulded to habits which much bustle or pleasure-going would inconveniently derange. “Society is not for ladies at Ypres,” was the idiomatic expression of a young lady of the town, speaking to me in very piquant English. There is a theatre somewhere hidden away in Ypres, but it is never open. The people take no interest in the drama in any shape, and don’t affect to disguise their indifference to it. There may be a ball on some extraordinary occasion; but it happens so rarely that the ladies declare they have no relish for dancing. Concerts take place; but they are exclusively instrumental, with the military element topping and predominating over all. In short, the ladies have no other engagements upon their hands than to walk, pray, and stitch,—occupations in the culture of which they exhibit indefatigable zeal. The fact is all the more remarkable from Ypres being a garrison-town, as we should say, and crowded with lounging soldiers. While the ladies are thus left to their own devices, the men, on the contrary, are abundantly provided with the only kind of entertainment from which they seem to derive any enjoyment. They have their club in the Grande Place, a handsome room brilliantly lighted up with gas, where, every evening, the principal residents, and a gay sprinkling of cavalry and infantry officers assemble to play at billiards, dominoes, back-gammon, whist, and sundry other games with cards and tables, and to drink beer out of tall, liberal glasses,—Allsopp’s ale, which has been introduced only within the last two or three weeks, being in high request. The scene is extremely lively and amusing; and the tone of the company—without any air of pretence or exclusiveness—is undoubtedly that of a society of gentlemen.
But the most conspicuous feature of this club is its inexpensiveness. The individual subscrip-