ten o'clock
The fierce traffic of the day was over , but the dam roared and rumbled , in vast confusion , with its enormous structures black against the moldering ashes of sunset . `` A cathedral without a tower ; a palace without a king ; a bishop 's house without a bishop ; a girl without a lover , '' is the saying that Amsterdammers have about the dam ; and I repeated it as we drove through , while my friends searched the verification of the saw . All was plain enough , except the `` girl without a lover '' ; but when they learned that she was a stone girl on a pedestal too constricted for two figures they pronounced her part of the distich far-fetched . Undaunted by all they had done that day , they would go out again after dinner , when Amsterdam was blue and silver and shining steel in the quiet streets , with a flare of yellow light in the lively ones , where people crowded the roadways , listening to the crash of huge hand-organs , or shopping until ten o'clock . We supped at the biggest _ café _ in Europe ; and then for contrast , since we were in a city of contrasts , I took them to the quaintest inn of Amsterdam -- a queer little pointed-roofed house hiding the painted `` Wilderman '' over his low-roofed door , behind a big archway , in the midst of all that is most modern , but with an interior of a rich gold-brown gloom , lit by glints of brass and gleams of pewter which would have delighted Rembrandt . Next day it was to his house , in the strange , teeming Jewish quarter that we went first of all ; but Nell and Phyllis were heartsick to find the rooms , once rich in treasures , piled untidily with `` curiosities '' of no great beauty or value . Then , by way of a change after the Old Town , and the harbor with its queer houses , like drunken men trying to prop each other up , I chose the Heerengracht , all the city has of the richest and most exclusive .