[3] The narrative is based on two historic facts: one, the Victoria hotel in Amsterdam, opposite the Central Station, has two nineteenth-century houses incrusted in its facade.

Two, the pharmacist Anijs in Hoogeveen was known for his commitment to improve the lives of a group of families of dirt-poor peat-cutters.

The main character, Walter Vedder, a violin maker, was in the 1880s the owner of one of the houses opposite the Central Station.

Public works such as in this case the construction of a railway station, can have unforeseen an unwanted effects on the lives of people but the cousins have the noble intention to achieve social justice on their own.

The poor families from the peatlands embark on an ill-advised journey but are saved by a surprising element of culture that the cousins did not value.