they found him at the dike, keeping the water back with his hand. Then
his father took him home, and the men stopped up the hole in the dike.
Everybody praised Hans for what he had done.

The little children in Holland are very pretty. They have round, fat
faces, golden hair, and blue eyes. The boys wear wide trousers and
little round caps. The girls wear jackets and skirts and little caps
with gold braid.

Both boys and girls wear wooden shoes. And what a noise they do make
with their wooden shoes when they run around! They have great fun
playing their shoes are boats. They sit on the sides of the canals and
take off their shoes and sail them on the water like little boats.
They tie strings to the shoes so that they can draw them in whenever
they like.

[Illustration: Dutch Girl with Wooden Shoes.]

Dutch children do not wear shoes in the house, but wear slippers. When
they go home after playing or from school they take off their shoes.
They leave them outside the door. Would you not think it strange to
see rows of little shoes outside the doors?

Every Saturday the children clean their shoes. But they do not shine
them as we do. They wash them with soap and water, and dry them at the
fire. If the sun shines, they hang them on a bush to dry. When they
are dry, they are almost as white as snow.

Winter is a very merry season in Holland. Then all the canals are
frozen, and there is great fun skating. Everybody has skates, even the
little children. And how merry and happy the boys and girls are,
skimming along on the ice!

[Illustration: Skating in Holland.]

The men and women go to market on skates. Those who do not wish to go
on skates go in sleds or chairs with runners on them. The chairs are
pushed by skaters.

But the best fun of all is on the ice boats. The ice boats have sails,
and can go very fast on the smooth ice.

The first day of skating every year is a holiday. There is no school
that day, and everybody goes out skating, or riding in sle

John Holland Rose (1855-1942) was an influential English historian who wrote a famous biography of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and also wrote a history of Europe, entitled The Development of the European Nations. Rose was the basis for C. P. Snows fictional character M. H. L. Gay (see Years of Hope: Cambridge, Colonial Administrator in the South Seas, and Cricket by Philip Snow.)

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