8 THE LAND OF PLUCK

tion. Sometimes they stand clustered together; some-
times alone, like silent sentinels ; sometimes in long rows

a
like ranks of soldiers. You see them rising from the
midst of factory buildings, by the cottages, on the polders
(the polders are lakes pumped dry and turned into farms) ;

?
on the wharves; by the rivers; along the canals; on the

dikes; Holland would n’t

                           

 

“ALONG THE CANAL.”

be Holland without its windmills, any more than it would
be Holland without its dikes and its Dutchmen.

A certain zealous dame is said to have once attempted
to sweep the ocean away with a broom. The Dutch have
heen wiser than she. They area slow and deliberate people.
Desperation may use brooms, but deliberation prefers clay
and solid masonry. So, slowly and deliberately, the dikes,
those great walls of cement and stone, have risen to
breast the Iuffeting waves. And the queer part of it is,