24 THE LAND OF PLUCK

the world as it appears when scrubbed to a polish. Every
morning the village shines forth as fresh as if it had just
taken a bath. The wooden houses are as bright and gay
as paint can make them. Their shining tiled roofs and
polished facings flash up a defiance to the sun to find a
speck of dust upon them. Certain dooryards, curiously
paved with shells and stones, look like enormous mosaic
brooches pinned to the earth ; the little canals and ditches,
instead of crawling sluggishly as many of their kindred do,
flow with a limpid cleanliness; the streets of fine yellow
brick are carefully sanded. Even the children walk as if
they were trying to make their wooden shoes express a
due respect for sand and pebbles. Horses and wheeled
vehicles of any kind are not allowed within the borders
of the town. The pea-green window-shutters usually are
closed; and the main entrances of cottages never are
opened except on the occasion of a christening

ge, a wedding,
or a funeral, or when the dazzling brass knobs and knock-
ers are to be rendered more dazzling still.

The gardens are as trim and complete as the houses; but
in summer the flower-beds, all laid out in little patches,
are bright with audacious blossoms nodding saucily to the
prim box-border that incloses them. Most of you have
seen the stocky, thick-stemmed box-plant, with its dense
growth of dark, glossy little leaves. Every old-fashioned
country-place in our own Middle States has had its box-
bordered flower-beds, with occasional taller clumps of the
shrub, looking like dumpy little trees. Well, the box-
plants in Broek -grow in a similar way, but they are very
old, and the work of trimming and shaping their hedges