12 Hans Brinker

Persons are born, live, and die, and even have their gardens,
on canal-boats. Farmhouses, with roofs like great slouched
hats pulled over their eyes, stand on wooden legs with a tucked-
up sort of air, as if to say, “ We intend to keep dry if we can.”
Even the horses wear a wide stool on each hoof to lift them
out of the mire.
In short, the land-
scape everywhere
suggests a paradise
for ducks. It is
a glorious country
in summer for
barefooted girls
and boys. Such
wadings! such
mimic. ship-
sailing! such row-
ing, fishing and
swimming! Only
think of a chain
of puddles, where

one can launch

EVEN THE HORSES WEAR A WIDE STOOL ON chip boats all day
EACH HOOF.

 

long, and never
make a return trip! But enough. A full recital would set
all young America rushing in a body toward the Zuyder-Zee.

Dutch cities seem at first sight to be a bewildering jungle
of houses, bridges, churches and ships, sprouting into masts,
steeples and trees. In some cities, vessels are hitched, like
horses, to their owners’ door-posts, and receive their freight
from the upper windows. Mothers scream to Lodewyk and