at lakes pumped
dry. Some of the busiest streets are water, while many of the country
roads are paved with brick. The city boats with their rounded sterns,
gilded prows, and gaily painted sides, are unlike any others under the
sun; and a Dutch wagon, with its funny little crooked pole, is a perfect
mystery of mysteries.

"One thing is clear," cries Master Brightside, "the inhabitants
need never be thirsty." But no, Odd-land is true to itself still.
Notwithstanding the sea pushing to get in, and the lakes struggling
to get out, and the overflowing canals, rivers, and ditches, in many
districts there is no water fit to swallow; our poor Hollanders must go
dry or drink wine and beer or send far into the inland to Utrecht and
other favored localities for that precious fluid older than Adam yet
younger than the morning dew. Sometimes, indeed, the inhabitants can
swallow a shower when they are provided with any means of catching it;
but generally they are like the albatross-haunted sailors in Coleridge's
famous poem "The Ancient Mariner." They see

Water, Water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink!

Great flapping windmills all over the country make it look as if flocks
of huge sea birds were just settling upon it. Everywhere one sees
the funniest trees, bobbed into fantastical shapes, with their trunks
painted a dazzling white, yellow, or red. Horses are often yoked three
abreast. Men, women, and children go clattering about in wooden shoes
with loose heels; peasant girls who cannot get beaux for love, hire them
for money to escort them to the kermis, *{Fair.} and husbands and wives
lovingly harness themselves side by side on the bank of the canal and
drag their pakschuyts to market.

Another peculiar feature of Holland is the dune, or sand hill. These are
numerous along certain portions of the coast. Before they were sown with
coarse reed grass and other plants, to hold them down, they used to send
great storms of sand over the inland. So, to add to the oddities, the
farmers sometimes dig down under the surface to find their soil, and on
windy days DRY SHOWERS (of sand) often fall upon fields that have grown
wet under a week of sunshine.

In short, almost the only familiar thing we Yankees can meet with
in Holland is a harvest song which is quite popular there, though no
linguist could translate it. Even then we must shut our eyes and listen
only to the tune, which I leave you to guess.

Yanker di