y present their
fans, or wings, to the wind in precisely the right direction to work
with the requisite power. In other words, the miller may take a nap and
feel quite sure that his mill will study the wind and make the most of
it, until he wakens. Should there be but a slight current of air, every
sail will spread itself to catch the faintest breath, but if a heavy
"blow" should come, they will shrink at its touch, like great mimosa
leaves, and only give it half a chance to move them.

One of the old prisons of Amsterdam, called the Rasphouse, because the
thieves and vagrants who were confined there were employed in rasping
logwood, had a cell for the punishment of lazy prisoners. In one corner
of this cell was a pump, and in another, an opening through which a
steady stream of water was admitted. The prisoner could take his choice,
either to stand still and be drowned or to work for dear life at the
pump and keep the flood down until his jailer chose to relieve him.
Now it seems to me that, throughout Holland, nature has introduced this
little diversion on a grand scale. The Dutch have always been forced to
pump for their very existence and probably must continue to do so to the
end of time.

Every year millions of dollars are spent in repairing dikes and
regulating water levels. If these important duties were neglected, the
country would be uninhabitable. Already dreadful consequences, as I have
said, have followed the bursting of these dikes. Hundreds of villages
and towns have from time to time been buried beneath the rush of waters,
and nearly a million persons have been destroyed. One of the most
fearful inundations ever known occurred in the autumn of the year 1570.
Twenty-eight terrible floods had before that time overwhelmed portions
of Holland, but this was the most terrible of all. The unhappy country
had long been suffering under Spanish tyranny; now, it seemed, the
crowning point was given to its troubles. When we read Motley's history
of the rise of the Dutch republic, we learn to revere the brave people
who have endured, suffered, and dared so much.

Mr. Motley, in his thrilling account of the great inundation, tells us
how a long-continued and violent gale had been sweeping the Atlantic
waters into the North Sea, piling them against the coasts of the Dutch
provinces; how the dikes, taxed beyond their strength, burst in all
directions; how even the Hand-bos, a bulwark formed of oaken piles,
braced wit