show, and everybody uses a side-entrance except on grand occasions."

"Oh, there is a family of storks on that house!" called out Wilhelmina; "look, Pieter, aren't they lucky people who live there?"

Sure enough, on the top of the chimney was a mass of straw, and in the midst of it stood two tall storks. This was their nest, and Papa and Mamma Stork were waiting for the young Stork family to come out of their shells. Papa Stork stood on one leg and cocked his head down to the children as much as to say: "Don't you wish that we were living at your house?"; for storks must know as well as anybody how much they are thought of in Holland. The good people of that country build little platforms over their chimneys just so that a stork couple that are looking for a place to begin housekeeping will see it and say to themselves: "Here's a nice flat place on which to build our nest."

It is considered very lucky indeed for a stork family to come to live on one's chimney-top.

"We thought one was coming to live at our house last year," said Wilhelmina, "but they must have made up their minds to go elsewhere, and I was so sorry."

"And they build on churches, too," cried Theodore. "Look, there's a nest on the roof of that church. I had been thinking that it was a bundle of sticks, and wondering how it got up there."

"The storks have built there for many years, and they seem to like the highest places they can find," said Pieter. "There is a law to protect the storks, and to forbid any injury being done to them, so you see they can have a better time than most birds."

"Look, Pieter, there are big ships over there in the middle of that green meadow; how ever did they get there? Bless my stars!" said Theodore, "I do believe they are sailing over the grass."

"Oh, Theodore, you are so funny!" laughed Wilhelmina; "of course they are on the water; there is a canal over there where you are looking."

"Well, I can't see it," persisted Theodore, who thought his eyes were playing him tricks.

"That's because our canals are higher than the land about them," said Pieter. "You must know that we are very economical with our dry land; there is nothing we prize so much, because we have so little of it; and there is no people in the world who have worked so hard for theirs as the Dutch, not only to get it in the first place, but to keep it afterward.

"Once all this country about here was either a marsh or covered by water. The land could not be allowed to go to waste like that, and so great walls of mud and stone, called dikes, were built. Canals were run here, there, and everywhere, and the waters which covered the lowlands were pumped into these canals and so drained off. The new land was practically a new area added to the small territory of Holland, and where once was nothing but salt marsh and water-flooded meadows are now cities and towns and houses and lovely gardens.

"As one walks along many of the canal banks in Holland, one is often overlooking the roof-tops of the houses below."

"Why," said Theodore, "if we tried, we might look right down that man's chimney, and see what they are cooking for dinner; the road is on a level with the roof."

"Yes, our roads, too, are often built on dikes; this keeps them hard and dry," said Pieter. "You may judge as to how wide some of these dikes are, for on this particular one there is not only a road, but a row of trees on either side of it as well. Some are so broad that there are houses, and even villages, on top of them. The reclaimed lands lying between the dikes are called 'polders,' and thousands of acres of the richest part of Holland have been made in this way. Some day, too, it is planned that the whole of the Zuyder Zee will be planted and built over with gardens and houses."

"That is just like finding a country," said Theodore, "but hasn't it all cost a lot of money?"

"Yes, indeed," answered Pieter, "and not only that, but millions of 'gulden' have still to be spent every year to fight the waters back again."

Pieter also told Theodore that many of the great windmills which he saw were used to pump off the surplus water which drained through from the canals. So many of these canals are there in Holland that the country is cut up by them like a checker-board. They are of all sizes, from a tiny ditch to others big enough for large ships to sail upon.

There are not only these inland dikes, which protect the canals and the lands lying between, but there are great sea-walls of sand and rock to keep the sea itself in place, otherwise it would come rushing over the lowlands and drown half the country. Even that is not the end of the matter. Thousands and thousands of men have to watch these dikes day and night, for one little leak might be the means of flooding miles of country, and washing away many homes and lives. When the cry is heard, "The dike is breaking!" every man, woman, and child must go and help do their share toward fighting back the water.

"Well, I am proud of my Dutch blood," said Theodore; "they are a splendid little people to work as they do, and they have had a hard fight to keep their heads above water. I wonder if that saying didn't first come from a Dutchman!"

"Perhaps that is the reason that we Dutch people talk so little," said Pieter; "we have to think and work so hard all the time to keep what we have."

"Well," said Theodore, "Holland is a wonderful country; it is wholly unlike any other place."

"Tell the story, Pieter," said Wilhelmina, "of the time when the people cut the dikes and let in the water to save themselves from the enemy."

"That's a long story, and we must save it for another time," said Pieter, "until after Theodore has seen Leyden, for it was there that it happened."

This talk on Dutch history came to a sudden stop as Pieter called out: "Look out, Theodore, or you will get drenched," and the children had only time to dodge a big bucket of water that a fat Vrouw was tossing up on her windows. "You have not yet learned, Theodore, that a Dutch woman will not stop her washing and cleaning for any one," laughed Pieter, as they left the angry Vrouw shaking her mop at them.

"I have seen Vrouw Huytens, our neighbour," said Pieter, "scrubbing her house-front in a heavy rain, holding an umbrella over herself at the same time."

I suppose the idea of cleanliness comes from the fact that the Dutch have so much water handy; they say that when a Dutch Vrouw cannot find anything else to do, she says, "Let's wash something."