His flowers are prophesying
That all we dread of change or fate
His love is underlying.
—J. G. Whittier.
XXVI.—HOLLAND.
Mary Mapes Dodge.
Dutch cities seem, at first sight, to be a bewildering jumble of houses, bridges, churches, and ships, sprouting into masts, steeples, and trees. In some cities boats are hitched, like horses, to their owners’ door-posts, and receive their freight from the upper windows.
Mothers scream to their children not to swing on the garden gate for fear they may be drowned. Water roads are more frequent in Holland than common roads and railroads; water fences, in the form of lazy green ditches, enclose pleasure-ground, farm, and garden.