1. Preparation

Recall all you have learned about Holland. Find pictures of the country and the people, if you can. What name is given the people?

1 Used by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

What sports do you think are favorite ones with the Dutch boys and girls?

In European countries the people are divided into classes or ranks, and it is hard for a person to pass out of the one in which he is born. These classes include peasants, gentry, burghers, and nobles.

Peasants till the soil on a small scale. They may be hired laborers, or owners of a small piece of land.

Gentry are the large landholders who are not nobles.

Burghers are well-to-do dwellers in the towns. Many are merchants.

The nobility are the highest class. They are large landholders and have titles which they have inherited.

2. Reading Lesson

The Scene Before The Skating Race

The Twentieth of December came at last, bringing with it the perfection of winter weather. All over the level landscape lay the warm sunlight. It tried its power on lake, canal, and river; but the ice flashed defiance and showed no sign of melting. The very weathercocks stood still to enjoy the sight. This gave the windmills a holiday. Nearly all the past week they had been whirling briskly; now, being rather out of breath, they rocked lazily in the clear, still air. Catch a windmill working when the weathercocks have nothing to do!

Everybody would be at the race - already the north side of the frozen Y was bordered with eager spectators; the news of the great skating match had travelled far and wide. Men, women, and children in holiday attire were flocking toward the spot.

The site selected for the race was a faultless plain of ice near Amsterdam. The townspeople turned out in large numbers. Strangers in the city deemed it a fine chance to see what was to be seen. Many a peasant from the northward had wisely chosen the Twentieth as the day for the next city-trading. It seemed that everybody, young and old, who had wheels, skates, or feet at command, had hastened to the scene.

There were the gentry in their coaches, dressed like Parisians; Amsterdam children in charity uniforms; girls from the Roman Catholic orphan house, in sable gowns and white headbands. There were old-fashioned gentlemen in cocked hats and velvet knee breeches; old-fashioned ladies, too, in stiff, quilted skirts and bodies of dazzling brocade. These were accompanied by servants bearing foot-stoves and cloaks. There were the peasant folk arrayed in every possible Dutch costume - women whose long, narrow aprons were stiff with embroidery; women with short, corkscrew curls hanging over their foreheads; women with shaved heads and close-fitting caps; and women in striped skirts and windmill bonnets. Men in leather, in homespun, in velvet and broadcloth; burghers in model European attire, and burghers in short jackets, wide trousers, and steeple-crowned hats.

There were beautiful Friesland girls in wooden shoes and coarse petticoats, with solid gold crescents encircling their heads, finished at each temple with a golden rosette, and hung with lace a century old. Some wore necklaces, pendants, and ear-rings of the purest gold; but many were content with gilt, or even with brass.

Scattered throughout the crowd were peasants from the Island of Marken, with sabots, black stockings, and the widest of breeches; also women from Marken with short blue petticoats, and black jackets, gayly figured in front. They wore red sleeves, white aprons, and a cap like a bishop's mitre over their golden hair.

The children often were as quaint and odd-looking as their elders. In short, one-third of the crowd seemed to have stepped bodily from a collection of Dutch paintings.

Everywhere could be seen tall women, and stumpy men, lively faced girls, and youths whose expression never changed from sunrise to sunset.

There seemed to be at least one specimen from every known town in Holland. There were Utrecht water-bearers, Gouda cheese makers, Delft pottery-men, Schiedam distillers, Amsterdam diamond cutters, Rotterdam merchants, dried up herring-packers, and two sleepy-eyed shepherds from Texel. Every man of them had his pipe and tobacco-pouch.

A true Dutchman, you must remember, is rarely without his pipe on any possible occasion. He may for a moment neglect to breathe, but when the pipe is forgotten, he must be dying, indeed. There were no such sad cases here. Wreaths of smoke were rising from every possible quarter. The more fantastic the smoke wreath, the more placid and solemn the smoker.

Look at those boys and girls on stilts ! That is a good idea. They can see over the heads of the tallest. It is strange to see those little bodies high in the air, carried about on mysterious legs. They have such a resolute look on their round faces, what wonder that nervous old gentlemen, with tender feet, wince and tremble while the long-legged little monsters stride past them.

You will read in certain books that the Dutch are a quiet people, - so they are generally, - but listen: did ever you hear such a din? All made up of human voices - no, the horses are helping somewhat, and the fiddles are squeaking pitifully (how it must pain fiddles to be timed !).

That queer little dwarf going about with a heavy basket, winding in and out among the people, helps not a little. You can hear his shrill cry above all the other sounds: "Pypen en tabac ! Pypen en tabac !"

Another, his big brother, though evidently some years younger, is selling doughnuts and bonbons. He is calling on all pretty children far and near to come quickly or the cakes will be gone.

High up in yonder pavilion, erected upon the border of the ice, are the Van Glecks. In the centre is Madame van Gleck. It is her birthday; she has the post of honor. There is Mynheer van Gleck whose meerschaum has not really grown fast to his lips - it only appears so. There are grandfather and grandmother, too, and all the children are with them. It is so mild they have brought even the baby. The poor little creature is swaddled very much like an Egyptian mummy, but it can crow with delight.

Grandfather with his pipe and spectacles and fur cap makes quite a picture as he holds baby upon his knee. Perched high upon their canopied platforms, the party can see all that is going on. No wonder the ladies look complacently at the glassy ice; with a stove for a foot stool one might sit cozily beside the North Pole.

Near by, in the next pavilion, sit the Van Holps with their son and daughter (the Van Gends) from the Hague. Mevrouw van Gend has brought bouquets of exquisite hot-house flowers for the winners.

These pavilions, and there are others besides, have all been erected since daylight. That semicircular one, containing Mynheer Korbes' family, is very pretty, and proves that the Hollanders are quite skilled at tent making, but I like the Van Glecks' best - the centre one - striped red and white, and hung with evergreens.

The one with the blue flags contains the musicians. Those pagoda-like affairs, decked with sea-shells and every possible hue, are the judges' stands, and those columns and flagstaffs upon the ice mark the limit of the race course. The two white columns twined with green, connected at the top by that long, floating strip of drapery, form the starting-point. Those flagstaffs, half a mile off, stand at each end of the boundary line.

The air is so clear it seems scarcely possible that the columns and flagstaffs are so far apart.

Half a mile on the ice, when the atmosphere is like this, is but a short distance after all, especially when fenced with a living chain of spectators.

- Mary Mapes Dodge. Adapted.