Rollo in Holland | Page 3

built up to hold them. Sometimes a brook is in this way brought across a river,--the river itself not being high enough to feed the canal.
The people of Holland have no such difficulties as these to encounter in their canals. The whole country being so nearly on a level with the sea, they have nothing to do, when they wish for a canal, but to extend it in some part to the sea shore, and then open a sluice way and let the water in.
It is true that sometimes they have to provide means to prevent the ingress of too much water; but this is very easily done.
It is thus so easy to make canals in Holland, that the people have been making them for hundreds of years, until now almost the whole country is intersected every where with canals, as other countries are with roads. Almost all the traffic, and, until lately, almost all the travel of the country, has been upon the canals. There are private canals, too, as well as public. A farmer brings home his hay and grain from his fields by water, and when he buys a new piece of land he makes a canal to it, as a Vermont farmer would make a road to a new pasture or wood lot that he had been buying.
Rollo wished very much to see all these things--but there was one question which it puzzled him very much to decide, and that was whether he would rather go to Holland in the summer or in the winter.
"I am not certain," said he to his mother one day, "whether it would not be better for me to go in the winter."
"It is very cold there in the winter," said his mother; "so I am told."
"That is the very thing," said Rollo. "They have such excellent skating on the canals. I want to see the boats go on the canals, and I want to see the skating, and I don't know which I want to see most."
"Yes," said his mother, "I recollect to have often seen pictures of skating on the Dutch canals."
"And I read, when I was a boy," continued Rollo, "that the women skate to market in Holland."
Rollo here observed that his mother was endeavoring to suppress a smile. She seemed to try very hard, but she could not succeed in keeping perfectly sober.
"What are you laughing at, mother?" asked Rollo.
Here Mrs. Holiday could no longer restrain herself, but laughed outright.
"Is it about the Dutch women skating to market?" asked Rollo.
"I think they must look quite funny, at any rate," said Mrs. Holiday.
What Mrs. Holiday was really laughing at was to hear Rollo talk about "when he was a boy." But the fact was, that Rollo had now travelled about so much, and taken care of himself in so many exigencies, that he began to feel quite like a man. And indeed I do not think it at all surprising that he felt so.
"Which would you do, mother," said Rollo, "if you were I? Would you rather go in the summer or in the winter?"
"I would ask uncle George," said Mrs. Holiday.
So Rollo went to find his uncle George.
Rollo was at this time at Morley's Hotel, in London, and he expected to find his uncle George in what is called the coffee room. The coffee room in Morley's Hotel is a very pleasant place. It fronts on one side upon a very busy and brilliant street, and on another upon a large open square, adorned with monuments and fountains. On the side towards the square is a bay window, and near this bay window were two or three small tables, with gentlemen sitting at them, engaged in writing. There were other tables along the sides of the room and at the other windows, where gentlemen were taking breakfast. Mr. George was at one of the tables near the bay window, and was busy writing.
Rollo went to the place, and standing by Mr. George's side, he said in an under tone,--
"Uncle George."
Every body speaks in an under tone in an English coffee room. They do this in order not to interrupt the conversation, or the reading, or the writing of other gentlemen that may be in the room.
"Wait a moment," said Mr. George, "till I finish this letter."
So Rollo turned to the bay window and looked out, in order to amuse himself with what he might observe in the street, till his uncle George should be ready to talk with him.
He saw the fountains in the square, and a great many children playing about the basins. He saw a poor boy at a crossing brushing the pavement industriously with an old broom, and then holding out his hand to the people passing by, in hopes that some of them