Rollo in Holland | Page 3

rivers and streams that he can turn into it, when
the bed of it shall have been excavated; and sometimes he has to bring
these supplies of water for a great distance in artificial channels, which
often cross valleys by means of great aqueducts 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