So Hans went up to the dike and put his hand against the hole, and stopped the water.  This was very hard to do.  But the little fellow held bravely on.

When night came and Hans did not come home, his father and some of the people who lived close by went to search for him.  After many hours they found him at the dike, keeping the water back with his hand.  Then his father took him home, and the men stopped up the hole in the dike.  Everybody praised Hans for what he had done.

The little children in Holland are very pretty.  They have round, fat faces, golden hair, and blue eyes.  The boys wear wide trousers and little round caps.  The girls wear jackets and skirts and little caps with gold braid.

Both boys and girls wear wooden shoes.  And what a noise they do make with their wooden shoes when they run around!  They have great fun playing their shoes are boats.  They sit on the sides of the canals and take off their shoes and sail them on the water like little boats.  They tie strings to the shoes so that they can draw them in whenever they like.

[Illustration:  Dutch Girl with Wooden Shoes.]

Dutch children do not wear shoes in the house, but wear slippers.  When they go home after playing or from school they take off their shoes.  They leave them outside the door.  Would you not think it strange to see rows of little shoes outside the doors?

Every Saturday the children clean their shoes.  But they do not shine them as we do.  They wash them with soap and water, and dry them at the fire.  If the sun shines, they hang them on a bush to dry.  When they are dry, they are almost as white as snow.

Winter is a very merry season in Holland.  Then all the canals are frozen, and there is great fun skating.  Everybody has skates, even the little children.  And how merry and happy the boys and girls are, skimming along on the ice!

[Illustration:  Skating in Holland.]

The men and women go to market on skates.  Those who do not wish to go on skates go in sleds or chairs with runners on them.  The chairs are pushed by skaters.

But the best fun of all is on the ice boats.  The ice boats have sails, and can go very fast on the smooth ice.

The first day of skating every year is a holiday.  There is no school that day, and everybody goes out skating, or riding in sleds or ice boats.  How glad the boys and girls are when Skating Day comes!  What fun they have!  And of course they have sleigh riding, for every family has a sleigh.  The sleighs are made like shells, or boats, or swans.  When the people go sleigh riding at night, they carry lighted torches.

The greatest holiday the Dutch have is Santa Claus’s day.  It is on December 6.  All the stores are made pretty on that day.  Santa Claus is in the windows.  He is dressed in red with white fur, and rides a large horse.  The streets are crowded with boys and girls to see all this.  They have Santa Claus cakes, and gingerbread made like chairs and tables and fishes and horses and many other things.