"How do you run in sabots?" I asked a Dutchman once. I had been
experimenting, and had hurt myself.

"We don't run," answered the Dutchman.

And observation has proved to me he was right. The Dutch boy, when
he runs, puts them for preference on his hands, and hits other Dutch
boys over the head with them as he passes.

The roads in Holland, straight and level, and shaded all the way with
trees, look, from the railway-carriage window, as if they would be
good for cycling; but this is a delusion. I crossed in the boat from
Harwich once, with a well-known black and white artist, and an
equally well-known and highly respected humorist. They had their
bicycles with them, intending to tour Holland. I met them a
fortnight later in Delft, or, rather, I met their remains. I was
horrified at first. I thought it was drink. They could not stand
still, they could not sit still, they trembled and shook in every
limb, their teeth chattered when they tried to talk. The humorist
hadn't a joke left in him. The artist could not have drawn his own
salary; he would have dropped it on the way to his pocket. The Dutch
roads are paved their entire length with cobbles--big, round cobbles,
over which your bicycle leaps and springs and plunges.

If you would see Holland outside the big towns a smattering of Dutch
is necessary. If you know German there is not much difficulty.
Dutch--I speak as an amateur--appears to be very bad German mis-
pronounced. Myself, I find my German goes well in Holland, even
better than in Germany. The Anglo-Saxon should not attempt the Dutch