Mary Mapes Dodge

“ Ben was half inclined to think that these personages were automata like the moving figures in the garden at Broek; for they both nodded their heads slowly, in precisely the same way, and both went on with their employment as steadily and stiffly as though they worked by machinery. The old man puffed, puffed, and his vrouw clicked her knitting needles, as if regulated by internal cog wheels. Even the real smoke issuing from the motionless pipe gave no convincing proof that they were human. ”

“ There's no counting the improvements he made in dikes and sluices and water mills and all that kind of thing. We Hollanders, you know, consider our great engineers as the highest of public benefactors. Brunings died years ago; they've a monument to his memory in the cathedral of Haarlem. I have seen his portrait, and I tell you, Ben, he was right noble-looking. No wonder the castle looks so stiff and proud. It is something to have given shelter to such a man! ”

“ The river is five feet higher than the land, so we must have everything strong in the way of dikes and sluice gates, or there would be wet work at once. The sluice arrangements are supposed to be something extra. ”