A poor boy in Holland races for silver skates on a frozen canal, while his father lies out of his mind after a fall on the dikes and the family's savings have been lost for ten years. Mary Mapes Dodge had never been to the Netherlands; she wrote it from books and from Dutch neighbours in New Jersey, and the country recognised itself. The tale of the boy who plugged the dike with his finger is a story told inside this book, and it was this book that made it famous. Ten plates of Dutch and European painting, from Jan Steen to Edvard Munch, show children at play, village revels and schoolrooms, the everyday life of the country Hans races through.