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Updated: May 29, 2025
"Mud pies!" exclaimed Jasper, in mock surprise. "Polly, how can you mention such a thing as dirt or mud here!" "Jasper, do you suppose the children can have a good time here?" pursued Polly, anxiously, willing to give up the mud pies, if only reassured on the latter point, which seemed to her a very doubtful one. "We'll hope so," answered Jasper. "See the klompen outside that door, Polly.
All her life had been passed under the shadow of the grand old Dom Kerk; she had played bo-peep behind the columns and arcades of the ruined, moss-grown cloisters; had slipped up and fallen down the steps leading to the grachts; had once or twice, in this very early life, been fished out of those same slimy, stagnant waters; had wandered under the great lindens in the Baan, and gazed curiously up at the stork's nest in the tree by the Veterinary School; had pattered about the hollow-sounding streets in her noisy wooden klompen; had danced and laughed, had quarrelled and wept, and fought and made friends again, to the tune of the silver chimes high up in the Dom chimes that were sometimes old Nederlandsche hymns, sometimes Mendelssohn's melodies and tender "Lieder ohne Worte."
Thirty years ago the 'Raadhuis' would have been the village inn, barber's shop, and the principal hotel all rolled into one, and the innkeeper, as a natural consequence, the wealthiest man in the neighbourhood. Nowadays a farmer goes to the 'Raad' dressed in a suit of black clothes and with his feet encased in leather boots. He never wears 'Klompen' save when at work in the field or on the farm.
They were not picturesque, they wore the sabôt or "Klompen," yellow varnished, and clumsy in shape. Their stockings were coarse gray worsted. Their short trousers were usually tied with a string above the calf, and they wore a sort of smock, sometimes of linen unbleached, or of a shining sort of dark purple thin stuff.
When the Van Eyck vrouw and the children saw how happy Daddy was, they each one wanted a pair. Then they asked him what he called them. "Klompen," said he, in good Dutch, and klompen, or klomps, they are to this day. "I'll make a fortune out of this," said Van Eyck.
"Are there any little children there?" asked Phronsie, slipping back into her place again, and nestling close to his side. "Hundreds of them, I suppose," replied Mr. King, with his arm around her and drawing her up to him, "and they wear wooden shoes or sabots, or klompen as they call them, and " "Wooden shoes!" cried Phronsie; "oh, Grandpapa," clasping her hands, "how do they stay on?"
And that was not the worst; it was when it came to her pretty feet having to be thrust into klompen, and her having to take a pail and syringe and mop and clean the windows and the pathway and the front of the house, that the game of maid-servant began to assume a very different aspect.
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