In Holland the very little children believe that while they are busy gathering up the saint’s goodies, or else in the night, he hides away the presents meant for them all over the house. Before they go to bed they place their largest shoes—wooden sabots, such as you see in almost every picture of Dutch children—in the chimney place, where in the morning they find them stuffed with fruit, nuts, and sweets. There are no lie-a-beds in Holland on St. Nicholas’ morning. There is a glorious game of “seek-and-find” going on in every house where there are children. Piet takes down one of the shining copper saucepans hanging beside the chimney place and finds curled up inside it the many-petticoated doll which of course he hands over to a delighted little sister, who has somewhere discovered his box of gaily painted leaden soldiers. There are plenty of hiding holes in an old Dutch house; thick oak beams support the walls and roofs and make wide ledges upon which Rupert may find a packet containing two flat silver buttons which once belonged to his great-grandfather. He is the oldest son, beginning to be particular about his striped waistcoats and the tight fit of his blue or red coat. He will be immensely proud to wear, as every other man in the old village does, two silver buttons at the waist of his baggy trousers. In the parts of Holland where the new fashions have not spoiled the old, silver buttons are to the men what such coral necklaces as Rupert’s sister wears are to the women. These buttons are always as big as the men can afford, and sometimes are like saucers; the little boys, even the tiniest ones, are dressed exactly after the pattern of their fathers, but their two flat buttons are smaller, about as large as fifty-cent pieces, and stamped with some design, the favorite one being a ship. When all the gifts have been hunted out (down to a pair of skates with long curved tips for a boy so little that you would think St. Nicholas must have made a mistake if you did not know that Dutch children learn to skate almost as early as you learn to walk), the children are ready for the season’s other special treat, the gingerbread cakes. Delicately spiced gingerbread is made into many fantastic shapes, but every one, young or old, receives a gingerbread doll. Figures of men are given to the women folk, and of women in ruffles and straight skirts to the men. It is interesting to see how exactly like these gingerbread figures are in outline to those in early Dutch paintings. The models from which they are patterned frequently date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. How St. Nicholas Came to Volendam