Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 April 1893 — Dutch Kloompers. [ARTICLE]

Dutch Kloompers.

One of the queerest sights which I saw in Europe was a row’ of wooden shoes outside the door of a Dutch farm-house on Saturday morning. There were the big-sized shoes of the farmer himself, the middle-sized shbes of his good vraow, and several small-sized shoes of the children; and all the line had been scrubbed and freshly whitewashed in preparation for Sunday. There are many kinds of wooden shoes worn by peasants in Europe, but none are more clumsy and heavy than the “kloompers” of the Hollanders. They are boat-shaped with high wooden protections to the heels, and a curious little upward twist to the toes, like the prow of a Chinese junk.. But heavy and awkward as the shoes are, the Dutch children run about as lightly as if they were shod in Cinderella’s glass slippers, and do not seem to object in the least to the clicking sound made by the shoes on the pavement. One of the most extraordinary sights in the world is a line of little Dutch boys playing leap-frog in their great noisy wooden kloompers. Having formed a row of “frogs” from one end of their village to the other, the boys begin to jump in the usual agile way of the players of the lively game. As soon as the line is in motion a most tremendous sound startles the village. The oldest inhabitant can hardly “hear himself think,” but he knows that the noise is not thunder; it is only the rattle of the boys’ wooden shoes as they strike the hard brick paved street.—[Harper’s Young People.