You may see in certain cafes dealers in these stones turning over priceless little heaps of them with the long little finger-nail which they preserve as a scoop.
Amsterdam may be a city builded on the sand; but none the less will it endure.

Indeed the sand saves it; for it is in the sand that the wooden piles on which every house rests find their footing, squelching through the black mud to this comparative solidity.

Some of the piles are as long as 52 ft., and watching them being driven in, it is impossible to believe that stability can ever be attained, every blow of the monkey accounting for so very many inches.

When one watches pile-driving in England it is difficult to see the effect of each blow; but during the five or fewer minutes that I spent one day on Damrak observing the preparation for the foundations of a new house, the pile must have gone in nearly a foot each time, and it was very near the end of its journey too.

In course of years the black brackish mud petrifies not only the piles but the wooden girders that are laid upon them.
Pile-driving on an extensive scale can be a very picturesque sight.