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Hans Brinker; Or, The Silver Skates

by Mary Mapes Dodge · English · Gutenberg #764 · 490,262 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Hans Brinker; Or, The Silver Skates

Author: Mary Mapes Dodge


        
Release date: December 1, 1996 [eBook #764]
                Most recently updated: November 4, 2016

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Ng E-Ching, and David Widger


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Produced by Ng E-Ching





HANS BRINKER

OR THE SILVER SKATES


By Mary Mapes Dodge



                              To my father
                              James J. Mapes
                              this book is dedicated
                              in gratitude and love




Preface


This little work aims to combine the instructive features of a book of
travels with the interest of a domestic tale. Throughout its pages the
descriptions of Dutch localities, customs, and general characteristics
have been given with scrupulous care. Many of its incidents are drawn
from life, and the story of Raff Brinker is founded strictly upon fact.

While acknowledging my obligations to many well-known writers on Dutch
history, literature, and art, I turn with especial gratitude to those
kind Holland friends who, with generous zeal, have taken many a backward
glance at their country for my sake, seeing it as it looked twenty years
ago, when the Brinker home stood unnoticed in sunlight and shadow.

Should this simple narrative serve to give my young readers a just
idea of Holland and its resources, or present true pictures of its
inhabitants and their every-day life, or free them from certain current
prejudices concerning that noble and enterprising people, the leading
desire in writing it will have been satisfied.

Should it cause even one heart to feel a deeper trust in God’s goodness
and love, or aid any in weaving a life, wherein, through knots and
entanglements, the golden thread shall never be tarnished or broken, the
prayer with which it was begun and ended will have been answered.

--M.M.D.




A LETTER FROM HOLLAND



Amsterdam, July 30, 1873


DEAR BOYS AND GIRLS AT HOME:

If you all could be here with me today, what fine times we might have
walking through this beautiful Dutch city! How we should stare at the
crooked houses, standing with their gable ends to the street; at the
little slanting mirrors fastened outside of the windows; at the wooden
shoes and dogcarts nearby; the windmills in the distance; at the great
warehouses; at the canals, doing the double duty of streets and rivers,
and at the singular mingling of trees and masts to be seen in every
direction. Ah, it would be pleasant, indeed! But here I sit in a great
hotel looking out upon all these things, knowing quite well that not
even the spirit of the Dutch, which seems able to accomplish anything,
can bring you at this moment across the moment. There is one comfort,
however, in going through these wonderful Holland towns without you--it
would be dreadful to have any of the party tumble into the canals; and
then these lumbering Dutch wagons, with their heavy wheels, so very far
apart; what should I do if a few dozen of you were to fall under THEM?
And, perhaps, one of the wildest of my boys might harm a stork, and then
all Holland would be against us! No. It is better as it is. You will
be coming, one by one, as years go on, to see the whole thing for
yourselves.

Holland is as wonderful today as it was when, more than twenty years
ago, Hans and Gretel skated on the frozen Y. In fact, more wonderful,
for every day increases the marvel of its not being washed away by the
sea. Its cities have grown, and some of its peculiarities have been
washed away by contact with other nations; but it is Holland still,
and always will be--full of oddity, courage and industry--the pluckiest
little country on earth. I shall not tell you in this letter of its
customs, its cities, its palaces, churches, picture galleries and
museums--for these are described in the story--except to say that they
are here still, just the same, in this good year 1873, for I have seen
them nearly all within a week.

Today an American boy and I, seeing some children enter an old house in
the business part of Amsterdam, followed them in--and what do you think
we found? An old woman, here in the middle of summer, selling hot water
and fire! She makes her living by it. All day long she sits tending
her great fires of peat and keeping the shining copper tanks above them
filled with water. The children who come and go carry away in a curious
stone pail their kettle of boiling water and their blocks of burning
peat. For these they give her a Dutch cent, which is worth less than
half of one of ours. In this way persons who cannot afford to keep a
fire burning in hot weather may yet have their cup of tea or coffee and
bit of boiled fish and potato.

After leaving the old fire woman, who nodded a pleasant good-bye to
us, and willingly put our stivers in her great outside pocket, we drove
through the streets enjoying the singular sights of a public washing
day. Yes, in certain quarters of the city, away from the canals, the
streets were lively with washerwomen hard at work. Hundreds of them
in clumsy wooden shoes, with their tucked-up skirts, bare arms, and
close-fitting caps, were bending over tall wooden tubs that reached as
high as their waists--gossiping and rubbing, rubbing and gossiping--with
perfect unconcern, in the public thoroughfare, and all washing with cold
water instead of using hot, as we do. What a grand thing it would be for
our old fire woman if boiling water were suddenly to become the fashion
on these public washing days!

And now goodbye. Oh! I must tell you one more thing. We found today in
an Amsterdam bookstore this story of Hans Brinker told in Dutch. It is
a queer-looking volume, beautifully printed, and with colored pictures,
but filled with such astounding words that it really made me feel sorry
for the little Hollanders who are to read them.

Good-bye again, in the touching words of our Dutch translator with whom
I’m sure you’ll heartily agree: Toch ben ik er mijn landgenooten dank
baar voor, die mijn arbeid steeds zoo welwillend outvangen en wier
genegenheid ik voortdurend hoop te verdienen.

Yours affectionately, The Author.




Contents



     Hans and Gretel
     Holland
     The Silver Skates
     Hans and Gretel Find a Friend
     Shadows in the Home
     Sunbeams
     Hans Has His Way
     Introducing Jacob Poot and His Cousin
     The Festival of Saint Nicholas
     What the Boys Saw and Did in Amsterdam
     Big Manias and Little Oddities
     On the Way to Haarlem
     A Catastrophe
     Hans
     Homes
     Haarlem--The Boys Hear Voices
     The Man with Four Heads
     Friends in Need
     On the Canal
     Jacob Poot Changes the Plan
     Mynheer Kleef and His Bill of Fare
     The Red Lion Becomes Dangerous
     Before the Court
     The Beleaguered Cities
     Leyden
     The Palace in the Wood
     The Merchant Prince and the Sister-Princess
     Through the Hague
     A Day of Rest
     Homeward Bound
     Boys and Girls
     The Crisis
     Gretel and Hilda
     The Awakening
     Bones and Tongues
     A New Alarm
     The Father’s Return
     The Thousand Guilders
     Glimpses
     Looking for Work
     The Fairy Godmother
     The Mysterious Watch
     A Discovery
     The Race
     Joy in the Cottage
     Mysterious Disappearance of Thomas Higgs
     Broad Sunshine
     Conclusion




Hans and Gretel



On a bright December morning long ago, two thinly clad children were
kneeling upon the bank of a frozen canal in Holland.

The sun had not yet appeared, but the gray sky was parted near the
horizon, and its edges shone crimson with the coming day. Most of the
good Hollanders were enjoying a placid morning nap. Even Mynheer
von Stoppelnoze, that worthy old Dutchman, was still slumbering “in
beautiful repose”.

Now and then some peasant woman, poising a well-filled basket upon her
head, came skimming over the glassy surface of the canal; or a lusty
boy, skating to his day’s work in the town, cast a good-natured grimace
toward the shivering pair as he flew along.

Meanwhile, with many a vigorous puff and pull, the brother and sister,
for such they were, seemed to be fastening something to their feet--not
skates, certainly, but clumsy pieces of wood narrowed and smoothed at
their lower edge, and pierced with holes, through which were threaded
strings of rawhide.

These queer-looking affairs had been made by the boy Hans. His mother
was a poor peasant woman, too poor even to think of such a thing
as buying skates for her little ones. Rough as these were, they had
afforded the children many a happy hour upon the ice. And now, as with
cold, red fingers our young Hollanders tugged at the strings--their
solemn faces bending closely over their knees--no vision of impossible
iron runners came to dull the satisfaction glowing within.

In a moment the boy arose and, with a pompous swing of the arms and a
careless “Come on, Gretel,” glided easily across the canal.

“Ah, Hans,” called his sister plaintively, “this foot is not well yet.
The strings hurt me on last market day, and now I cannot bear them tied
in the same place.”

“Tie them higher up, then,” answered Hans, as without looking at her he
performed a wonderful cat’s cradle step on the ice.

“How can I? The string is too short.”

Giving vent to a good-natured Dutch whistle, the English of which was
that girls were troublesome creatures, he steered toward her.

“You are foolish to wear such shoes, Gretel, when you have a stout
leather pair. Your klompen *{Wooden shoes.} would be better than these.”

“Why, Hans! Do you forget? The father threw my beautiful new shoes in
the fire. Before I knew what he had done, they were all curled up in the
midst o the burning peat. I can skate with these, but not with my wooden
ones. Be careful now--”

Hans had taken a string from his pocket. Humming a tune as he knelt
beside her, he proceeded to fasten Gretel’s skate with all the force of
his strong young arm.

“Oh! oh!” she cried in real pain.

With an impatient jerk Hans unwound the string. He would have cast it on
the ground in true big-brother style, had he not just then spied a tear
trickling down his sister’s cheek.

“I’ll fix it--never fear,” he said with sudden tenderness, “but we must
be quick. The mother will need us soon.”

Then he glanced inquiringly about him, first at the ground, next at
some bare willow branches above his head, and finally at the sky, now
gorgeous with streaks of blue, crimson, and gold.

Finding nothing in any of these localities to meet his need, his eye
suddenly brightened as, with the air of a fellow who knew what he was
about, he took off his cap and, removing the tattered lining, adjusted
it in a smooth pad over the top of Gretel’s worn-out shoe.

“Now,” he cried triumphantly, at the same time arranging the strings
as briskly as his benumbed fingers would allow, “can you bear some
pulling?”

Gretel drew up her lips as if to say, “Hurt away,” but made no further
response.

In another moment they were all laughing together, as hand in hand they
flew along the canal, never thinking whether the ice would bear them or
not, for in Holland ice is generally an all-winter affair. It settles
itself upon the water in a determined kind of way, and so far from
growing thin and uncertain every time the sun is a little severe upon
it, it gathers its forces day by day and flashes defiance to every beam.

Presently, squeak! squeak! sounded something beneath Hans’ feet. Next
his strokes grew shorter, ending oftimes with a jerk, and finally,
he lay sprawling upon the ice, kicking against the air with many a
fantastic flourish.

“Ha! ha!” laughed Gretel. “That was a fine tumble!” But a tender heart
was beating under her coarse blue jacket, and even as she laughed, she
came, with a graceful sweep, close to her prostrate brother.

“Are you hurt, Hans? Oh, you are laughing! Catch me now!” And she darted
away, shivering no longer, but with cheeks all aglow and eyes sparkling
with fun.

Hans sprang to his feet and started in brisk pursuit, but it was no easy
thing to catch Gretel. Before she had traveled very far, her skates,
too, began to squeak.

Believing that discretion was the better part of valor, she turned
suddenly and skated into her pursuer’s arms.

“Ha! ha! I’ve caught you!” cried Hans.

“Ha! ha! I caught YOU,” she retorted, struggling to free herself.

Just then a clear, quick voice was heard calling, “Hans! Gretel!”

“It’s the mother,” said Hans, looking solemn in an instant.

By this time the canal was gilded with sunlight. The pure morning air
was very delightful, and skaters were gradually increasing in numbers.
It was hard to obey the summons. But Gretel and Hans were good children;
without a thought of yielding to the temptation to linger, they pulled
off their skates, leaving half the knots still tied. Hans, with his
great square shoulders and bushy yellow hair, towered high above his
blue-eyed little sister as they trudged homeward. He was fifteen years
old and Gretel was only twelve. He was a solid, hearty-looking boy, with
honest eyes and a brow that seemed to bear a sign GOODNESS WITHIN just
as the little Dutch zomerhuis *{Summer house} wears a motto over its
portal. Gretel was lithe and quick; her eyes had a dancing light in
them, and while you looked at her cheek the color paled and deepened
just as it does upon a bed of pink and white blossoms when the wind is
blowing.

As soon as the children turned from the canal, they could see their
parents’ cottage. Their mother’s tall form, arrayed in jacket and
petticoat and close-fitting cap, stood, like a picture, in the crooked
frame of the doorway. Had the cottage been a mile away, it would still
have seemed near. In that flat country every object stands out plainly
in the distance; the chickens show as distinctly as the windmills.
Indeed, were it not for the dikes and the high banks of the canals, one
could stand almost anywhere in middle Holland without seeing a mound or
a ridge between the eye and the “jumping-off place.”

None had better cause to know the nature of these same dikes than Dame
Brinker and the panting youngsters now running at her call. But before
stating WHY, let me ask you to take a rocking-chair trip with me to that
far country where you may see, perhaps for the first time, some curious
things that Hans and Gretel saw every day.




Holland



Holland is one of the queerest countries under the sun. It should
be called Odd-land or Contrary-land, for in nearly everything it is
different from the other parts of the world. In the first place, a large
portion of the country is lower than the level of the sea. Great dikes,
or bulwarks, have been erected at a heavy cost of money and labor
to keep the ocean where it belongs. On certain parts of the coast it
sometimes leans with all its weight against the land, and it is as much
as the poor country can do to stand the pressure. Sometimes the dikes
give way or spring a leak, and the most disastrous results ensue.
They are high and wide, and the tops of some of them are covered with
buildings and trees. They have even fine public roads on them, from
which horses may look down upon wayside cottages. Often the keels of
floating ships are higher than the roofs of the dwellings. The stork
clattering to her young on the house peak may feel that her nest is
lifted far out of danger, but the croaking frog in neighboring bulrushes
is nearer the stars than she. Water bugs dart backward and forward above
the heads of the chimney swallows, and willow trees seem drooping with
shame, because they cannot reach as high as the reeds nearby.

Ditches, canals, ponds, rivers, and lakes are everywhere to be seen.
High, but not dry, they shine in the sunlight, catching nearly all
the bustle and the business, quite scorning the tame fields stretching
damply beside them. One is tempted to ask, “Which is Holland--the shores
or the water?” The very verdure that should be confined to the land
has made a mistake and settled upon the fish ponds. In fact, the entire
country is a kind of saturated sponge or, as the English poet, Butler,
called it,


     A land that rides at anchor, and is moor’d,
     In which they do not live, but go aboard.


Persons are born, live, and die, and even have their gardens on
canal-boats. Farmhouses, with roofs like great slouched hats pulled over
their eyes, stand on wooden legs with a tucked-up sort of air, as if
to say, “We intend to keep dry if we can.” Even the horses wear a wide
stool on each hoof as if to lift them out of the mire. In short, the
landscape everywhere suggests a paradise for ducks. It is a glorious
country in summer for barefoot girls and boys. Such wading! Such mimic
ship sailing! Such rowing, fishing, and swimming! Only think of a chain
of puddles where one can launch chip boats all day long and never make
a return trip! But enough. A full recital would set all young America
rushing in a body toward the Zuider Zee.

Dutch cities seem at first sight to be a bewildering jungle of houses,
bridges, churches, and ships, sprouting into masts, steeples, and
trees. In some cities vessels are hitched like horses to their owners’
doorposts and receive their freight from the upper windows. Mothers
scream to Lodewyk and Kassy not to swing on the garden gate for fear
they may be drowned! Water roads are more frequent there than common
roads and railways; water fences in the form of lazy green ditches
enclose pleasure-ground, farm, and garden.

Sometimes fine green hedges are seen, but wooden fences such as we
have in America are rarely met with in Holland. As for stone fences, a
Dutchman would lift his hands with astonishment at the very idea. There
is no stone there, except for those great masses of rock that have been
brought from other lands to strengthen and protect the coast. All the
small stones or pebbles, if there ever were any, seem to be imprisoned
in pavements or quite melted away. Boys with strong, quick arms may
grow from pinafores to full beards without ever finding one to start the
water rings or set the rabbits flying. The water roads are nothing less
than canals intersecting the country in every direction. These are of
all sizes, from the great North Holland Ship Canal, which is the wonder
of the world, to those which a boy can leap. Water omnibuses, called
trekschuiten, *{Canal boats. Some of the first named are over thirty
feet long. They look like green houses lodged on barges and are drawn by
horses walking along the bank of the canal. The trekschuiten are divided
into two compartments, first and second class, and when not too crowded,
the passengers make themselves quite at home in them; the men smoke, the
women knit or sew, while children play upon the small outer deck. Many
of the canal boats have white, yellow, or chocolate-colored sails.
This last color is caused by a tanning preparation which is put on
to preserve them.} constantly ply up and down these roads for the
conveyance of passengers; and water drays, called pakschuyten, are used
for carrying fuel and merchandise. Instead of green country lanes,
green canals stretch from field to barn and from barn to garden; and
the farms, or polders, as they are termed, are merely great lakes pumped
dry. Some of the busiest streets are water, while many of the country
roads are paved with brick. The city boats with their rounded sterns,
gilded prows, and gaily painted sides, are unlike any others under the
sun; and a Dutch wagon, with its funny little crooked pole, is a perfect
mystery of mysteries.

“One thing is clear,” cries Master Brightside, “the inhabitants
need never be thirsty.” But no, Odd-land is true to itself still.
Notwithstanding the sea pushing to get in, and the lakes struggling
to get out, and the overflowing canals, rivers, and ditches, in many
districts there is no water fit to swallow; our poor Hollanders must go
dry or drink wine and beer or send far into the inland to Utrecht and
other favored localities for that precious fluid older than Adam yet
younger than the morning dew. Sometimes, indeed, the inhabitants can
swallow a shower when they are provided with any means of catching it;
but generally they are like the albatross-haunted sailors in Coleridge’s
famous poem “The Ancient Mariner.” They see


     Water, Water, everywhere,
     Nor any drop to drink!


Great flapping windmills all over the country make it look as if flocks
of huge sea birds were just settling upon it. Everywhere one sees
the funniest trees, bobbed into fantastical shapes, with their trunks
painted a dazzling white, yellow, or red. Horses are often yoked three
abreast. Men, women, and children go clattering about in wooden shoes
with loose heels; peasant girls who cannot get beaux for love, hire them
for money to escort them to the kermis, *{Fair.} and husbands and wives
lovingly harness themselves side by side on the bank of the canal and
drag their pakschuyts to market.

Another peculiar feature of Holland is the dune, or sand hill. These are
numerous along certain portions of the coast. Before they were sown with
coarse reed grass and other plants, to hold them down, they used to send
great storms of sand over the inland. So, to add to the oddities, the
farmers sometimes dig down under the surface to find their soil, and on
windy days DRY SHOWERS (of sand) often fall upon fields that have grown
wet under a week of sunshine.

In short, almost the only familiar thing we Yankees can meet with
in Holland is a harvest song which is quite popular there, though no
linguist could translate it. Even then we must shut our eyes and listen
only to the tune, which I leave you to guess.


     Yanker didee dudel down
         Didee dudel lawnter;
     Yankee viver, voover, vown,
         Botermelk and Tawnter!


On the other hand, many of the oddities of Holland serve only to prove
the thrift and perseverance of the people. There is not a richer or more
carefully tilled garden spot in the whole world than this leaky, springy
little country. There is not a braver, more heroic race than its quite,
passive-looking inhabitants. Few nations have equalled it in important
discoveries and inventions; none has excelled it in commerce,
navigation, learning, and science--or set as noble examples in the
promotion of education and public charities; and none in proportion to
its extent has expended more money or labor upon public works.

Holland has its shining annals of noble and illustrious men and women;
its grand, historic records of patience, resistance, and victory; its
religious freedom; its enlightened enterprise; its art, music, and
literature. It has truly been called “the battlefield of Europe”; as
truly may we consider it the asylum of the world, for the oppressed
of every nation have there found shelter and encouragement. If we
Americans, who after all are homeopathic preparations of Holland stock,
can laugh at the Dutch, and call them human beavers and hint that their
country may float off any day at high tide, we can also feel proud, and
say they have proved themselves heroes and that their country will not
float off while there is a Dutchman left to grapple it.

There are said to be at least ninety-nine hundred large windmills in
Holland, with sails ranging from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet
long. They are employed in sawing timber, beating hemp, grinding, and
many other kinds of work; but their principal use is for pumping water
from the lowlands into the canals, and for guarding against the inland
freshets that so often deluge the country. Their yearly cost is said to
be nearly ten million dollars. The large ones are of great power.
The huge circular tower, rising sometimes from the midst of factory
buildings, is surmounted with a smaller one tapering into a caplike
roof. This upper tower is encircled at its base with a balcony, high
above which juts the axis turned by its four prodigious ladder-back
sails.

Many of the windmills are primitive affairs, seeming sadly in need of
Yankee “improvements,” but some of the new ones are admirable. They are
constructed so that by some ingenious contrivance they present their
fans, or wings, to the wind in precisely the right direction to work
with the requisite power. In other words, the miller may take a nap and
feel quite sure that his mill will study the wind and make the most of
it, until he wakens. Should there be but a slight current of air, every
sail will spread itself to catch the faintest breath, but if a heavy
“blow” should come, they will shrink at its touch, like great mimosa
leaves, and only give it half a chance to move them.

One of the old prisons of Amsterdam, called the Rasphouse, because the
thieves and vagrants who were confined there were employed in rasping
logwood, had a cell for the punishment of lazy prisoners. In one corner
of this cell was a pump, and in another, an opening through which a
steady stream of water was admitted. The prisoner could take his choice,
either to stand still and be drowned or to work for dear life at the
pump and keep the flood down until his jailer chose to relieve him.
Now it seems to me that, throughout Holland, nature has introduced this
little diversion on a grand scale. The Dutch have always been forced to
pump for their very existence and probably must continue to do so to the
end of time.

Every year millions of dollars are spent in repairing dikes and
regulating water levels. If these important duties were neglected, the
country would be uninhabitable. Already dreadful consequences, as I have
said, have followed the bursting of these dikes. Hundreds of villages
and towns have from time to time been buried beneath the rush of waters,
and nearly a million persons have been destroyed. One of the most
fearful inundations ever known occurred in the autumn of the year 1570.
Twenty-eight terrible floods had before that time overwhelmed portions
of Holland, but this was the most terrible of all. The unhappy country
had long been suffering under Spanish tyranny; now, it seemed, the
crowning point was given to its troubles. When we read Motley’s history
of the rise of the Dutch republic, we learn to revere the brave people
who have endured, suffered, and dared so much.

Mr. Motley, in his thrilling account of the great inundation, tells us
how a long-continued and violent gale had been sweeping the Atlantic
waters into the North Sea, piling them against the coasts of the Dutch
provinces; how the dikes, taxed beyond their strength, burst in all
directions; how even the Hand-bos, a bulwark formed of oaken piles,
braced with iron, moored with heavy anchors, and secured by gravel and
granite, was snapped to pieces like thread; how fishing boats and bulky
vessels floating up into the country became entangled among the trees
or beat in the roofs and walls of dwellings, and how, at last, all
Friesland was converted into an angry sea. “Multitudes of men, women,
children, of horses, oxen, sheep, and every domestic animal, were
struggling in the waves in every direction. Every boat and every article
which could serve as a boat was eagerly seized upon. Every house was
inundated; even the graveyards gave up their dead. The living infant
in his cradle and the long-buried corpse in his coffin floated side by
side. The ancient flood seemed about to be renewed. Everywhere, upon
the tops of trees, upon the steeples of churches, human beings were
clustered, praying to God for mercy and to their fellow men for
assistance. As the storm at last was subsiding, boats began to ply in
every direction, saving those who were struggling in the water, picking
fugitives from roofs and treetops, and collecting the bodies of those
already drowned.” No less than one hundred thousand human beings had
perished in a few hours. Thousands upon thousands of dumb creatures lay
dead upon the waters, and the damage to property was beyond calculation.

Robles, the Spanish governor, was foremost in noble efforts to save life
and lessen the horrors of the catastrophe. He had previously been hated
by the Dutch because of his Spanish or Portuguese blood, but by his
goodness and activity in their hour of disaster, he won all hearts to
gratitude. He soon introduced an improved method of constructing the
dikes and passed a law that they should in future be kept up by the
owners of the soil. There were fewer heavy floods from this time, though
within less than three hundred years, six fearful inundations swept over
the land.

In the spring there is always great danger of inland freshets,
especially in times of thaw, because the rivers, choked with blocks of
ice, overflow before they can discharge their rapidly rising waters into
the ocean. Adding to this that the sea chafes and presses against the
dikes, it is no wonder that Holland is often in a state of alarm. The
greatest care is taken to prevent accidents. Engineers and workmen are
stationed all along in threatened places, and a close watch is kept up
night and day. When a general signal of danger is given, the inhabitants
all rush to the rescue, eager to combine against their common foe. As,
everywhere else, straw is supposed to be of all things the most helpless
in the water, of course, in Holland, it must be rendered the mainstay
against a rushing tide. Huge straw mats are pressed against the
embankments, fortified with clay and heavy stone, and once adjusted, the
ocean dashes against them in vain.

Raff Brinker, the father of Gretel and Hans, had for years been employed
upon the dikes. It was at the time of a threatened inundation, when
in the midst of a terrible storm, in darkness and sleet, the men were
laboring at a weak spot near the Veermyk sluice, that he fell from the
scaffolding and became insensible. From that hour he never worked again;
though he lived on, mind and memory were gone.

Gretel could not remember him otherwise than as the strange, silent man
whose eyes followed her vacantly whichever way she turned, but Hans had
recollections of a hearty, cheerful-voiced father who was never tired
of bearing him upon his shoulder and whose careless song still seemed
echoing near when he lay awake at night and listened.




The Silver Skates



Dame Brinker earned a scant support for her family by raising
vegetables, spinning, and knitting. Once she had worked on board the
barges plying up and down the canal and had occasionally been harnessed
with other women to the towing rope of a pakschuyt plying between Broek
and Amsterdam. But when Hans had grown strong and large, he had insisted
on doing all such drudgery in her place. Besides, her husband had become
so very helpless of late that he required her constant care. Although
not having as much intelligence as a little child, he was yet strong
of arm and very hearty, and Dame Brinker had sometimes great trouble in
controlling him.

“Ah! children, he was so good and steady,” she would sometimes say,
“and as wise as a lawyer. Even the burgomaster would stop to ask him a
question, and now, alack! he doesn’t know his wife and little ones. You
remember the father, Hans, when he was himself--a great brave man--don’t
you?”

“Yes, indeed, Mother, he knew everything and could do anything under the
sun--and how he would sing! Why, you used to laugh and say it was enough
to set the windmills dancing.”

“So I did. Bless me! how the boy remembers! Gretel, child, take that
knitting needle from your father, quick; he’ll get it in his eyes maybe;
and put the shoe on him. His poor feet are like ice half the time, but
I can’t keep ‘em covered, all I can do--” And then, half wailing, half
humming, Dame Brinker would sit down and fill the low cottage with the
whirr of her spinning wheel.

Nearly all the outdoor work, as well as the household labor, was
performed by Hans and Gretel. At certain seasons of the year the
children went out day after day to gather peat, which they would
stow away in square, bricklike pieces, for fuel. At other times, when
homework permitted, Hans rode the towing-horses on the canals, earning
a few stivers *{A stiver is worth about two cents of our money.} a day,
and Gretel tended geese for the neighboring farmers.

Hans was clever at carving in wood, and both he and Gretel were good
gardeners. Gretel could sing and sew and run on great, high homemade
stilts better than any other girl for miles around. She could learn a
ballad in five minutes and find, in its season, any weed or flower
you could name; but she dreaded books, and often the very sight of the
figuring board in the old schoolhouse would set her eyes swimming. Hans,
on the contrary, was slow and steady. The harder the task, whether in
study or daily labor, the better he liked it. Boys who sneered at him
out of school, on account of his patched clothes and scant leather
breeches, were forced to yield him the post of honor in nearly every
class. It was not long before he was the only youngster in the school
who had not stood at least ONCE in the corner of horrors, where hung a
dreaded whip, and over it this motto: “Leer, leer! jou luigaart, of dit
endje touw zal je leeren!” *{Learn! learn! you idler, or this rope’s end
shall teach you.}

It was only in winter that Gretel and Hans could be spared to attend
school, and for the past month they had been kept at home because their
mother needed their services. Raff Brinker required constant attention,
and there was black bread to be made, and the house to be kept
clean, and stockings and other things to be knitted and sold in the
marketplace.

While they were busily assisting their mother on this cold December
morning, a merry troop of girls and boys came skimming down the canal.
There were fine skaters among them, and as the bright medley of costumes
flitted by, it looked from a distance as though the ice had suddenly
thawed and some gay tulip bed were floating along on the current.

There was the rich burgomaster’s daughter Hilda van Gleck, with her
costly furs and loose-fitting velvet sack; and, nearby, a pretty peasant
girl, Annie Bouman, jauntily attired in a coarse scarlet jacket and
a blue skirt just short enough to display the gray homespun hose to
advantage. Then there was the proud Rychie Korbes, whose father, Mynheer
van Korbes, was one of the leading men of Amsterdam; and, flocking
closely around her, Carl Schummel, Peter and Ludwig van Holp, Jacob
Poot, and a very small boy rejoicing in the tremendous name of
Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck. There were nearly twenty other boys
and girls in the party, and one and all seemed full of excitement and
frolic.

Up and down the canal within the space of a half mile they skated,
exerting their racing powers to the utmost. Often the swiftest among
them was seen to dodge from under the very nose of some pompous lawgiver
or doctor who, with folded arms, was skating leisurely toward the town;
or a chain of girls would suddenly break at the approach of a fat old
burgomaster who, with gold-headed cane poised in air, was puffing his
way to Amsterdam. Equipped in skates wonderful to behold, with their
superb strappings and dazzling runners curving over the instep and
topped with gilt balls, he would open his fat eyes a little if one of
the maidens chanced to drop him a curtsy but would not dare to bow in
return for fear of losing his balance.

Not only pleasure seekers and stately men of note were upon the canal.
There were workpeople, with weary eyes, hastening to their shops and
factories; market women with loads upon their heads; peddlers bending
with their packs; bargemen with shaggy hair and bleared faces, jostling
roughly on their way; kind-eyed clergymen speeding perhaps to the
bedsides of the dying; and, after a while, groups of children with
satchels slung over their shoulders, whizzing past, toward the distant
school. One and all wore skates except, indeed, a muffled-up farmer
whose queer cart bumped along on the margin of the canal.

Before long our merry boys and girls were almost lost in the confusion
of bright colors, the ceaseless motion, and the gleaming of skates
flashing back the sunlight. We might have known no more of them had not
the whole party suddenly come to a standstill and, grouping themselves
out of the way of the passersby, all talked at once to a pretty little
maiden, whom they had drawn from the tide of people flowing toward the
town.

“Oh, Katrinka!” they cried in one breath, “have you heard of it? The
race--we want you to join!”

“What race?” asked Katrinka, laughing. “Don’t all talk at once, please,
I can’t understand.”

Everyone panted and looked at Rychie Korbes, who was their acknowledged
spokeswoman.

“Why,” said Rychie, “we are to have a grand skating match on the
twentieth, on Mevrouw van Gleck’s birthday. It’s all Hilda’s work. They
are going to give a splendid prize to the best skater.”

“Yes,” chimed in half a dozen voices, “a beautiful pair of silver
skates--perfectly magnificent--with, oh! such straps and silver bells
and buckles!”

“WHO said they had bells?” put in a small voice of the boy with the big
name.

“I say so, Master Voost,” replied Rychie.

“So they have”; “No, I’m sure they haven’t”; “OH, how can you say
so?”; “It’s an arrow”; “And Mynheer van Korbes told MY mother they
had bells”--came from the excited group, but Mynheer Voostenwalbert
Schimmelpenninck essayed to settle the matter with a decisive “Well, you
don’t any of you know a single thing about it; they haven’t a sign of a
bell on them, they--”

“Oh! oh!” and the chorus of conflicting opinions broke forth again.

“The girls’ pair is to have bells,” interposed Hilda quietly, “but
there is to be another pair for the boys with an arrow engraved upon the
sides.”

“THERE! I told you so!” cried nearly all the youngsters in one breath.

Katrinka looked at them with bewildered eyes.

“Who is to try?” she asked.

“All of us,” answered Rychie. “It will be such fun! And you must, too,
Katrinka. But it’s schooltime now, we will talk it all over at noon. Oh!
you will join, of course.”

Katrinka, without replying, made a graceful pirouette and laughing out a
coquettish, “Don’t you hear the last bell? Catch me!” darted off toward
the schoolhouse standing half a mile away on the canal.

All started, pell-mell, at this challenge, but they tried in vain to
catch the bright-eyed, laughing creature who, with golden hair streaming
in the sunlight, cast back many a sparkling glance of triumph as she
floated onward.

Beautiful Katrinka! Flushed with youth and health, all life and mirth
and motion, what wonder thine image, ever floating in advance, sped
through one boy’s dreams that night! What wonder that it seemed his
darkest hour when, years afterward, thy presence floated away from him
forever.




Hans and Gretel Find a Friend



At noon our young friends poured forth from the schoolhouse, intent upon
having an hour’s practice upon the canal.

They had skated but a few moments when Carl Schummel said mockingly
to Hilda, “There’s a pretty pair just coming upon the ice! The little
ragpickers! Their skates must have been a present from the king direct.”

“They are patient creatures,” said Hilda gently. “It must have been hard
to learn to skate upon such queer affairs. They are very poor peasants,
you see. The boy has probably made the skates himself.”

Carl was somewhat abashed.

“Patient they may be, but as for skating, they start off pretty well,
only to finish with a jerk. They could move well to your new staccato
piece, I think.”

Hilda laughed pleasantly and left him. After joining a small detachment
of the racers and sailing past every one of them, she halted beside
Gretel, who, with eager eyes, had been watching the sport.

“What is your name, little girl?”

“Gretel, my lady,” answered the child, somewhat awed by Hilda’s rank,
though they were nearly of the same age, “and my brother is called
Hans.”

“Hans is a stout fellow,” said Hilda cheerily, “and seems to have a
warm stove somewhere within him, but YOU look cold. You should wear more
clothing, little one.”

Gretel, who had nothing else to wear, tried to laugh as she answered, “I
am not so very little. I am past twelve years old.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon. You see, I am nearly fourteen, and so large for
my age that other girls seem small to me, but that is nothing. Perhaps
you will shoot up far above me yet, but not unless you dress more
warmly, though. Shivering girls never grow.”

Hans flushed as he saw tears rising in Gretel’s eyes.

“My sister has not complained of the cold, but this is bitter weather,
they all say.” And he looked sadly upon Gretel.

“It is nothing,” said Gretel. “I am often warm--too warm when I
am skating. You are good, jufvrouw, *{Miss; young lady (pronounced
yuffrow). In studied or polite address it would be jongvrowe (pronounced
youngfrow).} to think of it.”

“No, no,” answered Hilda, quite angry at herself. “I am careless, cruel,
but I meant no harm. I wanted to ask you--I mean, if--” And here Hilda,
coming to the point of her errand, faltered before the poorly clad but
noble-looking children she wished to serve.

“What is it, young lady?” exclaimed Hans eagerly. “If there is any
service I can do, any--”

“Oh, no, no,” laughed Hilda, shaking off her embarrassment. “I only
wished to speak to you about the grand race. Why do you not join it? You
both can skate well, and the ranks are free. Anyone may enter for the
prize.”

Gretel looked wistfully at Hans, who, tugging at his cap, answered
respectfully.

“Ah, jufvrouw, even if we could enter, we could skate only a few strokes
with the rest. Our skates are hard wood, you see”--holding up the sole
of his foot--“but they soon become damp, and then they stick and trip
us.”

Gretel’s eyes twinkled with fun as she thought of Hans’s mishap in the
morning, but she blushed as she faltered out timidly, “Oh, no, we can’t
join, but may we be there, my lady, on the great day to look on?”

“Certainly,” answered Hilda, looking kindly into the two earnest faces
and wishing from her heart that she had not spent so much of her monthly
allowance for lace and finery. She had but eight kwartjes *{A kwartje
is a small silver coin worth one-quarter of a guilder, or ten cents in
American currency.} left, and they would buy but one pair of skates, at
the furthest.

Looking down with a sigh at the two pairs of feet so very different in
size, she asked:

“Which of you is the better skater?”

“Gretel,” replied Hans promptly.

“Hans,” answered Gretel in the same breath.

Hilda smiled.

“I cannot buy you each a pair of skates, or even one good pair, but here
are eight kwartjes. Decide between you which stands the best chance of
winning the race, and buy the skates accordingly. I wish I had enough
to buy better ones. Good-bye!” And, with a nod and a smile, Hilda, after
handing the money to the electrified Hans, glided swiftly away to rejoin
her companions.

“Jufvrouw! Jufvrouw van Gleck!” called Hans in a loud tone, stumbling
after her as well as he could, for one of his skate strings was untied.

Hilda turned and, with one hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun,
seemed to him to be floating through the air, nearer and nearer.

“We cannot take this money,” panted Hans, “though we know your goodness
in giving it.”

“Why not, indeed?” asked Hilda, flushing.

“Because,” replied Hans, bowing like a clown but looking with the eye of
a prince at the queenly girl, “we have not earned it.”

Hilda was quick-witted. She had noticed a pretty wooden chain upon
Gretel’s neck.

“Carve me a chain, Hans, like the one your sister wears.”

“That I will, lady, with all my heart. We have whitewood in the house,
fine as ivory; you shall have one tomorrow.” And Hans hastily tried to
return the money.

“No, no,” said Hilda decidedly. “That sum will be but a poor price
for the chain.” And off she darted outstripping the fleetest among the
skaters.

Hans sent a long, bewildered gaze after her; it was useless, he felt, to
make any further resistance.

“It is right,” he muttered, half to himself, half to his faithful
shadow, Gretel. “I must work hard every minute, and sit up half the
night if the mother will let me burn a candle, but the chain shall be
finished. We may keep the money, Gretel.”

“What a good little lady!” cried Gretel, clapping her hands with
delight. “Oh! Hans, was it for nothing the stork settled on our roof
last summer? Do you remember how the mother said it would bring us luck
and how she cried when Janzoon Kolp shot him? And she set it would bring
him trouble. But the luck has come to us at last! Now, Hans, if
the mother sends us to town tomorrow, you can buy the skates in the
marketplace.”

Hans shook his head. “The young lady would have given us the money to
buy skates, but if I EARN it, Gretel, it shall be spent for wool. You
must have a warm jacket.”

“Oh!” cried Gretel in real dismay, “not buy the skates? Why, I am not
often cold! Mother says the blood runs up and down in poor children’s
veins, humming, ‘I must keep ‘em warm! I must keep ‘em warm.’

“Oh, Hans,” she continued with something like a sob, “don’t say you
won’t buy the skates. It makes me feel just like crying. Besides, I want
to be cold. I mean, I’m real, awful warm--so now!”

Hans looked up hurriedly. He had a true Dutch horror or tears, or
emotion of any kind, and most of all, he dreaded to see his sisters’
blue eyes overflowing.

“Now, mind,” cried Gretel, seeing her advantage, “I’ll feel awful if you
give up the skates. I don’t want them. I’m not so stingy as that; but
I want YOU to have them, and then when I get bigger, they’ll do for
me--oh--count the pieces, Hans. Did you ever see so many!”

Hans turned the money thoughtfully in his palm. Never in all his life
had he longed so intensely for a pair of skates, for he had known of the
race and had fairly ached for a chance to test his powers with the other
children. He felt confident that with a good pair of steel runners he
could readily outdistance most of the boys on the canal. Then, too,
Gretel’s argument was plausible. On the other hand, he knew that she,
with her strong but lithe little frame, needed but a week’s practice
on good runners to make her a better skater than Rychie Korbes or even
Katrinka Flack. As soon as this last thought flashed upon him, his
resolve was made. If Gretel would not have the jacket, she should have
the skates.

“No, Gretel,” he answered at last, “I can wait. Someday I may have money
enough saved to buy a fine pair. You shall have these.”

Gretel’s eyes sparkled, but in another instant she insisted, rather
faintly, “The young lady gave the money to YOU, Hans. I’d be real bad to
take it.”

Hans shook his head resolutely as he trudged on, causing his sister to
half skip and half walk in her effort to keep beside him. By this time
they had taken off their wooden “rockers” and were hastening home to
tell their mother the good news.

“Oh! I know!” cried Gretel in a sprightly tone. “You can do this. You
can get a pair a little too small for you, and too big for me, and we
can take turns and use them. Won’t that be fine?” Gretel clapped her
hands again.

Poor Hans! This was a strong temptation, but he pushed it away from him,
brave-hearted fellow that he was.

“Nonsense, Gretel. You could never get on with a big pair. You stumbled
about with these, like a blind chicken, before I curved off the ends.
No, you must have a pair to fit exactly, and you must practice every
chance you can get, until the twentieth comes. My little Gretel shall
win the silver skates.”

Gretel could not help laughing with delight at the very idea.

“Hans! Gretel!” called out a familiar voice.

“Coming, Mother!”

They hastened toward the cottage, Hans still shaking the pieces of
silver in his hand.

On the following day there was not a prouder nor a happier boy in
all Holland than Hans Brinker as he watched his sister, with many a
dexterous sweep, flying in and out among the skaters who at sundown
thronged the canal. A warm jacket had been given her by the kind-hearted
Hilda, and the burst-out shoes had been cobbled into decency by Dame
Brinker. As the little creature darted backward and forward, flushed
with enjoyment and quite unconscious of the many wondering glances
bent upon her, she felt that the shining runners beneath her feet had
suddenly turned earth into fairyland while “Hans, dear, good Hans!”
 echoed itself over and over again in her grateful heart.

“By den donder!” exclaimed Peter van Holp to Carl Schummel, “but that
little one in the red jacket and patched petticoat skates well. Gunst!
She has toes on her heels and eyes in the back of her head! See her! It
will be a joke if she gets in the race and beats Katrinka Flack, after
all.”

“Hush! not so loud!” returned Carl, rather sneeringly. “That little lady
in rags is the special pet of Hilda van Gleck. Those shining skates are
her gift, if I make no mistake.”

“So! so!” exclaimed Peter with a radiant smile, for Hilda was his best
friend. “She has been at her good work there too!” And Mynheer van Holp,
after cutting a double figure eight on the ice, to say nothing of a huge
P, then a jump and an H, glided onward until he found himself beside
Hilda.

Hand in hand, they skated together, laughingly at first, then staidly
talking in a low tone.

Strange to say, Peter van Holp soon arrived at a sudden conviction that
his little sister needed a wooden chain just like Hilda’s.

Two days afterwards, on Saint Nicholas’s Eve, Hans, having burned three
candle ends and cut his thumb into the bargain, stood in the marketplace
at Amsterdam, buying another pair of skates.




Shadows in the Home



Good Dame Brinker! As soon as the scanty dinner had been cleared away
that noon, she had arrayed herself in her holiday attire in honor of
Saint Nicholas. It will brighten the children, she thought to herself,
and she was not mistaken. This festival dress had been worn very seldom
during the past ten years; before that time it had done good service and
had flourished at many a dance and kermis, when she was known, far
and wide, as the pretty Meitje Klenck. The children had sometimes been
granted rare glimpses of it as it lay in state in the old oaken chest.
Faded and threadbare as it was, it was gorgeous in their eyes, with
its white linen tucker, now gathered to her plump throat and vanishing
beneath the trim bodice of blue homespun, and its reddish-brown skirt
bordered with black. The knitted woolen mitts and the dainty cap showing
her hair, which generally was hidden, made her seem almost like a
princess to Gretel, while Master Hans grew staid and well-behaved as he
gazed.

Soon the little maid, while braiding her own golden tresses, fairly
danced around her mother in an ecstasy of admiration.

“Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother, how pretty you are! Look, Hans! Isn’t it
just like a picture?”

“Just like a picture,” assented Hans cheerfully. “JUST like a
picture--only I don’t like those stocking things on the hands.”

“Not like the mitts, brother Hans! Why, they’re very important. See,
they cover up all the red. Oh, Mother, how white your arm is where the
mitt leaves off, whiter than mine, oh, ever so much whiter. I declare,
Mother, the bodice is tight for you. You’re growing! You’re surely
growing!”

Dame Brinker laughed.

“This was made long ago, lovey, when I wasn’t much thicker about the
waist than a churn dasher. And how do you like the cap?” she asked,
turning her head from side to side.

“Oh, EVER so much, Mother. It’s b-e-a-u-tiful! See, the father is
looking!”

Was the father looking? Alas! only with a dull stare. His vrouw turned
toward him with a start, something like a blush rising to her cheeks, a
questioning sparkle in her eye. The bright look died away in an instant.

“No, no.” She sighed. “He sees nothing. Come, Hans”--and the smile
crept faintly back again--“don’t stand gaping at me all day, and the new
skates waiting for you at Amsterdam.”

“Ah, Mother,” he answered, “you need so many things. Why should I buy
skates?”

“Nonsense, child. The money was given to you on purpose, or the work
was--it’s all the same thing. Go while the sun is high.”

“Yes, and hurry back, Hans!” laughed Gretel. “We’ll race on the canal
tonight, if the mother lets us.”

At the very threshold he turned to say, “Your spinning wheel wants a new
treadle, Mother.”

“You can make it, Hans.”

“So I can. That will take no money. But you need feathers and wool and
meal, and--”

“There, there! That will do. Your silver cannot buy everything. Ah!
Hans, if our stolen money would but come back on this bright Saint
Nicholas’s Eve, how glad we would be! Only last night I prayed to the
good saint--”

“Mother!” interrupted Hans in dismay.

“Why not, Hans? Shame on you to reproach me for that! I’m as true a
Protestant, in sooth, as any fine lady that walks into church, but
it’s no wrong to turn sometimes to the good Saint Nicholas. Tut! It’s a
likely story if one can’t do that, without one’s children flaring up at
it--and he the boys’ and girls’ own saint. Hoot! Mayhap the colt is a
steadier horse than the mare?”

Hans knew his mother too well to offer a word in opposition when her
voice quickened and sharpened as it did now (it was often sharp and
quick when she spoke of the missing money), so he said gently, “And what
did you ask of good Saint Nicholas, Mother?”

“Why, never to give the thieves a wink of sleep till they brought it
back, to be sure, if he has the power to do such things, or else to
brighten our wits that we might find it ourselves. Not a sight have I
had of it since the day before the dear father was hurt--as you well
know, Hans.”

“That I do, Mother,” he answered sadly, “though you have almost pulled
down the cottage in searching.”

“Aye, but it was of no use,” moaned the dame. “‘HIDERS make best
finders.’”

Hans started. “Do you think the father could tell aught?”

“Aye, indeed,” said Dame Brinker, nodding her head. “I think so, but
that is no sign. I never hold the same belief in the matter two days.
Mayhap the father paid it off for the great silver watch we have been
guarding since that day. But, no--I’ll never believe it.”

“The watch was not worth a quarter of the money, Mother.”

“No, indeed, and your father was a shrewd man up to the last moment. He
was too steady and thrifty for silly doings.”

“Where did the watch come from, I wonder,” muttered Hans, half to
himself.

Dame Brinker shook her head and looked sadly toward her husband, who sat
staring blankly at the floor. Gretel stood near him, knitting.

“That we shall never know, Hans. I have shown it to the father many
a time, but he does not know it from a potato. When he came in that
dreadful night to supper, he handed the watch to me and told me to take
good care of it until he asked for it again. Just as he opened his lips
to say more, Broom Klatterboost came flying in with word that the dike
was in danger. Ah! The waters were terrible that Pinxter-week! My man,
alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of
him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead,
with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time,
but never the dullness--THAT grew worse every day. We shall never know.”

Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother,
in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding place, half
resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation.

“No, Hans,” she would say, “we must be nearer starvation than this
before we turn faithless to the father!”

A memory of some such scene crossed her son’s mind now, for, after
giving a heavy sigh, and flipping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the
table, he said, “Aye, Mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a
one would have tossed it off for gold long ago.”

“And more shame for them!” exclaimed the dame indignantly. “I would not
do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw
such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect the
father of--”

Hans flushed angrily.

“They would not DARE to say such a thing, Mother! If they did, I’d...”

He clenched his fist and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence
was too terrible to utter in her presence.

Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption.

“Ah, Hans, thou’rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with
the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it.”

“Might WAKE, Mother!” echoed Hans. “Wake--and know us?”

“Aye, child,” almost whispered his mother, “such things have been.”

By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam.
His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly to him. He felt himself now
to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser:

“You are right, Mother. We must never give up the watch. For the
father’s sake we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to
light when we least expect it.”

“Never!” cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with
a jerk and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. “There
is no chance! One thousand guilders--and all gone in a day! One thousand
guilders. Oh, what ever DID become of them? If they went in an evil way,
the thief would have confessed it on his dying bed. He would not dare to
die with such guilt on his soul!”

“He may not be dead yet,” said Hans soothingly. “Any day we may hear of
him.”

“Ah, child,” she said in a changed tone, “what thief would ever have
come HERE? It was always neat and clean, thank God, but not fine, for
the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid
by. ‘Little and often soon fills the pouch.’ We found it so, in truth.
Besides, the father had a goodly sum already, for service done to the
Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had
a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours
and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put
something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when
Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old
stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the
money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in
those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on
filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your
eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty
I wore my old gown. And the stocking went on filling, so full that
sometimes when I woke at night, I’d get up, soft and quiet, and go feel
it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my
little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might
rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I
would talk about a new chimney and a good winter room for the cow, but
my man had finer plans even than that. ‘A big sail,’ says he, ‘catches
the wind--we can do what we will soon,’ and then we would sing together
as I washed my dishes. Ah, ‘a smooth wind makes an easy rudder.’ Not a
thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the father would take
out the stocking and drop in the money and laugh and kiss me as we tied
it up together. Up with you, Hans! There you sit gaping, and the day
a-wasting!” added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had
been speaking too freely to her boy. “It’s high time you were on your
way.”

Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He
arose and, in almost a whisper, asked, “Have you ever tried, Mother?”

She understood him.

“Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so
strange that I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever
last winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing,
for fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then!
I smoothed his hair and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the
money--where it was, who had it? Alack! He would pick at my sleeve and
whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay
whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I screamed to him--it
seemed as if he MUST hear me--‘Raff, where is our money? Do you know
aught of the money, Raff? The money in the pouch and the stocking, in
the big chest?’ But I might as well have talked to a stone. I might
as--”

The mother’s voice sounded so strange, and her eye was so bright, that
Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder.

“Come, Mother,” he said, “let us try to forget this money. I am big
and strong. Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be
prosperous with us again. Why, Mother, Gretel and I would rather see
thee bright and happy than to have all the silver in the world, wouldn’t
we, Gretel?”

“The mother knows it,” said Gretel, sobbing.




Sunbeams



Dame Brinker was startled at her children’s emotion; glad, too, for it
proved how loving and true they were.

Beautiful ladies in princely homes often smile suddenly and sweetly,
gladdening the very air around them, but I doubt if their smile be more
welcome in God’s sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly
clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had
been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes and
looked upon them as only a mother can.

“Hoity! Toity! Pretty talk we’re having, and Saint Nicholas’s Eve almost
here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this
cent, *{The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.}
and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle in the
marketplace.”

“Let me stay home with you, Mother,” said Gretel, looking up with eyes
that sparkled through their tears. “Hans will buy me the cake.”

“As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of this needle
will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as
ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp) to sell to the
hosier on the Harengracht. *{A street in Amsterdam.} That will give us
three quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it’s right
hungry weather, you may buy four waffles. We’ll keep the Feast of Saint
Nicholas after all.”

Gretel clapped her hands. “That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what
grand times they will have in the big houses tonight. But we will be
merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates--and then there’ll be the
waffles! Oh! Don’t break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and button
them under your jacket very carefully.”

“Certainly,” replied Hans, quite gruff with pleasure and importance.

“Oh! Mother!” cried Gretel in high glee, “soon you will be busied with
the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint
Nicholas!”

Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen.
“Nonsense, children,” she said. “I have told it to you often.”

“Tell us again! Oh, DO tell us again!” cried Gretel, throwing herself
upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the
mother’s last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet
quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates
against the fireplace.

“Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight
again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as
I talk. Opening your ears needn’t shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you
must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of
sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a
time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three
sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning.”

“Is Athens in Holland, Mother?” asked Gretel.

“I don’t know, child. Probably it is.”

“Oh, no, Mother,” said Hans respectfully. “I had that in my geography
lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece.”

“Well,” resumed the mother, “what matter? Greece may belong to the king,
for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens.
While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn,
meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very
fine clothes--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks’ children
all over the world think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise,
were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do but contrive a
plan to kill the children and take their money and all their beautiful
clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep, he got up
and killed the three young gentlemen.”

Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if
killing and murder were everyday matters to him.

“That was not the worst of it,” continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly
and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked. “That was not
near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young
gentlemen’s bodies into little pieces and threw them into a great tub of
brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!”

“Oh!” cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the
story before. Hans was still unmoved and seemed to think that pickling
was the best that could be done under the circumstances.

“Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the
last of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had
a wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the
merchant’s children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for
he was a saint, but in the morning he went to the inn and charged
the landlord with murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from
beginning to end and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He
felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the
young masters to life.”

“And did the saint do it?” asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what
the answer would be.

“Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and
out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine tub. They cast themselves
at the feet of Saint Nicholas, and he gave them his blessing, and--oh!
mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don’t
start this minute!”

By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of
commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away
an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite
appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in
extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible
fire from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an
instant...

“Comes, Hans,” she said as her boy lingered by the door. “What keeps
thee?”

Hans kissed his mother’s plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of
all her troubles.

“My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have
a pair of skates, but”--and as he buttoned his jacket he looked, in a
troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearthstone--“if
my money would bring a meester *{Doctor (dokter in Dutch), called
meester by the lower class.} from Amsterdam to see the father, something
might yet be done.”

“A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do
no good if he did. Ah, how many guilders I once spent for that, but the
dear, good father would not waken. It is God’s will. Go, Hans, and buy
the skates.”

Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young and in a
boy’s bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother
had said “thee” to him, and that was quite enough to make even a
dark day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate
intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had
embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried
its thee and thou into her rude home, to be used in moments of extreme
love and tenderness.

Therefore, “What keeps thee, Hans?” sang an echo song beneath the boy’s
whistling and made him feel that his errand was blest.




Hans Has His Way



Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow
brick pavements and bright wooden houses, was nearby. It was a village
where neatness and show were in full blossom, but the inhabitants seemed
to be either asleep or dead.

Not a footprint marred the sanded paths where pebbles and seashells lay
in fanciful designs. Every window shutter was tightly closed as though
air and sunshine were poison, and the massive front doors were never
opened except on the occasion of a wedding, a christening, or a funeral.

Serene clouds of tobacco smoke were floating through hidden corners, and
children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying
in out-of-the-way corners or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few
peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed
the luxury of flesh and blood. They were made out of boxwood hedges and
seemed to be guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain
lively automata, ducks, women, and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer
houses, waiting for the spring-time when they could be wound up and
rival their owners in animation; and the shining tiled roofs, mosaic
courtyards, and polished house trimmings flashed up a silent homage to
the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell.

Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes and
wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some
of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of
solid gold.

He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop’s sweet cheeses in market, and he knew
that the lofty dame earned many a bright silver guilder in selling them.
But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a golden
skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails really
tied up with ribbons?

These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward
Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.
*{Pronounced eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.} The ice upon the canal was
perfect, but his wooden runners, so soon to be cast aside, squeaked a
dismal farewell as he scraped and skimmed along.

When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great
Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had
never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many
of the shop windows in Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never
forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern blue eyes,
and queer compressed lips that seemed to say “No smiling permitted,” he
certainly was not a very jolly or sociable-looking personage, nor one
that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden.

But Hans WAS bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom
disregarded--his own conscience.

“Here comes the greatest doctor in the world,” whispered the voice. “God
has sent him. You have no right to buy skates when you might, with the
same money, purchase such aid for your father!”

The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates
were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money
tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and
forbidding. Hans’s heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to
cry out, just as he was passing, “Mynheer Boekman!”

The great man halted and, sticking out his thin underlip, looked
scowling about him.

Hans was in for it now.

“Mynheer,” he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, “I
knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a
great favor--”

“Hump!” muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the intruder. “Get
out of the way. I’ve no money--never give to beggars.”

“I am no beggar, mynheer,” retorted Hans proudly, at the same time
producing his mite of silver with a grand air. “I wish to consult you
about my father. He is a living man but sits like one dead. He cannot
think. His words mean nothing, but he is not sick. He fell on the
dikes.”

“Hey? What?” cried the doctor, beginning to listen.

Hans told the whole story in an incoherent way, dashing off a tear once
or twice as he talked, and finally ending with an earnest “Oh, do see
him, mynheer. His body is well--it is only his mind. I know that this
money is not enough, but take it, mynheer. I will earn more, I know
I will. Oh! I will toil for you all my life, if you will but cure my
father!”

What was the matter with the old doctor? A brightness like sunlight
beamed from his face. His eyes were kind and moist; the hand that had
lately clutched his cane, as if preparing to strike, was laid gently
upon Hans’s shoulder.

“Put up your money, boy, I do not want it. We will see your father. It’s
hopeless, I fear. How long did you say?”

“Ten years, mynheer,” sobbed Hans, radiant with sudden hope.

“Ah! a bad case, but I shall see him. Let me think. Today I start for
Leyden, to return in a week, then you may expect me. Where is it?”

“A mile south of Broek, mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor,
broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your
honor,” added Hans with a heavy sigh. “They are all half afraid of the
place; they call it the idiot’s cottage.”

“That will do,” said the doctor, hurrying on with a bright backward nod
at Hans. “I shall be there. A hopeless case,” he muttered to himself,
“but the boy pleases me. His eye is like my poor Laurens’s. Confound it,
shall I never forget that young scoundrel!” And, scowling more darkly
than ever, the doctor pursued his silent way.

Again Hans was skating toward Amsterdam on the squeaking wooden runners;
again his fingers tingled against the money in his pocket; again the
boyish whistle rose unconsciously to his lips.

Shall I hurry home, he was thinking, to tell the good news, or shall I
get the waffles and the new skates first? Whew! I think I’ll go on!

And so Hans bought the skates.




Introducing Jacob Poot and His Cousin



Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas’s Eve.
There was a bright moon, and their mother, though she believed herself
to be without any hope of her husband’s improvement, had been made so
happy at the prospect of the meester’s visit, that she yielded to the
children’s entreaties for an hour’s skating before bedtime.

Hans was delighted with his new skates and, in his eagerness to show
Gretel how perfectly they “worked,” did many things upon the ice that
caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They
were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups
assembled upon the canal.

The two Van Holps and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness
to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had won three times.
Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor.
He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck, who, being
smaller than the others, kept meekly near them without feeling exactly
like one of the party, but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he
seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends.

“I say, boys, let’s put a stop to those young ragpickers from the
idiot’s cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it.
Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing
with the girl; and for my part, I don’t blame them. As for the boy, if
we’ve a spark of manhood in us, we will scorn the very idea of--”

“Certainly we will!” interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking
Carl’s meaning. “Who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him
would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!”

Carl wheeled about savagely. “Not so fast, master! And I’d thank you
not to put words in other people’s mouths. You’d best not try it again.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at
the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his
favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl.

Something in Peter’s eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He
wheeled furiously upon Voost.

“What are you shrieking about, you little weasel? You skinny herring
you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!”

Half a dozen bystanders and byskaters set up an applauding shout at this
brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished
his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently
resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when
Peter should not be present.

Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not
distinguish his features at first, but as he was the stoutest boy in the
neighborhood, there could be no mistaking his form.

“Hello! Here comes Fatty!” exclaimed Carl. “And there’s someone with
him, a slender fellow, a stranger.”

“Ha! ha! That’s like good bacon,” cried Ludwig. “A streak of lean and a
streak of fat.”

“That’s Jacob’s English cousin,” put in Master Voost, delighted at being
able to give the information. “That’s his English cousin, and, oh, he’s
got such a funny little name--Ben Dobbs. He’s going to stay with him
until after the grand race.”

All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, rolling, and doing
other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked, but now
they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob
Poot and his friend drew near.

“This is my cousin, boys,” said Jacob, rather out of breath. “Benjamin
Dobbs. He’s a John Bull and he’s going to be in the race.”

All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his
mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a
fine set of fellows.

If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as Penchamin
Dopps, and called his a Shon Pull, but as I translate every word of the
conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their
little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward
among his cousin’s friends. Though most of them had studied English and
French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very
funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that
vrouw meant wife; and ja, yes; and spoorweg, railway; kanaals, canals;
stoomboot, steamboat; ophaalbruggen, drawbridges; buiten plasten,
country seats; mynheer, mister; tweegevegt, duel or “two fights”; koper,
copper; zadel, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of
these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his “Dutch
dialogues.” The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded
to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask
in faultless German, “Have you seen my grandmother’s red cow?” and, when
he reached Germany, discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after
that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him
as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp,
a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke
Dutch, and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him
that Dutch “had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter
languish, much petter.”

However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through
this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well, and when Jacob (with
a sprinkling of French and English for Ben’s benefit) told of a grand
project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a ja, or
a nod, in quite a familiar way.

The project WAS a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for
carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival
of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general
cleaning of the schoolhouse.

Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating
journey--no less a one than from Broek to The Hague, the capital of
Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles! *{Throughout this narrative
distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile
of 5,280 feet. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.}

“And now, boys,” added Jacob, when he had told the plan, “who will go
with us?”

“I will! I will!” cried the boys eagerly.

“And so will I,” ventured little Voostenwalbert.

“Ha! ha!” laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides and shaking his puffy
cheeks. “YOU go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you
haven’t left off your pads yet!”

Now, in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around
their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to
protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between
babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this
dignity several years before; consequently Jacob’s insult was rather to
great for endurance.

“Look out what you say!” he squeaked. “Lucky for you when you can leave
off YOUR pads--you’re padded all over!”

“Ha! ha!” roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not
understand. “Ha! ha!”--and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any.

“It ish my fat--yaw--he say I bees pad mit fat!” he explained to Ben.

So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular
Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent.

“Good night!” sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all
his might.

“Good night!”

“We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ,”
 said Peter van Holp eagerly, “and at Leyden, too, where there’s no end
to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married
sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next
morning we can start for home.”

“All right!” responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker.

Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration.

“Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother’ll be as full
of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister
Van Gend. My, but it’s cold,” he added. “Cold enough to take a fellow’s
head off his shoulders. We’d better go home.”

“What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?” cried Carl, who was busily
practicing a step he called the “double edge.” “Great skating we should
have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don’t you
know that if it wasn’t an extra cold winter, and an early one into the
bargain, we couldn’t go?”

“I know it’s an extra cold night anyhow,” said Ludwig. “Whew! I’m going
home!”

Peter van Holp took out a bulgy gold watch and, holding it toward the
moonlight as well as his benumbed fingers would permit, called out,
“Halloo! It’s nearly eight o’clock! Saint Nicholas is about by this
time, and I, for one, want to see the little ones stare. Good night!”

“Good night!” cried one and all, and off they started, shouting,
singing, and laughing as they flew along.

Where were Gretel and Hans?

Ah, how suddenly joy sometimes comes to an end!

They had skated about an hour, keeping aloof from the others, quite
contented with each other, and Gretel had exclaimed, “Ah, Hans, how
beautiful! How fine! To think that we both have skates! I tell you, the
stork brought us good luck!”--when they heard something!

It was a scream--a very faint scream! No one else upon the canal
observed it, but Hans knew its meaning too well. Gretel saw him turn
white in the moonlight as he busily tore off his skates.

“The father!” he cried. “He has frightened our mother!” And Gretel ran
after him toward the house as rapidly as she could.




The Festival of Saint Nicholas



We all know how, before the Christmas tree began to flourish in the home
life of our country, a certain “right jolly old elf,” with “eight tiny
reindeer,” used to drive his sleigh-load of toys up to our housetops,
and then bounded down the chimney to fill the stockings so hopefully
hung by the fireplace. His friends called his Santa Claus, and those
who were most intimate ventured to say “Old Nick.” It was said that
he originally came from Holland. Doubtless he did, but, if so, he
certainly, like many other foreigners, changed his ways very much after
landing upon our shores. In Holland, Saint Nicholas is a veritable
saint and often appears in full costume, with his embroidered robes,
glittering with gems and gold, his miter, his crosier, and his jeweled
gloves. Here Santa Claus comes rollicking along, on the twenty-fifth of
December, our holy Christmas morn. But in Holland, Saint Nicholas visits
earth on the fifth, a time especially appropriated to him. Early on the
morning of the sixth, he distributes his candies, toys, and treasures,
then vanishes for a year.

Christmas Day is devoted by the Hollanders to church rites and pleasant
family visiting. It is on Saint Nicholas’s Eve that their young people
become half wild with joy and expectation. To some of them it is a sorry
time, for the saint is very candid, and if any of them have been bad
during the past year, he is quite sure to tell them so. Sometimes he
gives a birch rod under his arm and advises the parents to give them
scoldings in place of confections, and floggings instead of toys.

It was well that the boys hastened to their abodes on that bright
winter evening, for in less than an hour afterward, the saint made his
appearance in half the homes of Holland. He visited the king’s palace
and in the selfsame moment appeared in Annie Bouman’s comfortable home.
Probably one of our silver half-dollars would have purchased all that
his saintship left at the peasant Bouman’s; but a half-dollar’s worth
will sometimes do for the poor what hundreds of dollars may fail to
do for the rich; it makes them happy and grateful, fills them with new
peace and love.

Hilda van Gleck’s little brothers and sisters were in a high state of
excitement that night. They had been admitted into the grand parlor;
they were dressed in their best and had been given two cakes apiece at
supper. Hilda was as joyous as any. Why not? Saint Nicholas would never
cross a girl of fourteen from his list, just because she was tall and
looked almost like a woman. On the contrary, he would probably exert
himself to do honor to such an august-looking damsel. Who could tell? So
she sported and laughed and danced as gaily as the youngest and was
the soul of all their merry games. Her father, mother, and grandmother
looked on approvingly; so did her grandfather, before he spread his
large red handkerchief over his face, leaving only the top of his
skullcap visible. This kerchief was his ensign of sleep.

Earlier in the evening all had joined in the fun. In the general
hilarity there had seemed to be a difference only in bulk between
grandfather and the baby. Indeed, a shade of solemn expectation, now
and then flitting across the faces of the younger members, had made them
seem rather more thoughtful than their elders.

Now the spirit of fun reigned supreme. The very flames danced and
capered in the polished grate. A pair of prim candles that had been
staring at the astral lamp began to wink at other candles far away in
the mirrors. There was a long bell rope suspended from the ceiling in
the corner, made of glass beads netted over a cord nearly as thick as
your wrist. It is generally hung in the shadow and made no sign, but
tonight it twinkled from end to end. Its handle of crimson glass sent
reckless dashes of red at the papered wall, turning its dainty blue
stripes into purple. Passersby halted to catch the merry laughter
floating, through curtain and sash, into the street, then skipped on
their way with a startled consciousness that the village was wide-awake.
At last matters grew so uproarious that the grandsire’s red kerchief
came down from his face with a jerk. What decent old gentleman could
sleep in such a racket! Mynheer van Gleck regarded his children with
astonishment. The baby even showed symptoms of hysterics. It was high
time to attend to business. Madame suggested that if they wished to see
the good Saint Nicholas, they should sing the same loving invitation
that had brought him the year before.

The baby stared and thrust his fist into his mouth as mynheer put him
down upon the floor. Soon he sat erect and looked with a sweet scowl at
the company. With his lace and embroideries and his crown of blue ribbon
and whalebone (for he was not quite past the tumbling age), he looked
like the king of the babies.

The other children, each holding a pretty willow basket, formed a ring
at once, and moved slowly around the little fellow, lifting their eyes,
for the saint to whom they were about to address themselves was yet in
mysterious quarters.

Madame commenced playing softly upon the piano. Soon the voices
rose--gentle, youthful voices--rendered all the sweeter for their
tremor:


     “Welcome, friend!  Saint Nicholas, welcome!
         Bring no rod for us tonight!
     While our voices bid thee welcome,
         Every heart with joy is light!

          Tell us every fault and failing,
          We will bear thy keenest railing,
          So we sing--so we sing--
          Thou shalt tell us everything!

     Welcome, friend!  Saint Nicholas, welcome!
         Welcome to this merry band!
     Happy children greet thee, welcome!
         Thou art glad’ning all the land!

          Fill each empty hand and basket,
          ‘Tis thy little ones who ask it,
          So we sing--so we sing--
          Thou wilt bring us everything!”


During the chorus sundry glances, half in eagerness, half in dread, had
been cast toward the polished folding doors. Now a loud knocking was
heard. The circle was broken in an instant. Some of the little ones,
with a strange mixture of fear and delight, pressed against their
mother’s knee. Grandfather bent forward with his chin resting upon his
hand; Grandmother lifted her spectacles; Mynheer van Gleck, seated by
the fireplace, slowly drew his meerschaum from his mouth while Hilda and
the other children settled themselves beside him in an expectant group.

The knocking was heard again.

“Come in,” said madame softly.

The door slowly opened, and Saint Nicholas, in full array, stood before
them.

You could have heard a pin drop.

Soon he spoke. What a mysterious majesty in his voice! What kindliness
in his tones!

“Karel van Gleck, I am pleased to greet thee, and thy honored vrouw
Kathrine, and thy son and his good vrouw Annie!

“Children, I greet ye all! Hendrick, Hilda, Broom, Katy, Huygens,
and Lucretia! And thy cousins, Wolfert, Diedrich, Mayken, Voost, and
Katrina! Good children ye have been, in the main, since I last accosted
ye. Diedrich was rude at the Haarlem fair last fall, but he has tried
to atone for it since. Mayken has failed of late in her lessons, and too
many sweets and trifles have gone to her lips, and too few stivers to
her charity box. Diedrich, I trust, will be a polite, manly boy for
the future, and Mayken will endeavor to shine as a student. Let her
remember, too, that economy and thrift are needed in the foundation of
a worthy and generous life. Little Katy has been cruel to the cat more
than once. Saint Nicholas can hear the cat cry when its tail is pulled.
I will forgive her if she will remember from this hour that the smallest
dumb creatures have feelings and must not be abused.”

As Katy burst into a frightened cry, the saint graciously remained
silent until she was soothed.

“Master Broom,” he resumed, “I warn thee that the boys who are in the
habit of putting snuff upon the foot stove of the schoolmistress may one
day be discovered and receive a flogging--”

Master Broom colored and stared in great astonishment.

“But thou art such an excellent scholar, I shall make thee no further
reproof.”

“Thou, Hendrick, didst distinguish thyself in the archery match last
spring, and hit the Doel *{Bull’s-eye.} though the bird was swung before
it to unsteady thine eye. I give thee credit for excelling in manly
sport and exercise, though I must not unduly countenance thy boat
racing, since it leaves thee little time for thy proper studies.

“Lucretia and Hilda shall have a blessed sleep tonight. The
consciousness of kindness to the poor, devotion in their souls, and
cheerful, hearty obedience to household rule will render them happy.

“With one and all I avow myself well content. Goodness, industry,
benevolence, and thrift have prevailed in your midst. Therefore, my
blessing upon you--and may the new year find all treading the paths of
obedience, wisdom, and love. Tomorrow you shall find more substantial
proofs that I have been in your midst. Farewell!”

With these words came a great shower of sugarplums, upon a linen sheet
spread out in front of the doors. A general scramble followed. The
children fairly tumbled over each other in their eagerness to fill their
baskets. Madame cautiously held the baby down in their midst, till the
chubby little fists were filled. Then the bravest of the youngsters
sprang up and burst open the closed doors. In vain they peered into the
mysterious apartment. Saint Nicholas was nowhere to be seen.

Soon there was a general rush to another room, where stood a table,
covered with the finest and whitest of linen damask. Each child, in a
flutter of excitement, laid a shoe upon it. The door was then carefully
locked, and its key hidden in the mother’s bedroom. Next followed
goodnight kisses, a grand family procession to the upper floor, merry
farewells at bedroom doors, and silence, at last, reigned in the Van
Gleck mansion.

Early the next morning the door was solemnly unlocked and opened in the
presence of the assembled household, when lo! a sight appeared, proving
Saint Nicholas to be a saint of his word!

Every shoe was filled to overflowing, and beside each stood many a
colored pile. The table was heavy with its load of presents--candies,
toys, trinkets, books, and other articles. Everyone had gifts, from the
grandfather down to the baby.

Little Katy clapped her hands with glee and vowed inwardly that the cat
should never know another moment’s grief.

Hendrick capered about the room, flourishing a superb bow and arrows
over his head. Hilda laughed with delight as she opened a crimson box
and drew forth its glittering contents. The rest chuckled and said “Oh!”
 and “Ah!” over their treasures, very much as we did here in America on
last Christmas Day.

With her glittering necklace in her hands, and a pile of books in her
arms, Hilda stole towards her parents and held up her beaming face for a
kiss. There was such an earnest, tender look in her bright eyes that her
mother breathed a blessing as she leaned over her.

“I am delighted with this book. Thank you, Father,” she said, touching
the top one with her chin. “I shall read it all day long.”

“Aye, sweetheart,” said mynheer, “you cannot do better. There is no one
like Father Cats. If my daughter learns his ‘Moral Emblems’ by heart,
the mother and I may keep silent. The work you have there is the
Emblems--his best work. You will find it enriched with rare engravings
from Van de Venne.”

Considering that the back of the book was turned away, mynheer certainly
showed a surprising familiarity with an unopened volume, presented by
Saint Nicholas. It was strange, too, that the saint should have found
certain things made by the elder children and had actually placed them
upon the table, labeled with parents’ and grandparents’ names. But all
were too much absorbed in happiness to notice slight inconsistencies.
Hilda saw, on her father’s face, the rapt expression he always wore when
he spoke of Jakob Cats, so he put her armful of books upon the table and
resigned herself to listen.

“Old Father Cats, my child, was a great poet, not a writer of plays like
the Englishman, Shakespeare, who lived in his time. I have read them in
the German and very good they are--very, very good--but not like Father
Cats. Cats sees no daggers in the air; he has no white women falling in
love with dusky Moors; no young fools sighing to be a lady’s glove; no
crazy princes mistaking respectable old gentlemen for rats. No, no. He
writes only sense. It is great wisdom in little bundles, a bundle for
every day of your life. You can guide a state with Cats’s poems, and you
can put a little baby to sleep with his pretty songs. He was one of the
greatest men of Holland. When I take you to The Hague, I will show you
the Kloosterkerk where he lies buried. THERE was a man for you to study,
my sons! He was good through and through. What did he say?


     “O Lord, let me obtain this from Thee
     To live with patience, and to die with pleasure!

     *{O Heere! laat my daat van uwen hand verwerven,
     Te leven met gedult, en met vermaak te sterven.}


“Did patience mean folding his hands? No, he was a lawyer, statesman,
ambassador, farmer, philosopher, historian, and poet. He was keeper of
the Great Seal of Holland! He was a--Bah! there is too much noise here,
I cannot talk.” And mynheer, looking with great astonishment into the
bowl of his meerschaum, for it had gone out, nodded to his vrouw and
left the apartment in great haste.

The fact is, his discourse had been accompanied throughout with a
subdued chorus of barking dogs, squeaking cats, and bleating lambs, to
say nothing of a noisy ivory cricket that the baby was whirling with
infinite delight. At the last, little Huygens, taking advantage of the
increasing loudness of mynheer’s tones, had ventured a blast on his new
trumpet, and Wolfert had hastily attempted an accompaniment on the drum.
This had brought matters to a crisis, and it was good for the little
creatures that it had. The saint had left no ticket for them to attend
a lecture on Jakob Cats. It was not an appointed part of the ceremonies.
Therefore when the youngsters saw that the mother looked neither
frightened nor offended, they gathered new courage. The grand chorus
rose triumphant, and frolic and joy reigned supreme.

Good Saint Nicholas! For the sake of the young Hollanders, I, for
one, am willing to acknowledge him and defend his reality against all
unbelievers.

Carl Schummel was quite busy during that day, assuring little children,
confidentially, that not Saint Nicholas but their own fathers and
mothers had produced the oracle and loaded the tables. But WE know
better than that.

And yet if this were a saint, why did he not visit the Brinker cottage
that night? Why was that one home, so dark and sorrowful, passed by?




What the Boys Saw and Did in Amsterdam



“Are we all here?” cried Peter, in high glee, as the party assembled
upon the canal early the next morning, equipped for their skating
journey. “Let me see. As Jacob has made me captain, I must call the
roll. Carl Schummel, you here?”

“Ya!”

“Jacob Poot!”

“Ya!”

“Benjamin Dobbs!”

“Ya-a!”

“Lambert van Mounen!”

“Ya!”

“That’s lucky! Couldn’t get on without YOU, as you’re the only one who
can speak English. Ludwig van Holp!”

“Ya!”

“Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck!”

No answer.

“Ah, the little rogue has been kept at home! Now, boys, it’s just eight
o’clock--glorious weather, and the Y is as firm as a rock. We’ll be at
Amsterdam in thirty minutes. One, two, three START!”

True enough, in less than half an hour they had crossed a dike of
solid masonry and were in the very heart of the great metropolis of the
Netherlands--a walled city of ninety-five islands and nearly two hundred
bridges. Although Ben had been there twice since his arrival in Holland,
he saw much to excite wonder, but his Dutch comrades, having lived
nearby all their lives, considered it the most matter-of-course place in
the world. Everything interested Ben: the tall houses with their forked
chimneys and gable ends facing the street; the merchants’ ware rooms,
perched high up under the roofs of their dwellings, with long, armlike
cranes hoisting and lowering goods past the household windows; the grand
public buildings erected upon wooden piles driven deep into the marshy
ground; the narrow streets; the canals crossing the city everywhere; the
bridges; the locks; the various costumes; and, strangest of all, shops
and dwellings crouching close to the fronts of the churches, sending
their long, disproportionate chimneys far upward along the sacred walls.

If he looked up, he saw tall, leaning houses, seeming to pierce the sky
with their shining roofs. If he looked down, there was the queer street,
without crossing or curb--nothing to separate the cobblestone pavement
from the footpath of brick--and if he rested his eyes halfway, he saw
complicated little mirrors (spionnen) fastened upon the outside of
nearly every window, so arranged that the inmates of the houses could
observe all that was going on in the street or inspect whoever might be
knocking at the door, without being seen themselves.

Sometimes a dogcart, heaped with wooden ware, passed him; then a donkey
bearing a pair of panniers filled with crockery or glass; then a sled
driven over the bare cobblestones (the runners kept greased with a
dripping oil rag so that it might run easily); and then, perhaps, a
showy but clumsy family carriage, drawn by the brownest of Flanders
horses, swinging the whitest of snowy tails.

The city was in full festival array. Every shop was gorgeous in honor of
Saint Nicholas. Captain Peter was forced, more than once, to order his
men away from the tempting show windows, where everything that is, has
been, or can be, thought of in the way of toys was displayed. Holland is
famous for this branch of manufacture. Every possible thing is copied in
miniature for the benefit of the little ones; the intricate mechanical
toys that a Dutch youngster tumbles about in stolid unconcern would
create a stir in our patent office. Ben laughed outright at some of the
mimic fishing boats. They were so heavy and stumpy, so like the queer
craft that he had seen about Rotterdam. The tiny trekschuiten, however,
only a foot or two long, and fitted out, complete, made his heart ache.
He so longed to buy one at once for his little brother in England.
He had no money to spare, for with true Dutch prudence, the party had
agreed to take with them merely the sum required for each boy’s expenses
and to consign the purse to Peter for safekeeping. Consequently Master
Ben concluded to devote all his energies to sight-seeing and to think as
seldom as possible of little Robby.

He made a hasty call at the Marine school and envied the sailor students
their full-rigged brig and their sleeping berths swung over their trunks
or lockers; he peeped into the Jews’ Quarter of the city, where the rich
diamond cutters and squalid old-clothesmen dwell, and wisely resolved to
keep away from it; he also enjoyed hasty glimpses of the four principal
avenues of Amsterdam--the Prinsengracht, Keizersgracht, Herengracht, and
Singel. These are semicircular in form, and the first three average more
than two miles in length. A canal runs through the center of each, with
a well-paved road on either side, lined with stately buildings. Rows
of naked elms, bordering the canal, cast a network of shadows over its
frozen surface, and everything was so clean and bright that Ben told
Lambert it seemed to him like petrified neatness.

Fortunately the weather was cold enough to put a stop to the usual
street flooding and window-washing, or our young excursionists might
have been drenched more than once. Sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing form
a passion with Dutch housewives, and to soil their spotless mansions is
considered scarcely less than a crime. Everywhere a hearty contempt is
felt for those who neglect to rub the soles of their shoes to a polish
before crossing the doorsill; and in certain places visitors are
expected to remove their heavy shoes before entering.

Sir William Temple, in his memoirs of “What Passed in Christendom from
1672 to 1679,” tells a story of a pompous magistrate going to visit a
lady of Amsterdam. A stout Holland lass opened the door, and told him
in a breath that the lady was at home and that his shoes were not very
clean. Without another word she took the astonished man up by both arms,
threw him across her back, carried him through two rooms, set him down
at the bottom of the stairs, seized a pair of slippers that stood there,
and put them upon his feet. Then, and not until then, she spoke, telling
him that his mistress was on the floor above, and that he might go up.

While Ben was skating with his friends upon the crowded canals of the
city, he found it difficult to believe that the sleepy Dutchmen he saw
around him, smoking their pipes so leisurely and looking as though
their hats might be knocked off their heads without their making any
resistance, were capable of those outbreaks that had taken place in
Holland--that they were really fellow countrymen of the brave, devoted
heroes of whom he had read in Dutch history.

As his party skimmed lightly along he told Van Mounen of a burial
riot which in 1696 had occurred in that very city, where the women
and children turned out, as well as the men, and formed mock funeral
processions through the town, to show the burgomasters that certain
new regulations, with regard to burying the dead would not be acceded
to--how at last they grew so unmanageable and threatened so much damage
to the city that the burgomasters were glad to recall the offensive law.

“There’s the corner,” said Jacob, pointing to some large buildings,
where, about fifteen years ago, the great corn houses sank down in the
mud. They were strong affairs and set up on good piles, but they had
over seven million pounds of corn in them, and that was too much.”

It was a long story for Jacob to tell, and he stopped to rest.

“How do you know there were seven million pounds in them?” asked Carl
sharply. “You were in your swaddling clothes then.”

“My father knows all about it” was Jacob’s suggestive reply. Rousing
himself with an effort, he continued, “Ben likes pictures. Show him
some.”

“All right,” said the captain.

“If we had time, Benjamin,” said Lambert van Mounen in English, “I
should like to take you to the City Hall, or Stadhuis. There are
building piles for you! It is built on nearly fourteen thousand of them,
driven seventy feet into the ground. But what I wish you to see there is
the big picture of Van Speyk blowing up his ship--great picture.”

“Van WHO?” asked Ben.

“Van Speyk. Don’t you remember? He was in the height of an engagement
with the Belgians, and when he found that they had the better of him
and would capture his ship, he blew it up, and himself, too, rather than
yield to the enemy.”

“Wasn’t that Van Tromp?”

“Oh, no. Van Tromp was another brave fellow. They’ve a monument to
him down at Delftshaven--the place where the Pilgrims took ship for
America.”

“Well, what about Van Tromp? He was a great Dutch admiral, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was in more than thirty sea fights. He beat the Spanish fleet
and an English one, and then fastened a broom to his masthead to show
that he had swept the English from the sea. Takes the Dutch to beat, my
boy!”

“Hold up!” cried Ben. “Broom or no broom, the English conquered him at
last. I remember all about it now. He was killed somewhere on the Dutch
coast in an engagement in which the English fleet was victorious. Too
bad,” he added maliciously, “wasn’t it?”

“Ahem! Where are we?” exclaimed Lambert, changing the subject. “Halloo!
The others are way ahead of us--all but Jacob. Whew! How fat he is!
He’ll break down before we’re halfway.”

Ben, of course, enjoyed skating beside Lambert, who, though a staunch
Hollander, had been educated near London and could speak English as
fluently as Dutch, but he was not sorry when Captain van Holp called
out, “Skates off! There’s the museum!”

It was open, and there was no charge on that day for admission. In they
went, shuffling, as boys will when they have a chance, just to hear the
sound of their shoes on the polished floor.

This museum is in fact a picture gallery where some of the finest
works of the Dutch masters are to be seen, besides nearly two hundred
portfolios of rare engravings.

Ben noticed, at once, that some of the pictures were hung on panels
fastened to the wall with hinges. These could be swung forward like a
window shutter, thus enabling the subject to be seen in the best light.
The plan served them well in viewing a small group by Gerard Douw,
called the “Evening School,” enabling them to observe its exquisite
finish and the wonderful way in which the picture seemed to be lit
through its own windows. Peter pointed out the beauties of another
picture by Douw, called “The Hermit,” and he also told them some
interesting anecdotes of the artist, who was born at Leyden in 1613.

“Three days painting a broom handle!” echoed Carl in astonishment, while
the captain was giving some instances of Douw’s extreme slowness of
execution.

“Yes, sir, three days. And it is said that he spent five in finishing
one hand in a lady’s portrait. You see how very bright and minute
everything is in this picture. His unfinished works were kept carefully
covered and his painting materials were put away in airtight boxes
as soon as he had finished using them for the day. According to all
accounts, the studio itself must have been as close as a bandbox. The
artist always entered it on tiptoe, besides sitting still, before
he commenced work, until the slight dust caused by his entrance had
settled. I have read somewhere that his paintings are improved by being
viewed through a magnifying glass. He strained his eyes so badly with
the extra finishing, that he was forced to wear spectacles before he was
thirty. At forty he could scarcely see to paint, and he couldn’t find a
pair of glasses anywhere that would help his sight. At last, a poor old
German woman asked him to try hers. They suited him exactly, and enabled
him to go on painting as well as ever.”

“Humph!” exclaimed Ludwig indignantly. “That was high! What did SHE do
without them, I wonder?”

“Oh,” said Peter, laughing, “likely she had another pair. At any rate
she insisted upon his taking them. He was so grateful that he painted
a picture of the spectacles for her, case and all, and she sold it to
a burgomaster for a yearly allowance that made her comfortable for the
rest of her days.”

“Boys!” called Lambert in a loud whisper, “come look at this ‘Bear
Hunt.’”

It was a fine painting by Paul Potter, a Dutch artist of the seventeenth
century, who produced excellent works before he was sixteen years
old. The boys admired it because the subject pleased them. They passed
carelessly by the masterpieces of Rembrandt and Van der Helst, and went
into raptures over an ugly picture by Van der Venne, representing a sea
fight between the Dutch and English. They also stood spellbound before
a painting of two little urchins, one of whom was taking soup and the
other eating an egg. The principal merit in this work was that the
young egg-eater had kindly slobbered his face with the yolk for their
entertainment.

An excellent representation of the “Feast of Saint Nicholas” next had
the honor of attracting them.

“Look, Van Mounen,” said Ben to Lambert. “Could anything be better than
this youngster’s face? He looks as if he KNOWS he deserves a whipping,
but hopes Saint Nicholas may not have found him out. That’s the kind of
painting I like; something that tells a story.”

“Come, boys!” cried the captain. “Ten o’clock, time we were off!”

They hastened to the canal.

“Skates on! Are you ready? One, two--halloo! Where’s Poot?”

Sure enough, where WAS Poot?

A square opening had just been cut in the ice not ten yards off. Peter
observed it and, without a word, skated rapidly toward it.

All the others followed, of course.

Peter looked in. They all looked in; then stared anxiously at each
other.

“Poot!” screamed Peter, peering into the hole again. All was still. The
black water gave no sign; it was already glazing on top.

Van Mounen turned mysteriously to Ben. “DIDN’T HE HAVE A FIT ONCE?”

“My goodness! yes!” answered Ben in a great fright.

“Then, depend upon it, he’s been taken with one in the museum!”

The boys caught his meaning. Every skate was off in a twinkling. Peter
had the presence of mind to scoop up a capful of water from the hole,
and off they scampered to the rescue.

Alas! They did indeed find poor Jacob in a fit, but it was a fit of
sleepiness. There he lay in a recess of the gallery, snoring like a
trooper! The chorus of laughter that followed this discovery brought an
angry official to the spot.

“What now! None of this racket! Here, you beer barrel, wake up!” And
Master Jacob received a very unceremonious shaking.

As soon as Peter saw that Jacob’s condition was not serious, he hastened
to the street to empty his unfortunate cap. While he was stuffing in his
handkerchief to prevent the already frozen crown from touching his head,
the rest of the boys came down, dragging the bewildered and indignant
Jacob in their midst.

“The order to start was again given. Master Poot was wide-awake at last.
The ice was a little rough and broken just there, but every boy was in
high spirits.

“Shall we go on by the canal or the river?” asked Peter.

“Oh, the river, by all means,” said Carl. “It will be such fun; they say
it is perfect skating all the way, but it’s much farther.”

Jacob Poot instantly became interested.

“I vote for the canal!” he cried.

“Well, the canal it shall be,” responded the captain, “if all are
agreed.”

“Agreed!” they echoed, in rather a disappointed tone, and Captain Peter
led the way.

“All right, come on. We can reach Haarlem in an hour!”




Big Manias and Little Oddities



While skating along at full speed, they heard the cars from Amsterdam
coming close behind them.

“Halloo!” cried Ludwig, glancing toward the rail track, “who can’t beat
a locomotive? Let’s give it a race!”

The whistle screamed at the very idea--so did the boys--and at it they
went.

For an instant the boys were ahead, hurrahing with all their might--only
for an instant, but even THAT was something.

This excitement over, they began to travel more leisurely and indulge in
conversation and frolic. Sometimes they stopped to exchange a word with
the guards who were stationed at certain distances along the canal.
These men, in winter, attend to keeping the surface free from
obstruction and garbage. After a snowstorm they are expected to sweep
the feathery covering away before it hardens into a marble pretty to
look at but very unwelcome to skaters. Now and then the boys so far
forgot their dignity as to clamber among the icebound canal boats
crowded together in a widened harbor off the canal, but the watchful
guards would soon spy them out and order them down with a growl.

Nothing could be straighter than the canal upon which our party were
skating, and nothing straighter than the long rows of willow trees that
stood, bare and wispy, along the bank. On the opposite side, lifted high
above the surrounding country, lay the carriage road on top of the great
dike built to keep the Haarlem Lake within bounds; stretching out far in
the distance, until it became lost in a point, was the glassy canal with
its many skaters, its brown-winged iceboats, its push-chairs, and its
queer little sleds, light as cork, flying over the ice by means of
iron-pronged sticks in the hands of the riders. Ben was in ecstasy with
the scene.

Ludwig van Holp had been thinking how strange it was that the English
boy should know so much of Holland. According to Lambert’s account, he
knew more about it than the Dutch did. This did not quite please our
young Hollander. Suddenly he thought of something that he believed
would make the “Shon Pull” open his eyes; he drew near Lambert with a
triumphant “Tell him about the tulips!”

Ben caught the word tulpen.

“Oh, yes!” said he eagerly, in English, “the Tulip Mania--are you
speaking of that? I have often heard it mentioned but know very little
about it. It reached its height in Amsterdam, didn’t it?”

Ludwig moaned; the words were hard to understand, but there was no
mistaking the enlightened expression on Ben’s face. Lambert, happily,
was quite unconscious of his young countryman’s distress as he replied,
“Yes, here and in Haarlem, principally; but the excitement ran high all
over Holland, and in England too for that matter.”

“Hardly in England, I think,” said Ben, “but I am not sure, as I was
not thereat the time.”

     *{Although the Tulip Mania did not prevail in England as in
     Holland, the flower soon became an object of speculation and
     brought very large prices. In 1636, tulips were publicly
     sold on the Exchange of London. Even as late as 1800 a
     common price was fifteen guineas for one bulb. Ben did not
     know that in his own day a single tulip plant, called the
     “Fanny Kemble”, had been sold in London for more than
     seventy guineas.

     Mr Mackay, in his “Memoirs of Popular Delusions,” tells a
     funny story of an English botanist who happened to see a
     tulip bulb lying in the conservatory of a wealthy Dutchman.
     Ignorant if its value, he took out his penknife and, cutting
     the bulb in two, became very much interested in his
     investigations. Suddenly the owner appeared and, pouncing
     furiously upon him, asked if he knew what he was doing.
     “Peeling a most extraordinary onion,” replied the
     philosopher. “Hundert tousant tuyvel!” shouted the Dutchman,
     “it’s an Admiral Van der Eyk!” “Thank you,” replied the
     traveler, immediately writing the name in his notebook.
     “Pray, are these very common in your country?” “Death and
     the tuyvel!” screamed the Dutchman, “come before the Syndic
     and you shall see!” In spite of his struggles the poor
     investigator, followed by an indignant mob, was taken
     through the streets to a magistrate. Soon he learned to his
     dismay that he had destroyed a bulb worth 4,000 florins
     ($1,600). He was lodged in prison until securities could be
     procured for the payment of the sum.}


“Ha! ha! that’s true, unless you are over two hundred years old. Well,
I tell you, sir, there never was anything like it before nor since. Why,
persons were so crazy after tulip bulbs in those days that they paid
their weight in gold for them.”

“What, the weight of a man!” cried Ben, showing such astonishment in his
eyes that Ludwig fairly capered.

“No, no, the weight of a BULB. The first tulip was sent here from
Constantinople about the year 1560. It was so much admired that the rich
people of Amsterdam sent to Turkey for more. From that time they grew to
be the rage, and it lasted for years. Single roots brought from one
to four thousand florins; and one bulb, the Semper Augustus, brought
fifty-five hundred.”

“That’s more than four hundred guineas of our money,” interposed Ben.

“Yes, and I know I’m right, for I read it in a translation from Beckman,
only day before yesterday. Well, sir, it was great. Everyone speculated
in tulips, even bargemen and rag women and chimney sweeps. The richest
merchants were not ashamed to share the excitement. People bought bulbs
and sold them again at a tremendous profit without ever seeing them. It
grew into a kind of gambling. Some became rich by it in a few days, and
some lost everything they had. Land, houses, cattle, and even clothing
went for tulips when people had no ready money. Ladies sold their jewels
and finery to enable them to join in the fun. Nothing else was thought
of. At last the States-General interfered. People began to see what
dunces they were making of themselves, and down went the price of
tulips. Old tulip debts couldn’t be collected. Creditors went to law,
and the law turned its back upon them; debts made in gambling were not
binding, it said. Then there was a time! Thousands of rich speculators
were reduced to beggary in an hour. As old Beckman says, ‘The bubble was
burst at last.’”

“Yes, and a big bubble it was,” said Ben, who had listened with great
interest. “By the way, did you know that the name tulip came from a
Turkish word, signifying turban?”

“I had forgotten that,” answered Lambert, “but it’s a capital idea. Just
fancy a party of Turks in full headgear squatted upon a lawn--perfect
tulip bed! Ha! ha! Capital idea!”

“There,” groaned Ludwig to himself, “he’s been telling Lambert something
wonderful about tulips--I knew it!”

“The fact is,” continued Lambert, “you can conjure up quite a human
picture of a tulip bed in bloom, especially when it is nodding and
bobbing in the wind. Did you ever notice it?”

“Not I. It strikes me, Van Mounen, that you Hollanders are prodigiously
fond of the flower to this day.”

“Certainly. You can’t have a garden without them; prettiest flower that
grows, I think. My uncle has a magnificent bed of the finest varieties
at his summer house on the other side of Amsterdam.”

“I thought your uncle lived in the city?”

“So he does; but his summer house, or pavilion, is a few miles off.
He has another one built out over the river. We passed near it when we
entered the city. Everybody in Amsterdam has a pavilion somewhere, if he
can.”

“Do they ever live there?” asked Ben.

“Bless you, no! They are small affairs, suitable only to spend a few
hours in on summer afternoons. There are some beautiful ones on the
southern end of the Haarlem Lake--now that they’ve commenced to drain
it into polders, it will spoil THAT fun. By the way, we’ve passed some
red-roofed ones since we left home. You noticed them, I suppose, with
their little bridges and ponds and gardens, and their mottoes over the
doorway.”

Ben nodded.

“They make but little show, now,” continued Lambert, “but in warm
weather they are delightful. After the willows sprout, uncle goes to his
summer house every afternoon. He dozes and smokes; aunt knits, with her
feet perched upon a foot stove, never mind how hot the day; my cousin
Rika and the other girls fish in the lake from the windows or chat with
their friends rowing by; and the youngsters tumble about or hang upon
the little bridges over the ditch. Then they have coffee and cakes,
beside a great bunch of water lilies on the table. It’s very fine, I
can tell you; only (between ourselves), though I was born here, I shall
never fancy the odor of stagnant water that hangs about most of the
summer houses. Nearly every one you see is built over a ditch. Probably
I feel it more, from having lived so long in England.”

“Perhaps I shall notice it too,” said Ben, “if a thaw comes. The early
winter has covered up the fragrant waters for my benefit--much obliged
to it. Holland without this glorious skating wouldn’t be the same thing
at all.”

“How very different you are from the Poots!” exclaimed Lambert, who had
been listening in a sort of brown study. “And yet you are cousins--I
cannot understand it.”

“We ARE cousins, or rather we have always considered ourselves such, but
the relationship is not very close. Our grandmothers were half-sisters.
MY side of the family is entirely English, while he is entirely Dutch.
Old Great-grandfather Poot married twice, you see, and I am a descendant
of his English wife. I like Jacob, though, better than half of my
English cousins put together. He is the truest-hearted, best-natured boy
I ever knew. Strange as you may think it, my father became accidentally
acquainted with Jacob’s father while on a business visit to Rotterdam.
They soon talked over their relationship--in French, by the way--and
they have corresponded in the language ever since. Queer things come
about in this world. My sister Jenny would open her eyes at some of Aunt
Poot’s ways. Aunt is a thorough lady, but so different from mother--and
the house, too, and furniture, and way of living, everything is
different.”

“Of course,” assented Lambert, complacently, as if to say You could
scarcely expect such general perfection anywhere else than in Holland.
“But you will have all the more to tell Jenny when you go back.”

“Yes, indeed. I can say one thing--if cleanliness is, as they claim,
next to godliness, Broek is safe. It is the cleanest place I ever saw
in my life. Why, my Aunt Poot, rich as she is, scrubs half the time,
and her house looks as if it were varnished all over. I wrote to mother
yesterday that I could see my double always with me, feet to feet, in
the polished floor of the dining room.”

“Your DOUBLE! That word puzzles me; what do you mean?”

“Oh, my reflection, my apparition. Ben Dobbs number two.”

“Ah, I see,” exclaimed Van Mounen. “Have you ever been in your Aunt
Poot’s grand parlor?”

Ben laughed. “Only once, and that was on the day of my arrival. Jacob
says I shall have no chance of entering it again until the time of his
sister Kanau’s wedding, the week after Christmas. Father has consented
that I shall remain to witness the great event. Every Saturday Aunt Poot
and her fat Kate go into that parlor and sweep and polish and scrub;
then it is darkened and closed until Saturday comes again; not a soul
enters it in the meantime; but the schoonmaken, as she calls it, must be
done just the same.”

“That is nothing. Every parlor in Broek meets with the same treatment,”
 said Lambert. “What do you think of those moving figures in her
neighbor’s garden?”

“Oh, they’re well enough; the swans must seem really alive gliding about
the pond in summer; but that nodding mandarin in the corner, under the
chestnut trees, is ridiculous, only fit for children to laugh at. And
then the stiff garden patches, and the trees all trimmed and painted.
Excuse me, Van Mounen, but I shall never learn to admire Dutch taste.”

“It will take time,” answered Lambert condescendingly, “but you are sure
to agree with it at last. I saw much to admire in England, and I hope
I shall be sent back with you to study at Oxford, but, take everything
together, I like Holland best.”

“Of course you do,” said Ben in a tone of hearty approval. “You wouldn’t
be a good Hollander if you didn’t. Nothing like loving one’s country. It
is strange, though, to have such a warm feeling for such a cold place.
If we were not exercising all the time, we should freeze outright.”

Lambert laughed.

“That’s your English blood, Benjamin. I’M not cold. And look at the
skaters here on the canal--they’re red as roses and happy as lords.
Halloo, good Captain van Holp,” called out Lambert in Dutch, “what say
you to stopping at yonder farmhouse and warming our toes?”

“Who is cold?” asked Peter, turning around.

“Benjamin Dobbs.”

“Benjamin Dobbs shall be warmed,” and the party was brought to a halt.




On the Way to Haarlem



On approaching the door of the farmhouse the boys suddenly found
themselves in the midst of a lively domestic scene. A burly Dutchman
came rushing out, closely followed by his dear vrouw, and she was
beating him smartly with her long-handled warming pan. The expression on
her face gave our boys so little promise of a kind reception that they
prudently resolved to carry their toes elsewhere to be warmed.

The next cottage proved to be more inviting. Its low roof of bright
red tiles extended over the cow stable that, clean as could be, nestled
close to the main building. A neat, peaceful-looking old woman sat
at one window, knitting. At the other could be discerned part of the
profile of a fat figure that, pipe in mouth, sat behind the shining
little panes and snowy curtain. In answer to Peter’s subdued knock, a
fair-haired, rosy-cheeked lass in holiday attire opened the upper half
of the green door (which was divided across the middle) and inquired
their errand.

“May we enter and warm ourselves, jufvrouw?” asked the captain
respectfully.

“Yes, and welcome” was the reply as the lower half of the door swung
softly toward its mate. Every boy, before entering, rubbed long and
faithfully upon the rough mat, and each made his best bow to the old
lady and gentleman at the window. Ben was half inclined to think that
these personages were automata like the moving figures in the garden at
Broek; for they both nodded their heads slowly, in precisely the same
way, and both went on with their employment as steadily and stiffly as
though they worked by machinery. The old man puffed, puffed, and his
vrouw clicked her knitting needles, as if regulated by internal cog
wheels. Even the real smoke issuing from the motionless pipe gave no
convincing proof that they were human.

But the rosy-cheeked maiden. Ah, how she bustled about. How she gave
the boys polished high-backed chairs to sit upon, how she made the fire
blaze as if it were inspired, how she made Jacob Poot almost weep for
joy by bringing forth a great square of gingerbread and a stone jug of
sour wine! How she laughed and nodded as the boys ate like wild animals
on good behavior, and how blank she looked when Ben politely but firmly
refused to take any black bread and sauerkraut! How she pulled off
Jacob’s mitten, which was torn at the thumb, and mended it before his
eyes, biting off the thread with her whit teeth, and saying “Now it will
be warmer” as she bit; and finally, how she shook hands with every boy
in turn and, throwing a deprecating glance at the female automaton,
insisted upon filling their pockets with gingerbread!

All this time the knitting needles clicked on, and the pipe never missed
a puff.

When the boys were fairly on their way again, they came in sight of the
Zwanenburg Castle with its massive stone front, and its gateway towers,
each surmounted with a sculptured swan.

“Halfweg, *{Halfway.} boys,” said Peter, “off with your skates.”

“You see,” explained Lambert to his companions, “the Y and the Haarlem
Lake meeting here make it rather troublesome. The river is five feet
higher than the land, so we must have everything strong in the way of
dikes and sluice gates, or there would be wet work at once. The sluice
arrangements are supposed to be something extra. We will walk over them
and you shall see enough to make you open your eyes. The spring water
of the lake, they say, has the most wonderful bleaching powers of any
in the world; all the great Haarlem bleacheries use it. I can’t say
much upon that subject, but I can tell you ONE thing from personal
experience.”

“What is that?”

“Why, the lake is full of the biggest eels you ever saw. I’ve caught
them here, often--perfectly prodigious! I tell you they’re sometimes a
match for a fellow; they’d almost wriggle your arm from the socket
if you were not on your guard. But you’re not interested in eels, I
perceive. The castle’s a big affair, isn’t it?”

“Yes. What do those swans mean? Anything?” asked Ben, looking up at the
stone gate towers.

“The swan is held almost in reverence by us Hollanders. These give the
building its name--Zwanenburg, swan castle. That is all I know. This is
a very important spot; for it is here that the wise ones hold council
with regard to dike matters. The castle was once the residence of the
celebrated Christian Brunings.”

“What about HIM?” asked Ben.

“Peter could answer you better than I,” said Lambert, “if you could
only understand each other, or were not such cowards about leaving your
mother tongues. But I have often heard my grandfather speak of Brunings.
He is never tired of telling us of the great engineer--how good he was
and how learned and how, when he died, the whole country seemed to mourn
as for a friend. He belonged to a great many learned societies and was
at the head of the State Department intrusted with the care of the dikes
and other defences against the sea. There’s no counting the improvements
he made in dikes and sluices and water mills and all that kind of thing.
We Hollanders, you know, consider our great engineers as the highest of
public benefactors. Brunings died years ago; they’ve a monument to his
memory in the cathedral of Haarlem. I have seen his portrait, and I
tell you, Ben, he was right noble-looking. No wonder the castle looks so
stiff and proud. It is something to have given shelter to such a man!”

“Yes, indeed,” said Ben. “I wonder, Van Mounen, whether you or I will
ever give any old building a right to feel so proud. Heigh-ho! There’s
a great deal to be done yet in this world and some of us, who are
boys now, will have to do it. Look to your shoe latchet, Van. It’s
unfastened.”




A Catastrophe



It was nearly one o’clock when Captain van Holp and his command entered
the grand old city of Haarlem. They had skated nearly seventeen miles
since morning and were still as fresh as young eagles. From the youngest
(Ludwig van Holp, who was just fourteen) to the eldest, no less a
personage than the captain himself, a veteran of seventeen, there was
but one opinion--that this was the greatest frolic of their lives. To be
sure, Jacob Poot had become rather short of breath during the last mile
of two, and perhaps he felt ready for another nap, but there was enough
jollity in him yet for a dozen. Even Carl Schummel, who had become very
intimate with Ludwig during the excursion, forgot to be ill-natured. As
for Peter, he was the happiest of the happy and had sung and whistled
so joyously while skating that the staidest passersby had smiled as they
listened.

“Come, boys! It’s nearly tiffin hour,” he said as they neared a
coffeehouse on the main street. “We must have something more solid than
the pretty maiden’s gingerbread”--and the captain plunged his hands into
his pockets as if to say, “There’s money enough here to feed an army!”

“Halloo!” cried Lambert. “What ails the man?”

Peter, pale and staring, was clapping his hands upon his breast and
sides. He looked like one suddenly becoming deranged.

“He’s sick!” cried Ben.

“No, he’s lost something,” said Carl.

Peter could only gasp, “The pocketbook with all our money in it--it’s
gone!”

For an instant all were too much startled to speak.

Carl at last came out with a gruff, “No sense in letting one fellow have
all the money. I said so from the first. Look in your other pocket.”

“I did. It isn’t there.”

“Open your underjacket.”

Peter obeyed mechanically. He even took off his hat and looked into it,
then thrust his hand desperately into every pocket.

“It’s gone, boys,” he said at last in a hopeless tone. “No tiffin for
us, nor dinner, either. What is to be done? We can’t get on without
money. If we were in Amsterdam, I could get as much as we want, but
there is not a man in Haarlem from whom I can borrow a stiver. Doesn’t
one of you know anyone here who would lend us a few guilders?”

Each boy looked into five blank faces. Then something like a smile
passed around the circle, but it got sadly knotted up when it reached
Carl.

“That wouldn’t do,” he said crossly. “I know some people here, rich
ones, too, but father would flog me soundly if I borrowed a cent from
anyone. He has ‘An honest man need not borrow’ written over the gateway
of his summer house.”

“Humph!” responded Peter, not particularly admiring the sentiment just
at that moment.

The boys grew desperately hungry at once.

“It wash my fault,” said Jacob, in a penitent tone, to Ben. “I say
first, petter all de boys put zair pursh into Van Holp’s monish.”

“Nonsense, Jacob. You did it all for the best.”

Ben said this in such a sprightly tone that the two Van Holps and Carl
felt sure that he had proposed a plan that would relieve the party at
once.

“What? what? Tell us, Van Mounen,” they cried.

“He says it is not Jacob’s fault that the money is lost--that he did it
for the best when he proposed that Van Holp should put all of our money
into his purse.”

“Is that all?” said Ludwig dismally. “He need not have made such a fuss
in just saying THAT. How much money have we lost?”

“Don’t you remember?” said Peter. “We each put in exactly ten guilders.
The purse had sixty guilders in it. I am the stupidest fellow in the
world; little Schimmelpenninck would have made you a better captain. I
could pommel myself for bringing such a disappointment upon you.”

“Do it, then,” growled Carl. “Pooh,” he added, “we all know that it
was an accident, but that doesn’t help matters. We must have money, Van
Holp--even if you have to sell your wonderful watch.”

“Sell my mother’s birthday present! Never! I will sell my coat, my hat,
anything but my watch.”

“Come, come,” said Jacob pleasantly, “we are making too much of this
affair. We can go home and start again in a day or two.”

“YOU may be able to get another ten-guilder piece,” said Carl, “but the
rest of us will not find it so easy. If we go home, we stay home, you
may depend.”

Our captain, whose good nature had not yet forsaken him for a moment,
grew indignant.

“Do you think that I will let you suffer for my carelessness?” he
exclaimed. “I have three times sixty guilders in my strong box at home!”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Carl hastily, adding in a surlier tone,
“Well, I see no better way than to go back hungry.”

“I see a better plan than that,” said the captain.

“What is it?” cried all the boys.

“Why, to make the best of a bad business and go back pleasantly and like
men,” said Peter, looking so gallant and handsome as he turned his frank
face and clear blue eyes upon them that they caught his spirit.

“Ho for the captain!” they shouted.

“Now, boys, we may as well make up our minds, there’s no place like
Broek, after all--and that we mean to be there in two hours. Is that
agreed to?”

“Agreed!” cried all as they ran to the canal.

“On with your skates! Are you ready? Here, Jacob, let me help you.”

“Now. One, two, three, start!”

And the boyish faces that left Haarlem at that signal were nearly as
bright as those that had entered it with Captain Peter half an hour
before.




Hans



“Donder and Blixin!” cried Carl angrily, before the party had skated
twenty yards from the city gates, “if here isn’t that wooden-skate
ragamuffin in the patched leather breeches. That fellow is everywhere,
confound him! We’ll be lucky,” he added, in as sneering a tone as he
dared to assume, “if our captain doesn’t order us to halt and shake
hands with him.”

“Your captain is a terrible fellow,” said Peter pleasantly, “but this
is a false alarm, Carl. I cannot spy your bugbear anywhere among the
skaters. Ah, there he is! Why, what is the matter with the lad?”

Poor Hans! His face was pale, his lips compressed. He skated like one
under the effects of a fearful dream. Just as he was passing, Peter
hailed him:

“Good day, Hans Brinker!”

Hans’s countenance brightened at once. “Ah, mynheer, is that you? It is
well we meet!”

“Just like his impertinence,” hissed Carl Schummel, darting scornfully
past his companions, who seemed inclined to linger with their captain.

“I am glad to see you, Hans,” responded Peter cheerfully, “but you look
troubled. Can I serve you?”

“I have a trouble, mynheer,” answered Hans, casting down his eyes. Then,
lifting them again with almost a happy expression, he added, “But it is
Hans who can help Mynheer van Holp THIS time.”

“How?” asked Peter, making, in his blunt Dutch way, no attempt to
conceal his surprise.

“By giving you THIS, mynheer.” And Hans held forth the missing purse.

“Hurrah!” shouted the boys, taking their cold hands from their pockets
to wave them joyfully in the air. But Peter said “Thank you, Hans
Brinker” in a tone that made Hans feel as if the king had knelt to him.

The shout of the delighted boys had reached the muffled ears of the fine
young gentleman who, under a full pressure of pent-up wrath, was skating
toward Amsterdam. A Yankee boy would have wheeled about at once and
hastened to satisfy his curiosity. But Carl only halted, and, with his
back toward his party, wondered what on earth had happened. There he
stood, immovable, until, feeling sure that nothing but the prospect of
something to eat could have made them hurrah so heartily, he turned and
skated slowly toward his excited comrades.

In the meantime Peter had drawn Hans aside from the rest.

“How did you know it was my purse?” he asked.

“You paid me three guilders yesterday, mynheer, for making the whitewood
chain, telling me that I must buy skates.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“I saw your purse then. It was of yellow leather.”

“And where did you find it today?”

“I left my home this morning, mynheer, in great trouble, and as I
skated, I took no heed until I stumbled against some lumber, and while I
was rubbing my knee I saw your purse nearly hidden under a log.”

“That place! Ah, I remember now. Just as we were passing it I pulled
my tippet from my pocket and probably flipped out the purse at the same
time. It would have been gone but for you, Hans. Here”--pouring out
the contents--“you must give us the pleasure of dividing the money with
you.”

“No, mynheer,” answered Hans. He spoke quietly, without pretence or any
grace of manner, but Peter, somehow, felt rebuked, and put the silver
back without a word.

I like that boy, rich or poor, he thought to himself, then added aloud,
“May I ask about this trouble of yours, Hans?”

“Ah, mynheer, it is a sad case, but I have waited here too long. I am
going to Leyden to see the great Dr. Boekman.”

“Dr. Boekman!” exclaimed Peter in astonishment.

“Yes, mynheer, and I have not a moment to lose. Good day!”

“Stay, I am going that way. Come, my lads! Shall we return to Haarlem!”

“Yes,” cried the boys, eagerly--and off they started.

“Now,” said Peter, drawing near Hans, both skimming the ice so easily
and lightly as they skated on together that they seemed scarcely
conscious of moving. “We are going to stop at Leyden, and if you are
going there only with a message to Dr. Boekman, cannot I do the errand
for you? The boys may be too tired to skate so far today, but I will
promise to see him early tomorrow if he is to be found in the city.”

“Ah, mynheer, that would be serving me indeed; it is not the distance I
dread but leaving my mother so long.”

“Is she ill?”

“No, mynheer. It is the father. You may have heard it, how he has been
without wit for many a year--ever since the great Schlossen Mill was
built; but his body has been well and strong. Last night the mother
knelt upon the hearth to blow the peat (it is his only delight to sit
and watch the live embers, and she will blow them into a blaze every
hour of the day to please him). Before she could stir, he sprang upon
her like a giant and held her close to the fire, all the time laughing
and shaking his head. I was on the canal, but I heard the mother scream
and ran to her. The father had never loosened his hold, and her gown was
smoking. I tried to deaden the fire, but with one hand he pushed me off.
There was no water in the cottage or I could have done better, and all
that time he laughed--such a terrible laugh, mynheer, hardly a sound,
but all in his face. I tried to pull her away, but that only made it
worse. Then--it was dreadful, but could I see the mother burn? I beat
him--beat him with a stool. He tossed me away. The gown was on fire.! I
WOULD put it out. I can’t remember well after that. I found myself upon
the floor, and the mother was praying. It seemed to me that she was in
a blaze, and all the while I could hear that laugh. Gretel flew to the
closet and filled a porringer with the food he liked and put it upon the
floor. Then, mynheer, he left the mother and crawled to it like a little
child. She was not burned, only a part of her clothing. Ah, how kind
she was to him all night, watching and tending him. He slept in a high
fever, with his hands pressed to his head. The mother says he has done
that so much of late, as though he felt pain there. Ah, mynheer, I did
not mean to tell you. If the father was himself, he would not harm even
a kitten.”

For a moment the two boys moved on in silence.

“It is terrible,” said Peter at last. “How is he today?”

“Very sick, mynheer.”

“Why go for Dr. Boekman, Hans? There are others in Amsterdam who
could help him, perhaps. Boekman is a famous man, sought only by the
wealthiest, and they often wait upon him in vain.”

“He PROMISED, mynheer, he promised me yesterday to come to the father in
a week. But now that the change has come, we cannot wait. We think the
poor father is dying. Oh, mynheer, you can plead with him to come quick.
He will not wait a whole week and our father dying, the good meester is
so kind.”

“SO KIND!” echoed Peter in astonishment. “Why, he is known as the
crossest man in Holland!”

“He looks so because he has no fat and his head is busy, but his heart
is kind, I know. Tell the meester what I have told you, mynheer, and he
will come.”

“I hope so, Hans, with all my heart. You are in haste to turn homeward,
I see. Promise me that should you need a friend, you will go to my
mother in Broek. Tell her I bade you see her. And, Hans Brinker, not as
a reward, but as a gift, take a few of these guilders.”

Hans shook his head resolutely.

“No, no, mynheer. I cannot take it. If I could find work in Broek or
at the South Mill, I would be glad, but it is the same story
everywhere--‘Wait until spring’”.

“It is well you speak of it,” said Peter eagerly, “for my father needs
help at once. Your pretty chain pleased him much. He said, ‘That boy
has a clean cut; he would be good at carving.’ There is to be a carved
portal to our new summer house, and father will pay well for the job.”

“God is good!” cried Hans in sudden delight. “Oh, mynheer, that would
be too much joy. I have never tried big work, but I can do it. I know I
can.”

“Well, tell my father you are the Hans Brinker of whom I spoke. He will
be glad to serve you.”

Hans stared in honest surprise.

“Thank you, mynheer.”

“Now, captain,” shouted Carl, anxious to appear as good humored as
possible, by way of atonement, “here we are in the midst of Haarlem,
and no word from you yet. We await your orders, and we’re as hungry as
wolves.”

Peter made a cheerful answer, and turned hurriedly to Hans.

“Come, get something to eat, and I will detain you no longer.”

What a quick, wistful look Hans threw upon him! Peter wondered that he
had not noticed before that the poor boy was hungry.

“Ah, mynheer, even now the mother may need me, the father may be
worse--I must not wait. May God care for you.” And, nodding hastily,
Hans turned his face homeward and was gone.

“Come, boys,” sighed Peter, “now for our tiffin!”




Homes



It must not be supposed that our young Dutchmen had already forgotten
the great skating race which was to take place on the twentieth. On the
contrary, they had thought and spoken of it very often during the day.
Even Ben, though he had felt more like a traveler than the rest, had
never once, through all the sight-seeing, lost a certain vision of
silver skates which, for a week past, had haunted him night and day.

Like a true “John Bull,” as Jacob had called him, he never doubted that
his English fleetness, English strength, English everything, could at
any time enable him, on the ice, to put all Holland to shame, and the
rest of the world too, for that matter. Ben certainly was a superb
skater. He had enjoyed not half the opportunities for practicing that
had fallen to his new comrades but he had improved his share to the
utmost and was, besides, so strong of frame, so supple of limb, in
short, such a tight, trim, quick, graceful fellow in every way that he
had taken to skating as naturally as a chamois to leaping or an eagle to
soaring.

Only to the heavy heart of poor Hans had the vision of the silver skates
failed to appear during that starry winter night and the brighter sunlit
day.

Even Gretel had seen them flitting before her as she sat beside her
mother through those hours of weary watching--not as prizes to be won,
but as treasures passing hopelessly beyond her reach.

Rychie, Hilda, and Katrinka--why, they had scarcely known any other
thought than “The race, the race. It will come off on the twentieth!”

These three girls were friends. Though of nearly the same age, talent,
and station, they were as different as girls could be.

Hilda van Gleck, as you already know, was a warm-hearted, noble girl of
fourteen. Rychie Korbes was beautiful to look upon, far more sparkling
and pretty than Hilda but not half so bright and sunny within. Clouds
of pride, of discontent, and envy had already gathered in her heart
and were growing bigger and darker every day. Of course, these often
relieved themselves very much after the manner of other clouds. But who
saw the storms and the weeping? Only her maid or her father, mother, and
little brother--those who loved her better than all. Like other clouds,
too, hers often took queer shapes, and what was really but mist and
vapory fancy assumed the appearance of monster wrongs and mountains of
difficulty. To her mind, the poor peasant girl Gretel was not a human
being, a God-created creature like herself--she was only something that
meant poverty, rags, and dirt. Such as Gretel had no right to feel,
to hope; above all, they should never cross the paths of their
betters--that is, not in a disagreeable way. They could toil and labor
for them at a respectful distance, even admire them, if they would do it
humbly, but nothing more. If they rebel, put them down; if they suffer,
“Don’t trouble me about it” was Rychie’s secret motto. And yet how witty
she was, how tastefully she dressed, how charmingly she sang; how much
feeling she displayed (for pet kittens and rabbits), and how completely
she could bewitch sensible, honest-minded lads like Lambert van Mounen
and Ludwig van Holp!

Carl was too much like her, within, to be an earnest admirer, and
perhaps he suspected the clouds. He, being deep and surly and always
uncomfortably in earnest, of course preferred the lively Katrinka, whose
nature was made of a hundred tinkling bells. She was a coquette in her
infancy, a coquette in her childhood, and now a coquette in her school
days. Without a thought of harm she coquetted with her studies, her
duties, even her little troubles. She coquetted with her mother, her
pet lamb, her baby brother, even with her own golden curls--tossing them
back as if she despised them. Everyone liked her, but who could love
her? She was never in earnest. A pleasant face, a pleasant heart, a
pleasant manner--these satisfy for an hour. Poor happy Katrinka! She
tinkled, tinkled so merrily through their early days, but life is so apt
to coquette with them in turn, to put all their sweet bells out of tune
or to silence them one by one!

How different were the homes of these three girls from the tumbling
old cottage where Gretel dwelt. Rychie lived in a beautiful house near
Amsterdam, where the carved sideboards were laden with services of
silver and gold and where silken tapestries hung in folds from ceiling
to floor.

Hilda’s father owned the largest mansion in Broek. Its glittering roof
of polished tiles and its boarded front, painted in half a dozen various
colors, were the admiration of the neighborhood.

Katrinka’s home, not a mile distant, was the finest of Dutch country
seats. The garden was so stiffly laid out in little paths and patches
that the birds might have mistaken it for a great Chinese puzzle with
all the pieces spread out ready for use. But in summer it was beautiful;
the flowers made the best of their stiff quarters, and, when the
gardener was not watching, glowed and bent about each other in the
prettiest way imaginable. Such a tulip bed! Why, the queen of the
fairies would never care for a grander city in which to hold her court!
But Katrinka preferred the bed of pink and white hyacinths. She loved
their freshness and fragrance and the lighthearted way in which their
bell-shaped blossoms swung in the breeze.

Carl was both right and wrong when he said that Katrinka and Rychie were
furious at the very idea of the peasant Gretel joining in the race. He
had heard Rychie declare that it was “Disgraceful, shameful, too bad!”
 which in Dutch, as in English, is generally the strongest expression an
indignant girl can use; and he had seen Katrinka nod her pretty head and
heard her sweetly echo, “Shameful, too bad!” as nearly like Rychie as
tinkling bells can be like the voice of real anger. This had satisfied
him. He never suspected that had Hilda, not Rychie, first talked with
Katrinka upon the subject, the bells would have jingled as willing an
echo. She would have said, “Certainly, let her join us,” and would
have skipped off thinking no more about it. But now Katrinka with sweet
emphasis pronounced it a shame that a goose-girl, a forlorn little
creature like Gretel, should be allowed to spoil the race.

Rychie Korbes, being rich and powerful (in a schoolgirl way), had
other followers besides Katrinka who were induced to share her opinions
because they were either too careless or too cowardly to think for
themselves.

Poor little Gretel! Her home was sad and dark enough now. Raff Brinker
lay moaning upon his rough bed, and his vrouw, forgetting and forgiving
everything, bathed his forehead, his lips, weeping and praying that he
might not die. Hans, as we know, had started in desperation for Leyden
to search for Dr. Boekman and induce him, if possible, to come to their
father at once. Gretel, filled with a strange dread, had done the work
as well as she could, wiped the rough brick floor, brought peat to
build up the slow fire, and melted ice for her mother’s use. This
accomplished, she seated herself upon a low stool near the bed and
begged her mother to try to sleep awhile.

“You are so tired,” she whispered. “Not once have you closed your eyes
since that dreadful hour last night. See, I have straightened the willow
bed in the corner, and spread everything soft upon it I could find, so
that the mother might lie in comfort. Here is your jacket. Take off that
pretty dress. I’ll fold it away very carefully and put it in the big
chest before you go to sleep.”

Dame Brinker shook her head without turning her eyes from her husband’s
face.

“I can watch, mother,” urged Gretel, “and I’ll wake you every time the
father stirs. You are so pale, and your eyes are so red! Oh, mother,
DO!”

The child pleaded in vain. Dame Brinker would not leave her post.

Gretel looked at her in troubled silence, wondering whether it were very
wicked to care more for one parent than for the other, and sure--yes,
quite sure--that she dreaded her father while she clung to her mother
with a love that was almost idolatry.

Hans loves the father so well, she thought, why cannot I? Yet I could
not help crying when I saw his hand bleed that day, last month, when he
snatched the knife--and now, when he moans, how I ache, ache all over.
Perhaps I love him, after all, and God will see that I am not such a
bad, wicked girl as I thought. Yes, I love the poor father--almost as
Hans does--not quite, for Hans is stronger and does not fear him. Oh,
will that moaning go on forever and ever! Poor mother, how patient
she is; SHE never pouts, as I do, about the money that went away so
strangely. If he only could, for one instant, open his eyes and look at
us, as Hans does, and tell us where mother’s guilders went, I would not
care for the rest. Yes, I would care; I don’t want the poor father to
die, to be all blue and cold like Annie Bouman’s little sister. I KNOW I
don’t. Dear God, I don’t want Father to die.

Her thoughts merged into a prayer. When it ended the poor child scarcely
knew. Soon she found herself watching a little pulse of light at the
side of the fire, beating faintly but steadily, showing that somewhere
in the dark pile there was warmth and light that would overspread it
at last. A large earthen cup filled with burning peat stood near the
bedside; Gretel had placed it there to “stop the father’s shivering,”
 she said. She watched it as it sent a glow around the mother’s form,
tipping her faded skirt with light and shedding a sort of newness over
the threadbare bodice. It was a relief to Gretel to see the lines in
that weary face soften as the firelight flickered gently across it.

Next she counted the windowpanes, broken and patched as they were, and
finally, after tracing every crack and seam in the walls, fixed her gaze
upon a carved shelf made by Hans. The shelf hung as high as Gretel
could reach. It held a large leather-covered Bible with brass clasps, a
wedding present to Dame Brinker from the family at Heidelberg.

Ah, how handy Hans is! If he were here, he could turn the father some
way so the moans would stop. Dear, dear! If this sickness lasts,
we shall never skate anymore. I must send my new skates back to the
beautiful lady. Hans and I will not see the race. And Gretel’s eyes,
that had been dry before, grew full of tears.

“Never cry, child,” said her mother soothingly. “This sickness may not
be as bad as we think. The father has lain this way before.”

Gretel sobbed now.

“Oh, mother, it is not that alone--you do not know all. I am very, very
bad and wicked!”

“YOU, Gretel! you so patient and good!” and a bright, puzzled look
beamed for an instant upon the child. “Hush, lovey, you’ll wake him.”

Gretel hid her face in her mother’s lap and tried not to cry.

Her little hand, so thin and brown, lay in the coarse palm of her
mother’s, creased with many a hard day’s work. Rychie would have
shuddered to touch either, yet they pressed warmly upon each other.
Soon Gretel looked up with that dull, homely look which, they say, poor
children in shanties are apt to have, and said in a trembling voice,
“The father tried to burn you--he did--I saw him, and he was LAUGHING!”

“Hush, child!”

The mother’s words came so suddenly and sharply that Raff Brinker, dead
as he was to all that was passing around him, twitched slightly upon the
bed.

Gretel said no more but plucked drearily at the jagged edge of a hole
in her mother’s holiday gown. It had been burned there. Well for Dame
Brinker that the gown was woolen.




Haarlem--The Boys Hear Voices



Refreshed and rested, our boys came forth from the coffeehouse just
as the big clock in the square, after the manner of certain Holland
timekeepers, was striking two with its half-hour bell for half-past two.

The captain was absorbed in thought, at first, for Hans Brinker’s sad
story still echoed in his ears. Not until Ludwig rebuked him with a
laughing “Wake up, grandfather!” did he reassume his position as gallant
boy-leader of his band.

“Ahem! this way, young gentlemen!”

They were walking through the city, not on a curbed sidewalk, for such
a thing is rarely to be found in Holland, but on the brick pavement that
lay on the borders of the cobblestone carriage-way without breaking its
level expanse.

Haarlem, like Amsterdam, was gayer than usual, in honor of Saint
Nicholas.

A strange figure was approaching them. It was a small man dressed in
black, with a short cloak. He wore a wig and a cocked hat from which a
long crepe streamer was flying.

“Who comes here?” cried Ben. “What a queer-looking object.”

“That’s the aanspreeker,” said Lambert. “Someone is dead.”

“Is that the way men dress in mourning in this country?”

“Oh, no! The aanspreeker attends funerals, and it is his business, when
anyone dies, to notify all the friends and relatives.”

“What a strange custom.”

“Well,” said Lambert, “we needn’t feel very badly about this particular
death, for I see another man has lately been born to the world to fill
up the vacant place.”

Ben stared. “How do you know that?”

“Don’t you see that pretty red pincushion hanging on yonder door?” asked
Lambert in return.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s a boy.”

“A boy! What do you mean?”

“I mean that here in Haarlem, whenever a boy is born, the parents have a
red pincushion put out at the door. If our young friend had been a girl
instead of a boy, the cushion would have been white. In some places they
have much more fanciful affairs, all trimmed with lace, and even among
the very poorest houses you will see a bit of ribbon or even a string
tied on the door latch--”

“Look!” screamed Ben. “There IS a white cushion at the door of that
double-joined house with the funny roof.”

“I don’t see any house with a funny roof.”

“Oh, of course not,” said Ben. “I forgot you’re a native, but all the
roofs are queer to me, for that matter. I mean the house next to that
green building.”

“True enough, there’s a girl! I tell you what, captain,” called out
Lambert, slipping easily into Dutch, “we must get out of this street
as soon as possible. It’s full of babies! They’ll set up a squall in a
moment.”

The captain laughed. “I shall take you to hear better music than that,”
 he said. “We are just in time to hear the organ of Saint Bavon. The
church is open today.”

“What, the great Haarlem organ?” asked Ben. “That will be a treat
indeed. I have often read of it, with its tremendous pipes, and its vox
humana *{An organ stop which produces an effect resembling the human
voice.} that sounds like a giant singing.”

“The same,” answered Lambert van Mounen.

Peter was right. The church was open, though not for religious services.
Someone was playing upon the organ. As the boys entered, a swell of
sound rushed forth to meet them. It seemed to bear them, one by one,
into the shadows of the building.

Louder and louder it grew until it became like the din and roar of some
mighty tempest, or like the ocean surging upon the shore. In the midst
of the tumult a tinkling bell was heard; another answered, then another,
and the storm paused as if to listen. The bells grew bolder; they rang
out loud and clear. Other deep-toned bells joined in; they were tolling
in solemn concert--ding, dong! ding, dong! The storm broke forth with
redoubled fury, gathering its distant thunder. The boys looked at each
other but did not speak. It was growing serious. What was that? WHO
screamed? WHAT screamed--that terrible, musical scream? Was it man or
demon? Or was it some monster shut up behind that carved brass frame,
behind those great silver columns--some despairing monster begging,
screaming for freedom! it was the vox humana!

At last an answer came--soft, tender, loving, like a mother’s song. The
storm grew silent; hidden birds sprang forth filling the air with glad,
ecstatic music, rising higher and higher until the last faint note was
lost in the distance.

The vox humana was stilled, but in the glorious hymn of thanksgiving
that now arose, one could almost hear the throbbing of a human heart.
What did it mean? That man’s imploring cry should in time be met with a
deep content? That gratitude would give us freedom? To Peter and Ben
it seemed that the angels were singing. Their eyes grew dim, and their
souls dizzy with a strange joy. At last, as if borne upward by invisible
hands, they were floating away on the music, all fatigue forgotten, and
with no wish but to hear forever those beautiful sounds, when suddenly
Van Holp’s sleeve was pulled impatiently and a gruff voice beside him
asked, “How long are you going to stay here, captain, blinking at the
ceiling like a sick rabbit? It’s high time we started.”

“Hush!” whispered Peter, only half aroused.

“Come, man! Let’s go,” said Carl, giving the sleeve a second pull.

Peter turned reluctantly. He would not detain the boys against their
will. All but Ben were casting rather reproachful glances upon him.

“Well, boys,” he whispered, “we will go. Softly now.”

“That’s the greatest thing I’ve seen or heard since I’ve bee in
Holland!” cried Ben enthusiastically, as soon as they reached the open
air. “It’s glorious!”

Ludwig and Carl laughed slyly at the English boy’s wartaal, or
gibberish. Jacob yawned, and Peter gave Ben a look that made him
instantly feel that he and Peter were not so very different after all,
though one hailed from Holland and the other from England. And Lambert,
the interpreter, responded with a brisk “You may well say so. I believe
there are one or two organs nowadays that are said to be as fine; but
for years and years this organ of Saint Bavon was the grandest in the
world.”

“Do you know how large it is?” asked Ben. “I noticed that the church
itself was prodigiously high and that the organ filled the end of the
great aisle almost from floor to roof.”

“That’s true,” said Lambert, “and how superb the pipes looked--just like
grand columns of silver. They’re only for show, you know. The REAL pipes
are behind them, some big enough for a man to crawl through, and some
smaller than a baby’s whistle. Well, sir, for size, the church is higher
than Westminster Abbey, to begin with, and, as you say, the organ makes
a tremendous show even then. Father told me last night that it is one
hundred and eight feet high, fifty feet wide, and has over five thousand
pipes. It has sixty-four stops--if you know what they are, I don’t--and
three keyboards.”

“Good for you!” said Ben. “You have a fine memory. MY head is a perfect
colander for figures. They slip through as fast as they’re poured
in. But other facts and historical events stay behind--that’s some
consolation.”

“There we differ,” returned Van Mounen. “I’m great on names and figures,
but history, take it altogether, seems to me to be the most hopeless
kind of jumble.”

Meantime Carl and Ludwig were having a discussion concerning some square
wooden monuments they had observed in the interior of the church. Ludwig
declared that each bore the name of the person buried beneath, and
Carl insisted that they had no names but only the heraldic arms of the
deceased painted on a black ground, with the date of the death in gilt
letters.

“I ought to know,” said Carl, “for I walked across to the east side, to
look for the cannonball Mother told me was embedded there. It was fired
into the church, in the year fifteen hundred and something, by those
rascally Spaniards, while the services were going on. There it was
in the wall, sure enough, and while I was walking back, I noticed the
monuments. I tell you, they haven’t the sign of a name on them.”

“Ask Peter,” said Ludwig, only half convinced.

“Carl is right,” replied Peter, who, though conversing with Jacob, had
overheard their dispute. “Well, Jacob, as I was saying, Handel, the
great composer, chanced to visit Haarlem and, of course, he at once
hunted up this famous organ. He gained admittance and was playing upon
it with all his might when the regular organist chanced to enter the
building. The man stood awestruck. He was a good player himself, but he
had never heard such music before. ‘Who is there?’ he cried. ‘If it is
not an angel or the devil, it must be Handel!’ When he discovered that
it WAS the great musician, he was still more mystified! ‘But how is
this?’ he said. ‘You have done impossible things--no ten fingers on
earth can play the passages you have given. Human fingers couldn’t
control all the keys and stops!’ ‘I know it,’ said Handel coolly, ‘and
for that reason, I was forced to strike some notes with the end of my
nose.’ Donder! just think how the old organist must have stared!”

“Hey! What?” exclaimed Jacob, startled when Peter’s animated voice
suddenly became silent.

“Haven’t you heard me, you rascal?” was the indignant rejoinder.

“Oh, yes--no. The fact is, I heard you at first. I’m awake now, but I do
believe I’ve been walking beside you half asleep,” stammered Jacob, with
such a doleful, bewildered look on his face that Peter could not help
laughing.




The Man With Four Heads



After leaving the church, the boys stopped nearby in the open
marketplace, to look at the bronze statue of Laurens Janszoon Coster,
who is believed by the Dutch to have been the inventor of printing. This
is disputed by those who award the same honor to Johannes Gutenberg of
Mayence; while many maintain that Faustus, a servant of Coster, stole
his master’s wooden types on a Christmas eve, when the latter was at
church, and fled with his booty and his secret, to Mayence. Coster was
a native of Haarlem, and the Hollanders are naturally anxious to secure
the credit of the invention for their illustrious townsman. Certain it
is that the first book he printed is kept by the city in a silver case
wrapped in silk and is shown with great caution as a precious relic. It
is said that he first conceived the idea of printing from cutting his
name upon the bark of a tree and afterward pressing a piece of paper
upon the characters.

Of course, Lambert and his English friend fully discussed this subject.
They also had a rather warm argument concerning another invention.
Lambert declared that the honor of giving both the telescope and the
microscope to the world lay between Metius and Jansen, both Hollanders,
while Ben as stoutly insisted that Roger Bacon, an English monk of
the thirteenth century, “wrote out the whole thing, sir, perfect
descriptions of microscopes and telescopes, too, long before either of
those other fellows was born.”

On one subject, however, they both agreed: that the art of curing and
pickling herrings was discovered by William Beukles of Holland, and
that the country did perfectly right in honoring him as a national
benefactor, for its wealth and importance had been in a great measure
due to its herring trade.

“It is astonishing,” said Ben, “in what prodigious quantities those fish
are found. I don’t know how it is here, but on the coast of England, off
Yarmouth, the herring shoals have been known to be six and seven feet
deep with fish.”

“That is prodigious, indeed,” said Lambert, “but you know your herring
is derived from the German heer, an army, on account of a way the fish
have of coming in large numbers.”

Soon afterward, while passing a cobbler’s shop, Ben exclaimed, “Halloo!
Lambert, here is the name of one of your greatest men over a cobbler’s
stall! Boerhaave. If it were only Herman Boerhaave instead of Hendrick,
it would be complete.”

Lambert knit his brows reflectively, as he replied, “Boerhaave,
Boerhaave! The name is perfectly familiar; I remember, too, that he was
born in 1668, but the rest is all gone, as usual. There have been so
many famous Hollanders, you see, that it is impossible for a fellow to
know them all. What was he? Did he have two heads? Or was he one of your
great, natural swimmers like Marco Polo?”

“He had FOUR heads,” answered Ben, laughing, “for he was a great
physician, naturalist, botanist, and chemist. I am full of him just now,
for I read his life a few weeks ago.”

“Pour out a little, then,” said Lambert, “only walk faster or we shall
lose sight of the other boys.”

“Well,” resumed Ben, quickening his pace and looking with great interest
at everything going on in the crowded street, “this Dr. Boerhaave was a
great anspewker.”

“A great WHAT?” roared Lambert.

“Oh, I beg pardon. I was thinking of that man over there with the cocked
hat. He’s an anspewker, isn’t he?”

“Yes. He’s an aanspreeker, if that is what you mean to say. But what
about your friend with the four heads?”

“Well, as I was going to say, the doctor was left a penniless orphan at
sixteen without education or friends--”

“Jolly beginning!” interposed Lambert.

“Now, don’t interrupt. He was a poor friendless orphan at sixteen, but
he was so persevering and industrious, so determined to gain knowledge,
that he made his way, and in time became one of the most learned men of
Europe. All the--what is that?”

“Where? What do you mean?”

“Why, that paper on the door opposite. Don’t you see? Two or three
persons are reading it. I have noticed several of these papers since
I’ve been here.”

“Oh, that’s only a health bulletin. Somebody in the house is ill, and
to prevent a steady knocking at the door, the family write an account of
the patient’s condition on a placard and hang it outside the door, for
the benefit of inquiring friends--a very sensible custom, I’m sure.
Nothing strange about it that I can see. Go on, please. You said, ‘All
the’--and there you left me hanging.”

“I was going to say,” resumed Ben, “that all the--all the--how comically
persons do dress here, to be sure! Just look at those men and women with
their sugarloaf hats. And see this woman ahead of us with a straw bonnet
like a scoop shovel tapering to a point in the back. Did ever you see
anything so funny? And those tremendous wooden shoes, too--I declare,
she’s a beauty?”

“Oh, they are only back-country folk,” said Lambert, rather impatiently.
“You might as well let old Boerhaave drop or else shut your eyes.”

“Ha! ha! Well, I was GOING to say, all the big men of his day sought out
this great professor. Even Peter the Great, when he came over to Holland
from Russia to learn shipbuilding, attended his lectures regularly. By
that time Boerhaave was professor of medicine and chemistry and botany
in the University at Leyden. He had grown to be very wealthy as a
practicing physician, but he used to say that the poor were his best
patients because God would be their paymaster. All Europe learned
to love and honor him. In short, he became so famous that a certain
mandarin of China addressed a letter to ‘the illustrious Boerhaave,
physician in Europe,’ and the letter found its way to him without any
difficulty.”

“My goodness! That is what I call being a public character. The boys
have stopped. How now, Captain van Holp, where next?”

“We propose to move on,” said Van Holp. “There is nothing to see at this
season in the Bosch. The Bosch is a noble wood, Benjamin, a grand
park where they have most magnificent trees, protected by law. Do you
understand?”

“Ya!” nodded Ben as the captain proceeded.

“Unless you all desire to visit the Museum of Natural History, we may
go on the grand canal again. If we had more time it would be pleasant to
take Benjamin up the Blue Stairs.”

“What are the Blue Stairs, Lambert?” asked Ben.

“They are the highest point of the Dunes. You have a grand view of the
ocean from there, besides a fine chance to see how wonderful these dunes
are. One can hardly believe that the wind could ever heap up sand in so
remarkable a way. But we have to go through Bloemendal to get there, not
a very pretty village, and some distance from here. What do you say?”

“Oh, I am ready for anything. For my part, I would rather steer direct
for Leyden, but we’ll do as the captain says--hey, Jacob?”

“Ya, dat ish goot,” said Jacob, who felt decidedly more like taking a
nap than ascending the Blue Stairs.

The captain was in favor of going to Leyden.

“It’s four long miles from here. Full sixteen of your English miles,
Benjamin. We have no time to lose if you wish to reach there before
midnight. Decide quickly, boys--Blue Stairs or Leyden?”

“Leyden,” they answered, and were out of Haarlem in a twinkling,
admiring the lofty, towerlike windmills and pretty country seats as they
left the city behind them.

“If you really wish to see Haarlem,” said Lambert to Ben, after they
had skated awhile in silence, “you should visit it in summer. It is the
greatest place in the world for beautiful flowers. The walks around the
city are superb; and the ‘wood’ with its miles of noble elms, all in
full feather, is something to remember. You need not smile, old fellow,
at my saying ‘full feather.’ I was thinking of waving plumes and got
my words mixed up a little. But a Dutch elm beats everything; it is the
noblest tree on earth, Ben--if you except the English oak.”

“Aye,” said Ben solemnly, “IF you except the English oak.” And for some
moments he could scarcely see the canal because Robby and Jenny kept
bobbing in the air before his eyes.




Friends in Need



In the meantime, the other boys were listening to Peter’s account of an
incident which had occurred long ago *{Sir Thomas Carr’s tour through
Holland.} in a part of the city where stood an ancient castle, whose
lord had tyrannized over the burghers of the town to such an extent
that they surrounded his castle and laid siege to it. Just at the last
extremity, when the haughty lord felt that he could hold out no longer
and was prepared to sell his life as dearly as possible, his lady
appeared on the ramparts and offered to surrender everything, provided
she was permitted to bring out, and retain, as much of her most precious
household goods as she could carry upon her back. The promise was given,
and the lady came forth from the gateway, bearing her husband upon
her shoulders. The burghers’ pledge preserved him from the fury of the
troops but left them free to wreak their vengeance upon the castle.

“Do you BELIEVE that story, Captain Peter?” asked Carl in an incredulous
tone.

“Of course, I do. It is historical. Why should I doubt it?”

“Simply because no woman could do it--and if she could, she wouldn’t.
That is my opinion.”

“And I believe that there are many who WOULD. That is, to save those
they really cared for,” said Ludwig.

Jacob, who in spite of his fat and sleepiness was of rather a
sentimental turn, had listened with deep interest.

“That is right, little fellow,” he said, nodding his head approvingly.
“I believe every word of it. I shall never marry a woman who would not
be glad to do as much for ME.”

“Heaven help her!” cried Carl, turning to gaze at the speaker. “Why,
Poot, three MEN couldn’t do it!”

“Perhaps not,” said Jacob quietly, feeling that he had asked rather too
much of the future Mrs. Poot. “But she must be WILLING, that is all.”

“Aye,” responded Peter’s cheery voice, “willing heart makes nimble
foot--and who knows, but it may make strong arms also.”

“Pete,” asked Ludwig, changing the subject, “did you tell me last night
that the painter Wouwerman was born in Haarlem?”

“Yes, and Jacob Ruysdael and Berghem too. I like Berghem because he
was always good-natured. They say he always sang while he painted, and
though he died nearly two hundred years ago, there are traditions still
afloat concerning his pleasant laugh. He was a great painter, and he had
a wife as cross as Xantippe.”

“They balanced each other finely,” said Ludwig. “He was kind and she
was cross. But, Peter, before I forget it, wasn’t that picture of Saint
Hubert and the horse painted by Wouwerman? You remember, Father showed
us an engraving from it last night.”

“Yes, indeed. There is a story connected with that picture.”

“Tell us!” cried two or three, drawing closer to Peter as they skated
on.

“Wouwerman,” began the captain oratorically, “was born in 1620, just
four years before Berghem. He was a master of his art and especially
excelled in painting horses. Strange as it may seem, people were so long
finding out his merits that, even after he had arrived at the height
of his excellence, he was obliged to sell his pictures for very paltry
prices. The poor artist became completely discouraged, and, worst of
all, was over head and ears in debt. One day he was talking over
his troubles with his father-confessor, who was one of the few
who recognized his genius. The priest determined to assist him and
accordingly lent him six hundred guilders, advising him at the same time
to demand a better price for his pictures. Wouwerman did so, and in the
meantime paid his debts. Matters brightened with him at once. Everybody
appreciated the great artist who painted such costly pictures. He grew
rich. The six hundred guilders were returned, and in gratitude Wouwerman
sent also a work which he had painted, representing his benefactor as
Saint Hubert kneeling before his horse--the very picture, Ludwig, of
which we were speaking last night.”

“So! so!” exclaimed Ludwig, with deep interest. “I must take another
look at the engraving as soon as we get home.”


At that same hour, while Ben was skating with his companions beside the
Holland dike, Robby and Jenny stood in their pretty English schoolhouse,
ready to join in the duties of their reading class.

“Commence! Master Robert Dobbs,” said the teacher, “page 242. Now, sir,
mind every stop.”

And Robby, in a quick childish voice, roared forth at schoolroom pitch,
“Lesson 62. The Hero of Haarlem. Many years ago, there lived in Haarlem,
one of the principal cities of Holland, a sunny-haired boy of gentle
disposition. His father was a sluicer, that is, a man whose business it
was to open and close the sluices, or large oaken gates, that are placed
at regular distances across the entrances of the canals, to regulate the
amount of water that shall flow into them.

“The sluicer raises the gates more or less according to the quantity of
water required, and closes them carefully at night, in order to avoid
all possible danger of an oversupply running into the canal, or the
water would soon overflow it and inundate the surrounding country. As a
great portion of Holland is lower than the level of the sea, the waters
are kept from flooding the land only by means of strong dikes, or
barriers, and by means of these sluices, which are often strained to the
utmost by the pressure of the rising tides. Even the little children in
Holland know that constant watchfulness is required to keep the rivers
and ocean from overwhelming the country, and that a moment’s neglect of
the sluicer’s duty may bring ruin and death to all.”

“Very good,” said the teacher. “Now, Susan.”

“One lovely autumn afternoon, when the boy was about eight years old,
he obtained his parents’ consent to carry some cakes to a blind man
who lived out in the country, on the other side of the dike. The little
fellow started on his errand with a light heart, and having spent an
hour with his grateful old friend, he bade him farewell and started on
his homeward walk.

“Trudging stoutly along the canal, he noticed how the autumn rains had
swollen the waters. Even while humming his careless, childish song, he
thought of his father’s brave old gates and felt glad of their strength,
for, thought he, ‘If THEY gave way, where would Father and Mother be?
These pretty fields would all be covered with the angry waters--Father
always calls them the ANGRY waters. I suppose he thinks they are mad at
him for keeping them out so long.’ And with these thoughts just flitting
across his brain, the little fellow stooped to pick the pretty flowers
that grew along his way. Sometimes he stopped to throw some feathery
seed ball in the air and watch it as it floated away; sometimes he
listened to the stealthy rustling of a rabbit, speeding through the
grass, but oftener he smiled as he recalled the happy light he had seen
arise on the weary, listening face of his blind old friend.”

“Now, Henry,” said the teacher, nodding to the next little reader.

“Suddenly the boy looked around him in dismay. He had not noticed that
the sun was setting. Now he saw that his long shadow on the grass had
vanished. It was growing dark, he was still some distance from home, and
in a lonely ravine, where even the blue flowers had turned to gray.
He quickened his footsteps and, with a beating heart recalled many
a nursery tale of children belated in dreary forests. Just as he was
bracing himself for a run, he was startled by the sound of trickling
water. Whence did it come? He looked up and saw a small hole in the
dike through which a tiny stream was flowing. Any child in Holland will
shudder at the thought of A LEAK IN THE DIKE! The boy understood the
danger at a glance. That little hole, if the water were allowed to
trickle through, would soon be a large one, and a terrible inundation
would be the result.

“Quick as a flash, he saw his duty. Throwing away his flowers, the boy
clambered up the heights until he reached the hole. His chubby little
finger was thrust in, almost before he knew it. The flowing was stopped!
Ah! he thought, with a chuckle of boyish delight, the angry waters must
stay back now! Haarlem shall not be drowned while I am here!

“This was all very well at first, but the night was falling rapidly.
Chill vapors filled the air. Our little hero began to tremble with cold
and dread. He shouted loudly; he screamed, ‘Come here! come here!’ but
no one came. The cold grew more intense, a numbness, commencing in the
tired little finger, crept over his hand and arm, and soon his whole
body was filled with pain. He shouted again, ‘Will no one come? Mother!
Mother!’ Alas, his mother, good, practical soul, had already locked the
doors and had fully resolved to scold him on the morrow for spending
the night with blind Jansen without her permission. He tried to whistle.
Perhaps some straggling boy might heed the signal, but his teeth
chattered so, it was impossible. Then he called on God for help. And
the answer came, through a holy resolution: ‘I will stay here till
morning.’”

“Now, Jenny Dobbs,” said the teacher. Jenny’s eyes were glistening, but
she took a long breath and commenced.

“The midnight moon looked down upon that small, solitary form, sitting
upon a stone, halfway up the dike. His head was bent but he was not
asleep, for every now and then one restless hand rubbed feebly the
outstretched arm that seemed fastened to the dike--and often the pale,
tearful face turned quickly at some real or fancied sounds.

“How can we know the sufferings of that long and fearful watch--what
falterings of purpose, what childish terrors came over the boy as he
thought of the warm little bed at home, of his parents, his brothers and
sisters, then looked into the cold, dreary night! If he drew away that
tiny finger, the angry waters, grown angrier still, would rush forth,
and never stop until they had swept over the town. No, he would hold it
there till daylight--if he lived! He was not very sure of living. What
did this strange buzzing mean? And then the knives that seemed pricking
and piercing him from head to foot? He was not certain now that he could
draw his finger away, even if he wished to.

“At daybreak a clergyman, returning from the bedside of a sick
parishioner, thought he heard groans as he walked along on the top of
the dike. Bending, he saw, far down on the side, a child apparently
writhing with pain.

“‘In the name of wonder, boy,’ he exclaimed, ‘what are you doing there?’

“‘I am keeping the water from running out,’ was the simple answer of the
little hero. ‘Tell them to come quick.’

“It is needless to add that they did come quickly and that--”

“Jenny Dobbs,” said the teacher, rather impatiently, “if you cannot
control your feelings so as to read distinctly, we will wait until you
recover yourself.”

“Yes, sir!” said Jenny, quite startled.


It was strange, but at that very moment, Ben, far over the sea, was
saying to Lambert, “The noble little fellow! I have frequently met with
an account of the incident, but I never knew, till now, that it was
really true.”

“True! Of course it is,” said Lambert. “I have given you the story just
as Mother told it to me, years ago. Why, there is not a child in Holland
who does not know it. And, Ben, you may not think so, but that little
boy represents the spirit of the whole country. Not a leak can show
itself anywhere either in its politics, honor, or public safety, that a
million fingers are not ready to stop it, at any cost.”

“Whew!” cried Master Ben. “Big talking that!”

“It’s true talk anyway,” rejoined Lambert, so very quietly that Ben
wisely resolved to make no further comment.




On the Canal



The skating season had commenced unusually early; our boys were by no
means alone upon the ice. The afternoon was so fine that men, women, and
children, bent upon enjoying the holiday, had flocked to the grand canal
from far and near. Saint Nicholas had evidently remembered the favorite
pastime; shining new skates were everywhere to be seen. Whole families
were skimming their way to Haarlem or Leyden or the neighboring
villages. The ice seemed fairly alive. Men noticed the erect, easy
carriage of women, and their picturesque variety of costume. There were
the latest fashions, fresh from Paris, floating past dingy, moth-eaten
garments that had seen service through two generations; coal-scuttle
bonnets perched over freckled faces bright with holiday smiles; stiff
muslin caps with wings at the sides, flapping beside cheeks rosy with
health and contentment; furs, too, encircling the whitest of throats;
and scanty garments fluttering below faces ruddy with exercise. In
short, every quaint and comical mixture of dry goods and flesh that
Holland could furnish seemed sent to enliven the scene.

There were belles from Leyden, and fishwives from the border villages;
cheese women from Gouda, and prim matrons from beautiful country seats
on the Haarlemmer Meer. Gray-headed skaters were constantly to be seen;
wrinkled old women with baskets upon their heads, and plump little
toddlers on skates clutching at their mothers’ gowns. Some women carried
their babies upon their backs, firmly secured with a bright shawl. The
effect was pretty and graceful as they darted by or sailed slowly past,
now nodding to an acquaintance, now chirruping and throwing soft baby
talk to the muffled little ones they carried.

Boys and girls were chasing each other and hiding behind the one-horse
sleds that, loaded high with peat or timber, pursued their cautious
way along the track marked out as “safe.” Beautiful, queenly women were
there, enjoyment sparkling in their quiet eyes. Sometimes a long file
of young men, each grasping the coat of the one before him, flew by with
electric speed; and sometimes the ice squeaked under the chair of some
gorgeous old dowager, or rich burgomaster’s lady, who, very red in the
nose and sharp in the eyes, looked like a scare-thaw invented by old
Father Winter for the protection of his skating grounds. The chair would
be heavy with foot stoves and cushions, to say nothing of the old lady.
Mounted upon shining runners, it slid along, pushed by the sleepiest of
servants, who, looking neither to the right nor the left, bent himself
to his task while she cast direful glances upon the screaming little
rowdies who invariably acted as bodyguard.

As for the men, they were pictures of placid enjoyment. Some were
attired in ordinary citizen’s dress, but many looked odd enough with
their short woolen coats, wide breeches, and big silver buckles. These
seemed to Ben like little boys who had, by a miracle, sprung suddenly
into manhood and were forced to wear garments that their astonished
mothers had altered in a hurry. He noticed, too, that nearly all the
men had pipes as they passed him, whizzing and smoking like so many
locomotives. There was every variety of pipes, from those of common clay
to the most expensive meerschaums mounted in silver and gold. Some were
carved into extraordinary and fantastic shapes, representing birds,
flowers, heads, bugs, and dozens of other things; some resembled the
“Dutchman’s pipe” that grows in our American woods; some were red and
many were of a pure, snowy white; but the most respectable were those
which were ripening into a shaded brown. The deeper and richer the
brown, of course, the more honored the pipe, for it was proof that the
owner, if honestly shading it, was deliberately devoting his manhood
to the effort. What pipe would not be proud to be the object of such a
sacrifice!

For a while Ben skated on in silence. There was so much to engage his
attention that he almost forgot his companions. Part of the time he had
been watching the iceboats as they flew over the great Haarlemmer Meer
(or lake), the frozen surface of which was now plainly visible from the
canal. These boats had very large sails, much larger, in proportion,
than those of ordinary vessels, and were set upon a triangular frame
furnished with an iron “runner” at each corner--the widest part of the
triangle crossing the bow, and its point stretching beyond the stem.
They had rudders for guiding and brakes for arresting their progress and
were of all sizes and kinds, from small, rough affairs managed by a boy,
to large and beautiful ones filled with gay pleasure parties and manned
by competent sailors, who, smoking their stumpy pipes, reefed and tacked
and steered with great solemnity and precision.

Some of the boats were painted and gilded in gaudy style and flaunted
gay pennons from their mastheads; others, white as snow, with every
spotless sail rounded by the wind, looked like swans borne onward by a
resistless current. It seemed to Ben as, following his fancy, he watched
one of these in the distance, that he could almost hear its helpless,
terrified cry, but he soon found that the sound arose from a nearer and
less romantic cause--from an iceboat not fifty yards from him, using its
brakes to avoid a collision with a peat sled.

It was a rare thing for these boats to be upon the canal, and their
appearance generally caused no little excitement among skaters,
especially among the timid; but today every iceboat in the country
seemed afloat or rather aslide, and the canal had its full share.

Ben, though delighted at the sight, was often startled at the swift
approach of the resistless, high-winged things threatening to dart in
any and every possible direction. It required all his energies to keep
out of the way of the passersby and to prevent those screaming little
urchins from upsetting him with their sleds. Once he halted to watch
some boys who were making a hole in the ice preparatory to using their
fishing spears. Just as he concluded to start again, he found himself
suddenly bumped into an old lady’s lap. Her push-chair had come upon him
from the rear. The old lady screamed; the servant who was propelling her
gave a warning hiss. In another instant Ben found himself apologizing to
empty air. The indignant old lady was far ahead.

This was a slight mishap compared with one that now threatened him.
A huge iceboat, under full sail, came tearing down the canal, almost
paralyzing Ben with the thought of instant destruction. It was close
upon him! He saw its gilded prow, heard the schipper *{Skipper. Master
of a small trading vessel--a pleasure boat or iceboat.} shout, felt the
great boom fairly whiz over his head, was blind, deaf, and dumb all in
an instant, then opened his eyes to find himself spinning some yards
behind its great skatelike rudder. It had passed within an inch of his
shoulder, but he was safe! Safe to see England again, safe to kiss
the dear faces that for an instant had flashed before him one by
one--Father, Mother, Robby, and Jenny--that great boom had dashed their
images into his very soul. He knew now how much he loved them. Perhaps
this knowledge made him face complacently the scowls of those on the
canal who seemed to feel that a boy in danger was necessarily a BAD boy
needing instant reprimand.

Lambert chided him roundly.

“I thought it was all over with you, you careless fellow! Why don’t
you look where you are going? Not content with sitting on all the old
ladies’ laps, you must make a Juggernaut of every iceboat that comes
along. We shall have to hand you over to the aanspreekers yet, if you
don’t look out!”

“Please don’t,” said Ben with mock humility, then seeing how pale
Lambert’s lips were, he added in a low tone, “I do believe I THOUGHT
more in that one moment, Van Mounen, than in all the rest of my past
life.”

There was no reply, and, for a while, the two boys skated on in silence.

Soon a faint sound of distant bells reached their ears.

“Hark!” said Ben. “What is that?”

“The carillons,” replied Lambert. “They are trying the bells in the
chapel of yonder village. Ah! Ben, you should hear the chimes of the
‘New Church’ at Delft. They are superb--nearly five hundred sweet-toned
bells, and on of the best carillonneurs of Holland to play upon them.
Hard work, though. They say the fellow often has to go to bed from
positive exhaustion, after his performances. You see, the bells are
attached to a kind of keyboard, something like they have on pianofortes;
there is also a set of pedals for the feet; when a brisk tune is going
on, the player looks like a kicking frog fastened to his seat with a
skewer.”

“For shame,” said Ben indignantly.

Peter had, for the present, exhausted his stock of Haarlem anecdotes,
and now, having nothing to do but skate, he and his three companions
were hastening to catch up with Lambert and Ben.

“That English lad is fleet enough,” said Peter. “If he were a born
Hollander, he could do no better. Generally these John Bulls make but a
sorry figure on skates. Halloo! Here you are, Van Mounen. Why, we hardly
hoped for the honor of meeting you again. Whom were you flying from in
such haste?”

“Snails,” retorted Lambert. “What kept you?”

“We have been talking, and besides, we halted once to give Poot a chance
to rest.”

“He begins to look rather worn-out,” said Lambert in a low voice.

Just then a beautiful iceboat with reefed sail and flying streamers
swept leisurely by. Its deck was filled with children muffled up to
their chins. Looking at them from the ice you could see only smiling
little faces imbedded in bright-colored woolen wrappings. They were
singing a chorus in honor of Saint Nicholas. The music, starting in
the discord of a hundred childish voices, floated, as it rose, into
exquisite harmony:


     “Friend of sailors and of children!
        Double claim have we,
     As in youthful joy we’re sailing,
        O’er a frozen sea!

               Nicholas!  Saint Nicholas!
                  Let us sing to thee!

While through wintry air we’re rushing,   As our voices blend,
Are you near us? Do you hear us,   Nicholas, our friend?

               Nicholas!  Saint Nicholas!
                  Love can never end.

Sunny sparkles, bright before us,   Chase away the cold!
Hearts where sunny thoughts are welcome,   Never can grow old.

               Nicholas!  Saint Nicholas!
                  Never can grow old!

Pretty gift and loving lesson,   Festival and glee,
Bid us thank thee as we’re sailing   O’er the frozen sea.

               Nicholas!  Saint Nicholas!
                  So we sing to thee!




Jacob Poot Changes the Plan



The last note died away in the distance. Our boys, who in their vain
efforts to keep up with the boat had felt that they were skating
backward, turned to look at one another.

“How beautiful that was!” exclaimed Van Mounen.

“Just like a dream!”

Jacob drew close to Ben, giving his usual approving nod, as he spoke.
“Dat ish goot. Dat ish te pest vay. I shay petter to take to Leyden mit
a poat!”

“Take a boat!” exclaimed Ben in dismay. “Why, man, our plan was to
SKATE, not to be carried like little children.”

“Tuyfels!” retorted Jacob. “Dat ish no little--no papies--to go for
poat!”

The boys laughed but exchanged uneasy glances. It would be great fun to
jump on an iceboat, if they had a chance, but to abandon so shamefully
their grand undertaking--who could think of such a thing?

An animated discussion arose at once.

Captain Peter brought his party to a halt.

“Boys,” said he, “it strikes me that we should consult Jacob’s wishes in
this matter. He started the excursion, you know.”

“Pooh!” sneered Carl, throwing a contemptuous glance at Jacob. “Who’s
tired? We can rest all night in Leyden.”

Ludwig and Lambert looked anxious and disappointed. It was no slight
thing to lose the credit of having skated all the way from Broek to
the Hague and back again, but both agreed that Jacob should decide the
question.

Good-natured, tired Jacob! He read the popular sentiment at a glance.

“Oh, no,” he said in Dutch. “I was joking. We will skate, of course.”

The boys gave a delighted shout and started on again with renewed vigor.

All but Jacob. He tried his best not to seem fatigued and, by not saying
a word, saved his breath and energy for the great business of skating.
But in vain. Before long, the stout body grew heavier and heavier--the
tottering limbs weaker and weaker. Worse tha

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