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Title: The Book of Saint Nicholas
Author: Dominie Nicholas Ægedius Oudenarde
Release date: August 14, 2023 [eBook #71404]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Harper & Brothers, 1836
Credits: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF SAINT NICHOLAS ***
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
THE BOOK
OF
SAINT NICHOLAS.
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL DUTCH
OF
DOMINIE NICHOLAS ÆGIDIUS OUDENARDE.
NEW-YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF-ST.
1836.
[Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1836, by
JAMES K. PAULDING,
in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York.]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Dedication 5
Author's Advertisement 7
The Legend of Saint Nicholas 13
The Little Dutch Sentinel of the Manhadoes 33
Cobus Yerks 73
A Strange Bird in Nieuw-Amsterdam 89
Claas Schlaschenschlinger 105
The Revenge of Saint Nicholas 128
The Origin of the Bakers' Dozen 148
The Ghost 167
The Nymph of the Mountain 192
The Ride of Saint Nicholas on Newyear's Eve 206
TO
THE SOCIETIES OF SAINT NICHOLAS
IN THE
NEW NETHERLANDS,
COMMONLY CALLED
NEW-YORK.
MOST DEAR AND WORTHY ASSOCIATES,
In obedience to the command of the good saint who is equally an object
of affectionate reverence to us all, as well as in due deference to the
feelings of brotherhood which attach us irrevocably to those who honour
his name, his virtues, and his country, I dedicate this work to you
all without discrimination or exception. As descendants, in whole or
in part, from that illustrious people who, after conquering nature by
their industry and perseverance, achieved liberty by their determined
valour, and learning and science by their intellectual vigour, I
rejoice to see you instituting bonds of union, for the purpose of
preserving the remembrance of such an honourable lineage, and the ties
of a common origin. While we recollect with honest pride the industry,
the integrity, the enterprise, the love of liberty, and the heroism
of old “_faderland_,” let us not forget that the truest way to honour
worthy ancestors is to emulate their example.
That you may long live to cherish the memory of so excellent a saint,
and such venerable forefathers is the earnest wish of
Your associate and friend,
NICHOLAS ÆGIDIUS OUDENARDE.
Nieuw-Amsterdam, July, 1827.
THE
AUTHOR'S ADVERTISEMENT,
WHICH IS EARNESTLY RECOMMENDED TO THE ATTENTIVE PERUSAL OF THE
JUDICIOUS READER.
You will please to understand, gentle reader, that being a true
descendant of the adventurous Hollanders who first discovered the
renowned island of Manhattan—which is every day becoming more and more
worth its weight in paper money—I have all my life been a sincere and
fervent follower of the right reverend and jolly St. Nicholas, the only
tutelary of this mighty state. I have never, on any proper occasion,
omitted doing honour to his memory by keeping his birthday with all
due observances, and paying him my respectful devoirs on Christmas and
Newyear's eve.
From my youth upward I have been always careful to hang up my stocking
in the chimney corner, on both these memorable anniversaries; and this
I hope I may say without any unbecoming ebullition of vanity, that on
no occasion did I ever fail to receive glorious remembrances of his
favour and countenance, always saving two exceptions. Once when the
good saint signified his displeasure at my tearing up a Dutch almanac,
and again on occasion of my going to a Presbyterian meeting house with
a certain little Dutch damsel, by filling my stockings with snow balls,
instead savoury oily cookies.
Saving these manifestations of his displeasure, I can safely boast
of having been always a special favourite of the good St. Nicholas,
who hath ever shown a singular kindness and suavity towards me in all
seasons of my life, wherein he hath at divers times and seasons of
sore perplexity, more than once vouchsafed to appear to me in dreams
and visions, always giving me sage advice and goodly admonition. The
which never failed of being of great service to me in my progress
through life, seeing I was not only his namesake, but always reverently
honoured his name to the best of my poor abilities.
From my youth upward I have, moreover, been accustomed to call upon
him in time of need; and this I will say for him, that he always
came promptly whenever he was within hearing. I will not detain the
expectant reader with the relation of these special instances, touching
the years of my juvenility, but straightway proceed to that which is
material to my present purpose.
The reader will please to comprehend that after I had, with the labour
and research of many years, completed the tales which I now, with an
humble deference, offer to his acceptance, I was all at once struck
dumb, with the unparalleled difficulty of finding a name for my work,
seeing that every title appertinent to such divertisements hath been
applied over and over again, long and merry agone. Now, as before
intimated to the judicious reader, whenever I am in sore perplexity
of mind, as not unfrequently happens to such as (as it were) cudgel
their brains for the benefit of their fellow-creatures—I say, when thus
beleaguered, I always shut my eyes, lean back in my chair, which is
furnished with a goodly stuffed back and arms, and grope for that which
I require in the profound depths of abstraction.
It was thus I comported myself on this trying occasion, when, lo! and
behold! I incontinently fell asleep, as it were, in the midst of my
cogitations, and while I was fervently praying to the good-hearted St.
Nicholas to inspire me with a proper and significant name for this my
mental offspring. I cannot with certainty say how long I had remained
in the bonds of abstraction, before I was favoured with the appearance
of a vision, which, at first sight, I knew to be that of the excellent
St. Nicholas, who scorns to follow the pestilent fashions of modern
times, but ever appears in the ancient dress of the old patriarchs of
Holland. And here I will describe the good saint, that peradventure all
those to whom he may, in time to come, vouchsafe his presence, may know
him at first sight, even as they know the father that begot them.
He is a right fat, jolly, roistering little fellow— if I may make
bold to call him so familiarly—and had I not known him of old for a
veritable saint, I might, of a truth, have taken him, on this occasion,
for little better than a sinner. He was dressed in a snuff-coloured
coat of goodly conceited dimensions, having broad skirts, cuffs mighty
to behold, and buttons about the size of a moderate Newyear cooky.
His waistcoat and breeches, of which he had a proper number, were
of the same cloth and colour; his hose of gray worsted; his shoes
high-quartered, even up to the instep, ornamented with a pair of silver
buckles, exceedingly bright; his hat was of a low crown and right broad
brim, cocked up on one side; and in the buttonholes of his coat was
ensconced a long delft pipe, almost as black as ebony. His visage was
the picture of good-humoured benevolence; and by these marks I knew him
as well as I know the nose on my own face.
The good saint, being always in a hurry on errands of good fellowship,
and especially about the time of the holydays of Paas and Pinxster;
and being withal a person of little ceremony, addressed me without
delay, and with much frankness, which was all exceedingly proper, as we
were such old friends. He spoke to me in Dutch, which is now a learned
language, understood only by erudite scholars.
“What aileth thee, my Godson Nicholas?” quoth he.
I was about to say I was in sore perplexity concerning the matter
aforesaid, when he courteously interrupted me, saying,
“Be quiet, I know it, and therefore there is no special occasion for
thee to tell me. Thou shalt call thy work ‘THE BOOK OF ST. NICHOLAS,’
in honour of thy _patroon_; and here are the materials of my biography,
which I charge thee, on pain of empty pockets from this time forward,
to dilate and adorn in such a manner, as that, foreseeing, as I do,
thy work will go down to the latest posterity, it may do honour to my
name, and rescue it from that obscurity in which it hath been enveloped
through the crying ignorance of past generations, who have been seduced
into a veneration for St. George, St. Dennis, St. David, and other
doughty dragon-slaying saints, who were little better than roistering
bullies. Moreover, I charge thee, as thou valuest my blessing and
protection, to dedicate thy work unto the worthy and respectable
societies of St. Nicholas in this my stronghold in the New World. Thou
mightst, perhaps, as well have left out that prank of mine at the
carousing of old Baltus, but verily it matters not. Let the truth be
told.”
Saying this, he handed me a roll of ancient vellum, containing, as
I afterwards found, the particulars which, in conformity with his
solemn command, I have dilated into the only veritable biography of my
patron saint which hath ever been given to the world. The one hitherto
received as orthodox is, according to the declaration of the saint
himself, little better than a collection of legends, written under the
express inspection of the old lady of Babylon.
I reverently received the precious deposite, and faithfully promised
obedience to his commands; whereupon the good St. Nicholas, puffing
in my face a whiff of tobacco smoke more fragrant than all the spices
of the East, blessed me, and departed in haste, to be present at a
wedding in Communipaw. Hereupon I awoke, and should have thought all
that had passed but a dream, arising out of the distempered state
of my mind, had I not held in my hand the identical roll of vellum,
presented in the manner just related. On examination, it proved to
contain the matter which is incorporated in the first story of this
collection, under the title of “The Legend of St. Nicholas,” not only
in due obedience to his command, but in order that henceforward no one
may pretend ignorance concerning this illustrious and benevolent saint,
seeing they have now a biography under his own hand.
Thus much have I deemed it proper to preface to the reader, as some
excuse for the freedom of having honoured my poor fictions with the
title of The Book of St. Nicholas, which might otherwise have been
deemed a piece of unchristian presumption.
THE STORY BOOK
OF
SAINT NICHOLAS.
THE LEGEND OF ST. NICHOLAS.
Everybody has heard of St. Nicholas, that honest Dutch saint, whom I
look upon as having been one of the most liberal, good-natured little
fat fellows in the world. But, strange as it may seem, though everybody
has heard, nobody seems to know anything about him. The place of his
birth, the history of his life, and the manner in which he came to
be the dispenser of Newyear cakes, and the patron of good boys, are
matters that have hitherto not been investigated, as they ought to have
been long and long ago. I am about to supply this deficiency, and pay
a debt of honour which is due to this illustrious and obscure tutelary
genius of the jolly Newyear.
It hath often been justly remarked that the birth, parentage, and
education of the most illustrious personages of antiquity, are usually
enveloped in the depths of obscurity. And this obscurity, so far
from being injurious to their dignity and fame, has proved highly
beneficial; for as no one could tell who were their fathers and mothers
on earth, they could the more easily claim kindred with the skies, and
trace their descent from the immortals. Such was the case with Saturn,
Hercules, Bacchus, and others among the heathens; and of St. George,
St. Dennis, St. Andrew, St. Patrick, and the rest of the tutelaries,
of whom—I speak it with great respect and reverence—it may justly be
said, that nobody would ever have heard of their progenitors but for
the renown of their descendants. It is, therefore, no reflection on
the respectable St. Nicholas, that his history has hitherto remained a
secret, and his origin unknown.
In prosecuting this biography, and thus striving to repay my
obligations for divers, and I must say unmerited favours received from
this good saint, after whom I was christened, I shall refrain from all
invention or hyperbole, seeking the truth industriously, and telling it
simply and without reserve or embellishment. I scorn to impose on my
readers with cock and bull stories of his killing dragons, slaughtering
giants, or defeating whole armies of pagans with his single arm. St.
Nicholas was a peaceful, quiet, orderly saint, who, so far as I have
been able to learn, never shed a drop of blood in his whole life,
except, peradventure, it may be possible he sometimes cut his finger,
of which I profess to know nothing, and, therefore, contrary to the
custom of biographers, shall say nothing.
St. Nicholas was born—and that is all I can tell of the matter—on the
first of January; but in what year or at what place, are facts which I
have not been able to ascertain, although I have investigated them with
the most scrupulous accuracy. His obscurity would enable me to give him
a king and queen for his parents, whereby he might be able to hold up
his head with the best of them all; but, as I before observed, I scorn
to impose such doubtful, to say no worse, legends upon my readers.
Nothing is known of his early youth, except that it hath come down
to us that his mother dreamed, the night before his birth, that the
sun was changed into a vast Newyear cake and the stars into _oily
cooks_—which she concluded was the reason they burned so bright. It
hath been shrewdly intimated by certain would-be antiquaries, who
doubtless wanted to appear wiser than they really were, that because
our worthy saint was called Nicholas, that must of course have been
the name of his father. But I set such conjectures at naught, seeing
that if all the sons were called after their fathers, the distinction
of senior and junior would no longer be sufficient, and they would be
obliged to number them as they do in the famous island of Nantucket,
where I hear there are thirty-six Isaac Coffins and sixteen Pelegs.
Now, of the first years of the life of good St. Nicholas, in like
manner, we have been able to learn nothing until he was apprenticed to
a baker in the famous city of Amsterdam, after which this metropolis
was once called, but which my readers doubtless know was christened
over again when the English usurped possession, in the teeth of the
great right of discovery derived from the illustrious navigator,
Henricus Hudson, who was no more an Englishman than I am.
“Whether the youth Nicholas was thus apprenticed to a baker on account
of his mother's dream, or from his great devotion to Newyear cakes,
which may be inferred from the bias of his after life, it is impossible
to tell at this distant period. It is certain, however, that he was so
apprenticed, and that is sufficient to satisfy all reasonable readers.
As for those pestilent, curious, prying people, who want to know the
why and wherefore of everything we refer them to the lives of certain
famous persons, which are so intermingled and confounded with the
lives of their contemporaries, and the events, great and small, which
happened in all parts of the world during their sojourn on the earth,
that it is utterly impossible to say whose life it is we are reading.
Many people of little experience take the title page for a guide, not
knowing, peradventure, they might almost as safely rely upon history
for a knowledge of the events of past ages.
Little Nicholas, our hero, was a merry, sweet-tempered caitiff,
which was, doubtless, somewhat owing to his living almost altogether
upon sweet things. He was marvellously devoted to cakes, and ate up
numberless gingerbread alphabets before he knew a single letter.
Passing over the intermediate years, of which, indeed, I know no more
than the man in the moon, I come to the period when, being twenty-four,
and the term of his apprenticeship almost out, he fell desperately in
love with the daughter of his worthy master, who was a burgomaster of
forty years standing. In those unprecocious times, the boys did not
grow to be men and the girls women, so soon as they do now. It would
have been considered highly indecent for the former to think of falling
in love before they were out of their time, or the latter to set up
for young women before they knew how to be anything else. But as soon
as the worthy Nicholas arrived at the age of twenty-four, being, as
I said, within a year of the expiration of his time, he thought to
himself that Katrinchee, or Catharine, as the English call it, was a
clever, notable little soul, and eminently calculated to make him a
good wife. This was the main point in the times of which I am speaking,
when people actually married without first running mad either for love
or money.
Katrinchee was the toast of all the young bakers of Amsterdam, and
honest Nicholas had as many rivals as there were loaves of bread in
that renowned city. But he was as gallant a little Dutchman as ever
smoked his way through the world pipe foremost, and did not despair
of getting the better of his rivals, especially as he was a great
favourite with the burgomaster, as, indeed, his conduct merited.
Instead of going the vulgar way to work, and sighing and whining
out romance in her ear, he cunningly, being doubtless inspired by
Cupid himself, proceeded to insinuate his passion, and make it known
by degrees, to the pretty little Katrinchee, who was as plump as a
partridge, and had eyes of the colour of a clear sky.
First did he bake a cake in the shape of a heart pierced half through
by a toasting fork, the which he presented her smoking hot, which
she received with a blush and did eat, to the great encouragement of
the worthy Nicholas. A month after, for he did not wish to alarm the
delicacy of the pretty Katrinchee, he did bake another cake in the
shape of two hearts, entwined prettily with a true lover's knot. This,
too, she received with a blush, and did eat with marvellous content.
After the expiration of a like period, he did contrive another cake
in the shape of a letter, on which he had ingeniously engraven the
following couplet:—
“Wer diesen glauben wöhlt hat die vernanft verschworen,
Dem denken abgesaght sein eigentham verlohren.”
The meaning of which, if the reader doth not comprehend, I do hereby
earnestly advise him to set about studying the Dutch language
forthwith, that he may properly appreciate its hidden beauties.
Little Katrinchee read this poesy with a sigh, and rewarded the good
Nicholas with a look which, as he afterward affirmed, would have heated
an oven.
Thus did the sly youth gradually advance himself in the good graces of
the little damsel, until at length he ventured a downright declaration,
in the shape of a cake made in the exact likeness of a little Dutch
Cupid. The acceptance of this was conclusive, and was followed by
permission to address the matter to the decision of the worthy
burgomaster, whose name I regret hath not come down to the present time.
The good man consulted his pipe, and after six months' hard smoking,
came to the conclusion that the thing was feasible. Nicholas was a
well-behaved, industrious lad, and the burgomaster justly concluded
that the possession of virtuous and industrious habits without houses
and lands, was better than houses and lands without them. So he gave
his consent like an honest and ever to be respected magistrate.
The news of the intended marriage spoiled all the bread baked in
Amsterdam that day. The young bakers were so put out that they
forgot to put yeast in their bread, and it was all heavy. But the
hearts of the good Nicholas and his bride were as light as a feather
notwithstanding, and when they were married it was truly said there was
not a handsomer couple in all Amsterdam.
They lived together happily many years, and nothing was wanting to
their felicity but a family of little chubby boys and girls. But it was
ordained that he never should be blessed with any offspring, seeing
that he was predestined to be the patron and benefactor of the children
of others, not of his own. In good time, and in the fullness of years,
the burgomaster died, leaving his fortune and his business to Nicholas,
who had ever been a kind husband to his daughter, and a dutiful son to
himself. Rich and liberal, it was one of the chief pleasures of the
good Nicholas to distribute his cakes, of which he baked the best in
all Amsterdam, to the children of the neighbourhood, who came every
morning, and sometimes in the evening; and Nicholas felt his heart warm
within his bosom when he saw how they ate and laughed, and were as
happy, ay, and happier, too, than so many little kings. The children
all loved him, and so did their fathers and mothers, so that in process
of time he was made a burgomaster, like his father-in-law before him.
Not only did he entertain the jolly little folk of the city in the
manner heretofore described, but his home was open to all travellers
and sojourners who had no other home, as well as those who came
recommended from afar off. In particular the good pilgrims of the
church, who went about preaching and propagating the true faith, by the
which I mean the doctrines of the illustrious reformers in all time
past.
The good Nicholas had, in the latter part of his life, embraced these
doctrines with great peril to himself, for sore were the persecutions
they underwent in those days who departed from the crying abominations
of the ancient church; and had it not been for the good name he had
established in the city of Amsterdam, among all classes, high and low,
rich and poor, he might, peradventure, have suffered at the stake.
But he escaped, as it were, by a miracle, and lived to see the truth
triumph at last even throughout all the land.
But before this came to pass his faithful and affectionate helpmate
had been taken from him by death, sorely to his grief; and he would
have stood alone in the world had it not been for the little children,
now grown up to be men and women, who remembered his former kindness,
and did all they could to console him—for such is ever the reward of
kindness to our fellow-creatures.
One night as he was sitting disconsolate at home, thinking of poor
Katrinchee, and wishing that either she was with him or he with her, he
heard a distant uproar in the street, which seemed approaching nearer
and nearer. He was about to rise and go to the door to see what was
the occasion, when suddenly it was pushed open with some violence, and
a man rushed past him with very little ceremony. He seemed in a great
hurry, for he panted for breath, and it was some time before he could
say,
“I beseech thee to shut the door and hide me, for my life is in danger.”
Nicholas, who never refused to do a good-natured act, did as he was
desired, so far as shutting and barring the door. He then asked,
“What hath endangered thy life, and who art thou, friend, that thou art
thus afraid?”
“Ask me not now, I beseech thee, Nicholas—”
“Thou knowest my name then?” said the other, interrupting him.
“I do—everybody knows thee, and thy kindness of heart. But ask me
nothing now—only hide me for the present, and when the danger is past I
will tell thee all.”
“Thou art no murderer or fugitive from justice?”
“No, on my faith. I am sinned against, but I never injured but one man,
and I was sorry for that. But hark, I hear them coming—wilt thou or
wilt thou not protect me?”
“I will,” said the good Nicholas, who saw in the dignified air and open
countenance of the stranger something that inspired both confidence and
awe. Accordingly he hastily led him into a remote apartment, where he
secreted him in a closet, the door of which could not be distinguished,
and in which he kept his money and valuables, for he said to himself,
I will trust this man, he does not look as if he would abuse my
confidence.
“Take this key and lock thyself in, that thou mayst be able to get out
in case they take me away.”
Presently there was heard a great hallooing and banging at the outward
door, with a cry of “Open! open!” and Nicholas went to the door and
opened it. A flood of people rushed in helter-skelter, demanding the
body of an arch heretic, who, they said, had been seen to take refuge
in the house. But with all their rage and eagerness, they begged his
excuse for this unceremonious proceeding, for Nicholas was beloved and
respected by all, though he was a heretic himself.
“He's here—we saw him enter!” they cried.
“If he is here, find him,” quoth Nicholas, quietly. “I will not say he
is not here, neither would I betray him if he were.”
The interlopers then proceeded to search all parts of the house, except
the secret closet, which escaped their attention. When they had done
this, one of them said.
“We have heard of thy having a secret place in thy house where thy
money and papers are secured. Open it to us—we swear not to molest or
take away aught that is thine.”
The good Nicholas was confounded at this demand, and stood for a moment
not knowing what to say or what to do. The stranger in the closet heard
it too; but he was a stout-hearted man, and trusted in the Lord.
“Where is thy strong closet?” cried one of the fiercest and most
forward of the intruders. “We must and will find it.”
“Well, then, find it,” quoth Nicholas, quietly.
They inspected the room narrowly, and knocked against the walls in
hopes the hollow sound would betray the secret of the place. But they
were disappointed, for the door was so thick that it returned no hollow
sound.
They now began to be impatient, and savage withal, and the ferocious
leader exclaimed,
“Let us take this fellow then. One heretic is as good as another—as bad
I mean.”
“Seize him!” cried one.
“Away with him!” cried another.
“To the stake!” cried a third.
They forgot the ancient kindness of the good man; for bigotry and
over-heated zeal remember not benefits, and pay no respect to the
obligations of gratitude. The good Nicholas was violently seized, his
hands tied behind him, and he was about to be carried away a sacrifice
to the demon of religious discord, when the door of the closet flew
open, and the stranger came forth with a step so firm, a look so lofty
and inspired, that the rabble quailed, and were silent before him.
“Unbind this man,” said he, in a voice of authority, “and bind me in
his stead.”
Not a man stirred. They seemed spell bound, and stood looking at each
other in silent embarrassment.
“Unbind this man, I say!”
Still they remained, as it were, petrified with awe and astonishment.
“Well, then, I shall do it myself,” and he proceeded to release the
good Nicholas from his bonds, while the interlopers remained silent and
motionless.
“Mistaken men!” then said he, looking at them with pity, mingled with
indignation, “you believe yourselves fulfilling the duties of your
faith when you chase those who differ from you about the world, as if
they were wild beasts, and drag them to the stake, like malefactors who
have committed the worst crimes against society. You think that the
blood of human victims is the most acceptable offering to your Maker,
and worse than the ignorant pagans, who made martyrs of the blessed
saints, sacrifice them on the altar of a religion which is all charity,
meekness, and forgiveness. But I see you are ashamed of yourselves. Go,
and do so no more.”
The spirit of intolerance quailed before the majesty of truth and
genius. The poor deluded men, whose passions had been stimulated by
mistaken notions of religious duty, bowed their heads and departed,
rebuked and ashamed.
“Who art thou?” asked Nicholas, when they were gone.
“Thou shalt soon know,” replied the stranger. “In the mean time listen
to me. I must be gone before the fiend, which I have, perhaps, only
laid for a few moments, again awakens in the bosoms of these deluded
men, or some others like them get on the scent of their prey, and
track their victim hither. Listen to me, Nicholas, kind and good
Nicholas. Thou wouldst have endangered thy own life for the safety of
a stranger—one who had no claim on thee save that of hospitality—nay,
not even that, for I was not thy guest by invitation, but intrusion.
Blessed be thee and thine, thy house, thy memory when thou art dead,
and thy lot hereafter. Thou art worthy to know who I am.”
He then disclosed to him a name with which the world hath since rung,
from clime to clime, from country to country. A name incorporated
inseparably with the interests of truth and the progress of learning.
“Tell it not in Gath—proclaim it not in the streets of Askalon,”
continued he, “for it is a name which carries with it the sentence
of death in this yet benighted city. Interests of the deepest
nature—interests vitally connected with the progress of truth—the
temporal and eternal happiness of millions living, of millions yet
unborn, brought me hither. The business I came upon is in part
performed; but it is now known to some that I am, or have been in the
city, who will never rest till they run me down and tear me in pieces.
Farewell, and look for thy reward, if not here, hereafter—for, sure as
thou livest and breathest, a good action, done with a pure and honest
motive, is twice blessed—once to the doer and once to him to whom it is
done.
The good Nicholas would have knelt to the mighty genius that stood
before him, but he prevented him.
“I am no graven image, nor art thou an idolater that thou shouldst
kneel to me. Farewell! Let me have thy prayers, for the prayers of a
good man are indeed blessings.”
Saying this, the illustrious stranger departed in haste, and Nicholas
never saw him more for a long time. But he said to himself,
“Blessed is my house, for it hath sheltered the bright light of the
universe.”
From that time forward, he devoted himself to the good cause of the
reformation with heart and soul. His house was ever the refuge of the
persecuted; his purse the never-failing resource of the distressed; and
many were the victims of bigotry and intolerance whom his influence and
entreaties saved from the stake and the torture. He lived a blessing to
all within the sphere of his influence, and was blessed in living to
see the faith which he loved and cherished at length triumph over the
efforts of power, the arts of intrigue, and the fire of bigotry.
Neither did he forget or neglect the customary offices of kindness
and good will to the little children of the city, who continued still
to come and share his goodly cakes, which he gave with the smile and
the open hand of kind and unaffected benignity. It must have been
delightful to see the aged patriarch sitting at his door, while the
little boys and girls gathered together from all parts to share his
smiles, to be patted on the head, and kissed, and laden with his
bounties.
Every Newyear's day especially, being his birthday, as it came round,
was a festival, not only to all the children, but to all that chose to
come and see him. It seemed that he grew younger instead of older on
each return of the season; for he received every one with smiles, and
even his enemies were welcome to his good cheer. He had not the heart
to hate anybody on the day which he had consecrated to innocent gayety,
liberal hospitality, and universal benevolence. In process of time,
his example spread among the whole city, and from thence through the
country, until every village and town, nay, every house, adopted the
good custom of setting apart the first day of the year to be gay and
happy, to exchange visits, and shake hands with friends and to forgive
enemies.
Thus the good Nicholas lived, blessing all and blessed by all, until
he arrived at a happy old age. When he had reached fourscore years, he
was sitting by himself late in the evening of the first of January, old
style, which is the only true and genuine era after all—the new style
being a pestilent popish innovation—he was sitting, I say, alone, the
visiters having all departed, laden with gifts and good wishes. A knock
was heard at the door, which always opened of itself, like the heart of
its owner, not only on Newyear's day, but every day in the year.
A stately figure entered and sat down by him, after shaking his hand
right heartily. The good Nicholas was now old, and his eyesight had
somewhat failed him, particularly at night.
“Thou art welcome,” quoth the old man.
“I know it,” replied the other, “every one is welcome to the house of
the good Nicholas, not only on this, but every other day. I have heard
of thee in my travels.”
“Thou knowest my name—may I not know thine?”
The stranger whispered a name in his ear, which made the heart of the
good Nicholas leap in his bosom.
“Dost thou remember the adventure of the closet?” said the stranger.
“Yea—blessed be the day and the hour,” said the old man.
And now they had a long conversation, which pertained to high matters,
not according with the nature of my story, and therefore I pass them
by, more especially as I do not exactly know what they were.
“I almost fear to ask thee,” at length said Nicholas; “but thou wilt
partake of my cheer, on this the day of my birth. I shall not live to
see another.”
Old people are often prophetic on the duration of their lives.
“Assuredly,” replied the other, “for it is neither beneath my character
nor calling to share the good man's feast, and to be happy when I can.”
So they sat down together and talked of old times, and how much better
the new times were than the old, inasmuch as the truth had triumphed,
and they could now enjoy their consciences in peace.
The illustrious visiter staid all night; and the next morning, as he
was about to depart, the aged Nicholas said to him,
“Farewell—I shall never see thee again. Thou art going a long journey,
thou sayst, but I am about venturing on one yet longer.”
“Well, be it so,” said the other. “But those who remain behind will
bless thy name and thy memory. The little children will love thee, and
so long as thy countrymen cherish their ancient customs, thou wilt not
be forgotten.”
They parted, and the prediction of the good Nicholas was fulfilled.
He fell asleep in the arms of death, who called him so softly, and
received him so gently in his embrace, that though his family knew he
slept, they little thought it was for ever.
When this news went abroad into the city, you might see the worthy
burgomasters and citizens knocking the ashes out of their pipes, and
putting them quietly by in their buttonholes; and the good housewives,
ever and anon lifting their clean white aprons to their eyes, that they
might see to thread their needles or find the stitches, as they sat
knitting their stockings. The shops and schools were all shut the day
he was buried; and it was remarked that the men neglected their usual
amusements, and the little children had no heart to play.
When the whole city had gathered together at the side of his grave,
there suddenly appeared among them a remarkable and goodly-looking
man, of most reverent demeanour. Every one bowed their bodies, in
respectful devotion, for they knew the man, and what they owed him. All
was silent as the grave, just about to receive the body of Nicholas,
when he I have just spoken of lifted his head, and said as follows:—
“The good man just about to enter the narrow house never defrauded his
neighbour, never shut his door on the stranger, never did an unkind
action, nor ever refused a kind one either to friend or foe. His heart
was all goodness, his faith all purity, his morals all blameless, yea,
all praiseworthy. Such a man deserves the highest title that can be
bestowed on man. Join me then, my friends, old and young—men, women,
and children, in blessing his memory as _the good Saint Nicholas_;
for I know no better title to such a distinction than pure faith,
inflexible integrity, and active benevolence.” Thus spake the great
reformer, John Calvin.
The whole assembled multitude, with one voice and one heart, cried
out, “Long live the blessed memory of the good St. Nicholas!” as they
piously consigned him to the bosom of his mother earth.
Thus did he come to be called St. Nicholas; and the people, not content
with this, as it were by a mutual sympathy, and without coming to any
understanding on the subject, have ever since set apart the birthday
of the good man, for the exercise of hospitality to men, and gifts to
little children. From the Old World they carried the custom to the
New, where their posterity still hold it in reverence, and where I
hope it will long continue to flourish, in spite of the cold heartless
forms, unmeaning ceremonies, and upstart pretensions of certain vulgar
people, who don't know any better, and therefore ought to be pitied for
their ignorance, rather than contemned for their presumption.
THE
LITTLE DUTCH SENTINEL
OF THE
MANHADOES.
“How times change in this world, and especially in this New World!”
exclaimed old Aurie Doremus, as he sat at the door of his domicil—the
last of the little Dutch houses, built of little Dutch bricks, with
gable end turned to the street—on a sultry summer evening, in the year
so many honest people found out that paper money was not silver or
gold. Half a dozen of his grown-up grandchildren were gathered about
him, on the seats of the little porch, the top of which was shaped
something like an old revolutionary cocked hat, as the good patriarch
made this sage observation. He was in fine talking humour, and after a
little while, went on amid frequent pauses, as if taxing his memory to
make up his chronicle.
“It was the twenty-fourth—no, the twenty-fifth of March, 1609, that
Hendrick Hudson sailed from Amsterdam. On the fourth of September,
after coasting along Newfoundland to Cape Cod, from Cape Cod to
Chesapeake Bay, and thence back again along the Jersey coast, he came
in sight of the Highlands of Neversink, and anchored in the evening
inside of Sandy Hook. This was in 1609—how long ago is that, Egbert?”
said the good man, turning to me.
“Two hundred and sixteen years,” replied I, after sore tribulation, for
I never was good at ciphering.
“Two hundred and sixteen years—well, at that time there was not a
single white man, or white man's habitation, in sight of where we are
now sitting, in the midst of thousands, ten of thousands—I might almost
say hundreds of thousands. Ah! boys, 'tis a rapid growth, and Heaven
grant it may not afford another proof, that the quick of growth are
quick of decay.” After musing a little he proceeded, as if speaking to
himself rather than to us.
“If it were possible that an Indian, who had lived on this spot at
the time of Hudson's first visit, could rise from the dead, with
all his recollections of the past about him, what would he think at
beholding the changes that have taken place. Nothing that he had
ever seen, nothing that he had ever known, would he recognise; for
even the face of the earth has passed away, and the course of the
mighty rivers intruded upon by the labours of the white strangers. No
vestiges, not even the roots of the woods where he hunted his game—no
landmarks familiar to his early recollections—no ruins of his ancient
habitations—no traces to guide him to the spot where once reposed the
remains of his fathers—nothing to tell him that his eyes had opened on
the very spot where they closed two hundred years ago.” Again he paused
a few moments, and then resumed his cogitations.
“And this is not all, its name and destinies, as well as its nature,
are changed. From the Manhadoes of the ancient proprietors, it passed
into the New-Amsterdam of the Dutch, and the New-York of the English;
and now,” continued he, his eyes sparkling with exultation—” now it is
the possession of a free and sovereign people. The sandy barren which
formed the projecting point of our isle, and where a few Indian canoes
were hauled up, is now the resort of thousands of stately ships, coming
from the farthest parts of the earth, and bearing the rich products
of the New World into every corner of the Old. Their masts bristle
around the city, like the leafless trees of a wintry forest. The rugged
island, to which nature had granted nothing but its noble situation,
and which seemed condemned to perpetual sterility, is now become a
region of rich gardens and white groups of houses—the very rocks are
turned to beds of flowers, and the tangled swamps of ivy clinging about
the stinted shrubbery, into smooth lawns, embellishing and embellished
by the sprightly forms of playful lads and lasses, escaped from the
city to enjoy a summer afternoon of rural happiness. All, all is
changed—and man the most of all. Simplicity has given place to the
ostentatious, vulgar pride of purse-proud ignorance—the wild Indian
to the idle and effeminate beau—politeness to ceremony—comfort to
splendour—honest mechanics to knavish brokers—morals to manners—wampum
to paper money—and the fear of ghosts to the horror of poverty.” Here
again the old man paused, and seemed to retire within himself for a
minute or two; after which I observed him begin to chuckle and rub his
hands, while his mischievous old eye assumed a new vivacity.
“I wonder what figure our Dutch belles or beaux of 1700, or thereabout,
would make at a rout, or the Italian opera? I'faith I believe they
would be more out of their element than the Indian I spoke of just now.
They would certainly make rare sport in a cotillon, and I doubt would
never arrive at that acme of modern refinement, which enables people
to prefer sounds without sense, to sense without sound—and to expire
with ecstasy at sentiments expressed in a language of which they don't
comprehend a word.”
“But did they believe in ghosts, grandfather?” asked the youngest
little granddaughter, who was just beginning to dip in the modern
wonders of romance, and had been caught by the word ghost in the old
gentleman's harangue.
“Ay, that they did, and in everything else. Now people believe in
nothing except what they see in the newspapers—and the only exercise
of their faith appears, not indeed in believing a crust of bread is a
shoulder of mutton, but that a greasy rag of paper is a guinea. I have
heard my grandfather tell fifty stories of ghosts and witches; but
they have all passed from my memory, except one about a little Dutch
sentinel, which he used to repeat so often, that I have never forgotten
it to this day.”
“Oh, tell us the story,” cried the little romance reader, who was
the old gentleman's prime favourite, and to whom he never thought of
denying anything, either in or out of reason. “I'll give you two kisses
if you will.”
“A bargain,” cried the good Aurie; “come hither, baggage.” The little
girl presented first one rosy cheek and then the other, which he kissed
affectionately, and began as follows, while we all gathered about him,
and listened like so many Schahriars.
─────────────────
“Once upon a time, then, to use the words of a pleasant and instructive
historian, the governors of New-Amsterdam were little kings, and the
burgomasters such great men, that whoever spoke ill of one of them,
had a bridle put into his mouth, rods under his arms, and a label on
his breast recording his crime. In this trim he was led by the sheriff
and tied to a post, where he remained a spectacle to the public, and
an example to all evil doers—or rather evil sayers. I wonder how such
a custom would go down nowadays, with the great champions of the
liberty of the press? Then, too, instead of street inspectors, whose
duty it is to take care of one side of a street and let the other take
care of itself, there were roy meesters to look to the fences, and
keep the cows from trespassing on their neighbour's pastures—then the
houses were covered with reeds and straw, and the chimneys were made
of wood—then all matrimonial disputes were settled by ‘a commissary
of marriage affairs,’ and no man could eat a loaf of bread, except
the flour had been inspected by the ‘comptroller general of the
company's windmill,’ who could be no other than the sage Don Quixote
himself—then, the distinction of ranks, instead of being designated by
great and little barons, was signified by great and little burghers,
who danced hipsey-saw and reels—plucked the goose—rambled on the
commons, now the park, for nuts and strawberries—made parties of
pleasure to enjoy the retired shades of the Ladies' Valley, since
metamorphosed into Maiden Lane—shot bears in the impenetrable forests
of Harlem Heights—hunted the deer along the Bloomingdale road—and
erected Maypoles on the first of May, in the great meadow where the
college now stands.”
“In what year of our Lord was that?” asked the little pet lady.
“Why, in the year 1670, or thereabout, you baggage.”
“I declare I thought it must have been somewhere about the year one,”
said she, laughing. The old man patted her cheek, and went on.
“About this time the good citizens of New-Amsterdam were most
especially afraid of three things—Indians, ghosts, and witches. For the
first, they had good reason, for the Indians inhabited the country
around them in all directions, and though the honest Amsterdamers could
beat them at a bargain, there was another game at which they had rather
the advantage. In regard to ghosts and witches, I cannot say as much
in justification of their fears. But that is neither here nor there.
Some people that will run like a deer from real danger, defy ghosts
and witches, and all their works; while the fearless soldier who faces
death without shrinking in a hundred battles, trembles and flees from
a white cow in a churchyard, or a white sheet on a clothes line, of
a moonlight night. It was thus with honest JAN SOL, the little Dutch
sentinel of the Manhadoes.
“Jan was a short, square-built, bandy-legged, broad-faced, snub-nosed
little fellow, who valued himself upon being an old soldier; a species
of men that, with the exception of travellers, are the most given to
telling what are called tough stories, of any people in the world.
According to his own account, he had been in more pitched battles than
Henry the Lion, or Julius Cæsar; and made more lucky escapes than any
knight-errant on record. The most miraculous one of all, was at some
battle—I forget the name—where he would certainly have been killed, if
he had not very opportunely arrived just after it was over. But though
one of the most communicative persons in the world, he never gave any
tolerable reason for visiting New-Amsterdam. He hinted, indeed, that
he had been invited over to discipline the raw provincials; but there
was a counter story abroad, that he was drummed out of the regiment
for walking in his sleep, and emptying the canteens of the whole mess.
Indeed, he did not positively deny that he was apt to be a rogue in his
sleep; but then he made it up by being as honest as the day when he was
awake.
“However this may be, at the time I speak of, Jan Sol figured as
corporal in the trusty city guard, whose business it was to watch
during the night, to guard against the inroads of the savages, and
to enforce, in the daytime, the military code established for the
good order and well being of the metropolis. This code consisted of
nineteen articles, every one of which was a perfect blue law. Bread
and water, boring tongues with a red-hot iron, hanging, and such like
trifles, were the least a man had to expect in those days. The mildest
infliction of the whole code, was that of riding a wooden horse, for
not appearing on parade at the ringing of a bell. This town was always
famous for bellringing. Jan had many a ride in this way for nothing.
Among the most rigid of these regulations, was one which denounced
death for going in and out of the fort, except through the gate; and
another, ordaining a similar punishment for entering or leaving the
city by any other way but the land poort, after the mayor had gone his
rounds in the evening, and received the keys from the guard.
“The state of society, and the neighbourhood of the Indians, I suppose,
made these severe restrictions necessary; and we are not, while
sitting quietly at our firesides, out of their reach, to set ourselves
in judgment upon our ancestors, who planted the seeds of this empire in
the midst of dangers. In the little sketch of New-Amsterdam to which
I have before referred, and which is well worth your reading, it is
stated that the gate was shut in the evening before dark, and opened at
daylight. At nine o'clock the tattoo was beat, as the signal for the
honest folks to go to sleep as quick as possible, and it is recorded
they all obeyed the summons in the most exemplary manner. The sentinels
were placed at different points considered the most accessible, and
changed every half hour, that being the limit of a quiet, orderly
Dutchman's capacity for keeping awake after nine o'clock.
“One bright moonlight night, in the month of August, it fell to the lot
of Jan Sol to mount guard, not a hundred yards from the great gate, or
land poort, which was situated in Broadway, near where Trinity Church
now stands. Beyond this, between Liberty and Courtlandt streets, stood
the company's windmill, where nearly all the flour was made for the
consumption of the little metropolis. The place where he took his
rounds was a sand bank, elevated above the surrounding objects, and
whence he could see the river, the opposite shore of New-Jersey, then
called Pavonia, the capacious bay, and the distant hills of Staten
Island. The night was calm, and the cloudless sky showed thousands of
wandering glories overhead, whose bright twinklings danced on the slow
undulating surface of the glassy mirror. All round there was perfect
silence and repose, nothing moved upon the land or the waters, neither
lights were burning nor dogs barking; these sagacious animals having
been taught, by a most infallible way of appealing to their instincts,
that it was unlawful to disturb the somniferous indulgences of their
masters. It was a scene for poetic inspiration, but Jan Sol was no
poet, although he often availed himself of the poetic license in his
stories. He was thinking of something else, besides the beauty of the
night and the scene. The truth is, his nerves were very much out of
order at that moment.
“It was about the time that witches made their first appearance in
the New World, whither they came, I suppose, to escape the pleasant
alternative of being either drowned or hanged, proffered to them in
those days by the good people of England. But they got out of the
frying pan into the fire, as history records, particularly to the
eastward of the Manhadoes, where some of them underwent the ordeal of
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Others fled to New-Amsterdam, greatly
to the discomfort of the good citizens, who took such umbrage at
broomsticks, that the industrious and cleanly housewife's vocation of
sweeping the parlour twelve times a day was considered as naught. It is
affirmed, that instead of a broom, they used the broad-brimmed Sunday
hats of their husbands in blowing away the dust, for fear of being
taken for witches. There was a universal panic, and a universal dust
throughout all the city.
“But this was not the worst of it either. Just about this time Dominie
Egidius Luyck prophesied the world was coming speedily to an end, as
plainly appeared from the great quantity of toad stools, which made
their appearance in the Ladies' Valley and Windmill Meadow after a
heavy rain. This prophecy was followed up by the appearance of the
northern lights, falling stars, and mysterious rattlings of invisible
carriages through the streets at midnight. To crown all, an inspired
fanatic had passed through the Broadway, crying out 'Wo, wo to the
crown of pride, and the drunkards of Ephraim. Two woes past, and the
third coming, except ye repent—repent—repent.' All these horrors now
encompassed the imagination of Jan Sol, as he paced the little sand
hillock with slow steps, and from time to time started at his shadow.
The half hour seemed an age, and never did anybody long so much for the
appearance of a corporal's guard to relieve him.
“He had not been on his watch more than ten minutes, or so, when,
happening to look towards the opposite shore of Pavonia, he saw
something moving on the waters like a canoe shooting across the river.
Five hundred Indians with tomahawks and scalping knives all at once
stood before the little sentinel, whose imagination was ready cocked
and primed for the reception of all sorts of horrors. He had a great
mind to fire his gun, and alarm the garrison, but a little of the fear
of his companions' jokes restrained him for that time. However, he
drew a pistol, and refreshed his courage with a little of the genuine
Schiedam, after which he ventured to look that way again. But the canoe
had disappeared in a most miraculous manner, and Jan was satisfied in
his own mind, that it was neither more nor less than the ghost of a
canoe. There was not much consolation in this; but it was better than
the five hundred Indians, with their tomahawks and scalping knives.
“The night breeze now sprung up with its chilling dews, and cooled
Jan's courage till it nearly fell down to the freezing point. The wind,
or some other cause, produced a sort of creaking and moaning in the
old crazy windmill, which drew the eyes of the little sentinel in that
direction. At that moment, Jan saw a head slowly rising and peeping
over the wall, directly in a line with the windmill. His eyes became
riveted to the spot, with the irresistible fascination of overwhelming
terror. Gradually the head was followed by shoulders, body and legs,
which Jan swore belonged to a giant at least sixteen ells high. After
sitting a moment upon the wall, the figure, according to Jan's relation
before the governor next morning, put forth a pair of enormous wings,
and whirling itself round and round in a circle—while its eyes flashed
fire, and its teeth appeared like live coals—actually flew down from
the wall towards the governor's garden, where it disappeared, or rather
sank into the ground, close by the garden gate. Jan fired his gun,
and one might have supposed he killed himself, for he fell flat on his
face, apparently as dead as a door nail.
“Here he was found by the relief guard, about five minutes afterwards,
with his face buried in the sand hill. The moment they touched him,
he began to roar out with awful vociferation, ‘Wo, wo to the crown of
pride, and the drunkards of Ephraim.’ They could make nothing of Jan
or his story, and forthwith carried him to the ‘big house,’ as it was
called, where the governor resided, and who, together with the whole
corporation and city, had been waked by the discharge of the gun. Such
a thing had not happened within the memory of man. Jan told his story,
and swore to it afterwards; but all he got by it, was a ride on the
wooden horse the next morning. The story, however, took wind, and there
was more liquor sold that day at the Stadt Herberg, or city tavern,
than for a whole week before. Coming upon the back of the dominie's
toad stools, the northern lights, the rumbling of the invisible wheels,
and the mysterious denunciation of the drunkards of Ephraim, it made
a great impression; and many, not to say all, believed there must be
something in it. Several people went to church the next day, who had
not been there since they were christened.
“Measures were taken the following night, and for several nights
afterwards, to detect this gigantic spectre, but in vain. Nothing
appeared to disturb the quiet repose of the guard and the city, till
the next Saturday night, when it came to Jan Sol's turn to take his
watch upon the sand hill, about the same hour as before. They say Jan
fortified himself with a double allowance of Schiedam, and put a little
Dutch Bible in the pocket of one of his breeches. But all would not do,
for many people were ready to swear afterwards, that his hair stood on
end so sturdily that he could hardly keep his tin cap upon it. Ghosts,
hobgoblins, and all that sort of thing, have not only a propensity to
visit some one particular person, but are likewise extremely regular in
their habits, as well as in their hours of appearing. Exactly at the
same hour the little canoe shot from Pavonia—the night breeze sprang up
as before—the old windmill began to creak and moan—the gigantic spectre
peered over the wall at the same spot as before, and cautiously glaring
round with his fiery eyes, unfurled his mighty wings, and after turning
a few somersets, flew towards the gate of the governor's garden, where
he disappeared as before. This time Jan was too far gone to fire his
matchlock, but a few minutes after he was found almost insensible with
fright, by the relief guard, who carried him before the governor next
morning, where he swore to the same story, and was complimented with
another ride on the wooden horse.
“But the repetition of a miracle is sure to make it less miraculous;
and a wonder twice told is almost half proved. People began to believe,
and from believing, to be sure there was something out of the way, at
least, in this affair. Miracles, like misfortunes, never come single;
and almost every one had a wonder of his own to reinforce that of the
little Dutch sentinel. At least fifty of them happened within less than
a week, each more alarming than the other. Doors opened at midnight, by
invisible hands—strange black cats with green eyes, and sparks of fire
flying out of their backs, appeared at different times—the old mahogany
chests of drawers made divers strange noises, and sometimes went off
with a report almost as loud as a pistol—and an old woman coming into
market with cabbages before daylight in the morning, met a black
figure, she could almost swear had a tail and a cloven foot. A horseman
was heard in the middle of the night galloping furiously towards the
land poort, crying ‘Whoa! whoa!’ with a hollow voice; and what was very
singular, though several persons got up to look out of the windows,
not one could see the least sign of horse or horseman. In short, the
whole city of New-Amsterdam was in a panic, and he was a bold man that
did not run away from his own shadow. Even the ‘big house’ where the
governor dwelt, was infected, insomuch that his excellency doubled his
guards, and slept with loaded pistols at his bedside. One of these made
a voluntary discharge one night, and the bullet passed right through
the picture of Admiral Van Tromp, which hung up in the chamber. If it
had been the admiral himself he would have been killed as sure as a
gun. This accident was considered as very remarkable, as there were no
hair triggers in those days, to go off of themselves.
“There was at that time a public-spirited little magistrate in office,
by the name of DIRCK SMET, a pipemaker by trade, who was the father
of more laws than all the lawyers before or after him, from Moses
down to the present time. He had the itch of legislation to a most
alarming degree, and like Titus, considered he had lost a day when he
had not begotten at least one law. A single circumstance or event, no
matter how insignificant, was enough for him. If a little boy happened
to frighten a sober Dutch horse, which, by-the-way, was no such easy
matter, by flying his kite, the worshipful Dirck Smet would forthwith
call a meeting of the common council, and, after declaiming a full hour
upon the dangers of kiteflying, get a law passed, denouncing a penalty
upon all wicked parents who allowed their children to indulge in that
pestilent amusement. If there happened a rumour of a man, a horse, a
cow, or any other animal being bitten by a mad dog, in some remote part
of New-England, or elsewhere, Dirck Smet would spout a speech enough
to make one's hair stand on end, about the horrors of hydrophobia, and
get a law passed against all the honest mastiffs of New-Amsterdam, who
had no more idea of running mad than I have at this moment. Owing to
the number of little creeks intersecting the city, and the quantity of
grass growing in the streets at that time, there was never a finer city
for raising flocks of geese than New-Amsterdam—in fact, there were as
many geese as inhabitants. Dirck declared war against these in a speech
of three hours, which so overpowered the council, that they all fell
asleep, and passed a law banishing the geese from the city; although
one of the members, who had the finest goose pond in the place, talked
very learnedly about the famous goose that saved the capitol. It is
said that Dirck's antipathy to these honest birds arose from having
been attacked and sorely buffeted by a valiant old gander, whose
premises he had chanced to invade on some occasion. He was, indeed, the
most arrant meddler and busybody of his day, always poking his nose
into holes and corners, ferreting out nuisances, and seeking pretexts
for new laws; so that if the people had paid any attention to them they
would have been under a worse tyranny than that of the Turk or the
Spaniard. But they were saved from this by a lucky circumstance—the
council thinking they did enough by making the laws, let them take care
of themselves afterwards; and honest Dirck Smet was too busy begetting
new laws, to mind what became of the old ones. Nevertheless, he got
the reputation of a most vigilant magistrate, which means a pestilent
intermeddler with people's domestic sports and occupations, and a most
industrious busybody in attempting impossibilities.
“As soon as Dirck Smet heard the story of the inroads of the winged
monster, he fell into a fever of anxiety to do something for the good
of the community. He was on the point of proposing a severe law against
winged monsters, but from this he was dissuaded by a judicious friend,
who represented the difficulty of catching this sort of delinquents,
and that this was absolutely necessary, before he could punish them.
Baffled in this point, he fumed about from one place to another,
insisting that something must be done for the quiet and security of the
city, and that a law of some kind or other was absolutely necessary
on the occasion, if it were only to show their zeal for the public
good. It was his opinion that a bad law was better than no law at all,
and that it would be an inexcusable piece of negligence to let these
interloping monsters fly over the wall with impunity.
“All this while his excellency the governor of New-Amsterdam said
nothing, but thought a great deal. He was a little jealous of the
popularity of Dirck Smet, who had got the title of Father of the City,
on account of having saved it from the horrors of flying kites, mad
dogs, and hissing ganders. In fact, they were two such great men, that
the city was not half large enough for them both, and the consequence
was, that instead of assisting, they only stood in each other's way,
like two carts in a narrow lane. We can have too much of a good
thing, even as regards laws and rulers. The governor was determined
to do nothing, for no other reason that could ever be discovered
than because his rival was so busy. The fears of the good citizens,
however, and their increasing clamours against the negligence of their
rulers, at length roused the activity of the governor, who forthwith
convened his council, to deliberate upon the best means of saving the
city of New-Amsterdam.
“Dirck Smet, who was ex-officio a member, was in his glory on this
occasion, and talked so much that there was no time for acting. At
length, however, the inward man gave out, and he had not breath to say
anything more. It was then, tradition says, that a silent old member,
who never made a set speech in his life, proposed, in as few words as
possible, and in a quiet colloquial manner, that measures should be
first taken to ascertain the truth of the story, after which means
might be found to detect the miracle or the impostor, whatever it might
be. It is affirmed the whole council was astonished that a man should
be able to say so much in so few words, and that henceforth the silent
member was considered the wisest of them all. Even Dirck Smet held his
tongue for the rest of the sitting, thus furnishing another striking
proof, my children, that good sense is an overmatch for the most
confirmed garrulity. The same old gentleman suggested, that as Saturday
night seemed to be the period chosen for his two visits by the winged
monster, it would be advisable to place some of the most trusty of the
city guard in ambush in the vicinity of the spot where, according to
the testimony of Jan Sol, he had flown over the wall, to intercept
him there, or at least overtake him in his progress to the governor's
garden. Everybody wondered at the wisdom of this proposal, which
was adopted with only one dissenting voice. Dirck Smet moved, as an
amendment, that the word ‘progress’ should be changed to ‘flight,’ but
it was negatived, greatly to his mortification, and therefore he voted
against the whole proposition, declaring it went against his conscience.
“Accordingly, the next Saturday night a party was got in readiness,
of six picked men of the city guard, under the command of Captain
Balthaser Knyff, of immortal memory, who had faced more ghosts in his
generation than any man living. The whole band was equipped with an
extraordinary number of nether garments for defence, and fortified
with double allowance of Schiedam, to keep up their courage in this
arduous service. The captain was considered a person of the greatest
weight in all the city; and in addition to this, he added to his
specific gravity, by stuffing into his pocket all the leaden weights
he could borrow of a neighbouring grocer, for he did not know but
the monster might fly away with him. His comrades remonstrated that
this additional weight would impede his pursuit of the foe; but the
captain nobly replied, ‘it was beneath a soldier to run, either from or
after an enemy.’ The most perfect secrecy was preserved in all these
arrangements.
“Thus equipped, they took their station, about eleven o'clock on the
Saturday night following the last appearance of the winged monster,
under cover of one of the neighbouring houses, and there waited the
coming of the mysterious visiter. Twelve o'clock, the favourite hour
of spectres of all sorts, came and passed, yet no spectre appeared
peeping over the wall. By this time they began to be wearied with
long watching, and it was proposed that they should take turns, one
at a time, while the others slept off the fatigue of such unheard-of
service. The lot fell upon Jan Sol, who being, as it were, a sort
of old acquaintance of the spectre, was supposed to be particularly
qualified for this honour. Jan forthwith posted himself at the corner
of the house, upon one leg, to make sure of keeping awake, as he
had whilome seen the New-Amsterdam geese do, ere they were banished
from the city, by the inflexible patriotism of Dirck Smet, the great
lawgiver.
“The little Dutch sentinel stood for about half an hour, sometimes on
one leg, sometimes on the other, with his head full of hobgoblins and
his heart full of fears. All was silent as the grave, save the sonorous
music of the captain's vocal nose, or, as it might be poetically
expressed, ‘living lyre,’ which ever and anon snorted a low requiem to
the waning night. The moon was on the swift decrease, and now exhibited
an arch not unlike a bright Indian bow, suspended in the west, a
little above the distant horizon. Gradually it sank behind the hills,
leaving the world to the guardianship of the watchmen of the night, the
twinkling stars. Scarcely a minute after, the heart of honest Jan was
sent bumping against his trusty ribs, by the appearance of something
slowly rising above the indistinct line of the city wall, which I ought
to observe was made of wood. The spectre gradually mounted higher
and higher, and rested on the very spot where he had seen it twice
before. The teeth of Jan Sol chattered, and his knees knocked against
each other—but he stood his ground manfully, and either would not or
could not run away. This time the spectre, though he appeared with two
enormous wings projecting from his shoulders, did not whirl them round,
or expand them in the manner he had done before. After sitting perched
for a few moments on the wall, he flew down to the ground, and crept
cautiously along, under cover of the wall, in a direction towards the
big house. At this moment, the trusty Jan with some difficulty roused
his companions, and silently pointed to the spectre gliding along as
before related. Whether it was that it saw or heard something to alarm
it, I cannot say; but scarcely had the redoubtable Captain Knyff risen,
and shaken from his valiant spirit the fumes of sleep and Schiedam,
when the spirit took as it were to itself wings, and sped rapidly
towards the gate of the governor's garden. The party pursued, with
the exception of the captain, who carried too much weight for a race,
and arrived within sight of the gate just in time to see the spectre
vanish, either under, over, or inside of it, they could not tell
which. When they got to the gate, they found it fast locked, a proof,
if any had been wanting, that it must have been something supernatural.
“In pursuance of their instructions, the guard roused the governor,
his household, and his troops, with the intention of searching the
garden, and, if necessary, every part of his house, for the purpose
of detecting this mysterious intruder. The garden was surrounded by a
high brick wall, the top of which bristled with iron spikes and pieces
of bottles set in mortar. It was worth a man's life to get over it.
There was no getting in or out except by the gate, on the outside of
which the governor stationed two trusty fellows, with orders to stand
a little apart, and perfectly quiet. Now all the governor's household
was wide awake, and in a rustle of anxiety and trepidation, except
one alone, who did not make her appearance. This was the governor's
only daughter, as pretty a little Dutch damsel as ever crossed Kissing
Bridge, or rambled over the green fields of the Manhadoes. Compared
to the queer little bodies that figure nowadays in the Broadway,
seemingly composed of nothing but hats, feathers, and flounces, she was
a composition of real flesh and blood, which is better than all the
gauze, silk, tulle, and gros de Naples in the world. “A man marries a
milliner's shop instead of a woman nowadays,” said the old gentleman,
glancing a little archly at the fashionable paraphernalia of his pretty
pet granddaughter. “Her face and form was all unsophisticated native
beauty, and her dress all simplicity and grace.”
“Is that her picture hanging in the back parlour?” asked the little
girl, in a sly way.”
“Yes; but the picture does not do justice either to the beauty or the
dress of the original.”
“I hope not,” said the other; “for if it does, I am sure I would not be
like her for the world.”
“Pshaw, you baggage,” replied the old gentleman, “you'll never be fit
to hold a candle to her.”
“The search now commenced with great vigour in the garden, although Jan
Sol openly declared it as his opinion, that they might look themselves
blind before they found the spectre, who could fly over a wall as easy
as a grasshopper. He accordingly kept aloof from the retired part of
the garden, and stuck close to his noble commander, Captain Knyff, who
by this time had come up with the pursuers. All search, however, proved
vain; for after a close investigation of more than an hour, it was
unanimously agreed that the intruder, whether man, monster, or ghost,
could not possibly be hid in the garden. The governor then determined
to have the house searched, and accordingly the whole party entered for
that purpose, with the exception of the two sentinels without the gate.
Here, while rummaging in closets, peering under beds, and looking up
chimneys in vain, they were alarmed by a sudden shout from the garden,
which made their hearts quake with exceeding apprehension. The shout
was succeeded by loud talking and apparent tugging and struggling,
as if between persons engaged in hot contention. At the same moment
the governor's daughter rushed into her chamber, and throwing herself
on the bed with a loud shriek, remained insensible for some time.
Everybody was sure she had seen the spectre.
“It appears that while the search was going on in the big house, and
the attention of everybody employed in that direction, the sentinels
outside the gate heard the key cautiously turned inside, then, after
a little pause, slowly open. A face then peeped out as if to take an
observation, and the owner, apparently satisfied that the coast was
clear, darted forward. The first step, he unluckily tripped over a
rope which these trusty fellows had drawn across the gate, and fell
full length on the ground. Before he could recover his feet the two
sentinels were upon him, and in spite of his exertions kept him down,
until their shouts drew the rest of the guard to their assistance. The
spectre was then secured with ropes, and safely lodged in the cellar
under a strong escort, to await his examination the next morning. Jan
Sol was one of the band, though he insisted it was all nonsense to
mount guard over a spectre.
“The council met betimes at the sound of a bell, rung by a worthy
citizen, who, in addition to his vocation of bellringer, was crier of
the court, messenger to the governor, sexton, clerk, and gravedigger
to the whole city of New-Amsterdam. It was something to be a man in
those days, before the invention of steam engines, spinning jennies,
and chessplaying automatons caused such a superfluity of human beings,
that it is much if they can now earn salt to their porridge. At that
time, men were so scarce, that there were at least half a dozen offices
to one man; now there are half a dozen men to one office; all which is
owing to machinery. This accumulation of honours in the person of the
bellringer, made him a man of considerable consequence, insomuch, that
the little boys about Flattenbarrack Hill chalked his name upon their
sleighs, and it is even asserted that he had an Albany sloop called
after him. I could, therefore, do no less than make honourable mention
of a person of his dignity.
“After the council met, and everything was ready, the door of the
cellar was cautiously opened, and Jan Sol, at the head, that is to
say, in the rear of a file of soldiers, descended for the purpose of
bringing forth this daring interloper, who had thus, from time to
time, disturbed the sleep of the sober citizens of New-Amsterdam. Jan
offered to bet a canteen of Schiedam, that they would find nobody in
the cellar; but, contrary to all expectation, they presently came
forth with the body of a comely youth, apparently about the age of
five-and-twenty, which was considered very young in those days. Nothing
was more customary there, than for a sturdy mother to bastinado her
boys, as she called them, after they had grown to be six feet high.
They were all the better for it, and made excellent husbands.
“When the young man came into the presence of the puissant governor
of the New Netherlands, he appeared a comely person, tall, fair
complexioned, and pleasant of feature. He was asked whence he came,
and not having a lawyer at his elbow to teach him the noble art of
prevarication, replied without hesitation,
“‘From Pavonia.’
“‘How did you get into the city?’
“‘I climbed the wall, near the company's windmill.’
“‘And how did you get into the governor's garden?’
“‘The same way I got out.’
“‘How was that?’
“‘Through the gate.’
“‘How did you get through the gate?’
“‘By unlocking it.’
“‘With what?’
“‘With a key.’
“‘Whence came that key?’
“No answer.
“‘Whence came that key?’
“‘I shall not tell.’
“‘What induced you to scale the wall and intrude into the garden?’
“‘I shall not tell.’
“‘Not if you are hanged for not telling?’
“‘Not if I am hanged for not telling.’
“‘What have you done with the wings with which, according to the
testimony of Jan Sol, you flew from the wall, and through the street to
the governor's garden?’
“‘I never had any wings, and never flew in the whole course of my life.’
“Here Jan Sol was called up, and testified positively to the wings and
the flying. There was now great perplexity in the council, when the
keeper of the windmill demanded to be heard. He stated he remembered
perfectly well, that on the two nights referred to, he had set his
windmill going about the hour in which Jan Sol saw the spectre whirl
round and fly from the wall. There had been a calm for several days
previous, and the citizens began to be in want of flour. He had
therefore taken advantage of the rising of the wind at the time, to
set his mill going. A little further inquiry led to the fact, that the
place where the spectre scaled the wall was exactly in a line with the
windmill and the spot where Jan held his watch. It was thus that the
spectre became identified with the wings of the mill. This exposition
marvellously quieted the fears of the good people; but there were
a number of stern believers who stuck by the little sentinel, and
continued to believe in the winged monster. As for poor Jan, he looked
ten times more foolish than when he used to be caught emptying the
canteens of his comrades in his sleep. This elucidation being over, the
examination proceeded.
“‘Did you know of the law making it death for any one to enter or
depart from the city between sunset and sunrise, except through the
gate?’
“‘I did.’
“‘What induced you to violate it?’
“‘I shall not tell.’
“‘Was it plunder?’
“‘I am no thief.’
“‘Was it treason against the state?’
“‘I am no traitor.’
“‘Was it mischief?’
“‘I am not a child.’
“‘Was it to frighten people?’
“‘I am no fool.’
“‘What is your name?’
“'My name is of no consequence—a man can be hanged without a name.'
“And this was all they could get out of him. Various cross-questions
were put to entrap him. He replied to them all with perfect freedom
and promptitude, until they came to his name, and his motives for
intruding into the city in violation of a law so severe, that none as
yet had ever been known to transgress it. Then, as before, he declined
answering.
“In those early days, under the Dutch dynasty, trial by jury was not
in fashion. People were too busy to serve as jurymen, if they had
been wanted; and the decision of most cases was left either to the
burgomasters, or if of great consequence, to the governor and council.
Justice was severe and prompt, in proportion to the dangers which
surrounded the early colonists, and the spirit of the times in which
they flourished. They lived in perpetual apprehension; and fear is
the father of cruelty. The law denouncing death to any person who
should enter the city between sunset and sunrise, except by the gate,
was considered as too essential to the security of the citizens to
be relaxed in favour of any one, especially of a person who refused
to tell either his name or the motive for his intrusion. By his own
admission, he was guilty of the offence, and but one course remained
for the council. The young man was sentenced to be hanged that day
week, and sent to the fort for safe keeping till the period arrived.
“That day the daughter of the governor did not appear to grace the
table of his excellency, nor in the management of those little
household affairs, that are not beneath the dignity of the daughters of
kings. She was ill with a headache, and kept her bed. The governor had
no child but her, and though without any great portion of sensibility,
was capable of all the warmth of parental affection. Indeed, all his
affections were centred in this little blooming offspring, who was
the only being in all the New World that carried a drop of his blood
coursing in her blue veins. He was also proud of her—so proud, that his
pride often got the better of his affection. She had many admirers—for
she was fair, wealthy, and the daughter of the greatest governor in
the New World, not excepting him of Virginia. It followed, as a matter
of course, that she was admired, but it was at an awful distance. The
honest Dutch swains, who had not pursued the female sprite through
all the mazes of romance, and learned how ofttimes highborn ladies
stooped to lads of low degree, gaped at her at church, as if she had
been a sea serpent. They would as soon have thought of aspiring to the
governor's dignity, as to the governor's daughter. Besides, he was one
of those absurd old blockheads, who consider nobody good enough for
their daughters at home, and hawk them about Europe, in search of some
needy sprig of nobility, who will exchange his mighty honours for bags
of gold, and a fair, blooming, virtuous virgin into the bargain. He had
sworn a thousand times, that his Blandina should never marry anything
below a Dutch baron.”
“Was her name Blandina—was she my namesake?” interrupted the little
granddaughter.
“Yes, girl, she was your great great grandmother, and you were
christened after her,” said the old man, and proceeded.
“This fear on the part of the young fellows of New-Amsterdam, and this
well-known determination of the governor, kept all admirers at an awful
distance from the young lady, who grew up to the age of eighteen,
loving no one save her father, now that her mother was no more; and an
old black woman, who had taken care of her ever since she was a child.
The throne of her innocent bosom had remained till then quite vacant,
nor did she know for certain what it was that made her sometimes so
weary of the world, and so tired of the length of the livelong sultry
summer hours. She walked into the garden to pluck the flowers, until
she became tired of that. She strolled with her old nurse into the
rural retirement of Ladies' Valley, and the shady paths which coursed
the wood where the Park is now, until she became tired of these. In
short, she became tired of everything, and so spiritless, that her
father was not a little alarmed for her health.
“About this time the governor was called by important political
business to the eastern frontier, and the journey was expected to
take up several days. During his absence, a party was formed to cross
the river, and spend the day in rambling about the romantic solitudes
of Weehawk, then a sort of frontier between the white man and the
Indian. Blandina was pressed to accompany them, and at last consented,
although against the will, not only of the governor's deputy, but of
the governor himself, who would certainly have forbidden it, had he
been present; but he was a hundred miles off, and in the absence of
the governor there was nobody equal to the governor's daughter. The
morning was fine, and the party set out as happy as youthful spirits
and youthful anticipations could make them. Here they rambled at will
and at random, in groups, in pairs, and alone, just as it suited them;
gathering together to take their refreshments, and again separating, as
chance or will directed them.
“Blandina had separated from the others, and wandered, almost
unconsciously, half a mile from the landing place by herself. Perhaps
when she set out, she expected some of the beaux to follow, but they
stood in such awe of her, that not one had the temerity to offer his
attendance. Each being occupied with his own pursuits and reflections,
no one missed the young madam for some time, until their attention was
roused by a shriek at a distance in the wood. After a momentary pause,
the shrieks were repeated in quick succession, and almost immediately
succeeded by the report of a gun. The little group of young people was
struck with dismay, and the first impulse was to run to the boats,
and escape into the stream. But to do them justice, this was but an
involuntary selfishness, for the moment they missed Blandina, the young
men prepared to pursue in the direction of the shrieks and the gun. At
this crisis, a figure darted swiftly from the wood, bearing the young
lady insensible in his arms, and approaching the group, placed her with
her head in the lap of one of the girls, while he ran to the river, and
returned with some water in his hat.
“Blandina soon came to herself, and related that she had been seized
by an Indian, and rescued by the young man, who, all the young damsels
presently discovered, was very handsome. He wore the dress of a
gentleman of that day, which, sooth to say, would not cut much of a
figure just now. He was accoutred as a sportsman, and had in his bag
sufficient evidence of his skill. It was decided on all hands that the
stranger, having saved the life of Blandina, or at least rescued her
from captivity, was destined to be her future husband, and that her
time was now come. Such prophecies are very apt to be fulfilled. The
stranger announced himself as the son of the ancient and honourable
Lord of Pavonia, and was blushingly invited by Blandina to come and
receive the thanks of her father, when he should return from the
eastern frontier. But he only shook his head, and replied with a
dubious smile, ‘Are you sure I shall be welcome?’
“From this time Blandina became more languid and thoughtful than
ever. When the father returned, and heard the story of her straying
into the woods, and of her deliverance, he swore he would reward the
gallant young man, like a most liberal and puissant governor. But when
afterwards, on inquiring his name, he found that he was the son of
the Lord of Pavonia, he retracted his promise, and swore that the son
was no better than the father, who was an arrant splutterkin. They
had quarrelled about boundaries; his excellency claiming the whole
of the river on the west side, up to the high-water mark, while the
Lord of Pavonia, whose territories lay exactly opposite the city of
New-Amsterdam, had the temerity to set nets, and catch shad in the very
middle of the stream. The feud was bitter in proportion to the dignity
of the parties and the importance of the point at issue. The governor
commanded his daughter never to mention the name of the splutterkin, on
pain of his displeasure.
“Rumour, however, says that the young man found means to renew his
acquaintance with Blandina, and that though she might never mention
his name to her father, she thought of him all day, and dreamed about
him all night. After a while the rumour died away, and the people
began to think and talk of something else. Some of the young men,
however, who happened to see the culprit that had dared to leap over
the wall against the statute, thought he had a strong resemblance to
the youth who had rescued Blandina from the Indian. The young lady,
as I said before, continued ill all day, and for several days after
the condemnation of the spectre youth, who persevered in obstinately
refusing any disclosure of his name, or his motives for scaling the
walls of New-Amsterdam. In the mean time the period of his execution
approached; only two days of life now remained to him, when Blandina,
with an effort, determined to bring her fate to a crisis at once. She
rose from her bed, pale and drooping like a lily, and tottering to her
father's study, sank at his feet.
“‘Father,’ said she, ‘will you forgive him and me?’
“‘Forgive thee, my daughter; I have nothing to forgive, so that is
settled. But who is the other?’
“‘My husband.’
“‘Thy husband!’ exclaimed the puissant governor, starting up in dismay;
‘and who is he?’
“‘The youth who is sentenced to die the day after the morrow.’
“'And who is he—in the d—l's name, I had almost said,' exclaimed his
excellency, in wrathful amazement.
“‘He is the son of the Lord of Pavonia,’ replied she, hiding her face
with her hands.
“‘And thou art married to that splutterkin?’
“‘Yes, father.’
“'Then I shall take care to unmarry thee—the knot the parson tied the
hangman shall untie the day after the morrow, or I'm no governor. But
who dared to marry thee against my will?'
“‘Dominie Curtenius.’
“'He did—then the dominie shall hang by the side of the splutterkin. Go
to thy chamber, to thy bed, to thy grave, thou art no daughter of mine.'
“Poor Blandina crawled to her bed, and wept herself into a temporary
forgetfulness. The next day she was so much worse, that the old nurse
declared she would die before her husband. The governor kept up a good
countenance, but his heart was sorely beset by pity and forgiveness,
which both clung weeping about him. He went so far as to sound some of
the council about pardoning the young man; but one of them, who was
suspected of looking up to the fair Blandina, talked so eloquently
about the safety of the city and the public good, that he was fain to
hold his tongue, and shut himself up, for he could not bear to see his
daughter.
“At length the day arrived, big with the fate of poor Blandina and
her unhappy husband. She sent to her father for permission to see him
before he died, but the governor, after a sore struggle, denied her
request.
“‘Then, indeed, he is no longer my father,’ cried Blandina, and sinking
upon her bed, covered her head, as if to shut out the world. Presently
the bell tolled the hour of the sacrifice, and its hollow vibrations
penetrated the ears of the mourning wife. In spite of her weakness, and
the endeavours of the old nurse, she started up, and rushing towards
the door of her chamber, exclaimed, wildly, 'I will see him—I will go
and see him die.' But her strength failed her, and she sank on the
floor. In the mean time a scene, peculiarly interesting to the fortunes
of Blandina, was passing below. The proud, obdurate, rich old Lord of
Pavonia, had heard of the capture, the condemnation of his only son.
For a while his pride and hatred of the Governor of New-Amsterdam
almost choked the thought of entreaty or concession to his ancient
enemy. But as the time approached, and he heard of the situation of his
son, and of his unfortunate wife, who had never offended him, his heart
gradually relented. When the morning arrived, and he looked across the
smooth river, from the long porch fronting his stately mansion, towards
the spot where his son was about suffering an ignominious death, he
could restrain his feelings no longer.
“Calling for his boatmen and his barge, and hastily putting on his
cocked hat and sword, he embarked, crossed swiftly over the river, and
landing, proceeded directly to the big house. He demanded an audience
of the governor.
“'The splutterkin is here too—but let him come in, that I may be
satisfied the old dog is as miserable as myself,' said the governor,
with tears in his eyes.
“The Lord of Pavonia entered with a stately bow, which was returned in
as stately a manner by the governor.
“‘I come,’ said Pavonia, ‘I come,’ and his voice became choked, ‘to ask
the life of my son at your hands.’
“‘Thy son has broken the laws, and the laws have condemned him to
death, justly.’
“‘I know it,’ said the other; ‘but what if I pay the price of his
ransom?’
“‘I am no money higgler.’
“‘But if I surrender the right of the river to high-water mark?’
“‘What!’ said his excellency, pricking up his ears, ‘wilt thou? And the
shad fishery, and the diabolical gill nets?’
“'Yea—all—all,‘ said the other, 'to save the life of my only son.’
“‘Wilt thou sign, seal, and deliver?’
“'This instant—so I receive back my boy alive.'
“‘Stay, then, a moment.’
“The governor then hastily directed his bellringer to call the council
together, and laid the proposition before them. The concession was
irresistible, and the council decided to pardon the son, on condition
that the father executed the deed of relinquishment. He did so, and the
young man was forthwith set at liberty. It is time for me to retire,”
said our good grandfather, “so I must cut short my story. The meeting
of the husband and his faithful wife took place without witnesses, and
none was ever able to describe it. Blandina speedily recovered, and
lived to see her children's children play about the room by dozens.
The Lord of Pavonia and the Governor of New-Amsterdam continued a sort
of grumbling acquaintance, and dined together once a year, when they
always quarrelled about the fishery and high-water mark. In process
of time, their respective fortunes became united in the person of the
winged monster, and formed a noble patrimony, some of which I inherited
with your grandmother.
“Jan Sol underwent many a joke, good, bad, and indifferent, about
the winged monster. But he continued to his dying day to assert his
solemn belief, that the young Lord of Pavonia and the spectre were
two different persons. Many a time and oft did he frighten his wife
and children with the story, which he improved every time he told
it, till he was at length gathered to his fathers, as his fathers
had been gathered before him. He had enough people to keep him in
countenance, for there were hundreds of discreet citizens, who treated
all doubts concerning the appearance of the winged monster with as
little toleration as do the good folks of the town of Salem the wicked
unbelievers in the existence of the great sea serpent.”
COBUS YERKS.
Little Cobus Yerks—his name was Jacob, but being a Dutchman, if not a
double Dutchman, it was rendered in English Cobus—little Cobus, I say,
lived on the banks of Sawmill River, where it winds close under the
brow of the Raven Rock, an enormous precipice jutting out of the side
of the famous Buttermilk Hill, of which the reader has doubtless often
heard. It was a rude, romantic spot, distant from the high road, which,
however, could be seen winding up the hill about three miles off. His
nearest neighbours were at the same distance, and he seldom saw company
except at night, when the fox and the weasel sometimes beat up his
quarters, and caused a horrible cackling among the poultry.
One Tuesday, in the month of November, 1793, Cobus had gone in his
wagon to the little market town on the river, from whence the boats
plied weekly to New-York, with the produce of the neighbouring farmers.
It was then a pestilent little place for running races, pitching
quoits, and wrestling for gin slings; but I must do it the credit to
say, that it is now a very orderly town, sober and quiet, save when
Parson Mathias, who calls himself a son of thunder, is praying in
secret, so as to be heard across the river. It so happened, that of
all the days in the year, this was the very day a rumour had got into
town, that I myself—the veritable writer of this true story—had been
poisoned by a dish of Souchong tea, which was bought a great bargain
of a pedler. There was not a stroke of work done in the village that
day. The shoemaker abandoned his awl; the tailor his goose; the hatter
his bowstring; and the forge of the blacksmith was cool from dawn till
nightfall. Silent was the sonorous harmony of the big spinning wheel;
silent the village song, and silent the fiddle of Master Timothy Canty,
who passed his livelong time in playing tuneful measures, and catching
bugs and butterflies. I must say something of Tim before I go on with
my tale.
Master Timothy was first seen in the village, one foggy morning, after
a drizzling, warm, showery night, when he was detected in a garret, at
the extremity of the suburbs; and it was the general supposition that
he had rained down in company with a store of little toads that were
seen hopping about, as is usual after a shower. Around his garret were
disposed a number of unframed pictures, painted on glass, as in the
olden time, representing the Four Seasons, the old King of Prussia, and
Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, in their sharp-pointed cocked hats; the
fat, bald-pated Marquis of Granby, the beautiful Constantia Phillips,
and divers others, not forgetting the renowned Kitty Fisher, who, I
honestly confess, was my favourite among them all. The whole village
poured into the garret to gaze at these chef d'œuvres; and it is my
confirmed opinion, which I shall carry to the grave, that neither the
gallery of Florence, Dresden, nor the Louvre, was ever visited by so
many real amateurs. Besides the pictures, there were a great many other
curiosities, at least curiosities to the simple villagers, who were
always sure of being welcomed by Master Tim with a jest and a tune.
Master Tim, as they came to call him when they got to be a little
acquainted, was a rare fellow, such as seldom rains down anywhere, much
less on a country village. He was of “merry England,” as they call
it—lucus a non lucendo—at least so he said and I believe, although he
belied his nativity, by being the merriest rogue in the world, even
when the fog was at the thickest. In truth, he was ever in a good
humour, unless it might be when a rare bug or gorgeous butterfly,
that he had followed through thick and thin, escaped his net at last.
Then, to be sure, he was apt to call the recreant all the “vagabonds”
he could think of. He was a middle-sized man, whose person decreased
regularly, from the crown of his head to the—I was going to say, sole
of his foot—but it was only to the commencement of the foot, to speak
by the card. The top of his head was broad and flat, and so was his
forehead, which took up at least two thirds of his face, that tapered
off suddenly to a chin, as sharp as the point of a triangle. His
forehead was indeed a large field, diversified like the country into
which he had rained down, with singular varieties of hill and dale,
meadow and plough land, hedge and ditch, ravine and watercourse. It had
as many points as a periwinkle. The brow projected exuberantly, though
not heavily, over a pair of rascally little cross-firing, twinkling
eyes, that, as the country people said, looked at least nine ways from
Sunday. His teeth were white enough, but no two of them were fellows.
But his head would have turned the brains of a phrenologist, in
exploring the mysteries of its development; it was shaped somewhat like
Stony Point—which everybody knows as the scene of a gallant exploit of
Pennsylvanian Wayne—and had quite as many abruptnesses and quizzical
protuberances to brag about. At the upper extremity of his forehead, as
he assured us, he carried his money, in the shape of a piece of silver,
three inches long and two wide, inserted there in consequence of a
fracture he got by falling down a precipice in hot chase of a “vagabond
of a beetle,” as he was pleased to call him. Descending towards terra
firma, to wit, his feet, we find his body gradually diminishing to his
legs, which were so thin, everybody wondered how they could carry the
great head. But, like Captain Wattle, each had a foot at the end of
it, full as large as the Black Dwarf. It is so long ago that I almost
forget his costume. All I recollect is, that he never wore boots or
pantaloons, but exhibited his spindles in all weathers in worsted
stockings, and his feet in shoes, gorgeously caparisoned in a pair of
square silver buckles, the only pieces of finery he ever displayed.
In the merry months of spring and summer, and early in autumn, Master
Timothy was most of his time chasing bugs and butterflies about the
fields, to the utter confusion of the people, who wondered what
he could want with such trumpery. Being a genius and an idler by
profession, I used to accompany him frequently in these excursions, for
he was fond of me, and called me vagabond oftener than he did anybody
else. He had a little net of green gauze, so constructed as to open and
shut as occasion required, to entrap the small fry, and a box with a
cork bottom, upon which he impaled his prisoners with true scientific
barbarity, by sticking a pin in them. Thus equipped, this Don Quixote
of butterfly catchers, with myself his faithful esquire, would sally
out of a morning into the clovered meadows and flower-dotted fields,
over brook, through tangled copse and briery dell, in chase of these
gentlemen commoners of nature. Ever and anon, as he came upon some
little retired nook, where nature, like a modest virgin, shrouded her
beauties from the common view—a rocky glen, romantic cottage, rustic
bridge, or brawling stream, he would take out his little portfolio,
and pointing me to some conspicuous station to animate his little
landscape, sketch it and me together, with a mingled taste and skill
I have never since seen surpassed. I figure in all his landscapes,
although he often called me a vagabond, because he could not drill me
into picturesque attitudes. But the finest sport for me, was to watch
him creeping slily after a humming bird, the object of his most intense
desires, half buried in the bliss of the dewy honeysuckle, and just
as he was on the point of covering it with his net, to see the little
vagrant flit away with a swiftness that made it invisible. It was an
invaluable sight to behold Master Timothy stand wiping his continent of
a forehead, and blessing the bird for a “little vagabond.” These were
happy times, and at this moment I recall them, I hardly know why, with
a melancholy yet pleasing delight.
During the winter season, Master Timothy was usually employed in the
daytime painting pleasure sleighs, which, at that period, it was the
fashion among the farmers to have as fine as fiddles. Timothy was
a desperate hand at a true lover's knot, a cipher, or a wreath of
flowers; and as for a blazing sun! he painted one for the squire,
that was seriously suspected of melting all the snow in ten leagues
round. He would go ten or a dozen miles to paint a sleigh, and always
carried his materials on a board upon the top of his head—it was before
the invention of high-crowned hats. Destiny had decreed he should
follow this trade, and nature had provided him a head on purpose.
It was as flat as a pancake. In the long winter evenings it was his
pleasure to sit by the fireside, and tell enormous stories to groups
of horrorstruck listeners. I never knew a man that had been so often
robbed on Hounslow Heath, or had seen so many ghosts in his day, as
Master Tim Canty. Peace to his ashes! he is dead, and, if report is to
be credited, is sometimes seen on moonlight nights in the churchyard,
with his little green gauze net, chasing the ghosts of moths and
beetles, as he was wont in past times.
But it is high time to return to my story; for I candidly confess I
never think of honest Tim that I don't grow as garrulous as an old
lady, talking about the revolution and the Yagers. In all country
villages I ever saw or heard of, whenever anything strange, new,
horrible, or delightful happens, or is supposed to have happened, all
the male inhabitants, not to say female, make for the tavern as fast
as possible, to hear the news, or tell the news, and get at the bottom
of the affair. I don't deny that truth is sometimes to be found at the
bottom of a well; but in these cases she is generally found at the
bottom of the glass. Be this as it may—when Cobus Yerks looked into
the village inn, just to say How d'ye do to the landlady, he beheld a
party of some ten or a dozen people, discussing the affair of my being
poisoned with Souchong tea, which by this time had been extended to the
whole family, not one of whom had been left alive by the bloody-minded
damsel, Rumour.
Cobus could not resist the fascination of these horrors. He edged
himself in among them, and after a little while they were joined
by Master Timothy, who, on hearing of the catastrophe of his old
fellow-labourer in butterfly catching, had strode over a distance of
two miles to our house to ascertain the truth of the story. He of
course found it was a mistake, and had now returned with a nefarious
design of frightening them all out of their wits by a story of more
than modern horrors. By this time it was the dusk of the evening, and
Cobus had a long way to travel before he could reach home. He had been
so fascinated with the story, and the additions every moment furnished
by various new comers, that he forgot the time till it began to grow
quite dark; and then he was so horrorstruck at what he had heard,
that he grew fast to his chair in the chimney corner, where he had
intrenched himself. It was at this moment Master Timothy came in with
the design aforesaid.
The whole party gathered round him to know if the story of the
poisoning was true. Tim shook his head, and the shaking of such a head
was awful. “What! all the family?” cried they, with one voice. “Every
soul of them,” cried Tim, in a hollow tone—“every soul of them, poor
creatures; and not only they, but all the cattle, horses, pigs, ducks,
chickens, cats, dogs, and guinea hens, are poisoned.” “What! with
Souchong tea?” “No—with coloquintida.” Coloquintida! the very name was
enough to poison a whole generation of Christian people. “But the black
bulldog!” cried Timothy, in a sepulchral voice, that curdled the very
marrow of their innermost bones. “What of the black bulldog?” quoth
little Cobus. “Why, they do say that he came to life again after laying
six hours stone dead, and ran away howling like a d—l incarnate.” “A
d—l incarnate!” quoth Cobus, who knew no more about the meaning of that
fell word than if it had been Greek. He only knew it was something
very terrible. “Yes,” replied Timothy; “and what's more, I saw where
he jumped over the barnyard gate, and there was the print of a cloven
foot, as plain as the daylight this blessed minute.” It was as dark
as pitch, but the comparison was considered proof positive. “A cloven
foot!” quoth Cobus, who squeezed himself almost into the oven, while
the thought of going home all alone in the dark, past the churchyard,
the old grave at the cross roads, and, above all, the spot where John
Ryer was hanged for shooting the sheriff, smote upon his heart, and
beat it into a jelly—at least it shook like one. What if he should
meet the big black dog, with his cloven foot, who howled like a d—l
incarnate! The thought was enough to wither the heart of a stone.
Cobus was a little, knock-kneed, broad-faced, and broad-shouldered
Dutchman, who believed all things, past, present, and to come,
concerning spooks, goblins, and fiends of all sorts and sizes, from a
fairy to a giant. Tim Canty knew him of old, for he had once painted a
sleigh for him, and frightened Cobus out of six nights' sleep, by the
story of a man that he once saw murdered by a highwayman on Hounslow
Heath. Tim followed up the story of the black dog with several others,
each more appalling than the first, till he fairly lifted Cobus's
wits off the hinges, aided as he was by certain huge draughts upon a
pewter mug, with which the little man reinforced his courage at short
intervals. He was a true disciple of the doctrine that spirit and
courage, that is to say, whiskey and valour were synonymous.
It now began to wax late in the evening, and the company departed, not
one by one, but in pairs, to their respective homes. The landlady, a
bitter root of a woman, and more than a match for half the men in the
village, began to grow sleepy, as it was now no longer worth her while
to keep awake. Gradually all became quiet within and without the house,
except now and then the howling of a wandering cur, and the still more
doleful moaning of the winds, accompanied by the hollow thumpings of
the waves, as they dashed on the rocky shores of the river that ran
hard by. Once, and once only, the cat mewed in the garret, and almost
caused Cobus to jump out of his skin. The landlady began to complain
that it grew late, and she was very sleepy; but Cobus would take no
hints, manfully keeping his post in the chimney corner, till at last
the good woman threatened to call up her two negroes, and have him
turned neck and heels out of doors. For a moment the fear of the big
black dog with the cloven foot was mastered by the fear of the two
stout black men, and the spirit moved Cobus towards the door, lovingly
hugging the stone jug, which he had taken care to have plentifully
replenished with the creature. He sallied forth in those graceful
curves, which are affirmed to constitute the true lines of beauty; and
report says that he made a copious libation of the contents of the
stone jug outside the door, ere the landlady, after assisting to untie
his patient team, had tumbled him into his wagon. This was the last
that was seen of Cobus Yerks.
That night his faithful, though not very obedient little wife, whom
he had wedded at Tappan, on the famous sea of that name, and who wore
a cap trimmed with pink ribands when she went to church on Sundays,
fell asleep in her chair, as she sat anxiously watching his return.
About midnight she waked, but she saw not her beloved Cobus, nor heard
his voice calling her to open the door. But she heard the raven, or
something very like it, screaming from the Raven Rock, the foxes
barking about the house, the wind whistling and moaning among the
rocks and trees of the mountain side, and a terrible commotion among
the poultry, Cobus having taken the great house-dog with him that
day. Again she fell asleep, and waked not until the day was dawning.
She opened the window, and looked forth upon as beautiful an autumnal
morning as ever blessed this blessed country. The yellow sun threw a
golden lustre over the many-tinted woods, painted by the cunning hand
of Nature with a thousand varied dies; the smoke of the neighbouring
farmhouses rose straight upward to heaven in the pure atmosphere, and
the breath of the cattle mingled its warm vapour with the invisible
clearness of the morning air. But what were all these beauties of
delicious nature to the eye and the heart of the anxious wife, who saw
that Cobus was not there?
She went forth to the neighbours to know if they had seen him, and
they good-naturedly sallied out to seek him on the road that led from
the village to his home. But no traces of him could be found, and they
were returning with bad news for his anxious wife, when they bethought
themselves of turning into a byroad that led to a tavern, that used
whilome to attract the affections of honest Cobus, and where he was
sometimes wont to stop and wet his whistle.
They had not gone far, when they began to perceive traces of the
lost traveller. First his broad-brimmed hat, which he had inherited
through divers generations, and which he always wore when he went to
the village, lay grovelling in the dirt, crushed out of all goodly
shape by the wheel of his wagon, which had passed over it. Next, they
encountered the backboard of the wagon, ornamented with C. Y. in a true
lover's knot, painted by Tim Canty, in his best style—and anon a little
farther, a shoe, that was identified as having belonged to our hero,
by having upward of three hundred hobnails in the sole, for he was a
saving little fellow, though he would wet his whistle sometimes, in
spite of all his wife and the minister could say. Proceeding about a
hundred rods farther, to a sudden turn of the road, they encountered
the wagon, or rather the fragments of it, scattered about and along
in the highway, and the horses standing quietly against a fence, into
which they had run the pole of the wagon.
But what was become of the unfortunate driver, no one could discover.
At length, after searching some time, they found him lying in a tuft
of blackberry briars, amid the fragments of the stone jug, lifeless
and motionless. His face was turned upward, and streaked with seams
of blood; his clothes torn, bloody, and disfigured with dirt; and his
pipe, that he carried in the buttonholes of his waistcoat, shivered all
to naught. They made their way to the body, full of sad forebodings,
and shook it, to see if any life remained. But it was all in vain—there
seemed neither sense nor motion there. “Maybe, after all,” said one,
“he is only in a swound—here is a little drop of the spirits left in
the bottom of the jug—let us hold it to his nose, it may bring him to
life.”
The experiment was tried, and wonderful to tell, in a moment or
two, Cobus, opening his eyes, and smacking his lips with peculiar
satisfaction, exclaimed, “Some o' that, boys!” A little shaking brought
him to himself, when being asked to give an account of the disaster of
his wagon and his stone jug, he at first shook his head mysteriously,
and demurred. Being, however taken to the neighbouring tavern, and
comforted a little with divers refreshments, he was again pressed for
his story, when, assuming a face of awful mystification, he began as
follows:—
“You must know,” said Cobus, “I started rather late from town, for I
had been kept there by—by business; and because, you see, I was waiting
for the moon to rise, that I might find my way home in the dark night.
But it grew darker and darker, until you could not see your hand
before your face, and at last I concluded to set out, considering I
was as sober as a deacon, and my horses could see their way blindfold.
I had not gone quite round the corner, where John Ryer was hung for
shooting Sheriff Smith, when I heard somebody coming, pat, pat, pat,
close behind my wagon. I looked back, but I could see nothing, it was
so dark. By-and-by, I heard it again, louder and louder, and then
I confess I began to be a little afeard. So I whipped up my horses
a quarter of a mile or so, and then let them walk on. I listened,
and pat, pat, pat, went the noise again. I began to be a good deal
frightened, but considering it could be nothing at all, I thought I
might as well take a small dram, as the night was rather chilly, and I
began to tremble a little with the cold. I took but a drop, as I am a
living sinner, and then went on quite gayly; but pat, pat, pat, went
the footsteps ten times louder and faster than ever. And then! then
I looked back, and saw a pair of saucer eyes just at the tail of my
wagon, as big and as bright as the mouths of a fiery furnace, dancing
up and down in the air like two stage lamps in a rough road.
“By gosh, boys, but you may depend I was scared now! I took another
little dram, and then made the whip fly about the ears of old Pepper
and Billy, who cantered away at a wonderful rate, considering.
Presently, bang! something heavy jumped into the wagon, as if heaven
and earth were coming together. I looked over my shoulder, and the
great burning eyes were within half a yard of my back. The creature
was so close that I felt its breath blowing upon me, and it smelled
for all one exactly like brimstone. I should have jumped out of the
wagon, but, somehow or other, I could not stir, for I was bewitched
as sure as you live. All I could do was to bang away upon Pepper and
Billy, who rattled along at a great rate up hill and down, over the
rough roads, so that if I had not been bewitched, I must have tumbled
out to a certainty. When I came to the bridge, at old Mangham's, the
black dog, for I could see something black and shaggy under the goggle
eyes, all at once jumped up, and seated himself close by me on the
bench, snatched the whip and reins out of my hands like lightning. Then
looking me in the face, and nodding, he whispered something in my ear,
and lashed away upon Pepper and Billy, till they seemed to fly through
the air. From that time I began to lose my wits by degrees, till at
last the smell of brimstone overpowered me, and I remember nothing
till you found me this morning in the briars.”
Here little Cobus concluded his story, which he repeated with several
variations and additions to his wife, when he got home. That good
woman, who, on most occasions, took the liberty of lecturing her
good man, whenever he used to be belated in his excursions to the
village, was so struck with this adventure, that she omitted her
usual exhortation, and ever afterwards viewed him as one ennobled by
supernatural communication, submitting to him as her veritable lord
and master. Some people, who pretend to be so wise that they won't
believe the evidence of their senses when it contradicts their reason,
affected to be incredulous, and hinted that the goggle eyes, and the
brimstone breath, appertained to Cobus Yerks's great house-dog, which
had certainly followed him that day to the village, and was found
quietly reposing by his master, in the tuft of briars. But Cobus was
ever exceedingly wroth at this suggestion, and being a sturdy little
brusier, had knocked down one or two of these unbelieving sinners, for
venturing to assert that the contents of the stone jug were at the
bottom of the whole business. After that, everybody believed it, and
it is now for ever incorporated with the marvellous legends of the
renowned Buttermilk Hill.
A STRANGE BIRD
IN
NIEUW-AMSTERDAM.
In the year of the building of the city (which in Latin is called
_Anno Urba Conditur_) fifty-five, to wit, the year of our Lord 1678,
there appeared a phenomenon in the street of Nieuw-Amsterdam called
Garden-street. This was a youthful stranger, dressed in the outlandish
garb of the English beyond the Varsche river, towards the east, where
those interlopers have grievously trespassed on the territories of
their high mightinesses, the states general. Now, be it known that this
was the first stranger from foreign parts that ever showed himself in
the streets of Nieuw-Amsterdam, which had never been before invaded
in like manner. Whereat the good people were strangely perplexed and
confounded, seeing they could by no means divine his business. The good
yffrouws did gaze at him as he passed along by their stoops, and the
idle boys followed him wheresoever he went, shouting and hallooing, to
the great disturbance of the peaceable and orderly citizens, of whom it
was once said that the barking of a cur disturbed the whole city.
But the stranger took not the least heed of the boys or their
hallooings, but passed straight onward, looking neither to the right
nor to the left, which circumstance seemed exceedingly perplexing to
the good yffrouws, seeing it savoured of having no curiosity to see or
be seen, which to them appeared altogether out of nature. The stranger
proceeded in a sort of rigmarole way, seeming little to care whither he
went, all along by the Stadt Huys, the East and West Docks, the Bendeel
or Battery, the Rondeels, and I can't tell where else. All the while he
seemed to take no notice of anything, which everybody thought strange,
since he appeared as if he had no other business than to see the city.
In the course of his marvellous peregrinations, he at length came to
the great building, which, being the only house of public resort, was
called, by way of eminence, the City Tavern. Here he stopped all of
a sudden, so abruptly, that little Brom, son of Alderman Botherwick,
who was close at his heels, did run right upon his hinder parts, and
almost knocked him down, before he could stop himself. Whereupon the
stranger turned round and gave him a look, whether of menace or good
will, was long after disputed by divers people that saw him. Be this
as it may, the stranger, on seeing the tavern, nodded his head, and
went straight up the steps into the bar-room, where he courteously
saluted the landlord, good Mynheer Swighauser, by pulling off his hat,
saying, at the same time, nothing; which mynheer thought rather mighty
particular. He asked the interloping stranger what he would please
to have; for he was a polite man enough, except to losel beggars,
and that sort of vermin. The stranger hereupon said nothing, but
addressed Mynheer Swighauser in a figurative style, which all landlords
comprehend. He pulled out a purse, and showed him the money, at the
sight of which mynheer made him a reverend bow, and ushered him into
the Half Moon, so called from being ornamented with a gallant picture
of the vessel of that name, in which good Master Hendrick Hudson did
first adventure to the discovery of the Manhadoes. It was the best room
in the house, and always reserved by Mynheer Swighauser for guests that
carried full purses.
Having so done, mynheer courteously asked the stranger what he would
please to have for dinner, it being now past eleven o'clock, and the
dinner hour nigh. Whereat the stranger looked hard at him, and said not
a word. Mynheer thereupon raised his voice so loud, that he frightened
divers tame pigeons, sitting on their coop in the yard, who rose into
the air out of sight, and, it is affirmed, never returned again. The
stranger answered not a word, as before.
“_Wat donder is dat?_” exclaimed mynheer; “a man with such a full purse
might venture to call for his dinner, I think.”
However, when Mynheer Swighauser and his family sat down to their
dinner at twelve o'clock, the stranger, without any ceremony, sat
down with them, taking the chair from time immemorial appropriated
to mynheer's youngest child, who was thereat so mortally offended,
that she set up a great cry, and refused to eat any dinner. Yffrouw
Swighauser looked hard and angry at the stranger, who continued to eat
as if it were his last, saying nothing all the while, and paying no
more heed to the little child than he did to the hallooing of the boys
or mynheer's courteous interrogatories.
When he had finished, he took up his hat, and went forth on a
peregrination, from which he did not return until it was nigh dusk.
Mynheer was in tribulation lest he should lose the price of his
dinner, but the Yffrouw said she did not care if she never saw such a
dumb noddy again. The stranger ate a huge supper in silence, smoked
his pipe, and went to bed at eight o'clock, at which hour mynheer
always shut up the front of his house, leaving the back door open
to the roistering younkers, who came there to carouse every night,
and play at all-fours. Soon after the stranger retired, there was
heard a great noise in his room, which so excited the curiosity of
Yffrouw Swighauser, that she took a landlady's liberty, and went and
listened at the door. It proved only the stranger playing a concert
with Morpheus, on the nasal trumpet, whereupon the yffrouw went away,
exclaiming,
“The splutterkin! he makes noise enough in his sleep, if he can't when
he is awake.”
That night the good city of Nieuw-Amsterdam was impestered with divers
strange noises, grievous mishaps, and unaccountable appearances. The
noises were such as those who heard them could not describe, and, for
that reason, I hope the courteous reader will excuse me, if I say
nothing more about them; the mishaps were of certain mysterious broken
heads, black eyes, and sore bruises received, as was affirmed, from
unknown assailants; and the mysterious appearances consisted in lights
moving about, at midnight, in the Ladies' Valley, since called Maiden
Lane, which might have passed for lightning bugs, only people that saw
them said they were as big as jack-a-lanterns. Besides these, there
were seen divers stars shooting about in the sky, and an old yffrouw,
being called out after midnight on a special occasion, did certify that
she saw two stars fighting with each other, and making the sparks fly
at every blow. Other strange things happened on that memorable night,
which alarmed the good citizens, and excited the vigilance of the
magistrates.
The next night, matters were still worse. The lights in the Ladies'
Valley were larger and more numerous; the noises waxed more alarming
and unaccountable; and the stranger, while he continued to act and
say nothing all day, snored louder than ever. At length, Yffrouw
Swighauser, being thereunto, as I suspect, instigated by a stomachful
feeling, on account of the stranger's having got possession of her
favourite's seat, and set her a crying, did prevail, by divers means,
of which, thank Heaven, I have little experience, being a bachelor,
to have her husband go and make a complaint against the stranger, as
having some diabolical agency in these matters.
“_Wat donner meen je_, wife?” quoth mynheer; “what have I to say
against the man? He is a very civil, good sort of a body, and never
makes any disturbance except in his sleep.”
“Ay, there it is,” replied the yffrouw. “I never heard such a snore in
all my life. Why, it's no more like yours than the grunt of a pig is to
the roar of a lion. It's unnatural.”
Mynheer did not like this comparison, and answered and said, “By St.
Johannes de Dooper, whoever says I snore like a pig is no better than a
goose.”
The yffrouw had a point to gain, or mynheer Swighauser would have
repented this rejoinder.
“My duck-a-deary,” said she, “whoever says you don't snore like a
fiddle has no more ear for music than a mole—I mean a squeaking
fiddle,” quoth she, aside.
Without further prosecuting this dialogue, let it suffice to say that
the yffrouw at length wrought upon mynheer to present the stranger unto
Alderman Schlepevalcker as a mysterious person, who came from—nobody
knew where, for—nobody knew what; and for aught he knew to the
contrary, was at the bottom of all the disturbances that had beset the
good people of Nieuw-Amsterdam for the last two nights. Accordingly,
the honest man went on his way to the Stadt Huys, where the excellent
magistrate was taking his turn in presiding over the peace of the city
of Nieuw-Amsterdam, and told all he knew, together with much more
besides.
During this communication, the worthy alderman exclaimed, from time to
time, “Indeedaad!” “Onbegrypelyk!” “Goeden Hemel!” “Is het mogelyk!”
“Vuur envlammen!” and finally dismissed Mynheer Swighauser, desiring
him to watch the stranger, and come next day with the result of his
observations. After which he went home to consult his pillow, which he
considered worth all the law books in the world.
The honest publican returned to the City Tavern, where he found supper
all ready; and the stranger, sitting down as usual in the old place,
ate a hearty meal without uttering one word. The yffrouw was out of all
patience with him, seeing she never before had a guest in the house
four-and-twenty hours, without knowing all about him. The upshot of the
interview with the worthy magistrate being disclosed to the yffrouw, it
was agreed in secret to set old Quashee, the black hostler, to watch
the stranger; though the yffrouw told her husband he might as well set
a wooden image to do it, for Quashee was the most notorious sleepyhead
in all Nieuw-Amsterdam, not excepting himself.
“Well, well,” quoth mynheer, “_men weet niet hoe een koe een haas
vangan kan_;” which means, “There is no saying that a cow won't catch
a hare,” and so the matter was settled.
When the stranger retired to his room after supper, the old negro was
accordingly stationed outside the door, with strict injunctions to keep
himself awake, on pain of losing his Newyear present, and being shut up
in the stable all Newyear's day. But it is recorded of Quashee, that
the flesh was too strong for the spirit, though he had a noggin of
genuine Holland to comfort him, and that he fell into a profound nap,
which lasted till after sunrise next day, when he was found sitting
bolt upright on a three-legged stool, with his little black stump of
a pipe declining from the dexter corner of his mouth. Mynheer was
exceeding wroth, and did accommodate old Quashee with such a hearty
cuff on the side of his head, that he fell from the stool, and did
incontinently roll down the stairs and so into the kitchen, where he
was arrested by the great Dutch andirons. “_Een vervlockte jonge_,”
exclaimed Mynheer Swighauser, “_men weet niet, hoe een dubbeltje rollen
kan_”—in English, “There is no saying which way a sixpence will roll.”
At breakfast, the stranger was for the first time missing from his
meals, and this excited no small wonder in the family, which was
marvellously aggravated, when, after knocking some time and receiving
no answer, the door was opened, and the stranger found wanting.
“_Is het mogelyk!_” exclaimed the yffrouw, and “_Wat blixen!_” cried
mynheer. But their exclamations were speedily arrested by the arrival
of the reverend schout, Master Roelif, as he was commonly called, who
summoned them both forthwith to the Stadt Huys, at the command of his
worship Alderman Schlepevalker.
“_Ben je bedonnered?_” cried mynheer; “what can his worship want of my
wife now?”
“Never mind,” replied the good yffrouw, “_het is goed visschen in
troebel water_,” and so they followed Master Roelif to the Stadt House,
according to the behest of Alderman Schlepevalker, as aforesaid.
When they arrived there, whom should they see, in the middle of a
great crowd in the hall of justice, but that “_vervlocte hond_,” the
stranger, as the yffrouw was wont to call him, when he would not answer
her questions.
The stranger was standing with his hands tied behind, and apparently
unconscious, or indifferent to what was going forward around him. It
appears he had been detected very early in the morning in a remote
part of the King's Farm, as it was afterwards called, but which was
then a great forest full of rabbits and other game, standing over the
dead body of a man, whose name and person were equally unknown, no one
recollecting ever to have seen him before. On being interrogated on
the subject, he had not only declined answering, but affected to take
not the least heed of what they said to him. Under these suspicious
circumstances he was brought before the magistrate, charged with the
murder of the unknown person, whose body was also produced in proof of
the fact. No marks of violence were found on the body, but all agreed
that the man was dead, and that there must have been some cause for his
death. The vulgar are ever prone to suspicions, and albeit, are so fond
of seeing a man hanged, that they care little to inquire whether he is
guilty or not.
The worthy alderman, after ordering Master Roelif to call the people to
order, proceeded to interrogate the prisoner as followeth:—
“What is thy name?”
The stranger took not the least notice of him.
“What is thy name, _ben je bedonnered_?” repeated the worthy
magistrate, in a loud voice, and somewhat of a violent gesture of
impatience.
The stranger looked him in the face and nodded his head.
“_Wat donner is dat?_” cried the magistrate.
The stranger nodded as before.
“_Wat donner meen je?_”
Another nod. The worthy magistrate began, as it were, to wax wroth,
and demanded of the prisoner whence he came; but he had relapsed into
his usual indifference, and paid not the least attention, as before.
Whereupon the angry alderman committed him for trial, on the day but
one following, as the witnesses were all on the spot, and the prisoner
contumacious. In the interim, the body of the dead man had been
examined by the only two doctors of Nieuw-Amsterdam, Mynheer Van Dosum
and Mynheer Vander Cureum, who being rival practitioners, of course
differed entirely on the matter. Mynheer Van Dosum decided that the
unknown died by the hand of man, and Mynheer Vander Cureum, by the hand
of his Maker.
When the cause came to be tried, the stranger, as before, replied to
all questions, either by taking not the least notice, or nodding his
head. The worthy magistrate hereupon was sorely puzzled, whether this
ought to be construed into pleading guilty or not pleading at all. In
the former case his course was quite clear; in the latter, he did not
exactly know which way to steer his doubts. But fortunately having
no lawyers to confound him, he finally decided, after consulting
the ceiling of the courtroom, that as it was so easy for a man to
say not guilty, the omission or refusal to say it was tantamount to
a confession of guilt. Accordingly he condemned the prisoner to be
hanged, in spite of the declaration of Doctor Vander Cureum, that the
murdered man died of apoplexy.
The prisoner received the sentence, and was conducted to prison without
saying a word in his defence, and without discovering the least
emotion on the occasion. He merely looked wistfully, first on the
worthy magistrate, then on his bonds, and then at Master Roelif, who,
according to the custom of such losel varlets in office, rudely pushed
him out of the court and dragged him to prison.
On the fourteenth day after his condemnation, it being considered that
sufficient time had been allowed him to repent of his sins, the poor
stranger was brought forth to execution. He was accompanied by the
good dominie, who had prepared his last dying speech and confession,
and certified that he died a repentant sinner. His face was pale and
sad, and his whole appearance bespoke weakness and suffering. He still
persisted in his obstinate silence, and seemed unconscious of what was
going forward; whether from indifference or despair, it was impossible
to decide. When placed on a coffin in the cart, and driven under the
gallows, he seemed for a moment to be aware of his situation, and the
bitter tears coursed one by one down his pallid cheeks. But he remained
silent as before; and when the rope was tied round his neck, only
looked wistfully with a sort of innocent wonder in the face of the
executioner.
All being now ready, and the gaping crowd on the tiptoe of expectation,
the dominie sang a devout hymn, and shaking hands for the last time
with the poor stranger, descended from the cart. The bell tolled the
signal for launching him into the illimitable ocean of eternity, when,
all at once, its dismal moanings were, as it were, hushed into silence
by the piercing shrieks of a female which seemed approaching from a
distance. Anon a voice was heard crying out, “Stop, stop, for the love
of Heaven stop; he is innocent!”
The crowd opened, and a woman of good appearance, seemingly about
forty-five years old, rushed forward, and throwing herself at the feet
of the worthy alderman, whose duty it was to preside at the execution
and maintain due order among the crowd, cried out aloud,
“Spare him, he is my son—he is innocent!“
“_Ben je bedonnered?_” cried the magistrate, “_he is een verdoemde
schurk_, and has confessed his crime by not denying it.”
“He cannot confess or deny it—he was born deaf and dumb!”
“_Goeden Hemel!_” exclaimed Alderman Schlepevalcker; “that accounts for
his not pleading guilty or not guilty. But art thou sure of it, good
woman?”
“Sure of it! Did not I give him birth, and did I not watch like one
hanging over the deathbed of an only child, year after year, to catch
some token that he could hear what I said? Did I not try and try, day
after day, month after month, year after year, to teach him only to
name the name of mother? and when at last I lost all hope that I should
ever hear the sound of his voice, did I not still bless Heaven that I
was not childless, though my son could not call me mother?”
“_Het is jammer!_” exclaimed the worthy magistrate, wiping his eyes.
“But still a dumb man may kill another, for all this. What have you to
say against that?”
At this moment the poor speechless youth recognised his mother,
and uttering a strange inarticulate scream, burst away from the
executioner, leaped from the cart, and throwing himself on her bosom,
sobbed as if his heart was breaking. The mother pressed him to her
heart in silent agony, and the absence of words only added to the deep
pathos of the meeting.
Alderman Schlepevalcker was sorely puzzled as well as affected on this
occasion, and after wiping his eyes, addressed the weeping mother.
“How came thy son hither?”
“He is accustomed to ramble about the country, sometimes all day,
alone; and one day having strayed farther than usual, lost his way,
and being unable to ask any information, wandered we knew not whither,
until a neighbour told us a rumour of a poor youth, who was about to be
executed at Nieuw-Amsterdam for refusing to answer questions. I thought
it might be my son, and came in time, I hope, to save him.”
“Why did not thy husband come with thee?”
“He is dead.”
“And thy father?”
“He died when I was a child.”
“And thy other relatives?”
“I have none but him,” pointing to the dumb youth.
“_Het is jammer!_ but how will he get rid of the charge of this foul
murder?”
“I will question him,” said the mother, who now made various signs,
which were replied to by the youth in the same way.
“What does he say?” asked the worthy magistrate.
“He says that he went forth early in the morning of the day; he was
found standing over the dead body, as soon as the gate was opened to
admit the country people, where he saw the dead man lying under a tree,
and was seized while thus occupied. He knows nothing more.”
“_Onbegrypelik!_ how can you understand all this?”
“Oh, sir, I have been used to study every look and action of his life
since he was a child, and can comprehend his inmost thoughts.”
“_Goeden Hemel!_ is all this true? but he must go back to prison, while
I wait on the governor to solicit his pardon. Wilt thou accompany him?”
“Oh yes!—but no. I will go with thee to the governor. He will not deny
the petition of a mother for the life of her only child.”
Accordingly, the worthy magistrate calling on Doctor Vander Cureum on
his way, proceeded to the governor's house, accompanied by the mother
of the youth, who repeated what he had told her by signs. The doctor
also again certified, in the most positive manner, that the supposed
murdered man had died of apoplexy, brought on, as he supposed, by
excessive drinking; and the good governor, moved by the benevolence of
his heart, did thereupon grant the poor youth an unconditional pardon.
He was rewarded by the tears, the thanks, and the blessings of the now
happy mother.
“Where dost thou abide?” asked the governor. “If it is at a distance,
I will send some one to protect thee.”
“My home is beyond the fresh water river.”
“_Wat blikslager!_ thou belongest to the Splutterkins, who—but no
matter, thou shalt have protection in thy journey home.“ The governor,
being somewhat of a conscientious man, instead of swearing by the
lightning, did piously asseverate by the tinman.
The young man was forthwith released, to the unutterable joy of the
mother, and the infinite content of the Yffrouw Swighauser, who, now
that she knew the cause of his silence, forgave him with all her heart.
The next day the mother and son departed towards home, accompanied by
an escort provided by the good governor, the commander of which carried
a stout defiance to the Yankees; and the last words of that upright and
excellent magistrate, Alderman Schlepevalcker, as he looked kindly at
the youth, were,
”_Het is jammer_—it is a pity.”
CLAAS SCHLASCHENSCHLINGER.
Thrice blessed St. Nicholas! may thy memory and thine honours endure
for ever and a day! It is true that certain arch calumniators, such as
Romish priests, and the like, have claimed thee as a Catholic saint,
affirming, with unparalleled insolence, that ever since the pestilent
heresy of the illustrious John Calvin, there hath not been so much as
a single saint in the Reformed Dutch Church. But beshrew these keepers
of fasts, and other abominations, the truth is not, never was, nor ever
will be in their mouths, or their hearts! Doth not everybody know that
the blessed St. Nicholas was of the Reformed Dutch Church, and that the
cunning Romanists did incontinently filch him from us to keep their
own calendar in countenance? The splutterkins! But I will restrain the
outpourings of my wrath, and contenting myself with having proved that
the good saint was of the true faith, proceed with my story, which
is of undoubted authority, since I had it from a descendant of Claas
Schlaschenschlinger himself, who lives in great honour and glory at the
Waalboght on Long Island, and is moreover a justice of the peace and
deacon of the church.
Nicholas, or, according to the true orthography, Claas
Schlaschenschlinger, was of a respectable parentage, being born
at Saardam, in our good faderland, where his ancestors had been
proprietors of the greatest windmill in all the country round, ever
since the period when that bloody tyrant, Philip of Spain, was driven
from the Low Countries the invincible valour of the Dutch, under the
good Prince of Orange. It is said in a certain credible tradition, that
one of the family had done a good turn to the worshipful St. Nicholas,
in secreting him from the persecutions of the Romanists, who now,
forsooth, claim him to themselves! and that ever afterwards the saint
took special interest and cognizance in their affairs.
While at Saardam, little Claas, who was the youngest of a goodly family
of seventeen children, was observed to be a great favourite of St.
Nicholas, whose namesake he was, who always brought him a cake or two
extra at his Christmas visits, and otherwise distinguished him above
his brothers and sisters; whereat they were not a little jealous, and
did sometimes slyly abstract some of the little rogue's benefactions,
converting them to their own comfort and recreation.
In the process of time, Claas grew to be a stout lad, and withal a
little wild, as he did sometimes neglect the great windmill, the which
he had charge of in turn with the rest of his brothers, whereby it
more than once came to serious damage. Upon these occasions, the worthy
father, who had a reverend care of the morals of his children, was
accustomed to give him the bastinado; but as Claas wore a competent
outfit of breeches, he did not much mind it, not he; only it made him a
little angry, for he was a boy of great spirit. About the time, I say,
that Claas had arrived at the years of two or three and twenty, and was
considered a stout boy for his age, there was great talk of settling
a colony at the Manhadoes, which the famous Heinrick Hudson had
discovered long years before. Many people of good name and substance
were preparing to emigrate there, seeing it was described as a land
flowing with milk and honey—that is to say, abounding in shad and
herrings—and affording mighty bargains of beaver and other skins.
Now Claas began to cherish an earnest longing to visit these parts, for
he was tired of tending the windmill, and besides he had a natural love
for marshes and creeks, and being a shrewd lad, concluded that there
must be plenty of these where beavers and such like abounded. But his
father and the Vrouw Schlaschenschlinger did eschew and anathematize
this notion of Claas's, and placed him apprentice to an eminent
shoemaker, to learn that useful art and mystery. Claas considered it
derogatory to the son of the proprietor of the greatest windmill in all
Saardam to carry the lapstone, and wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, or
some such thing. But his father told him in so many words, that there
were more lawyers than clients in the town already, and that a good
cobbler saved more people from being sick, than all the doctors cured.
So Claas became apprentice to the shoemaking business, and served out
his time, after which he got to be his own master, and determined to
put in practice his design of visiting the Manhadoes, of which he had
never lost sight.
After much ado, Mynheer Schlaschenschlinger, and the good vrouw,
consented unwillingly to let him follow the bent of his inclinations,
and accordingly all things were got ready for his departure for the
New World, in company with a party which was going out under that
renowned Lord Michael Paauw, who was proceeding to settle his domain
of Pavonia, which lieth directly opposite to New-Amsterdam. Mynheer
Schlaschenschlinger fitted out his son nobly, and becoming the owner
of the largest windmill in all Saardam, equipping him with awls, and
knives, and wax, and thread, together with a bench, and a goodly
lapstone, considering in his own mind that the great scarcity of stones
in Holland might, peradventure, extend to the Manhadoes. Now all being
prepared, it was settled that Claas should depart on the next day but
one, the next being St. Nicholas his day, and a great festival among
the people of Holland.
According to custom, ever since the days of the blessed saint, they had
a plentiful supper of waffles and chocolate—that pestilent beverage
tea not having yet come into fashion—and sat up talking of Claas, his
adventures, and what he would see and hear in the Manhadoes, till it
was almost nine o'clock. Upon this, mynheer ordered them all to bed,
being scandalized at such unseasonable hours. In the morning when Claas
got up, and went to put on his stocking, he felt something hard at the
toe, and turning it inside out, there fell on the floor the bowl of a
pipe of the genuine _Meershaum_, which seemed to have been used beyond
memory since its polish was a thousand times more soft and delightsome
than ivory or tortoise shell, and its lustre past all price. Would that
the blessed saint would bestow such a one on me!
Claas was delighted; he kissed it as if he had been an idolatrous
Romanist—which, by the blessing of Saint Nicholas, he was not—and
bestowing it in the bottom of his strong oaken chest, resolved like
unto a prudent Dutchman, never to use it for fear of accidents. In a
few hours afterwards, he parted from his parents, his family, and his
home; his father gave him a history of the bloody wars and persecutions
of Philip of Spain; a small purse of guilders, and abundance of advice
for the government of his future life; but his mother gave him what
was more precious than all these—her tears, her blessing, and a little
Dutch Bible with silver clasps. Bibles were not so plenty then as
they are now, and were considered as the greatest treasures of the
household. His brothers and sisters took an affectionate farewell of
him, and asked his pardon for stealing his Newyear cookies. So Claas
kissed his mother, promising, if it pleased Heaven, to send her stores
of herrings and beaver skins, whereat she was marvellously comforted;
and he went on his way, as it were sorrowfully rejoicing.
I shall pass over the journey, and the voyage to the Manhadoes, saving
the relation of a curious matter that occurred after the ship had
been about ninety days at sea, and they were supposed to be well on
their way to the port of New-Amsterdam. It came into the heads of
the passengers to while away the time as they were lying to one day
with the sails all furled, except one or two, which I name not, for
a special reason, contrary to the practice of most writers—namely,
because I am ignorant thereof—having the sails thus furled, I say, on
account of certain suspicious-looking clouds, the which the captain,
who kept a bright lookout day and night, had seen hovering overhead,
with no good intentions, it came into the noddles of divers of the
passengers to pass the time by opening their chests, and comparing
their respective outfits, for they were an honest set of people, and
not afraid of being robbed.
When Claas showed his lapstone, most of the company, on being told the
reasons for bringing it such a long distance, held up their hands,
and admired the foresight of his father, considering him an exceeding
prudent and wise man to think of such matters. Some of them wanted to
buy it on speculation, but Claas was too well acquainted with its
value to set a price on it. While they were thus chaffering, an old
sailor, who had accompanied the renowned Heinrick Hudson as cabin boy,
in his first voyage to the Manhadoes, happening to come by and hear
them, swore a great Dutch oath, and called Claas a splutterkin for
bringing stones all the way from Holland, saying that there were enough
at the Manhadoes to furnish lapstones for the whole universe. Whereupon
Claas thought to himself, “What a fine country it must be, where stones
are so plenty.”
In process of time, as all things, and especially voyagings by
sea, have an end, the vessel came in sight of the highlands of
Neversink—vulgarly called by would-be learned writers, Navesink—and
Claas and the rest, who had never seen such vast mountains before, did
think that it was a wall, built up from the earth to the sky, and that
there was no world beyond.
Favoured by a fine south wind, whose balmy freshness had awakened the
young spring into early life and beauty, they shot like an arrow from
a bow through the Narrows, and sailing along the heights of Staaten
Island, came in sight of the illustrious city of New-Amsterdam, which,
though at that period containing but a few hundred people, I shall
venture to predict, in some future time, may actually number its tens
of thousands.
Truly it was a beautiful city, and a beautiful sight as might be
seen of a spring morning. As they came through Buttermilk Channel,
they beheld with delighted astonishment the fort, the church, the
governor's house, the great dock jutting out into the salt river, the
Stadt Huys, the rondeel, and a goodly assemblage of houses, with the
gable ends to the street, as before the villanous introduction of new
fashions, and at the extremity of the city, the gate and wall, from
whence Wall-street deriveth its name. But what above all gloriously
delighted Claas, was a great windmill, towering in the air, and
spreading its vast wings on the rising ground along the Broadway,
between Liberty and Courtlandt streets, the which reminded him of home
and his parents. The prospect rejoiced them all mightily, for they
thought to themselves, “We have come to a little Holland far over the
sea.”
So far as I know, it was somewhere about the year of our Lord one
thousand six hundred and sixty, or thereabout, and in the month of
May, that Claas landed in the New World; but of the precise day of
the month I cannot be certain, seeing what confusion of dates hath
been caused by that idolatrous device of Pope Gregory, called the New
Style, whereby events that really happened in one year are falsely
put down to another, by which means history becomes naught. The first
thing he thought of, was to provide himself a home, for be it known
it was not then the fashion to live in taverns and boarding houses,
and the man who thus demeaned himself was considered no better than
he should be; nobody would trust or employ him, and he might consider
it a special bounty of the good St. Nicholas, if he escaped a ride
on the wooden horse provided for the punishment of delinquents. So
Claas looked out for a pleasant place whereon to pitch his tent. As he
walked forth for this end, his bowels yearned exceedingly for a lot on
the Broad-street, through which ran a delightful creek, crooked like
unto a ram's horn, the sides of which were low, and, as it were, juicy
with the salt water which did sometimes overflow them at spring tides,
and the full of the moon. More especially the ferry house, with its
never to be forgotten weathercock, did incite him sorely to come and
set himself down thereabout. But he was deterred by the high price of
lots in that favoured region, seeing they asked him as much as five
guilders for the one at the corner of the Broad and Wall streets, a
most unheard-of price, and not to be thought of by a prudent man like
Claas Schlaschenschlinger.
So he sought about elsewhere, though he often looked wistfully at the
fair meads of the Broad-street, and nothing deterred him from ruining
himself by gratifying his longings, but the truly excellent expedient
of counting his money, which I recommend to all honest people, before
they make a bargain. But though he could not settle in Broad-street,
he resolved in his mind to get as nigh as possible, and finding a
lot with a little puddle of brackish water in it large enough for a
goose pond, nigh unto the wall and gate of the city, and just at the
head of what hath lately been called Newstreet—then the region of
unsettled lands—he procured a grant thereof from the schout, scheepens,
and burgomasters, who then ruled the city, for five stivers, being
the amount of fees for writing and recording the deed by the Geheim
Schryver.
Having built himself a comfortable house, with a little stoop to it,
he purchased a pair of geese, or, to be correct and particular, as
becometh a conscientious historian, a goose and gander, that he might
recreate himself with their gambols in the salt puddle, and quietly sat
himself down to the making and mending of shoes. In this he prospered
at first indifferently well, and thereafter mightily, when the people
found that he made shoes, some of which were reported never to wear
out; but this was, as it were, but a sort of figure of speech to
express their excellent qualities.
Every Sunday, after church, in pleasant weather, Claas, instead of
putting off his Sunday suit, as was the wont of the times, used to
go and take a walk in the Ladies' Valley, since called Maiden Lane,
for everything has changed under those arch intruders, the English,
who, I believe, in their hearts, are half Papists. This valley was
an exceeding cool, retired, and pleasant place, being bordered by a
wood, in the which was plenty of pinkster blossoms in the season.
Being a likely young fellow, and dressed in a goodly array of breeches
and what not, he was much noticed, and many a little damsel cast a
sheep's eye upon him as he sat smoking his pipe of a summer afternoon
under the shade of the trees which grew plentifully in that quarter.
I don't know how it was, but so it happened, that in process of time
he made acquaintance with one of these, a buxom creature of rare and
unmatchable lineaments and dimensions, insomuch that she was considered
the beauty of New-Amsterdam, and had refused even the burgomaster,
Barendt Roeloffsen, who was taxed three guilders, being the richest
man of the city. But Aintjie was not to be bought with gold; she loved
Claas because he was a solid young fellow, who plucked for her the most
beautiful pinkster blossoms, and was the most pleasant companion in the
world, for a ramble in the Ladies' Valley.
Report says, but I believe there was no great truth in the story,
that they sometimes QUEESTED[1] together, but of that I profess
myself doubtful. Certain it is, however, that in good time they were
married, to the great content of both, and the great discontent of the
burgomaster, Barendt Roeloffsen.
[1] This word is untranslatable.
In those days young people did not marry to set up a coach, live in
fine houses filled with rich furniture, for which they had no use,
and become bankrupt in a few years. They began in a small way, and
increased their comforts with their means. It was thus with Claas and
his wife, who were always employed in some useful business, and never
ran into extravagance, except it may be on holydays. In particular
Claas always feasted lustily on St. Nicholas his day, because, he was
his patron saint, and he remembered his kindness in faderland.
Thus they went on prospering as folks always do that are industrious
and prudent, every year laying up money, and every year increasing
their family; for be it known, those who are of the true Dutch blood,
always apportion the number of children to the means of providing for
them. They never are caught having children for other people to take
care of. But be this as it may, about this time began the mischievous
and oppressive practice of improving the city, draining the marshes,
cutting down hills, and straightening streets, which hath since grown
to great enormity in this city, insomuch that a man may be said to be
actually impoverished by his property.
Barendt Roeloffsen, who was at the head of the reformers, having a
great estate in vacant lands, which he wanted to make productive at the
expense of his neighbours—Barendt Roeloffsen, I say, bestirred himself
lustily to bring about what he called, in outlandish English, the era
of improvement, and forthwith looked around to see where he should
begin. I have always believed, and so did the people at that time, that
Barendt singled out Claas his goose pond for the first experiment,
being thereunto impelled by an old grudge against Claas, on account of
his having cut him out with the damsel he wished to marry, as before
related.
But, however, Barendt Roeloffsen, who bore a great sway among the
burgomasters, on account of his riches, got a law passed, by hook or by
crook, for draining Claas his pond, at his own expense, making him pay
at the same time for the rise in the value of his property, of which
they did not permit him to be the judge, but took upon themselves to
say what it was. The ancestors of Claas had fought valiantly against
Philip of Spain, in defence of their religion and liberty, and he had
kept up his detestation of oppression by frequently reading the account
of the cruelties committed in the Low Countries by the Spaniard, in
the book which his father had given him on his departure from home.
Besides, he had a great admiration, I might almost say affection, for
his goose pond, as is becoming in every true Dutchman. In it he was
accustomed to see, with singular delight, his geese, now increased to a
goodly flock, sailing about majestically, flapping their wings, dipping
their necks into the water, and making a noise exceedingly tuneful and
melodious. Here, too, his little children were wont to paddle in the
summer days, up to their knees in the water, to their great contentment
as well as recreation, thereby strengthening themselves exceedingly.
Such being the case, Claas resisted the behest of the burgomasters,
declaring that he would appeal to the laws for redress if they
persisted in trespassing on his premises. But what can a man get by the
law at any time, much less when the defendant, as in this case, was
judge as well as a party in the business? After losing a vast deal of
time, which was as money to him, and spending a good portion of what he
had saved for his children, Claas was at length cast in his suit, and
the downfall of his goose pond irrevocably decreed.
It was a long time before he recovered this blow, and when he
did, Fortune, as if determined to persevere in her ill offices,
sent a blacksmith from Holland, who brought over with him the new
and diabolical invention of hobnails, the which he so strenuously
recommended to the foolish people, who are prone to run after
novelties, that they, one and all, had their shoes stuck full of
nails, whereby they did clatter about the streets like unto a horse
newly shod. As might be expected, the business of shoemaking decreased
mightily upon this, insomuch that the shoes might be said to last for
ever; and I myself have seen a pair that have descended through three
generations, the nails of which shone like unto silver sixpences. Some
people supposed this was a plot of Barendt Roeloffsen, to complete
the ruin of poor Claas; but whether it was or not, it is certain that
such was the falling off in his trade, on account of the pestilent
introduction of hobnails, that, at the end of the year, Claas found
that he had gone down hill at a great rate. The next year it was still
worse, and thus, in the course of a few more, from bad to worse, he at
last found himself without the means of support for himself, his wife,
and his little children. But what shows the goodness of Providence, it
is worthy of record, that from this time his family, miraculously as
it were, ceased to increase.
Neither begging nor running in debt without the prospect of paying
was in fashion in those days, nor were there any societies to invite
people to idleness and improvidence by the certainty of being relieved
from their consequences without the trouble of asking. Claas tried
what labouring day and night would do, but there was no use in making
shoes when there was nobody to buy them. His good wife tried the
magic of saving; but where there is nothing left to save, economy is
to little purpose. He tried to get into some other business, but the
wrath of Barendt Roeloffsen was upon him, and the whole influence of
the burgomasters stood in his way on account of the opposition he had
made to the march of improvement. He then offered his house and lot for
sale; but here again his old enemy Barendt put a spoke in his wheel,
going about among the people and insinuating that as Claas had paid
nothing for his lot, the title was good for nothing. So one by one he
tried all ways to keep want from his door; but it came at last, and one
Newyear's eve, in the year of our Lord—I don't know what, the family
was hovering round a miserable fire, not only without the customary
means of enjoying the festivity of the season, but destitute of the
very necessaries of life.
The evening was cold and raw, and the heavy moanings of a keen
northeast wind announced the approach of a snow storm. The little
children cowered over the almost expiring embers, shivering with cold
and hunger; the old cat lay half buried in the ashes to keep herself
warm; and the poor father and mother now looked at the little flock of
ragged—no, not ragged—the mother took care of that; and industry can
always ward off rags and dirt. But though not ragged or dirty, they
were miserably clad and worse fed; and as the parents looked first at
them and then at each other, the tears gathered in their eyes until
they ran over.
“We must sell the silver clasps of the Bible my mother gave me, wife,”
said Claas, at last.
“The Goodness forbid,” said she; “we should never prosper after it.”
“We can't prosper worse than we do now, Aintjie.”
“You had better sell the little book about the murders of the
Spaniards, that you sometimes read to me.”
“It has no silver clasps, and will bring nothing,” replied Claas,
despondingly, covering his face with his hand, and seeming to think for
a few moments. All at once he withdrew his hand, and cried,
“The pipe! the meershaum pipe! it is worth a hundred guilders!” and he
ran to the place where he had kept it so carefully that he never used
it once in the whole time he had it in his possession.
He looked at it wistfully, and it brought to his mind the time he
found it in his stocking. He thought of his parents, his brothers, his
sisters, and old faderland, and wished he had never parted from them
to visit the New World. His wife saw what was passing in his heart, and
said,
“Never mind, dear Claas, with these hundred guilders we shall get on
again by the blessing of the good St. Nicholas, whose namesake you are.”
Claas shook his head, and looked at the meershaum, which he could
not bear to part with, because, somehow or other, he could not help
thinking it was the gift of St. Nicholas. The wind now freshened, and
moaned more loudly than ever, and the snow began to come in through
the crevices of the door and windows. The cold increased apace, and
the last spark of fire was expiring in the chimney. There was darkness
without and within, for the candle, the last they had, was just going
out.
Claas, without knowing what he was doing, rubbed the pipe against his
sleeve, as it were mechanically.
He had scarcely commenced rubbing, when the door suddenly opened, and
without more ado, a little man, with a right ruddy good-humoured face,
as round as an apple, and a cocked beaver, white with snow, walked in,
without so much as saying, “By your leave,” and sitting himself by the
side of the yffrouw, began to blow at the fire, and make as if he was
warming his fingers, though there was no fire there, for that matter.
Now Claas was a good-natured fellow, and though he had nothing to give,
except a welcome, which is always in the power of everybody, yet he
wished to himself he had more fire to warm people's fingers. After
a few moments, the little man rubbed his hands together, and looking
around him, with a good-humoured smile, said,
“Mynheer Schlaschenschlinger, methinks it might not be amiss to
replenish this fire a little; 'tis a bitter cold night, and my fingers
are almost frostbitten.”
“Alack, mynheer,” quoth Claas, “I would, with all my heart, but I have
nothing wherewith to warm myself and my children, unless I set fire to
my own house. I am sorry I cannot entertain thee better.”
Upon this the little man broke the cane with which he walked into two
pieces, which he threw in the chimney, and thereupon the fire began to
blaze so cheerfully that they could see their shadows on the wall, and
the old cat jumped out of the ashes, with her coat well singed, which
made the little jolly fellow laugh heartily.
The sticks burnt and burnt, without going out, and they were soon all
as warm and comfortable as could be. Then the little man said,
“Friend Claas, methinks it would not be much amiss if the good vrouw
here would bestir herself to get something to eat. I have had no dinner
to-day, and come hither on purpose to make merry with thee. Knowest
thou not that this is Newyear's eve?”
“Alack!” replied Claas, “I know it full well; but we have not
wherewithal to keep away hunger, much less to make merry with. Thou
art welcome to all we have, and that is nothing.”
“Come, come, Friend Claas, thou art a prudent man, I know, but I never
thought thou wert stingy before. Bestir thyself, good Aintjie, and see
what thou canst find in that cupboard. I warrant there is plenty of
good fare in it.”
The worthy yffrouw looked rather foolish at this proposal, for she knew
she would find nothing there if she went; but the little man threatened
her, in a good-humoured way, to break the long pipe he carried stuck in
his cocked hat, over her nightcap, if she didn't do as he bid her. So
she went to the cupboard, resolved to bring him out the empty pewter
dishes, to show they had nothing to give him. But when she opened the
cupboard, she started back, and cried out aloud, so that Claas ran to
see what was the matter; and what was his astonishment to find the
cupboard full of all sorts of good things for a notable jollification.
“Aha!” cried the merry little man, “you're caught at last. I knew
thou hadst plenty to entertain a stranger withal; but I suppose thou
wantedst to keep it all to thyself. Come, come! bestir thyself,
Aintjie, for I am as hungry as a schoolboy.”
Aintjie did as she was bid, wondering all the time who this familiar
little man could be; for the city was not so big, but that she knew by
sight everybody that lived in it, and she was sure she had never seen
him before.
In a short time there was a glorious array of good things set out
before them, and they proceeded to enjoy themselves right lustily in
keeping of the merry Newyear's eve. The little man cracked his jokes,
patted little Nicholas—Claas, his youngest son, who was called after
his father—on the head; chucked Aintjie under the chin; said he was
glad she did not wed the splutterkin Barendt Roeloffsen, and set them
so good an example, that they all got as merry as crickets.
By-and-by the little man inquired of Claas concerning his affairs,
and he gave him an account of his early prosperity, and how he had
declined, in spite of all he could do, into poverty and want; so that
he had nothing left but his wife, his children, his Dutch Bible, his
history of the Low Country wars, and his meershaum pipe.
“Aha!” quoth the little man, “you've kept that, hey! Let me see it.”
Claas gave it to him, while the tears came into is eyes, although he
was so merry, to think that he must part with it on the morrow. It was
the pride of his heart, and he set too great a value on it to make any
use of it whatever.
The little man took the pipe, and looking at it, said, as if to himself,
“Yes; here it is! the very identical meershaum out of which the great
Calvin used to smoke. Thou hast done well, Friend Claas, to preserve
it; and thou must keep it as the apple of thine eye all thy life, and
give it as an inheritance to thy children.”
“Alack!” cried Aintjie, “he must sell it to-morrow, or we shall want
wherewithal for a dinner.”
“Yea,” said Claas, “of a truth it must go to-morrow!”
“Be quiet, splutterkin!” cried the little man, merrily; “give me some
more of that spiced beverage, for I am as thirsty as a dry sponge.
Come, let us drink to the Newyear, for it will be here in a few
minutes.”
So they drank a cup to the jolly Newyear, and at that moment the little
boys and negroes, who didn't mind the snow any more than a miller does
flour, began to fire their cannon at a great rate; whereupon the little
man jumped up, and cried out,
“My time is come! I must be off, for I have a great many visits to pay
before sunrise.”
Then he kissed the yffrouw with a hearty smack, just as doth the
illustrious Rip Van Dam, on the like occasions; patted little
Nicholas on the head, and gave him his blessing; after which he did
incontinently leap up the chimney and disappear. Then they knew it was
the good St. Nicholas, and rejoiced mightily in the visit he had paid
them, looking upon it as an earnest that their troubles were over.
The next morning the prudent housewife, according to custom, got up
before the dawn of day to put her house in order, and when she came
to sweep the floor, was surprised to hear something jingle just like
money. Then opening the embers, the sticks which the good saint had
thrown upon the fire again blazed out, and she descried a large purse,
which, on examination, was found filled with golden ducats. Whereupon
she called out to Claas, and they examined the purse, and found
fastened to it a paper bearing this legend:—
“THE GIFT OF SAINT NICHOLAS.”
While they stood in joyful wonder, they heard a great knocking and
confusion of tongues outside the door, and the people calling aloud
upon Claas Schlaschenschlinger to come forth; whereupon he went forth,
and, to his great astonishment, found that his little wooden house had
disappeared in the night, and in its place was standing a gorgeous
and magnificent mansion of Dutch bricks, two stories high, with three
windows in front, all of a different size; and a door cut right out of
the corner, just as it is seen at this blessed day.
The neighbours wondered much, and it was whispered among them, that
the fiend had helped Claas to this great domicil, which was one of the
biggest in the city, and almost equal to that of Barendt Roeloffsen.
But when Claas told them of the visit of St. Nicholas, and showed them
the purse of golden ducats, with the legend upon it, they thought
better of it, and contented themselves with envying him heartily his
good fortune.
I shall not relate how Claas prospered ever afterwards, in spite of his
enemies the burgomasters, who, at last, were obliged to admit him as
one of their number; or how little Aintjie held up her head among the
highest; or how Claas ever after eschewed the lapstone, and, like a
worshipful magistrate, took to bettering the condition of mankind, till
at length he died, and was gathered to his forefathers, full of years
and honours.
All I shall say is, that the great house in New street continued in the
family for several generations, until a degenerate descendant of Claas,
being thereunto incited by the d—l, did sell it to another degenerate
splutterkin, who essayed to pull it down. But mark what followed. No
sooner had the workmen laid hands on it, than the brickbats began to
fly about at such a rate, that they all came away faster than they
went; some with broke heads, and others with broken bones, and not one
could ever be persuaded to meddle with it afterwards.
And let this be a warning to any one who shall attempt to lay their
sacrilegious hands on the LAST OF THE DUTCH HOUSES, the gift of St.
Nicholas, for whoever does so, may calculate, to a certainty on getting
well peppered with brickbats, I can tell them.
THE REVENGE OF SAINT NICHOLAS.
A TALE FOR THE HOLYDAYS.
Everybody knows that in the famous city of New-York, whose proper name
is New-Amsterdam, the excellent St. Nicholas—who is worth a dozen St.
Georges and dragons to boot, and who, if every tub stood on its right
bottom, would be at the head of the Seven Champions of christendom—I
say, everybody knows the excellent St. Nicholas, in holyday times,
goes about among the people in the middle of the night, distributing
all sorts of toothsome and becoming gifts to the good boys and girls
in this his favourite city. Some say that he comes down the chimneys
in a little Jersey wagon; others, that he wears a pair of Holland
skates, with which he travels like the wind; and others, who pretend
to have seen him, maintain that he has lately adopted a locomotive,
and was once actually detected on the _Albany_ railroad. But this last
assertion is looked upon to be entirely fabulous, because St. Nicholas
has too much discretion to trust himself in such a newfangled jarvie;
and so I leave this matter to be settled by whomsoever will take the
trouble. My own opinion is, that his favourite mode of travelling
is on a canal, the motion and speed of which aptly comport with the
philosophic dignity of his character. But this is not material, and
I will no longer detain my readers with extraneous and irrelevant
matters, as is too much the fashion with our statesmen, orators,
biographers, and story tellers.
It was in the year one thousand seven hundred and sixty, or sixty-one,
for the most orthodox chronicles differ in this respect; but it was
a very remarkable year, and it was called _annus mirabilis_ on that
account. It was said that several people were detected in speaking the
truth about that time; that nine staid, sober, and discreet widows,
who had sworn on an anti-masonic almanac never to enter a second time
into the holy state, were snapped up by young husbands before they knew
what they were about; that six venerable bachelors wedded as many buxom
young belles, and, it is reported, were afterwards sorry for what they
had done; that many people actually went to church, from motives of
piety; and that a great scholar, who had written a book in support of
certain opinions, was not only convinced of his error, but acknowledged
it publicly afterwards. No wonder the year one thousand seven hundred
and sixty, if that was the year, was called _annus mirabilis_!
What contributed to render this year still more remarkable, was
the building of six new three-story brick houses in the city, and
three persons setting up equipages, who, I cannot find, ever failed
in business afterwards, or compounded with their creditors at a
pistareen in the pound. It is, moreover, recorded in the annals of the
horticultural society of that day, which were written on a cabbage
leaf, as is said, that a member produced a forked radish, of such vast
dimensions, that being dressed up in fashionable male attire at the
exhibition, it was actually mistaken for a travelled beau by several
inexperienced young ladies, who pined away for love of its beautiful
complexion, and were changed into daffadowndillies. Some maintained
it was a mandrake, but it was finally detected by an inquest of
experienced matrons. No wonder the year seventeen hundred and sixty was
called _annus mirabilis_!
But the most extraordinary thing of all, was the confident assertion
that there was but one _gray mare_ within the bills of mortality; and,
incredible as it may appear, she was the wife of a responsible citizen,
who, it was affirmed, had grown rich by weaving velvet purses out of
sows' ears. But this we look upon as being somewhat of the character of
the predictions of almanac makers. Certain it is, however, that Amos
Shuttle possessed the treasure of a wife who was shrewdly suspected of
having established within doors a system of government not laid down in
Aristotle or the Abbe Sièyes, who made a constitution for every day in
the year, and two for the first of April.
Amos Shuttle, though a mighty pompous little man out of doors, was the
meekest of human creatures within. He belonged to that class of people
who pass for great among the little, and little among the great; and
he would certainly have been master in his own house had it not been
for a woman! We have read somewhere that no wise woman ever thinks her
husband a demigod. If so, it is a blessing that there are so few wise
women in the world.
Amos had grown rich, Heaven knows how—he did net know himself; but,
what was somewhat extraordinary, he considered his wealth a signal
proof of his talents and sagacity, and valued himself according to the
infallible standard of pounds, shillings, and pence. But though he
lorded it without, he was, as we have just said, the most gentle of men
within doors. The moment he stepped inside of his own house, his spirit
cowered down, like that of a pious man entering a church; he felt as
if he was in the presence of a superior being—to wit, Mrs. Abigail
Shuttle. He was, indeed, the meekest of beings at home, except Moses;
and Sir Andrew Aguecheek's song, which Sir Toby Belch declared “would
draw nine souls out of one weaver,” would have failed in drawing half
a one out of Amos. The truth is, his wife, who ought to have known,
affirmed he had no more soul than a monkey; but he was the only man
in the city thus circumstanced at the time we speak of. No wonder,
therefore, the year one thousand seven hundred and sixty was called
_annus mirabilis_!
Such as he was, Mr. Amos Shuttle waxed richer and richer every day,
insomuch that those who envied his prosperity were wont to say, “that
he had certainly been born with a dozen silver spoons in his mouth, or
such a great blockhead would never have got together such a heap of
money.” When he had become worth ten thousand pounds, he launched his
shuttle magnanimously out of the window, ordered his weaver's beam to
be split up for oven wood, and Mrs. Amos turned his weaver's shop into
a _boudoir_. Fortune followed him faster than he ran away from her.
In a few years the ten thousand doubled, and in a few more trebled,
quadrupled—in short, Amos could hardly count his money.
“What shall we do now, my dear?” asked Mrs. Shuttle, who never sought
his opinion, that I can learn, except for the pleasure of contradicting
him.
“Let us go and live in the country, and enjoy ourselves,” quoth Amos.
“Go into the country! go to—” I could never satisfy myself what Mrs.
Shuttle meant; but she stopped short, and concluded the sentence with a
withering look of scorn, that would have cowed the spirits of nineteen
weavers.
Amos named all sorts of places, enumerated all sorts of modes of
life he could think of, and every pleasure that might enter into the
imagination of a man without a soul. His wife despised them all; she
would not hear of them.
“Well, my dear, suppose you suggest something; do now, Abby,” at length
said Amos, in a coaxing whisper; “will you, my onydoney?”
“Ony fiddlestick! I wonder you repeat such vulgarisms. But if I must
say what I should like, I should like to travel.”
“Well, let us go and make a tour as far as Jamaica, or Hackensack, or
Spiking-devil. There is excellent fishing for striped bass there.”
“Spiking-devil!” screamed Mrs. Shuttle; “an't you ashamed to swear so,
you wicked mortal! I won't go to Jamaica, nor Hackensack among the
Dutch Hottentots, nor to Spiking-devil to catch striped bass. I'll go
to Europe!”
If Amos had possessed a soul it would have jumped out of its skin at
the idea of going beyond seas. He had once been on the sea-bass banks,
and got a seasoning there; the very thought of which made him sick.
But, as he had no soul, there was no great harm done.
When Mrs. Shuttle said a thing, it was settled. They went to Europe,
taking their only son with them; the lady ransacked all the milliners'
shops in Paris, and the gentleman visited all the restaurateurs. He
became such a desperate connoisseur and gourmand, that he could almost
tell an _omelette au jambon_ from a gammon of bacon. After consummating
the polish, they came home, the lady with the newest old fashions, and
the weaver with a confirmed preference of _potage à la Turque_ over
pepper-pot. It is said the city trembled, as with an earthquake, when
they landed; but the notion was probably superstitious.
They arrived near the close of the year, the memorable year, the _annus
mirabilis_, one thousand seven hundred and sixty. Everybody that had
ever known the Shuttles flocked to see them, or rather to see what
they had brought with them; and such was the magic of a voyage to
Europe, that Mr. and Mrs. Amos Shuttle, who had been nobodies when they
departed, became somebodies when they returned, and mounted at once to
the summit of _ton_.
“You have come in good time to enjoy the festivities of the holydays,”
said Mrs. Hubblebubble, an old friend of Amos the weaver and his wife.
“We shall have a merry Christmas and a happy Newyear,” exclaimed Mrs.
Doubletrouble, another old acquaintance of old times.
“The holydays,” drawled Mrs. Shuttle; “the holydays? Christmas and
Newyear? Pray what are they?”
It is astonishing to see how people lose their memories abroad
sometimes. They often forget their old friends, old customs, and
occasionally themselves.
“Why, la! now, who'd have thought it?” cried Mrs. Doubletrouble; “why,
sure you haven't forgot the oily cooks and the mince pies, the merry
meetings of friends, the sleigh-rides, the Kissing Bridge, and the
family parties?”
“Family parties!” shrieked Mrs. Shuttle, and held her salts to her
nose; “family parties! I never heard of anything so Gothic in Paris
or Rome; and oily cooks—oh shocking! and mince pies—detestable! and
throwing open one's doors to all one's old friends, whom one wishes to
forget as soon as possible. Oh! the idea is insupportable!” and again
she held the salts to her nose.
Mrs. Hubblebubble and Mrs. Doubletrouble found they had exposed
themselves sadly, and were quite ashamed. A real, genteel, well-bred,
enlightened lady of fashion ought to have no rule of conduct—no
conscience, but Paris—whatever is fashionable there is genteel—whatever
is not fashionable is vulgar. There is no other standard of right,
and no other eternal fitness of things. At least so thought Mrs.
Hubblebubble and Mrs. Doubletrouble.
“But is it possible that all these things are out of fashion abroad?”
asked the latter, beseechingly.
“They never were in,” said Mrs. Amos Shuttle. “For my part, I mean to
close my doors and windows on Newyear's day—I'm determined.”
“And so am I,” said Mrs. Hubblebubble.
“And so am I,” said Mrs. Doubletrouble.
And it was settled that they should make a combination among themselves
and their friends, to put down the ancient and good customs of the
city, and abolish the sports and enjoyments of the jolly Newyear. The
conspirators then separated, each to pursue her diabolical designs
against oily cooks, mince pies, sleigh ridings, sociable visitings,
and family parties.
Now the excellent St. Nicholas, who knows well what is going on in
every house in the city, though, like a good and honourable saint, he
never betrays any family secrets, overheard these wicked women plotting
against his favourite anniversary, and he said to himself,
“_Vuur en Vlammen!_ but I'll be even with you, _mein vrouw_.” So he
determined he would play these conceited and misled women a trick or
two before he had done with them.
It was now the first day of the new year, and Mrs. Amos Shuttle,
and Mrs. Doubletrouble, and Mrs. Hubblebubble, and all their wicked
abetters, had shut up their doors and windows, so that when their old
friends called they could not get into their houses. Moreover, they
had prepared neither mince pies, nor oily cooks, nor crullers, nor
any of the good things consecrated to St. Nicholas by his pious and
well-intentioned votaries, and they were mightily pleased at having
been as dull and stupid as owls, while all the rest of the city were as
merry as crickets, chirping and frisking in the warm chimney corner.
Little did they think what horrible judgments were impending over them,
prepared by the wrath of the excellent St. Nicholas, who was resolved
to make an example of them for attempting to introduce their newfangled
corruptions in place of the ancient customs of his favourite city.
These wicked women never had another comfortable sleep in their lives!
The night was still, clear, and frosty—the earth was everywhere one
carpet of snow, and looked just like the ghost of a dead world, wrapped
in a white winding sheet; the moon was full, round, and of a silvery
brightness, and by her discreet silence afforded an example to the
rising generation of young damsels, while the myriads of stars that
multiplied as you gazed at them, seemed as though they were frozen
into icicles, they looked so cold, and sparkled with such a glorious
lustre. The streets and roads leading from the city were all alive
with sleighs, filled with jovial souls, whose echoing laughter and
cheerful songs, mingled with a thousand merry bells, that jingled in
harmonious dissonance, giving spirit to the horses and animation to
the scene. In the license of the season, hallowed by long custom, each
of the sleighs saluted the others in passing with a “Happy Newyear,”
a merry jest, or mischievous gibe, exchanged from one gay party to
another. All was life, motion, and merriment; and as old frostbitten
Winter, aroused from his trance by the rout and revelry around, raised
his weatherbeaten head to see what was passing, he felt his icy blood
warming and coursing through his veins, and wished he could only
overtake the laughing buxom Spring, that he might dance a jig with her,
and be as frisky as the best of them. But as the old rogue could not
bring this desirable matter about, he contented himself with calling
for a jolly bumper of cocktail, and drinking a swinging draught to the
health of the blessed St. Nicholas, and those who honour the memory of
the president of good fellows.
All this time the wicked women and their abetters lay under the
malediction of the good saint, who caused them to be bewitched by
an old lady from Salem. Mrs. Amos Shuttle could not sleep, because
something had whispered in her apprehensive ear, that her son, her
only son, whom she had engaged to the daughter of Count Grenouille, in
Paris, then about three years old, was actually at that moment crossing
Kissing Bridge, in company with little Susan Varian, and some others
besides. Now Susan was the fairest little lady of all the land; she
had a face and an eye just like the Widow Wadman, in Leslie's charming
picture; a face and an eye which no reasonable man under Heaven could
resist, except my Uncle Toby—beshrew him and his fortifications, I
say! She was, moreover, a good little girl, and an accomplished little
girl—but, alas! she had not mounted to the step in Jacob's ladder of
fashion, which qualifies a person for the heaven of high ton, and Mrs.
Shuttle had not been to Europe for nothing. She would rather have seen
her son wedded to dissipation and profligacy than to Susan Varian; and
the thought of his being out sleigh-riding with her, was worse than
the toothache. It kept her awake all the livelong night; and the only
consolation she had was scolding poor Amos, because the sleigh bells
made such a noise.
As for Mrs. Hubblebubble and Mrs. Doubletrouble, they neither of them
got a wink of sleep during a whole week, for thinking of the beautiful
French chairs and damask curtains Mrs. Shuttle had brought from Europe.
They forthwith besieged their good men, leaving them no rest until they
sent out orders to Paris for just such rich chairs and curtains as
those of the thrice happy Mrs. Shuttle, from whom they kept the affair
a profound secret, each meaning to treat her to an agreeable surprise.
In the mean while they could not rest for fear the vessel which was
to bring these treasures might be lost on her passage. Such was the
dreadful judgment inflicted on them by the good St. Nicholas.
The perplexities of Mrs. Shuttle increased daily. In the first place,
do all she could, she could not make Amos a fine gentleman. This was
a metamorphosis which Ovid would never have dreamed of. He would be
telling the price of everything in his house, his furniture, his
wines, and his dinners, insomuch that those who envied his prosperity,
or, perhaps, only despised his pretensions, were wont to say, after
eating his venison and drinking his old Madeira, “that he ought to
have been a tavern keeper, he knew so well how to make out a bill.”
Mrs. Shuttle once overheard a speech of this kind, and the good St.
Nicholas himself, who had brought it about, almost felt sorry for the
mortification she endured on the occasion.
Scarcely had she got over this, when she was invited to a ball, by Mrs.
Hubblebubble, and the first thing she saw on entering the drawing
room, was a suit of damask curtains and chairs, as much like her own
as two peas, only the curtains had far handsomer fringe. Mrs. Shuttle
came very near fainting away, but escaped for that time, determining to
mortify this impudent creature, by taking not the least notice of her
finery. But St. Nicholas ordered it otherwise, so that she was at last
obliged to acknowledge they were very elegant indeed. Nay, this was not
the worst, for she overheard one lady whisper to another, that Mrs.
Hubblebubble's curtains were much richer than Mrs. Shuttle's.
“Oh, I dare say,” replied the other—”I dare say Mrs. Shuttle bought
them second-hand, for her husband is as mean as pursley.
This was too much. The unfortunate woman was taken suddenly ill—called
her carriage, and went home, where it is supposed she would have died
that evening had she not wrought upon Amos to promise her an entire
new suit of French furniture for her drawing room and parlour to boot,
besides a new carriage. But for all this she could not close her eyes
that night for thinking of the “second-hand curtains.”
Nor was the wicked Mrs. Doubletrouble a whit better off, when her
friend Mrs. Hubblebubble treated her to the agreeable surprise of the
French window curtains and chairs. “It is too bad—too bad, I declare,”
said she to herself; “but I'll pay her off soon.” Accordingly she
issued invitations for a grand ball and supper, at which both Mrs.
Shuttle and Mrs. Hubblebubble were struck dumb at beholding a suit of
curtains and a set of chairs exactly of the same pattern with theirs.
The shock was terrible, and it is impossible to say what might have
been the consequences, had not the two ladies all at once thought of
uniting in abusing Mrs. Doubletrouble for her extravagance.
“I pity poor Mr. Doubletrouble,” said Mrs. Shuttle, shrugging her
shoulders significantly, and glancing at the room.
“And so do I,” said Mrs. Hubblebubble, doing the same.
Mrs. Doubletrouble had her eye upon them, and enjoyed their
mortification until her pride was brought to the ground by a dead shot
from Mrs. Shuttle, who was heard to exclaim, in reply to a lady who
observed the chairs and curtains were very handsome,
“Why, yes; but they have been out of fashion in Paris a long time; and,
besides, really they are getting so common, that I intend to have mine
removed to the nursery.”
Heavens! what a blow! Poor Mrs. Doubletrouble hardly survived it. Such
a night of misery as the wicked woman endured almost made the good St.
Nicholas regret the judgment he had passed upon these mischievous and
conceited females. But he thought to himself he would persevere until
he had made them a sad example to all innovators upon the ancient
customs of our forefathers.
Thus were these wicked and miserable women spurred on by witchcraft
from one piece of extravagance to another, and a deadly rivalship
grew up between them, which destroyed their own happiness and that of
their husbands. Mrs. Shuttle's new carriage and drawing-room furniture
in due time were followed by similar extravagances on the part of
the two other wicked women, who had conspired against the hallowed
institutions of St. Nicholas; and soon their rivalship came to such a
height that neither of them had a moment's rest or comfort from that
time forward. But they still shut their doors on the jolly anniversary
of St. Nicholas, though the old respectable burghers and their wives,
who had held up their heads time out of mind, continued the good
custom, and laughed at the presumption of these upstart interlopers,
who were followed only by a few people of silly pretensions, who had
no more soul than Amos Shuttle himself. The three wicked women grew to
be almost perfect skeletons, on account of the vehemence with which
they strove to outdo each other, and the terrible exertions necessary
to keep up the appearance of being the best friends in the world.
In short, they became the laughingstock of the town; and sensible,
well-bred folks cut their acquaintance, except when they sometimes
accepted an invitation to a party, just to make merry with their folly
and conceitedness.
The excellent St. Nicholas, finding they still persisted in their
opposition to his rites and ceremonies, determined to inflict on them
the last and worst punishment that can befall the sex. He decreed that
they should be deprived of all the delights springing from the domestic
affections, and all taste for the innocent and virtuous enjoyments
of a happy fireside. Accordingly, they lost all relish for home;
were continually gadding about from one place to another in search
of pleasure, and worried themselves to death to find happiness where
it is never to be found. Their whole lives became one long series of
disappointed hopes, galled pride, and gnawing envy. They lost their
health, they lost their time, and their days became days of harassing
impatience, their nights nights of sleepless, feverish excitement,
ending in weariness and disappointment. The good saint sometimes
felt sorry for them, but their continued obstinacy determined him to
persevere in his plan to punish the upstart pride of these rebellious
females.
Young Shuttle, who had a soul, which I suppose he inherited from
his mother, all this while continued his attentions to little Susan
Varian, which added to the miseries inflicted on his wicked mother.
Mrs. Shuttle insisted that Amos should threaten to disinherit his son,
unless he gave up this attachment.
“Lord bless your soul, Abby,” said Amos, “what's the use of my
threatening, the boy knows as well as I do that I've no will of my own.
Why, bless my soul, Abby—”
“Bless your soul!” interrupted Mrs. Shuttle; “I wonder who'd take the
trouble to bless it but yourself? However, if you don't I will.”
Accordingly, she threatened the young man with being disinherited
unless he turned his back on little Susan Varian, which no man ever did
without getting a heartache.
“If my father goes on as he has done lately,” sighed the youth, “he
won't have anything left to disinherit me of but his affection, I fear.
But if he had millions I would not abandon Susan.”
Are you not ashamed of such a lowlived attachment? You, that have been
to Europe! But, once for all, remember this, renounce this lowborn
upstart, or quit your father's home for ever.”
“Upstart!” thought young Shuttle; “one of the oldest families in the
city.” He made his mother a respectful bow, bade Heaven bless her, and
left the house. He was, however, met by his father at the door, who
said to him,
“Johnny, I give my consent; but mind, don't tell your mother a word of
the matter. I'll let her know I've a soul as well as other people;” and
he tossed his head like a war horse.
The night after this Johnny was married to little Susan, and the
blessing of affection and beauty lighted upon his pillow. Her old
father, who was in a respectable business, took his son-in-law into
partnership, and they prospered so well that in a few years Johnny was
independent of all the world, with the prettiest wife and children in
the land. But Mrs. Shuttle was inexorable, while the knowledge of his
prosperity and happiness only worked her up to a higher pitch of anger,
and added to the pangs of jealousy perpetually inflicted on her by the
rivalry of Mrs. Hubblebubble and Mrs. Doubletrouble, who suffered under
the like infliction from the wrathful St. Nicholas, who was resolved to
make them an example to all posterity.
No fortune, be it ever so great, can stand the eternal sapping of
wasteful extravagance, engendered and stimulated by the baleful passion
of envy. In less than ten years from the hatching of the diabolical
conspiracy of these three wicked women against the supremacy of the
excellent St. Nicholas, their spendthrift rivalship had ruined the
fortunes of their husbands, and entailed upon themselves misery and
remorse. Rich Amos Shuttle became at last as poor as a church mouse,
and, would have been obliged to take to the loom again in his old age,
had not Johnny, now rich, and a worshipful magistrate of the city,
afforded him and his better half a generous shelter under his own happy
roof. Mrs. Hubblebubble and Mrs. Doubletrouble had scarcely time to
condole with Mrs. Shuttle, and congratulate each other, when their
husbands went the way of all flesh, that is to say, failed for a few
tens of thousands, and called their creditors together to hear the good
news. The two wicked women lived long enough after this to repent of
their offence against St. Nicholas; but they never imported any more
French curtains, and at last perished miserably in an attempt to set
the fashions in Pennypot alley.
Mrs. Abigail Shuttle might have lived happily the rest of her life
with her children and grandchildren, who all treated her with
reverent courtesy and affection, now that the wrath of the mighty St.
Nicholas was appeased by her exemplary punishment. But she could not
get over her bad habits and feelings, or forgive her lovely little
daughter-in-law for treating her so kindly when she so little deserved
it. She gradually pined away; and though she revived at hearing of the
catastrophe of Mrs. Hubblebubble and Mrs. Doubletrouble, it was only
for a moment. The remainder of the life of this wicked woman was a
series of disappointments and heartburnings, and when she died, Amos
tried to shed a few tears, but he found it impossible, I suppose,
because, as his wife always said, “he had no soul.”
Such was the terrible revenge of St. Nicholas, which ought to be
a warning to all who attempt to set themselves up against the
venerable customs of their ancestors, and backslide from the hallowed
institutions of the blessed saint, to whose good offices, without
doubt, it is owing that this his favourite city has transcended all
others of the universe in beautiful damsels, valorous young men, mince
pies, and Newyear cookies. The catastrophe of these three wicked women
had a wonderful influence in the city, insomuch that from this time
forward, no _gray mares_ were ever known, no French furniture was ever
used, and no woman was hardy enough to set herself up in opposition
to the good customs of St. Nicholas. And so, wishing many happy
Newyears to all my dear countrywomen and countrymen, saving those who
shut their doors to old friends, high or low, rich or poor, on that
blessed anniversary, which makes more glad hearts than all others put
together—I say, wishing a thousand happy Newyears to all, with this
single exception, I lay down my pen, with a caution to all wicked women
to beware of the revenge of St. Nicholas.
THE ORIGIN
OF
THE BAKERS' DOZEN.
Little Brom Boomptie, or Boss Boomptie, as he was commonly called by
his apprentices and neighbours, was the first man that ever baked
Newyear cakes in the good city of New-Amsterdam. It is generally
supposed that he was the inventor of those excellent and respectable
articles. However this may be, he lived and prospered in the little
Dutch house in William-street, called, time out of mind, Knickerbocker
Hall, just at the outskirts of the good town of New-Amsterdam.
Boomptie was a fat comfortable creature, with a capital pair of
oldfashioned legs; a full, round, good-natured face; a corporation
like unto one of his plump loaves; and as much honesty as a Turkish
baker, who lives in the fear of having his ears nailed to his own door
for retailing bad bread. He wore a low-crowned, broad-brimmed beaver;
a gray bearskin cloth coat, waistcoat, and breeches, and gray woollen
stockings, summer and winter, all the year round. The only language
he spoke, understood, or had the least respect for, was Dutch— and
the only books he ever read or owned, were a Dutch Bible, with silver
clasps and hinges, and a Dutch history of the Duke of Alva's bloody
wars in the Low Countries. Boss Boomptie was a pious man, of simple
habits and simple character; a believer in “demonology and witchcraft;”
and as much afraid of _spooks_ as the mother that bore him. It ran in
the family to be bewitched, and for three generations the Boompties had
been very much pestered with supernatural visitations. But for all this
they continued to prosper in the world, insomuch that Boss Boomptie
daily added a piece of wampum or two to his strong box. He was blessed
with a good wife, who saved the very parings of her nails, and three
plump boys, after whom he modelled his gingerbread babies, and who were
every Sunday zealously instructed never to pass a pin without picking
it up and bringing it home to their mother.
It was on Newyear's eve, in the year 1655, and the good city of
New-Amsterdam, then under the special patronage of the blessed
St. Nicholas, was as jovial and wanton as hot spiced rum and long
abstinence from fun and frolic could make it. It is worth while to
live soberly and mind our business all the rest of the year, if it be
only to enjoy the holydays at the end with a true zest. St. Nicholas,
thrice blessed soul! was riding up one chimney and down another like a
locomotive engine in his little one-horse wagon, distributing cakes to
the good boys, and whips to the bad ones; and the laugh of the good
city, which had been pent up all the year, now burst forth with an
explosion that echoed even unto Breuckelen and Communipaw.
Boss Boomptie, who never forgot the main chance, and knew from
experience that Newyear's eve was a shrewd time for selling cakes,
joined profit and pleasure on this occasion. He was one minute in his
shop, dealing out cakes to his customers, and the next laughing, and
tippling, and jigging, and frisking it with his wife and children
in the little back room, the door of which had a pane of glass that
commanded a full view of the shop. Nobody, that is, no genuine
disciple of jolly St. Nicholas, ever went to bed till twelve o'clock
on Newyear's eve. The Dutch are eminently a sober, discreet folk; but
somehow or other, no people frolic so like the very dickens, when they
are once let loose, as your very sober and discreet bodies.
By twelve o'clock the spicy beverage, sacred to holydays at that time,
began to mount up into Boss Boomptie's head, and he was vociferating a
Dutch ditty in praise of St. Nicholas with marvellous discordance, when
just as the old clock in one corner of the room struck the hour that
ushers in the new year, a loud knock was heard on the counter, which
roused the dormant spirit of trade within his bosom. He went into the
shop, where he found a little ugly old thing of a woman, with a sharp
chin, resting on a crooked black stick, which had been burned in the
fire and then polished; two high sharp cheek bones; two sharp black
eyes; skinny lips, and a most diabolical pair of leather spectacles on
a nose ten times sharper than her chin.
“I want a dozen Newyear cookies,” screamed she, in a voice sharper than
her nose.
“Vel, den, you needn't sbeak so loud,” replied Boss Boomptie, whose ear
being just then attuned to the melody of his own song, was somewhat
outraged by this shrill salutation.
“I want a dozen Newyear cookies,” screamed she again, ten times louder
and shriller than ever.
“Duyvel—I an't teaf den,” grumbled the worthy man, as he proceeded to
count out the cakes, which the other very deliberately counted after
him.
“I want a dozen,” screamed the little woman; “here is only twelve.”
“Vel, den, and what de duyvel is dwalf but a dozen?” said Boomptie.
“I tell you I want one more,” screamed she, in a voice that roused Mrs.
Boomptie in the back room, who came and peeped through the pane of
glass, as she often did when she heard the boss talking to the ladies.
Boss Boomptie waxed wroth, for he had a reasonable quantity of hot
spiced rum in his noddle, which predisposes a man to valour.
“Vel, den,” said he, “you may co to de duyvel and get anoder, for you
won't get it here.”
Boomptie was not a stingy man; on the contrary, he was very generous
to the pretty young damsels who came to buy cakes, and often gave them
two or three extra for a smack, which made Mrs. Boomptie peevish
sometimes, and caused her to watch at the little pane of glass when she
ought to have been minding her business like an honest woman.
But this old hag was as ugly as sin, and the little baker never in his
whole life could find in his heart to be generous to an ugly woman, old
or young.
“In my country they always give thirteen to the dozen,” screamed the
ugly woman in the leather spectacles.
“And where de duyvel is your gountry?” asked Boomptie.
“It is nobody's business,” screeched the old woman. “But will you give
me another cake, once for all?”
“Not if it would save me and all my chineration from peing pewitched
and pedemonologized dime out of mind,” cried he, in a great passion.
What put it into his head to talk in this way I don't know, but he
might better have held his tongue. The old woman gave him three stivers
for his cakes, and went away, grumbling something about “living to
repent it,” which Boss Boomptie didn't understand or care a fig about.
He was chock full of Dutch courage, and defied all the ugly old women
in Christendom. He put his three stivers in the till and shut up
his shop, determined to enjoy the rest of the night without further
molestation.
While he was sitting smoking his pipe, and now and then sipping his
beverage, all at once he heard a terrible jingling of money in his
shop, whereupon he thought some losel caitiff was busy with his little
till. Accordingly, priming himself with another reinforcement of Dutch
courage, he took a pine knot, for he was too economical to burn candles
at that late hour, and proceeded to investigate. His money was all
safe, and the till appeared not to have been disturbed.
“Duyvel,” quoth the little baker man, “I pelieve mine _vrouw_ and I
have bote cot a zinging in our heads.”
He had hardly turned his back when the same jingling began again, so
much to the surprise of Boss Boomptie, that had it not been for his
invincible Dutch courage, he would, as it were, have been a little
frightened. But he was not in the least; and again went and unlocked
the till, when what was his astonishment to see the three diabolical
stivers, received from the old woman, dancing, and kicking up a dust
among the coppers and wampum with wonderful agility.
“_Wat donder is dat!_” exclaimed he, sorely perplexed; “de old duyvel
has cot indo dat old sinner's stivers, I dink.” He had a great mind to
throw them away, but he thought it a pity to waste so much money; so
he kept them locked up all night, enjoining them to good behaviour,
with a design to spend them the next day in another jollification.
But the next day they were gone, and so was the broomstick with which
it was the custom to sweep out the shop every morning. Some of the
neighbours coming home late the night before, on being informed of the
“abduction” of the broomstick, deposed and said, they had seen an old
woman riding through the air upon just such another, right over the top
of the little bakehouse; whereat Boss Boomptie, putting these odds and
ends together, did tremble in his heart, and he wished to himself that
he had given the ugly old woman thirteen to the dozen.
Nothing particular came to pass the next day, except that now and then
the little Boompties complained of having pins stuck in their backs,
and that their cookies were snatched away by some one unknown. On
examination it was found that no marks of the pins were to be seen; and
as to the cookies, the old black woman of the kitchen declared she saw
an invisible hand just as one of the children lost his commodity.
“Den I am pewitched, zure enough!” cried Boomptie, in despair, for
he had had too much of “demonology and witchcraft” in the family not
to know when he saw them, just as well as he did his own face in the
Collect.
On the second day of the year, the 'prentice boys all returned to their
business, and Boomptie once more solaced himself with the baking of the
staff of life. The reader must know that it is the custom of bakers to
knead a great batch at a time, in a mighty bread tray, into which they
throw two or three little apprentice boys to paddle about, like ducks
in a mill pond, whereby it is speedily amalgamated, and set to rising
in due time. When the little caitiffs began their gambols in this
matter they one and all stuck fast in the dough, as though it had been
so much pitch, and, to the utter dismay of honest Boomptie, behold the
whole batch rose up in a mighty mass, with the boys sticking fast on
the top of it!
“_Wat blikslager!_” exclaimed little Boomptie, as he witnessed this
catastrophe; “de duyvel ish cot into de yeast dis dime, I dink.”
The bread continued to rise till it lifted the roof off the bakehouse,
with the little 'prentice boys on the top, and the bread tray following
after. Boss Boomptie and his wife watched this wonderful rising of the
bread in dismay, and in proof of the poor woman's being bewitched,
it was afterwards recollected that she uttered not a single word on
this extraordinary occasion. The bread rose and rose, until it finally
disappeared, boys and all, behind the Jersey hills. If such things had
been known of at that time, it would have been taken for a balloon; as
it was, the people of Bergen and Communipaw thought that it was a water
spout.
Little Boss Boomptie was disconsolate at the loss of his bread and his
'prentice boys, whom he never expected to see again. However, he was a
stirring body, and set himself to work to prepare another batch, seeing
his customers must be supplied in spite of “witchcraft or demonology.”
To guard against such another rebellious rising, he determined to go
through the process down in the cellar, and turn his bread tray upside
down. The bread, instead of rising, began to sink into the earth so
fast, that Boss Boomptie had just time to jump off before it entirely
disappeared in the ground, which opened and shut just like a snuffbox.
“Wat blikslager is dat!” exclaimed he, out of breath; “my pread rises
downward dis dime, I dink. My customers must go widout to-day.”
By-and-by his customers came for hot rolls and muffins, but some of
them had gone up and some down, as little Boss Boomptie related after
the manner just described. What is very remarkable, nobody believed
him; and doubtless, if there had been any rival baker in New-Amsterdam,
the boss would have lost all his customers. Among those that called on
this occasion, was the ugly old woman with the sharp eyes, nose, chin,
voice, and leather spectacles.
“I want a dozen Newyear cookies!” screamed she, as before.
“Vuur en vlammen!” muttered he, as he counted out the twelve cakes.
“I want one more!” screamed she.
“Den you may co to de duyvel and kit it, I say, for not anoder shall
you haf here, I dell you.”
So the old woman took her twelve cakes, and went out grumbling, as
before. All the time she staid, Boomptie's old dog, who followed him
wherever he went, growled and whined, as it were, to himself, and
seemed mightily relieved when she went away. That very night, as
the little baker was going to see one of his old neighbours at the
_Maiden's Valley_, then a little way out of town walking, as he always
did, with his hands behind him, every now and then he felt something as
cold as death against them, which he could never account for, seeing
there was not a soul with him but his old dog. Moreover, Mrs. Boomptie,
having bought half a pound of tea at a grocery store, and put it into
her pocket, did feel a twitching and jerking of the paper of tea in
her pocket, every step she went. The faster she ran the quicker and
stronger was the twitching and jerking, so that when the good woman got
home she was nigh fainting away. On her recovery she took courage, and
pulled the tea out of her pocket, and laid it on the table, when behold
it began to move by fits and starts, jumped off the table, hopped out
of doors, all alone by itself, and jigged away to the place from whence
it came. The grocer brought it back again, but Madam Boomptie looked
upon the whole as a judgment for her extravagance, in laying out so
much money for tea, and refused to receive it again. The grocer assured
her that the strange capers of the bundle were owing to his having
forgot to cut the twine with which he had tied it; but the good woman
looked upon this as an ingenious subterfuge, and would take nothing but
her money. When the husband and wife came to compare notes, they both
agreed they were certainly bewitched. Had there been any doubt of the
matter, subsequent events would soon have put it to rest.
That very night Mrs. Boomptie was taken after a strange way. Sometimes
she would laugh about nothing, and then she would cry about nothing;
then she would set to work and talk about nothing for a whole hour
without stopping, in a language nobody could understand; and then, all
at once, her tongue would cleave to the roof of her mouth, so that
it was impossible to force it away. When this fit was over she would
get up and dance double trouble, till she tired herself out, when she
fell asleep, and waked up quite rational. It was particularly noticed
that when she talked loudest and fastest, her lips remained perfectly
closed, without motion, and her mouth wide open, so that the words
seemed to come from down her throat. Her principal talk was railing
against Dominie Laidlie, the good pastor of Garden-street Church,
whence everybody concluded that she was possessed by a devil. Sometimes
she got hold of a pen, and though she had never learned to write, would
scratch and scrawl certain mysterious and diabolical figures, that
nobody could understand, and everybody said must mean something.
As for little Boss Boomptie, he was worse off than his wife. He was
haunted by an invisible hand, which played him all sorts of scurvy
tricks. Standing one morning at his counter, talking to one of the
neighbours, he received a great box on the ear, whereat being exceeding
wroth, he returned it with such interest on the cheek of his neighbour,
that he laid him flat on the floor. His friend hereupon took the law of
him, and proved, to the satisfaction of the court, that he had both
hands in his breeches pockets at the time Boss Boomptie said he gave
him the box on the ear. The magistrate not being able to come at the
truth of the matter, fined them each twenty-five guilders for the use
of the dominie.
A dried codfish was one day thrown at his head, and the next minute his
walking stick fell to beating him, though nobody seemed to have hold of
it A chair danced about the room, and at last alighted on the dinner
table, and began to eat with such a good appetite, that had not the
children snatched some of the dinner away, there would have been none
left. The old cow one night jumped over the moon, and a pewter dish
ran fairly off with a horn spoon, which seized a cat by the tail, and
away they all went together, as merry as crickets. Sometimes, when Boss
Boomptie had money, or cakes, or perhaps a loaf of bread in his hand,
instead of putting them in their proper places, he would throw them
into the fire, in spite of his teeth, and then the invisible hand would
beat him with a bag of flour, till he was as white as a miller. As for
keeping his accounts, that was out of the question; whenever he sat
himself down to write his ink horn was snatched away by the invisible
hand, and by-and-by it would come tumbling down the chimney. Sometimes
an old dishcloth would be pinned to the skirt of his coat, and then a
great diabolical laugh heard under the floor. At night he had a pretty
time of it. His nightcap was torn off his head, his hair pulled out by
handfuls, his face scratched, and his ears pinched as if with a red-hot
pincers. If he went out in the yard at night, he was pelted with
brickbats, sticks, stones, and all sorts of filthy missives; and if he
staid at home, the ashes were blown upon his supper; and old shoes,
instead of plates, seen on the table. One of the frying pans rang
every night of itself for a whole hour, and a three-pronged fork stuck
itself voluntarily into Boss Boomptie's back, without hurting him in
the least. But what astonished the neighbours more than all, the little
man, all at once, took to speaking in a barbarous and unknown jargon,
which was afterwards found out to be English.
These matters frightened some of the neighbours and scandalized others,
until at length poor Boomptie's shop was almost deserted. People were
jealous of eating his bread, for fear of being bewitched. Nay, more
than one little urchin complained grievously of horrible, out of the
way pains in the stomach, after eating two or three dozen of his
Newyear cookies.
Things went on in this way until Newyear's eve came round again, when
Boss Boomptie was sitting behind his counter, which was wont to be
thronged with customers on this occasion, but was now quite deserted.
While thinking on his present miserable state and future prospects, all
of a sudden the little ugly old woman, with a sharp nose, sharp chin,
sharp eyes, sharp voice, and leather spectacles, again stood before
him, leaning on her crooked black cane.
“Ben je bedondered?” exclaimed Boss Boomptie, “what to you want now?”
“I want a dozen Newyear cookies!” screamed the old creature.
The little man counted out twelve, as before.
“I want one more!” screamed she, louder than ever.
“Men weet hoe een koe een haas vangen kan!” cried the boss, in a rage;
“den want will pe your masder.”
She offered him six stivers, which he indignantly rejected, saying,
“I want none of your duyvel's stuyvers—begone, duyvel's huysvrouw!”
The old woman went her way, mumbling and grumbling as usual.
“By Saint Johannes de Dooper,” quoth Boss Boomptie, “put she's a
peaudy!”
That night, and all the week after, the brickbats flew about
Knickerbocker Hall like hail, insomuch that Boss Boomptie marvelled
where they could all come from, until one morning, after a terrible
shower of bricks, he found, to his great grief and dismay, that his
oven had disappeared; next went the top of his chimney; and when that
was gone, these diabolical sinners began at the extreme point of the
gable end, and so went on picking at the two edges downward, until they
looked just like the teeth of a saw, as may be still seen in some of
our old Dutch houses.
“Onbegrypelik!” cried Boss Boomptie, “put it's too pad to have my
prains peat out wid my own prickpats.”
About the same time a sober respectable cat, that for years had done
nothing but sit purring in the chimney corner, all at once got the
duyvel in her, and after scratching the poor man half to death, jumped
out of the chimney and disappeared. A Whitehall boatman afterwards saw
her in Buttermilk Channel, with nothing but the tail left, swimming
against the tide as easy as kiss your hand. Poor Mrs. Boomptie had
no peace of her life, what with pinchings, stickings of needles, and
talking without opening her mouth. But the climax of the malice of the
demon which beset her was in at last tying up her tongue, so that she
could not speak at all, but did nothing but sit crying and wringing her
hands in the chimney corner.
These carryings on brought round Newyear's eve again, when Boss
Boomptie thought he would have a frolic, “in spite of de duyvel,” as
he said, which saying was, somehow or other, afterwards applied to
the creek at Kingsbridge. So he commanded his wife to prepare him a
swinging mug of hot spiced rum, to keep up his courage against the
assaults of the brickbats. But what was the dismay of the little man
when he found that every time he put the beverage to his lips he
received a great box on the ear, the mug was snatched away by an
invisible hand, and every single drop drank out of it before it came to
Boss Boomptie's turn. Then as if it was an excellent joke, he heard a
most diabolical laugh down in the cellar.
“Goeden Hemel! Is het mogelyk!” exclaimed the little man in despair.
This was attacking him in the very intrenchments of his heart. It was
worse than the brickbats.
“Saint Nicholas! Saint Nicholas! what will become of me—what sal ich
doon, mynheer?”
Scarcely had he uttered this pathetic appeal, when there was a sound
of horses' hoofs in the chimney, and presently a light wagon, drawn by
a little, fat, gray 'Sopus pony, came trundling into the room, loaded
with all sorts of knickknacks. It was driven by a jolly, fat, little
rogue of a fellow, with a round sparkling eye, and a mouth which would
certainly have been laughing had it not been for a glorious Meershaum
pipe, which would have chanced to fall out in that case. The little
rascal had on a three-cornered cocked hat, decked with old gold lace;
a blue Dutch sort of a short pea jacket, red waistcoat, breeks of the
same colour, yellow stockings, and honest thick-soled shoes, ornamented
with a pair of skates. Altogether he was a queer figure—but there was
something so irresistibly jolly and good-natured in his face, that Boss
Boomptie felt his heart incline towards the stranger as soon as he saw
him.
“Orange Boven!” cried the good saint, pulling off his cocked hat, and
making a low bow to Mrs. Boomptie, who sat tonguetied in the chimney
corner.
“Wat donderdag is dat?” said Boss Boomptie, speaking for his wife,
which made the good woman very angry, that he should take the words out
of her mouth.
“You called on Saint Nicholas. Here am I,” quoth the jolly little
saint. “In one word—for I am a saint of few words, and have my hands
full of business to-night—in one word, tell me what you want.”
“I am pewitched,” quoth Boss Boomptie. “The duyvel is in me, my house,
my wife, my Newyear cookies, and my children. What shall I do?”
“When you count a dozen you must count thirteen,” answered the wagon
driver, at the same time cracking his whip, and clattering up the
chimney, more like a little duyvel than a little saint.
“Wat blixum!” muttered Boss Boomptie, “when you count a dozen you must
count dirdeen! je mag even wel met un stokje in de goot roeron! I never
heard of such counting. By Saint Johannes de Dooper, put Saint Nicholas
is a great plockhead!”
Just as he uttered this blasphemy against the excellent Saint Nicholas,
he saw through the pane of glass, in the door leading from the spare
room to the shop, the little ugly old woman, with the sharp eyes, sharp
nose, sharp chin, sharp voice, and leather spectacles, alighting from a
broomstick, at the street door.
“Dere is de duyvel's kint come again,” quoth he, in one of his cross
humours, which was aggravated by his getting just then a great box on
the ear from the invisible hand. However, he went grumbling into the
shop, for it was part of his religion never to neglect a customer, let
the occasion be what it might.
“I want a dozen Newyear cookies,” screamed the old beauty, as usual,
and as usual Boss Boomptie counted out twelve.
“I want another one,” screamed she still louder.
“Aha!” thought Boss Boomptie, doubtless inspired by the jolly little
caitiff, Saint Nicholas—”Aha! Het is goed visschen in troebel
water—when you count dwalf, you must count dirdeen. Ha—ha! ho—ho—ho!”
And he counted out the thirteenth cooky like a brave fellow.
The old woman made him a low courtesy, and laughed till she might have
shown her teeth, if she had had any.
“Friend Boomptie,” said she, in a voice exhibiting the perfection of a
nicely modulated scream—“Friend Boomptie, I love such generous little
fellows as you, in my heart. I salute you,” and she advanced to kiss
him. Boss Boomptie did not at all like the proposition; but, doubtless
inspired by Saint Nicholas, he submitted with indescribable grace.
At that moment, an explosion was heard inside the little glass pane,
and the voice of Mrs. Boomptie crying out,
“You false-hearted villain, have I found out your tricks at last!”
“De Philistyner Onweetende!” cried Boss Boomptie. “She's come to her
speech now!”
“The spell is broken!” screamed the old woman with the sharp eyes,
nose, chin, and voice. “The spell is broken, and henceforward a dozen
is thirteen, and thirteen is a dozen! There shall be thirteen Newyear
cookies to the dozen, as a type of the thirteen mighty states that are
to arise out of the ruins of the government of faderland!”
Thereupon she took a Newyear cake bearing the effigy of the blessed
St. Nicholas, and caused Boss Boomptie to swear upon it, that for ever
afterwards twelve should be thirteen, and thirteen should be twelve.
After which, she mounted her broomstick and disappeared, just as the
little old Dutch clock struck twelve. From that time forward, the
spell that hung over the fortunes of little Boss Boomptie was broken;
and ever after he became illustrious for baking the most glorious
Newyear cookies in our country. Everything became as before: the little
'prentice boys returned, mounted on the batch of bread, and their
adventures may, peradventure, be told some other time. Finally, from
that day forward no baker of New-Amsterdam was ever bewitched, at least
by an ugly old woman, and a bakers dozen has been always counted as
thirteen.
THE GHOST.
Some time in the year 1800 or 1801, I am not certain which, a man of
the name of William Morgan—I don't mean the person whose “abduction”
has made so much noise in the world—enlisted on board the United States
frigate —— for a three years' cruise in the Mediterranean. He was an
awful-looking person, six feet four inches high; a long pale visage
deeply furrowed with wrinkles; sunken eyes far up towards his forehead;
black exuberant hair standing on end as if he was always frightened at
something; a sharp chin of a length proportioned to his height; teeth
white, but very irregular; and the colour of his eyes what the writers
on supernatural affairs call very singular and mysterious. Besides
this, his voice was hollow and sepulchral; on his right arm were
engraved certain mysterious devices, surmounted with the letters E. M.;
and his tobacco box was of iron. His everyday dress was a canvass hat
with a black riband band, a blue jacket, white trousers, and leather
shoes. On Sundays he wore a white beaver, which, among sailors, bespoke
something extraordinary, and on rainy days a pea jacket too short by
half a yard. It is worthy of remark that Morgan entered on Friday;
that the frigate was launched on Friday; that the master carpenter who
built her was born on Friday; and that the squadron went to sea on
Friday. All these singular coincidences, combined with his mysterious
appearance, caused the sailors to look upon Morgan with some little
degree of wonder.
During the voyage to Gibraltar, Morgan's conduct served to increase
the impression his appearance had made on the crew. He sometimes went
without eating for several days together, at least no one ever saw him
eat; and, if he ever slept at all, it was without shutting his eyes or
lying down, for his messmates, one and all, swore that, wake at what
time of the night they would, Morgan was seen sitting upright in his
hammock, with his eyes glaring wide open. When his turn came to take
his watch upon deck, his conduct was equally strange. He would stand
stock still in one place, gazing at the stars, or the ocean, apparently
unconscious of his situation; and when roused by his companions, tumble
on the deck in a swoon. When he revived, he would fall to preaching
the most strange and incomprehensible rhapsodies that ever were heard.
In their idle hours upon the forecastle, Morgan told such stories
about himself, and his strange escapes by sea and land, as caused
the sailors' hair to stand on end, and made the jolly fellows look
upon him as a person gifted with the privilege of living for ever. He
often indeed hinted that he had as many lives as a cat, and several
times offered to let himself be hanged for the gratification of his
messmates. On more than one occasion, he was found lying on his back
in his hammock, apparently without life, his eyes fixed and glassy,
his limbs stiff and rigid, his lower jaw sunk down, and his pulse
motionless, at least so his messmates swore when they went to call the
doctor; though when the latter came he always found Morgan as well as
ever he was in his life, and apparently unconscious of all that had
happened.
As they proceeded on the voyage, which proved for the most part a
succession of calms, the sailors having little else to do, either
imagined or invented new wonders about Morgan. At one time a little
Welsh foretopman swore that as he was going to sit down to dinner, his
canteen was snatched from under him by an invisible hand, and he fell
plump on the deck. A second had his allowance of grog “abducted” in a
mysterious manner, although he was ready to make oath he never had his
eyes off it for a moment. A third had his tobacco box rifled, though it
had never been out of his pocket. A fourth had a crooked sixpence, with
a hole by which it was suspended from his neck by a riband, taken away
without his ever being the wiser for it.
These things at length reached the ears of Captain R————, who, the
next time Morgan got into one of his trances, had him confined for
four-and-twenty hours; and otherwise punished him in various ways
on the recurrence of any one of these wonderful reports. All this
produced no effect whatever either on Morgan or the crew, which at
length had its wonder stretched to the utmost bounds by a singular
adventure of our hero.
One day, the squadron being about halfway across the Atlantic, and
the frigate several leagues ahead with a fine breeze, there was an
alarm of the magazine being on fire. Morgan was just coming on deck
with a spoon in his hand, for some purpose or other, when hearing the
cry of “magazine on fire,” he made one spring overboard. The fire was
extinguished by the daring gallantry of an officer, now living, and
standing in the first rank of our naval heroes. In the confusion and
alarm, it was impossible to make any efforts to save Morgan; and it was
considered a matter of course that he had perished in the ocean. Two
days after, one of the other vessels of the squadron came alongside
the frigate, and sent a boat on board with Billy Morgan. Twelve hours
from the time of his leaping overboard, he had been found swimming away
gallantly, with the spoon in his hand. When asked why he did not let it
go, he replied that he kept it to help himself to salt water when he
was dry. This adventure fixed in the minds of the sailors an obstinate
opinion, that Morgan was either a dead man come to life again, or one
that was not very easy to be killed.
After this, Morgan continued his mysterious pranks. The sailors talked
and wondered, and Captain R———— punished him, until the squadron was
within two or three days' sail of Gibraltar, admitting the wind
continued fair as it then was. Morgan had been punished pretty severely
that morning for stargazing and falling into a swoon on his watch the
night before, and had solemnly assured his messmates, that he intended
to jump overboard and drown himself the first opportunity. He made his
will, dressed himself in his best, and settled all his affairs. He
also replenished his tobacco box, put his allowance of biscuit in his
pocket, and filled a small canteen with water, which he strung about
his neck; saying that perhaps he might take it into his head to live a
day or two in the water, before he finally went to the bottom.
Between twelve and one, the vessel being becalmed, the night a clear
starlight, and the sentinels pacing their rounds, Morgan was distinctly
seen to come up through the hatchway, walk forward, climb the bulwark,
and let himself drop into the sea. A midshipman and two seamen
testified to the facts; and Morgan being missing the next morning,
there was no doubt of his having committed suicide by drowning himself.
This affair occasioned much talk, and various were the opinions of the
ship's crew on the subject. Some swore it was one Davy Jones who had
been playing his pranks; others that it was no man, but a ghost or a
devil that had got among them; and others were in daily expectation of
seeing him come on board again, as much alive as ever he was.
In the mean time, the squadron proceeded but slowly, being detained
several days by calms and head winds, most of which were in some way or
other laid to Billy Morgan by the gallant tars, who fear nothing but
Fridays and men without heads. His fate, however, gradually ceased to
be a subject of discussion, and the wonder was quickly passing away,
when one night, about a week after his jumping overboard, the figure of
Morgan, all pale and ghastly, his clothes hanging wet about him—with
eyes more sunken, hair more upright, and face more thin and cadaverous
than ever, was seen by one of his messmates, who happened to be lying
awake, to emerge slowly from the forepart of the ship, approach one of
the tables where there was a can of water, from which it took a hearty
draught, and disappear in the direction whence it came. The sailor told
the story next morning, but as yet very few believed him.
The next night the same figure appeared, and was seen by a different
person from him by whom it was first observed. It came from the same
quarter again, helped itself to a drink, and disappeared in the same
direction it had done before. The story of Morgan's ghost, in the
course of a day or two, came to the ears of Captain R————, who caused
a search to be made in that part of the vessel whence the ghost had
come; under the impression that the jumping overboard of Morgan had
been a deception, and that he was now secreted on board the ship. The
search ended, however, without any discovery. The calms and head winds
still continued, and not a sailor on board but ascribed them to Billy
Morgan's mysterious influence. The ghost made its appearance again
the following night after the search, when it was seen, by another of
Morgan's messmates, to empty his tobacco box, and seize some of the
fragments of supper, which had been accidentally left on a table, with
which it again vanished in the manner before described. The sailor
swore that when the ghost made free with his tobacco box, he attempted
to lay hold of him, but felt nothing in his hand, except something
exactly like cold water.
Captain R———— was excessively provoked at these stories, and caused
another and still more thorough search to be made, but without any
discovery. He then directed a young midshipman to keep watch between
decks. That night the ghost again made its appearance, and the
courageous young officer sallied out upon it; but the figure darted
away with inconceivable velocity, and disappeared. The midshipman,
as directed, immediately informed Captain R————, who instituted an
immediate search, but with as little success as before. By this time
there was not a sailor on board that was not afraid of his shadow, and
even the officers began to be infected with a superstitious dread. At
length the squadron arrived at Gibraltar, and came to in the bay of
Algesiras, where the ships remained some days waiting the arrival of
those they had come to relieve. About the usual hour that night, the
ghost of Billy Morgan again appeared to one of his messmates, offered
him its hand, and saying “Good-by, Tom,” disappeared as usual.
It was a fortnight or more before the relief squadron sailed up the
Mediterranean, during which time the crews of the ships were permitted
to take their turn to go on shore. On one of these occasions, a
messmate of Billy Morgan, named Tom Brown, was passing through a
tolerably dark lane in the suburbs of Algesiras, when he heard a
well-known voice call out, “Tom, Tom, d—n your eyes, don't you know
your old messmate?” Tom knew the voice, and looking round, recognised
his old messmate Morgan's ghost. But he had no inclination to renew the
acquaintance; he took to his heels, and without looking behind him to
see if the ghost followed, ran to the boat where his companions were
waiting, and told the story as soon as he could find breath for the
purpose. This reached the ear of Captain R————, who, being almost sure
of the existence of Morgan, applied to the governor of the town, who
caused search to be made everywhere without effect. No one had ever
seen such a person. That very night the ghost made its appearance on
board the frigate, and passed its cold wet hand over the face of Tom
Brown, to whom Morgan had left his watch and chest of clothes. The poor
fellow bawled out lustily; but before any pursuit could be made, the
ghost had disappeared in the forward part of the ship as usual. After
this Billy again appeared two or three times alternately to some one
of his old messmates; sometimes in the town, at others on board the
frigate, but always in the dead of night. He seemed desirous to say
something particular, but could never succeed in getting any of the
sailors to listen quietly to the communication. The last time he made
his appearance at Algesiras, on board the frigate, he was heard by one
of the sailors to utter, in a low hollow whisper, “You shall see me at
Malta;” after which he vanished as before.
Caption R—— was excessively perplexed at these strange and
unaccountable visitations, and instituted every possible inquiry
into the circumstances in the hope of finding some clew to explain
the mystery. He again caused the ship to be examined with a view to
the discovery either of the place where Morgan secreted himself, or
the means by which he escaped from the vessel. He questioned every
man on board, and threatened the severest punishment, should he ever
discover that they deceived him in their story, or were accomplices
in the escape of Morgan. He even removed everything in the forward
part of the ship, and rendered it impossible for any human being to
be there without being detected. The whole resulted in leaving the
affair involved in complete mystery, and the squadron proceeded up the
Mediterranean, to cruise along the African coast, and rendezvous at
Malta.
It was some weeks before the frigate came to the latter place, and in
the mean time, as nothing had been seen of the ghost, it was concluded
that the shade of Billy Morgan was appeased, or rather the whole affair
had been gradually forgotten. Two nights after her arrival, a party
of sailors, being ashore at La Vallette, accidentally entered a small
tavern in a remote part of the suburbs, where they commenced a frolic,
after the manner of those amphibious bipeds. Among them was the heir
of Billy Morgan, who about three or four in the morning went to bed,
not quite as clear headed as he might have been. He could not tell how
long he had been asleep, when he was awakened by a voice whispering in
his ear, “Tom, Tom, wake up!” On opening his eyes, he beheld, by the
pale light of the morning, the ghastly figure of Billy Morgan leaning
over his bed and glaring at him with eyes like saucers. Tom cried,
“Murder! ghost! Billy Morgan!” as loud as he could bawl, until he
roused the landlord, who came to know what was the matter. Tom related
the whole affair, and inquired if he had seen anything of the figure
he described. Mine host utterly denied having seen or ever heard of
such a figure as Billy Morgan, and so did all his family. The report
was again alive on board the frigate, that Billy Morgan's ghost had
taken the field once more. “Heaven and earth!” cried Captain R————, “is
Billy Morgan's ghost come again? Shall I never get rid of this infernal
spectre, or whatever else it may be?”
Captain R———— immediately ordered his barge, waited on the governor,
explained the situation of his crew, and begged his assistance in
apprehending the ghost of Billy Morgan, or Billy himself, as the case
might be. That night the governor caused the strictest search to be
made in every hole and corner of the little town of La Vallette; but in
vain. No one had seen that remarkable being, corporeal or spiritual;
and the landlord of the house where the spectre appeared, together with
all his family, utterly denied any knowledge of such a person or thing.
It is little to be wondered at, that the search proved ineffectual,
for that very night Billy took a fancy to appear on board the frigate,
where he again accosted his old friend Tom, to whom he had bequeathed
all his goods and chattels. But Tom had no mind for a confidential
communication with the ghost, and roared out so lustily, as usual, that
it glided away and disappeared as before, without being intercepted in
the confusion which followed.
Captain R———— was in despair; never was man so persecuted by a ghost
in this world before. The ship's crew were in a state of terror and
dismay, insomuch that had an Algerine come across them they might
peradventure have surrendered at discretion. They signed a round robin,
drawn up by one of Billy Morgan's old messmates, representing to
Captain R———— the propriety of running the ship ashore, and abandoning
her entirely to the ghost, which now appeared almost every night,
sometimes between decks, at others on the end of the bowsprit, and
at others cutting capers on the yards and topgallant mast. The story
spread into the town of La Vallette, and nothing was talked of but the
ghost of Billy Morgan, which now began to appear occasionally to the
sentinels of the fort, one of whom had the courage to fire at it, by
which he alarmed the whole island and made matters ten times worse than
ever.
From Malta the squadron, after making a cruise of a few weeks,
proceeded to Syracuse, with the intention of remaining some time. They
were obliged to perform a long quarantine; the ships were strictly
examined by the health officers, and fumigated with brimstone, to
the great satisfaction of the crew of the frigate, who were in great
hopes this would drive away Billy Morgan's ghost. These hopes were
strengthened by their seeing no more of that troublesome visiter during
the whole time the quarantine continued. The very next night after the
expiration of the quarantine, Billy again visited his old messmate
and heir Tom Brown, lank, lean, and dripping wet, as usual, and after
giving him a rousing shake, whispered, “Hush, Tom; I want to speak to
you about my watch and chest of clothes.” But Tom had no inclination
to converse with his old friend, and cried out “Murder” with all his
might; when the ghost vanished as before, muttering, as Tom swore, “You
bloody infernal lubber.”
The reappearance of the ghost occasioned greater consternation than
ever among the crew of the good ship, and it required all the
influence of severe punishments to keep them from deserting on every
occasion. Poor Tom Brown, to whom the devoirs of the spectre seemed
most especially directed, left off swearing and chewing tobacco, and
dwindled to a perfect shadow. He became very serious, and spent almost
all his leisure time in reading chapters in the Bible or singing
psalms. Captain R———— now ordered a constant watch all night between
decks, in hopes of detecting the intruder; but all in vain, although
there was hardly a night passed without Tom's waking and crying out
that the ghost had just paid him a visit. It was, however, thought very
singular, and to afford additional proof of its being a ghost, that on
all these occasions, except two, it was invisible to everybody but Tom
Brown.
In addition to the vexation arising from this persevering and
diabolical persecution of Billy's ghost, various other strange and
unaccountable things happened almost every day on board the frigate.
Tobacco boxes were emptied in the most mysterious manner, and in the
dead of the night; sailors would sometimes be missing a whole day, and
return again without being able to give any account of themselves;
and not a few of them were overtaken with liquor, without their being
ever the wiser for it, for they all swore they had not drunk a drop
beyond their allowance. Sometimes, on going ashore on leave for a
limited time, the sailors would be decoyed, as they solemnly assured
the captain, by some unaccountable influence into strange, out of the
way places, where they could not find their road back, and where they
were found by their officers in a state of mysterious stupefaction,
though not one had tasted a drop of liquor. On these occasions, they
always saw the ghost of Billy Morgan, either flying through the air, or
dancing on the tops of the steeples, with a fiery tail like a comet.
Wonder grew upon wonder every day, until the wonder transcended the
bounds of human credulity.
At length, Tom Brown, the night after receiving a visit from Billy
Morgan's ghost, disappeared, and was never heard of afterwards. As
the chest of clothes inherited from his deceased messmate was found
entirely empty, it might have been surmised that Tom had deserted,
had not a sailor, who was on the watch, solemnly declared that he saw
the ghost of Billy Morgan jump overboard with him in a flame of fire,
and that he hissed like a red-hot ploughshare in the water. After
this bold feat, the spectre appeared no more. The squadron remained
some time at Syracuse, and various adventures befell the officers
and crews, which those remaining alive tell of to this day. How
Macdonough, then a madcap midshipman, “licked” the high constable of
the town; how Burroughs quizzed the governor; what rows they kicked
up at masquerades; what a dust they raised among the antiquities; and
what wonders they whispered in the ear of Dionysius. From thence, they
again sailed on a cruise, and after teaching the Bey of Tripoli a new
way of paying tribute, and laying the foundation of that structure
of imperishable glory which shall one day reach the highest heaven,
returned home, after an absence of between two and three years. The
crew of the frigate were paid off and discharged, and it is on record,
as a wonder, that their three years' pay lasted some of them nearly
three days. But though we believe in the ghost of Billy Morgan, we
can scarcely credit this incredible wonder. Certain it is, that not a
man of them ever doubted for a moment the reality of the spectre, or
would have hesitated to make oath of having seen it more than once.
Even Captain R———— spoke of it on his return, as one of those strange,
inscrutable things, which baffle the efforts of human ingenuity, and
seem to justify the most extraordinary relations of past and present
times. His understanding revolted at the absurdity of a great part of
the wonders ascribed to Billy Morgan's ghost; but some of the facts
were so well attested, that a painful doubt would often pass over his
mind, and dispose it to the reception of superstitious impressions.
He remained in this state of mixed skepticism and credulity, when, some
years after his return from the Mediterranean, being on a journey to
the westward, he had occasion to halt at a log house, on the borders
of the Tennessee, for refreshment. A man came forth to receive him,
whom he at once recognised as his old acquaintance, Billy Morgan.
“Heavens!” thought Captain R————, “here's Monsieur Tonson come again!”
Billy, who had also found out who his guest was, when too late to
retreat, looked rather sheepish, and invited him in with little of the
frank hospitality characteristic of a genuine backwoodsman. Captain
R—— followed him into the house, where he found a comely good-natured
dame, and two or three yellow-haired boys and girls, all in a fluster
at the stranger. The house had an air of comfort, and the mistress, by
her stirring activity, accompanied with smiling looks withal, seemed
pleased at the rare incident of a stranger's entering their door.
Bill Morgan was at first rather shy and awkward. But finding Captain
R—— treated him with good-humoured frankness, he, in the course of
the evening, when the children were gone to bed, and the wife busy in
milking the cows, took occasion to accost his old commander.
“Captain, I hope you don't mean to shoot me for a deserter?”
“By no means,” said the captain, smiling; “there would be little use in
shooting a ghost, or a man with as many lives as a cat.”
Billy Morgan smiled rather a melancholy smile. “Ah! captain, you have
not forgot the ghost, I see. But it is a long time to remember an old
score, and I hope you'll forgive me.”
“On one condition I will,” replied Captain R————; “that you tell me
honestly how you managed to make all my sailors believe they saw you,
night after night, on board the ship as well as on shore.”
“They did see me,” replied Billy, in his usual sepulchral voice.
The captain began to be in some doubt whether he was talking to Billy
Morgan or his ghost.
“You don't pretend to say you were really on board my vessel all the
time?”
“No, not all the time, only at such times as the sailors saw me—except
previous to our arrival at Gibraltar.”
“Then their seeing you jump overboard was all a deception.”
“By no means, sir; I did jump overboard—but then I climbed back again,
directly after.”
“The deuse you did—explain.”
“I will, sir, as well as I am able. I was many years among the Sandwich
Islanders, where the vessel in which I was a cabin boy was wrecked,
a long time ago, and I can pass whole hours, I believe days, in the
water, without being fatigued, except for want of sleep. I have also
got some of their other habits, such as a great dislike to hard work,
and a liking for going where I will, and doing just what I please. The
discipline of a man-of-war did not suit me at all, and I grew tired
after a few days. To pass the time, and to make fun for myself with the
sailors, I told them stories of my adventures, and pretended that I
could live in the water, and had as many lives as a cat. Besides this,
as you know, I played them many other pranks, partly for amusement, and
partly from a kind of pride I felt in making them believe I was half
a wizard. The punishment you gave me, though I own I deserved it, put
me out of all patience, and I made up my mind to desert the very first
opportunity. I had an old shipmate with me, whom I could trust, and we
planned the whole thing together. I knew if I deserted at Gibraltar,
or any of the ports of the Mediterranean, I should almost certainly be
caught, and shot as an example; and for this reason we settled that
I should jump overboard, return again, and hide myself in a coil of
cable which was stowed away between decks, close to the bows, where
it was dark even in the daytime. My messmate procured a piece of old
canvass, with which I might cover myself if necessary. To make my
jumping overboard have a greater effect on the crew, and to provide
against accidents until the ship arrived at Gibraltar, I took care to
fill my tobacco box with tobacco, my pockets with biscuits, and to
sling a canteen of water round my neck, as I told them perhaps I might
take it into my head not to go to the bottom for two or three days. I
got Tom Brown to write my will, intending to leave my watch and chest
to my messmate, who was to return them to me at Gibraltar, the first
chance he could get. But Tom played us a trick, and put his own name in
place of my friend's. Neither he nor I were any great scholars, and the
trick was not found out till afterwards, when my friend was afraid of
discovery, if he made any rout about the matter.”
“Who was your friend?” asked Captain R————.
“He is still alive, and in service. I had rather not mention his name.”
“Very well,” replied Captain R————, “go on.”
“That night I jumped overboard.”
“How did you get back into the ship?” asked the captain, hastily.
“Why, sir, the forward porthole, on the starboard side, was left open,
with a bit of rope fastened to the gun, and hanging down so that I
could catch it.”
The captain struck his forehead with the palm of his hand, and said to
himself,
“What a set of blockheads we were!”
“Not so great as might have been expected,” said honest Billy Morgan,
intending to compliment the captain; but it sounded directly the
contrary.
“As soon as I had jumped overboard I swam to the rope, which I held
fast, waiting the signal from my friend to climb up and hide myself in
the coil of cable. In the bustle which followed it was easy enough to
do this, and nobody saw me but my friend. Here I remained in my wet
clothes, rather uncomfortably, as you may suppose, until my provision
and water were expended, and my tobacco box empty. I calculated they
would last till we arrived at Gibraltar, when nothing would have
been easier for me than to jump out of the porthole and swim ashore.
But the plaguy head winds and calms, which I dare say you remember,
delayed the squadron several days longer than I expected, and left me
without supply. I could have gone without biscuit and water, but it
was impossible to live without tobacco. My friend had promised to come
near enough to hear signals of distress sometimes, but, as he told me
afterwards, he was confined several days for picking a quarrel with Tom
Brown, whom he longed to flog for forging the will.
“I remained in this state until I was nearly starved, when, not being
able to stand it any longer, I one night, when everybody between decks
seemed fast asleep, crept out from my hiding place, where I was coiled
up in the shape of a cable, and finding a pitcher of water, took a
hearty drink out of it. This was as far as I dared go at that time,
so I went back again as quietly as possible. But I was too hungry to
remain quiet, though among the Sandwich Islanders I had been used to go
without eating for days at a time. The next night I crept out again,
and was lucky enough to get a pretty good supply of provisions, which
happened to be left by some accident in the way. Two or three times I
heard search making for me, and was very much frightened lest I should
be found out in my hole.”
“How was it possible for the blockheads to miss you?” asked Captain
R————.
“Why, sir, they did come to the cable tier where I was, but I believe
they were too much frightened to look into it, or could not see me in
the dark hole. They did not lift the canvass that covered me either
of the times they came. The night I found the officer on the watch,
I gave myself up for gone; but as luck would have it, my friend was
now out of limbo, and always took care to examine the coil of cable so
carefully, that nobody thought of looking into it after him. When we
arrived at the bay of Algesiras, I took an opportunity to frighten Tom
Brown a little, by visiting him in the night and bidding him good-by,
after which I slipped quietly out of the porthole, and swam ashore,
while my friend pulled up the rope and shut the port after me as usual.”
“But how did you manage to escape from the search made by the police at
Algesiras?”
“Oh, sir! I was on board the frigate all the time in my old hiding
place.”
“And when the ship was searched directly after?”
“I was ashore at that time.”
“And how did you manage at Malta?”
“The landlord was my sworn brother, and wouldn't have blabbed for a
thousand pounds.”
“And the capers on the yardarm and topgallant, the visits paid to Tom
Brown at Syracuse, and the wonderful stories told by the sailors of
being robbed of their tobacco, getting tipsy upon nothing, and being
led astray by nobody? What do you say to all this, Mr. Ghost?” said the
captain, smiling.
“I never paid but two visits to the ship, so far is I remember, sir,
after she left Malta. One was the night I wanted to talk with Tom
Brown, the other when he disappeared the night afterwards. The rest of
the stories were all owing to the jokes of some of the sailors, and the
fears of the others.”
“But you are sure you did not jump into the sea with Tom Brown, in a
flame of fire?”
“Yes, sir, as I am an honest man. Tom got away without any help of
mine, and without my ever knowing how, until a long time afterwards,
when I accidentally met him at Liverpool.”
“Well?”
“He was not to be convinced I was living, but ran away as hard as he
could, and to this day believes in ghosts as much as he does in his
being alive himself.”
“So far all is clear enough,” said Captain R————; “but what could
possibly induce you to put yourself in the way of being caught after
escaping, by visiting the ship and letting yourself be seen?”
“I wanted to see Tom Brown, sir.”
“Why so?”
“I wanted to get back my watch and clothes from him.”
“Oh! I see it now. But had you no other object?”
“Why, I'll tell you, sir; besides that, I had a sort of foolish pride,
all my life, in frightening people, and making them wonder at me, by
telling tough stories, or doing strange things. I haven't got over it
to this day, and have been well beaten two or three times, besides
being put in jail, for playing the ghost hereabout, with the country
people, at court time. I confess too, sir, that I have once or twice
frightened my wife almost into fits, by way of a frolic; and for all
the trouble it has brought upon me, I believe in my soul I shall play
the ghost till I give up the ghost at last. Besides this, the truth is,
sir, I had a little spite at you for having put me in the bilboes for
some of these pranks, as I deserved, and had no objection to pay you
off, by breeding trouble in the ship.”
“Truly, you succeeded wonderfully; but what became of you afterwards?”
“Why, sir, after Tom Brown deserted, and, to quiet his conscience, left
my watch and clothes to my friend, I had no motive for playing the
ghost any more. I shipped in an American merchantman for Smyrna—from
thence I went to Gibraltar—and after voyaging a year or two, and saving
a few hundred dollars, came to Boston at last. I did not dare to stay
along shore, for fear of being known by some of the officers of the
squadron, so I took my money and my bundle and went into the back
country. I am a little of everything, a jack of all trades, and turned
farmer, as sea captains often do when they are tired of ploughing the
ocean. I get on pretty well now, and hope you won't have me shot by a
court martial.”
“No,” replied Captain R————, “I am out of the navy now. I have turned
farmer too, and you are quite safe.”
“I hope you prosper well, sir?”
“Not quite as well as you, Billy—I have come into the backwoods to see
if I can do better.”
“Only serve under me,” said Billy,“ and I will repay all your good
offices.”
“What, the floggings, _et cetera_?”
“By God's help, sir, I may,” said Billy. “Try me, sir.”
“No—I am going on a little farther.”
“You may go farther, and fare worse, sir.”
“Perhaps so—but I believe it is bedtime, and so good-night, Mr. Ghost.”
Captain R———— retired very quietly to his room, went to bed, and slept
like a top, till the broad sun shone over the summits of the trees into
his face, as he lay under the window. He breakfasted sumptuously, and
set out gallantly for the prairies of St. Louis.
“Good-by, captain,” said Billy, leering, and lengthening his face to a
supernatural degree. “I hope you won't meet any ghosts on your way.”
“Good-by, Billy,” replied Captain R————, a little nettled at this joke.
“I hope you will not get into the state prison for playing the ghost.”
“I'll take care of that, sir; I've been in the state prison already,
and you won't catch me there again, I warrant you.”
“What do you mean, Billy?”
“I mean, that there is little or no odds between a state ship and a
state prison,” said Billy, with a face longer than ever, and a most
expressive shrug.
Captain R———— proceeded on his way, reflecting on the singular story
of Billy Morgan, whose pranks on board the frigate had convinced some
hundreds of men of the existence of ghosts, and thrown the gloom of
superstitious horror over the remainder of their existence. “Not a
sailor,” thought he, “out of more than five hundred, with the exception
of a single one, but will go to his grave in the full belief of the
appearance of Billy Morgan's ghost. What an unlucky rencounter this of
mine; it has spoiled one of the best-authenticated ghost stories of the
age.”
THE
NYMPH OF THE MOUNTAIN.
In a certain corner of the Bay State there once stood, and we hope will
continue to nourish long and happily, a snug town, now promoted to be
a city, the name of which is not material to our purpose. Here in a
great shingle palace, which would have been a very comfortable edifice
had it only been finished, lived a reputable widow, well to do in the
world, and the happy mother of a promising lad, a wonderful clever boy,
as might be expected. In fact, Shearjashub (that was his name) was no
bad specimen of the country lad. He was hardy, abstemious, independent,
and _cute_ withal; and before he was a man grown, made a great bargain
once out of a travelling merchant, a Scotchman, who chanced that way.
Besides this, he was a mechanical genius; and, though far from being
lazy, delighted in the invention of labour-saving machines, some of
which were odd enough. He peeled all his mother's pumpkins by water,
and spun her flax with a windmill. Nay, it was reported of him, that he
once invented a machine for digging graves upon speculation, by which
he calculated he should certainly have made his fortune, had not the
people of the village all with one accord taken it into their heads to
live for ever. The name of the family was Yankee, they having been the
first that had intercourse with the Indians, who called them Yankee,
because they could not say English.
The Widow Yankee was a right pious, meeting-going woman, who held it
to be a great want of faith not to believe in everything; especially
everything out of the way and impossible. She was a great amateur of
demonology and witchcraft. Moreover, she was gifted with a reasonable
share of curiosity, though it is recorded that once she came very near
missing to get at the bottom of a secret. The story ran as follows:—
One day, as she was sitting at her window, which had a happy aspect for
overlooking the affairs of the village, she saw a mysterious-looking
man, with a stick in his hand and a pipe in his mouth, walking exactly
three feet behind a white cow. The same thing happened precisely at the
same hour in the same manner the next day, and so continued for some
time. The first week the widow began to think it rather odd; the second
she began to think it quite strange; the third it became altogether
mysterious; and the fourth the poor woman took to her bed, of the
disease of the man and the cow.
Doctor Calomel undertook the cure in a new and original manner, to wit,
without the use of medicine. He wrought upon the mysterious cowdriver
to come to the widow's house, and tell her the whole secret of the
business. When he came into the room the sick woman raised herself up,
and in a faint voice addressed him as follows:—
“Mysterious man! I conjure thee to tell me what under the sun makes
thee always follow that cow about every day at the same hour, and at
the same distance from her tail?”
“Because the cow always goes before me!” replied the mysterious man.
Upon which the widow jumped out of her sick bed, seized an old shoe,
fired it at the mysterious man's head, and was miraculously cured from
that moment. Doctor Calomel got into great practice thereupon.
Shearjashub inherited a considerable share of his mother's inquiring
disposition, and was very inquisitive about the affairs of other
people; but, to do him justice, he took pretty good care to keep
his own to himself, like a discreet lad as he was. Having invented
so many labour-saving machines, Jashub, as he was usually called by
the neighbours, thought it was great nonsense to work himself; so he
set his machines going, and took to the amusement of killing time,
which, in a country village, is no such easy matter. It required a
considerable share of ingenuity. His favourite mode of doing this was
taking his gun on his shoulder, and sallying forth into the fields and
woods, followed by a cur, whose genealogy was perfectly mysterious.
Nobody could tell to what family he belonged; certain it was, that
he was neither “mongrel, puppy, whelp, nor hound,” but a cur of low
degree, whose delight was to bask in the sun when he was not out with
his young master.
In this way Jashub would pass day after day, in what he called
sporting; that is to say, toiling through tangled woods and rough bog
meadows and swamps, that quivered like a jelly at every step, and
returning home at night hungry as well as tired. Report said that he
never was known to shoot anything; and thus far his time was spent
innocently, if not improvingly.
One fast-day, early in the spring of 1776, Jashub went forth as usual,
with his gun on his shoulder, and little Snap (such was the name of the
dog) at his heels. The early May had put on all her charms; a thousand
little patches of wild violets were peeping forth with deep blue eyes;
a thousand, yea, tens of thousands of little buds were expanding into
leaves apace; and crowds of chirping birds were singing a hymn to the
jolly laughing spring. Jashub could not find it in his heart to fire
at them; but if he had, there would have been no danger, except of
frightening the little warblers, and arresting their song.
Beguiled by the beauties of Nature and her charming music, Jashub
almost unconsciously wandered on until he came to the opening of a deep
glen in the mountain, which rose at some miles distance, west of the
village. It was formed by the passage of a pure crystal stream, which,
in the course of ages, or perhaps by a single effort, had divided the
mountain about the space of twenty yards, ten of which were occupied
by the brook, which silently wound its way along the edge of steep and
rocky precipices several hundred feet high, that formed the barriers of
the glen on either side. These towering perpendicular masses of gray
eternity were here and there green with the adventurous laurel, which,
fastening its roots in the crevices, nodded over the mighty steep in
fearful dizziness. Here and there a little spring gushed forth high up
among the graybeard rocks, and trickled down their sides in silvery
brightness. In other places patches of isinglass appeared, sparkling
against the sober masses, and communicating a singularly lustrous
character to the scene, which had otherwise been all gloomy solitude.
Jashub gazed a while in apprehensive wonder, as he stood at the
entrance of these everlasting gates. Curiosity prompted him to enter,
and explore the recesses within, while a certain vague unwillingness
deterred him. At length curiosity, or perhaps fate, which had decreed
that he should become the instrument of her great designs, prevailed
against all opposition, and he entered the gates of this majestic
palace of nature. He slowly advanced, sometimes arrested by a certain
feeling of mysterious awe; at others driven on by the power which had
assumed the direction of his conduct, until he arrived at the centre
of the hallowed solitude. Not a living thing breathed around him,
except his little dog, and his gun trembled in his hand. All was
gloom, silence, solitude, deep and profound. The brook poured forth
no murmurs, the birds and insects seemed to have shunned the unsunned
region, where everlasting twilight reigned; and the scream of the
hawks, pursuing their way across the deep chasm, was hushed as they
passed.
Jashub was arrested by the melancholy grandeur of the scene, and his
dog looked wistfully in his face, as if he wanted to go home. As he
stood thus lingering, leaning on his gun, a merry strain broke forth
upon the terrible silence, and echoed through the glen. The sound made
him suddenly start, in doing which his foot somehow or other caught
in the lock of his gun, which he had forgot to uncock, as was usual
with him, and caused it to go off. The explosion rang through the
recesses of the glen in a hundred repetitions, which were answered by
the howlings of the little dog. As the echoes gradually subsided, and
the smoke cleared away, the music again commenced. It was a careless,
lively air, such as suited the taste of the young man, and he forgot
his fears in his love of music.
As he stood thus entranced he heard a voice, sweet, yet animating as
the clear sound of the trumpet, exclaim,
“Shearjashub! Shearjashub!”
Jashub's heart bounded into his throat, and prevented his answering. He
loaded his gun, and stood on the defensive.
In a moment after the same trumpet voice repeated the same words,
“Shearjashub! Shearjashub!”
“What d'ye want, you tarnal kritter?” at length the young man answered,
with a degree of courage that afterwards astonished him.
“Listen—and look!”
He listened and looked, but saw nothing, until a little flourish of the
same sprightly tune directed his attention to the spot whence it came.
High on the summit of the highest perpendicular cliff, which shone
gorgeously with sparkling isinglass, seated under the shade of a tuft
of laurels, he beheld a female figure, holding a little flageolet,
and playing the sprightly air which he had just heard. Her height,
notwithstanding the distance, appeared majestic; the flash of her
bright beaming eye illumined the depths of the gloom, and her air
seemed that of a goddess. She was dressed in simple robes of virgin
white, and on her head she wore a cap, such as has since been
consecrated to Liberty by my gallant countrymen.
Shearjashub looked, trembled, and was silent. In a few minutes,
however, his recollection returned.
“Shearjashub!” exclaimed the lady of the rock, “listen!”
But Shearjashub had given leg bail. Both he and his faithful squire,
little Snap, had left the haunted glen as fast as their feet would
carry them.
He told the story when he got home, with some little exaggeration.
Nobody believed him except the widow, his honoured mother, who had
faith to swallow a camel. All the rest laughed at him, and the wicked
damsels of the village were always joking about his mountain sweetheart.
At last he got out of patience, and one day demanded of those who were
bantering him what proof they would have of the truth of his story.
“Why,” said old Deacon Mayhew, “I guess I should be considerably
particular satisfied if you would bring us hum that same fife you heard
the gal play on so finely.”
“And I,” said another, “will believe the young squire if he'll play the
same tune on it he heard yonder in the mountain.”
Shearjashub was so pestered and provoked at last, that he determined to
put his courage to the proof, and see whether it would bear him out in
another visit to the chasm in the mountain. He thought he might as well
be dead as have no comfort of his life.
“I'll be darned if I don't go,” said he, and away he went, with no
other company than his little dog. It was on the fourth day of July,
1776, that Shearjashub wrought himself up to a second visit.
“I'm just come of age this very day,” said he, “and I'll show the
kritters I'm not made a man for nothing.”
He certainly felt, as he afterwards confessed, a little skittish on
this occasion, and his dog seemed not much to relish the excursion.
Shearjashub had his gun, but had not the heart to fire at any of the
birds that flitted about, and seemed as if they were not afraid of
coming nigh him. His mind ran upon other matters entirely. He was a
long while getting to the chasm in the mountain. Sometimes he would
stop to rest, as he said to himself, though he was not in the least
tired; sometimes he found himself standing still, admiring nothing;
and once or twice actually detected his feet moving on their way home,
instead of towards the mountain.
On arriving at the vast gates that, as it were, guarded the entrance to
the glen, he halted to consider the matter. All was silence, repose,
gloom, and sublimity. His spirit at first sunk under the majesty of
nature, but at length became gradually inspired by the scene before
him with something of a kindred dignity. He marched forward with a
vigorous step and firm heart, rendered the more firm by hearing and
seeing nothing of the white nymph of the rock or her sprightly music.
He hardly knew whether he wished to see her or not, if she appeared he
might be inspired to run away again; and if she did not, the deacon and
the girls would laugh at him worse than ever.
With these conflicting thoughts he arrived at the very centre of the
gloomy solitude, where he stood a few moments, expecting to hear the
music. All was loneliness; Repose lay sleeping on his bed of rocks, and
Silence reigned alone in her chosen retreat.
“Is it possible that I was dreaming the other day, when I was here, as
these tarnal kritters twit me I was?” asked the young man of himself.
He was answered by the voice of the white girl of the mountain,
exclaiming, in the same sweet yet clear, animating, trumpet tones,
“Shearjashub! Shearjashub! listen.”
Jashub's legs felt some little inclination to run away; but this time
he kept his ground like a brave fellow.
Again the same sprightly air echoed through the silence of the deep
profound, in strains of animating yet simple, careless vivacity.
Shearjashub began to feel himself inspired. He bobbed his head from
side to side to suit the air, and was once or twice on the point of
cutting a caper.
He felt his bosom thrill with unwonted energies, and a new vigour
animated his frame as he contemplated the glorious figure of the
mountain nymph, and listened to her sprightly flageolet.
“Shearjashub!” cried the nymph, after finishing her strain of music,
“listen!”
“Speak—I hear,” said the young man.
“My name is Liberty; dost thou know me?”
“I have heard my father and grandfather speak of thee, and say they
came to the New World to seek thee.”
“Well, I am found at last. Listen to me.”
“Speak on.”
“Your country has just devoted herself forever to me and my glory. Your
countrymen have this day pronounced themselves freemen, and they shall
be what they have willed, in spite of fate or fortune. But my blessings
are never thrown away on cowards; they are to be gained by toil,
suffering, hunger, wounds, and death; by courage and perseverance;
by virtue and patriotism. The wrath and the mighty energies of the
oppressor are now directed against your people; hunger assails them;
force overmatches them, and their spirits begin to fail. Take this
pipe,” and she flung him the little flageolet, which he caught in his
hand. “Canst thou play on it? Try.”
He put it to his lips, and to his surprise, produced the same animating
strain he had heard from the nymph of the mountain.
“Now go forth among the people and their armies, and inspire them for
battle. Wherever thou goest with thy pipe, and whenever thou playest
that air, I will be with thee and thy countrymen. Go, fear not; those
who deserve me shall always win me. Farewell—we shall meet again.” So
saying, she vanished behind the tuft of laurels.
Shearjashub marched straight home with his pipe, and somehow or other
felt he did not quite know how; he felt as if he could eat gunpowder,
and snap his fingers at the deacon.
“What the dickens has got in the kritter?” said the deacon, when he saw
him strutting along like a captain of militia.
“I declare, Jashub looks like a continental,” exclaimed the girls.
Just then Shearjashub put his pipe to his mouth, and played the tune
he had learned, as if by magic, from the mountain nymph; whereat
Deacon Mayhew made for the little white meeting house, whither all
the villagers followed him, and preached a sermon, calling on the
people to rise and fight for liberty, in such stirring strains that
forthwith all the men, young and old, took their muskets and went out
in defence of their country, under the command of Shearjashub. Wherever
he came he played the magic tune on his pipe, and the men, like those
of his native village, took to their arms, and went forth to meet the
oppressor, like little David against Goliath, armed with a sling and a
stone.
They joined the army of Liberty, which they found dispirited with
defeat, and weak with suffering and want. They scarcely dared hope for
success to their cause, and a general gloom depressed the hearts of all
the true friends of freedom. In this state the enemy attacked them, and
threw them into confusion, when Shearjashub came on at the head of his
troops, playing his inspiring music with might and main. Wherever he
went the sounds seemed to awaken the spirit of heroism in every breast.
Those who were retreating rallied; and those who stood their ground
maintained it more stoutly than ever. The victory remained with the
sons of Liberty, and Shearjashub celebrated it with a tune on his pipe,
which echoed through the whole land, and wakened it to new triumphs.
After a hard and bloody struggle, in which the pipe of Shearjashub
animated the very clods of the valley wherever he went, the promise of
the nymph of the mountain was fulfilled. The countrymen of Shearjashub
were free and independent. They were about to repose under the laurels
they had reaped, and to wear what they had so dearly won.
Shearjashub also departed for his native village with his pipe,
which had so materially assisted in the attainment of the blessings
of freedom. His way lay through the chasm in the mountain, where he
first encountered the nymph with the cap and snow-white robe. He was
anticipating the happiness of seeing his aged mother, who had lived
through the long war, principally on the excitement of news, and the
still more near and dear happiness of taking to his bosom the girl of
his heart, Miss Prudence Worthy, as fair a maid as ever raised a sigh
in the bosom of lusty youth.
He had got to the centre of the glen when he was roused from his
sweet anticipations by the well-remembered voice of the nymph of the
mountain, who sat on the same inaccessible rock, under the same tuft of
laurel, where he had first seen her, with an eagle at her side.
“Shearjashub!” cried she, in a voice which made the echoes of the rocks
mad with ecstasy—“Shearjashub! thou hast done well, and deserved nobly
of thy country. The thought of that is, in itself, a glorious reward
for toil, danger, and suffering. But thou shalt have one as dear, if
not dearer than even this. Look where it comes.”
Shearjashub looked, and beheld afar off a figure all in white coming
towards him, at the entrance of the glen. It approached nearer, and it
was a woman; nearer yet, and it was a young woman; still nearer, and
Shearjashub rushed towards it, and kissed its blushing cheek. It was
the girl of his heart, Miss Prudence Worthy.
“This is thy other blessing,” exclaimed the mountain nymph, the
sight of whom made Miss Prudence a little jealous; “a richer reward
for noble exertions than a virtuous woman I know not of. Live free,
live virtuous, and then thou wilt be happy. I shall be with thee an
invisible witness, an invisible protector; but, in the mean while,
should the spirit of the people ever flag, and their hearts fail them
in time of peril, go forth among them as thou didst before, and rouse
them with thy pipe and thy music. Farewell, and be happy!”
The nymph disappeared, and the little jealous pang felt by Miss
Prudence melted away in measureless confidence and love. The tune of
the mountain nymph was played over and over again at Shearjashub's
wedding, and ever afterwards became known by the name of YANKEE DOODLE.
THE
RIDE OF SAINT NICHOLAS
ON
NEWYEAR'S EVE.
Of all the cities in this New World, that which once bore the name of
Fort Orange, but now bears it no more, is the favourite of the good St.
Nicholas. It is there that he hears the sound of his native language,
and sees the honest Dutch pipe in the mouths of a few portly burghers,
who, disdaining the pestilent innovations of modern times, still cling
with honest obstinacy to the dress, the manners, and customs of old
faderland. It is there, too that they have instituted a society in
honour of the excellent saint, whose birthday they celebrate in a
manner worthy of all commendation.
True it is, that the city of his affections has from time to time
committed divers great offences which sorely wounded the feelings of
St. Nicholas, and almost caused him to withdraw his patronage from
its backsliding citizens. First, by adopting the newfangled style of
beginning the year at the bidding of the old lady of Babylon, whereby
the jolly Newyear was so jostled out of place that the good saint
scarcely knew where to look for it. Next, they essayed themselves to
learn outlandish tongues, whereby they gradually sophisticated their
own, insomuch that he could hardly understand them. Thirdly, they did,
from time to time, admit into their churches preachings and singings
in the upstart English language, until by degrees the ancient worship
became adulterated in such a manner that the indignant St. Nicholas,
when he first witnessed it, did, for the only time in his life, come
near to uttering a great oath, by exclaiming, “Wat donderdag is dat?”
Now be it known that had he said, “Wat donder is dat,” it would have
been downright swearing; so you see what a narrow escape he had.
Not content with these backslidings, the burghers of Fort Orange—a
pestilence on all new names!—suffered themselves by degrees to be
corrupted by various modern innovations, under the mischievous disguise
of improvements. Forgetting the reverence due to their ancestors, who
eschewed all internal improvement, except that of the mind and heart,
they departed from the venerable customs of the faderland, and pulling
down the old houses that, scorning all appearance of ostentation,
modestly presented the little end to the street, began to erect in
their places certain indescribable buildings, with the broadsides as
it were turned frontwise, by which strange contortion the comeliness
of Fort Orange was utterly destroyed. It is on record that a heavy
judgment fell upon the head of the first man who adventured on this
daring innovation. His money gave out before this monstrous novelty
was completed, and he invented the pernicious system of borrowing and
mortgaging, before happily unknown among these worthy citizens, who
were utterly confounded, not long afterwards, at seeing the house
change its owner—a thing that had never happened before in that goodly
community, save when the son entered on the inheritance of his father.
Becoming gradually more incorrigible in their backslidings, they were
seduced into opening, widening, and regulating the streets; making the
crooked straight and the narrow wide, thereby causing sad inroads into
the strong boxes of divers of the honest burghers, who became all at
once very rich, saving that they had no money to go to market. To cap
the climax of their enormities, they at last committed the egregious
sacrilege of pulling down the ancient and honourable Dutch church,
which stood right in the middle of State-street, or Staats-street,
being so called after the family of that name, from which I am lineally
descended.
At this the good St. Nicholas was exceedingly grieved; and when, by
degrees, his favourite burghers left off eating sturgeon, being thereto
instigated by divers scurvy jests of certain silly strangers, that knew
not the excellence of that savoury fish, he cried out in the bitterness
of his soul, “Onbegrypelyk!”—“Incredible!” meaning thereby that he
could scarcely believe his eyes. In the bitterness of his soul he
had resolved to return to faderland, and leave his beloved city to be
swallowed up in the vortex of improvement. He was making his progress
through the streets, to take his last farewell, in melancholy mood,
when he came to the outlet of the Grand Canal, just then completed.
“Is het mogelyk?”—which means, is it possible—exclaimed St. Nicholas;
and thereupon he was so delighted with this proof that his beloved
people had not altogether degenerated from their ancestors, that he
determined not to leave them to strange saints, outlandish tongues, and
modern innovations. He took a sail on the canal, and returned in such
measureless content, that he blessed the good city of Fort Orange, as
he evermore called it, and resolved to distribute a more than usual
store of his Newyear cookies, at the Christmas holydays. That jovial
season was now fast approaching. The autumn frosts had already invested
the forests with a mantle of glory; the farmers were in their fields
and orchards, gathering in the corn and apples, or making cider, the
wholesome beverage of virtuous simplicity; the robins, blackbirds, and
all the annual emigrants to southern climes, had passed away in flocks,
like the adventurers to the far West; the bluebird alone lingered last
of all to sing his parting song; and sometimes of a morning, the river
showed a little fretted border of ice, looking like a fringe of lace on
the garment of some decayed dowager. At length the liquid glass of the
river cooled into a wide, immoveable mirror, glistening in the sun;
the trees, all save the evergreens, stood bare to the keen cold winds;
the fields were covered with snow, affording no lures to tempt to rural
wanderings; the enjoyments of life gradually centred themselves at the
cheerful fireside—it was winter, and Newyear's eve was come again!
The night was clear, calm, and cold, and the bright stars glittered in
the heavens in such multitudes, that every man might have had a star to
himself. The worthy patriarchs of Fort Orange, having gathered around
them their children, and children's children, even unto the third and
fourth generation, were enjoying themselves in innocent revelry at the
cheerful fireside. All the enjoyments of life had contracted themselves
into the domestic circle; the streets were as quiet as a churchyard,
and not even the stroke of the watchman was heard on the curbstone.
Gradually it waxed late, and the city clocks rang, in the silence
of night, the hour which not one of the orderly citizens had heard,
except at midday, since the last anniversary of the happy Newyear,
save peradventure troubled with a toothache, or some such unseemly
irritation.
The doleful warning, which broke upon the frosty air like the tolling
of a funeral bell, roused the sober devotees of St. Nicholas to a sense
of their trespasses on the waning night, and after one good, smoking
draught of spiced Jamaica to the patron saint, they, one and all, young
and old, hied them to bed, that he might have a fair opportunity to
bestow his favours without being seen by mortal eye. For be it known,
that St. Nicholas, like all really heart-whole generous fellows, loves
to do good in secret, and eschews those pompous benefactions which are
duly recorded in the newspapers, being of opinion they only prove that
the vanity of man is sometimes an overmatch for his avarice.
Having allowed them fifteen minutes, which is as much as a sober
burgher of good morals and habits requires, to get as fast asleep as a
church, St. Nicholas, having harnessed his pony, and loaded his little
wagon with a store of good things for well-behaved, diligent children,
together with whips and other mementoes for undutiful varlets, did set
forth gayly on his errand of benevolence.
_Vuur en vlammen!_ how the good saint did hurry through the streets,
up one chimney and down another; for be it known, they are not such
miserable narrow things as those of other cities, where the claims
of ostentation are so voracious that people can't afford to keep up
good fires, and the chimneys are so narrow that the little sweeps
of seven years old often get themselves stuck fast, to the imminent
peril of their lives. You may think he had a good deal of business
on hand, being obliged to visit every house in Fort Orange, between
twelve o'clock and daylight, with the exception of some few would-be
fashionable upstarts, who had mortally offended him, by turning up
their noses at the simple jollifications and friendly greetings of the
merry Newyear. Accordingly, he rides like the wind, scarcely touching
the ground; and this is the reason that he is never seen, except by
a rare chance, which is the cause why certain unbelieving sinners,
who scoff at old customs and notions, either really do, or pretend
to doubt, whether the good things found on Christmas and Newyear
mornings in the stockings of the little varlets of Fort Orange and
New-Amsterdam, are put there by the jolly St. Nicholas or not. Beshrew
them, say I—and may they never taste the blessing of his bounty! Goeden
Hemel! as if I myself, being a kinsman of the saint, don't know him
as well as a debtor does his creditor! But people are grown so wise
nowadays, that they believe in nothing but the increased value of
property.
Be this as it may, St. Nicholas went forth blithely on his goodly
errand, without minding the intense cold, for he was kept right warm by
the benevolence of his heart, and when that failed, he ever and anon
addressed himself to a snug little pottle, the contents of which did
smoke lustily when he pulled out the stopper, a piece of snow-white
corn cob.
It is impossible for me to specify one by one the visits paid
that night by the good saint, or the various adventures which he
encountered. I therefore content myself, and I trust my worthy and
excellent readers, with dwelling briefly on those which appear to me
most worthy of descending to posterity, and withal convey excellent
moral lessons, without which history is naught, whether it be true or
false.
After visiting various honest little Dutch houses, with notched
roofs, and the gable ends to the street, leaving his benedictions,
St. Nicholas at length came to a goodly mansion bearing strong marks
of being sophisticated by modern fantastic innovations. He would have
passed it by in scorn, had he not remembered that it belonged to a
descendant of one of his favoured votaries, who had passed away to
his long home without being once backslided from the customs of his
ancestors. Respect for the memory of this worthy man wrought upon his
feelings, and he forthwith dashed down the chimney, where he stuck
fast in the middle, and came nigh being suffocated with the fumes of
anthracite coal, which this degenerate descendant of a pious ancestor,
who spent thousands in useless and unseemly ostentation, burned by way
of economy.
If the excellent saint had not been enveloped, as it were, in the odour
of sanctity, which in some measure protected him from the poison of
this pestilent vapour, it might have gone hard with him; as it was, he
was sadly bewildered, when his little pony, which liked the predicament
no better than his master, made a violent plunge, drew the wagon
through the narrow passage, and down they came plump into a magnificent
bedchamber, filled with all sorts of finery, such as wardrobes,
bedizened with tawdry ornaments; satin chairs too good to be looked
at or sat upon, and therefore covered with brown linen; a bedstead of
varnished mahogany, with a canopy over it somewhat like a cocked hat,
with a plume of ostrich feathers instead of orthodox valances and the
like; and a looking-glass large enough to reflect a Dutch city.
St. Nicholas contemplated the pair who slept in this newfangled
abomination with a mingled feeling of pity and indignation, though I
must say the wife looked very pretty in her lace nightcap, with one arm
as white as snow partly uncovered. But he soon turned away, being a
devout and self-denying saint, to seek for the stockings of the little
children, who were innocent of these unseemly innovations. But what was
his horror at finding that, instead of being hung up in the chimney
corner, they were thrown carelessly on the floor, and that the little
souls, who lay asleep in each other's arms in another room, lest they
should disturb their parents, were thus deprived of all the pleasant
anticipations accompanying the approaching jolly Newyear.
“Een vervlocte jonge,” said he to himself, for he never uttered his
maledictions aloud, “to rob their little ones of such wholesome and
innocent delights! But they shall not be disappointed.” So he sought
the cold and distant chamber of the children, who were virtuous and
dutiful, who, when they waked in the morning, found the bed covered
with good things, and were as happy as the day is long. When St,
Nicholas returned to the splendid chamber, which, be it known, was
furnished with the spoils of industrious unfortunate people, to whom
the owner lent money, charging them so much the more in proportion
to their necessities. It is true that he gave some of the wealth he
thus got over the duyvel's back, as it were, to public charities, and
sometimes churches, when he knew it would get into the newspapers, by
which he obtained the credit of being very pious and charitable. But
St. Nicholas was too sensible and judicious not to know that the only
charitable and pious donations agreeable to the Giver of good, are
those which are honestly come by. The alms which are got by ill means
can never come to good, and it is better to give back to those from
whom we have taken it dishonestly even one fourth, yea, one tenth, than
to bestow ten times as much on those who have no such claim. The true
atonement for injuries is that made to the injured alone. All other is
a cheat in the eye of Heaven. You cannot settle the account by giving
to Peter what you have filched from Paul.
So thought the good St. Nicholas, as he revolved in his mind a plan
for punishing this degenerate caitiff, who despised his ordinances
and customs, and was moreover one who, in dealing with borrowers,
not only shaved but skinned them. Remembering not the perils of the
chimney, he was about departing the same way he came, but the little
pony obstinately refused; and the good saint, having first taken off
the lace nightcap, and put a foolscap in its place, and given the
money lender a tweak of the nose that made him roar, whipped instantly
through the keyhole to pursue his benevolent tour through the ancient
city of Fort Orange.
Gliding through the streets unheard and unseen, he at length came
to a little winding lane, from which his quick ear caught the sound
of obstreperous revelry. Stopping his pony, and listening more
attentively,— he distinguished the words, “Ich ben Liederich,” roared
out in a chorus of mingled voices seemingly issuing from a little low
house of the true orthodox construction, standing on the right-hand
side, at a distance of a hundred yards, or thereabout.
“Wat donderdag!” exclaimed St. Nicholas, “is mine old friend, Baltus
Van Loon, keeping it up at this time of the morning? The old rogue! but
I'll punish him for this breach of the good customs of Fort Orange.”
So he halted on the top of Baltus's chimney, to consider the best way
of bringing it about, and was, all at once, saluted in the nostrils by
such a delectable perfume, arising from a certain spiced beverage, with
which the substantial burghers were wont to recreate themselves at this
season of the year, that he was sorely tempted to join a little in the
revelry below, and punish the merry caitiffs afterwards. Presently he
heard honest Baltus propose—“The jolly St. Nicholas,” as a toast, which
was drunk in a full bumper, with great rejoicing and acclamation.
St. Nicholas could stand it no longer, but descended forthwith into
the little parlour of old Baltus, thinking, by-the-way, that, just
to preserve appearances, he would lecture the roistering rogues a
little for keeping such late hours, and, provided Baltus could give
a good reason, or indeed any reason at all, for such an unseemly
transgression, he would then sit down with them, and take some of the
savoury beverage that had regaled his nostrils while waiting at the top
of the chimney.
The roistering rogues were so busy roaring out, “Ich ben Liederich,”
that they did not take note of the presence of the saint, until he
cried out with a loud and angry voice, “Wat blikslager is dat?”—he
did not say blixem, because that would have been little better than
swearing. “Ben je be dondered, to be carousing here at this time of
night, ye ancient, and not venerable sinners?”
Old Baltus was not a little startled at the intrusion of the
strangers—for, if the truth must out, he was a little in for it, and
saw double, as is usual at such times. This caused such a confusion in
his head that he forgot to rise from his seat, and pay due honour to
his visiter, as did the rest of the company.
“Are you not ashamed of yourselves,” continued the saint, “to set
such a bad example to the neighbourhood, by carousing at this time of
the morning, contrary to good old customs, known and accepted by all,
except such noisy splutterkins as yourselves?”
“This time of the morning,” replied old Baltus, who had his full
portion of Dutch courage—”this time of the morning, did you say? Look
yonder, and see with your own eyes whether it is morning or not.
The cunning rogue, in order to have a good excuse for transgressing
the canons of St. Nicholas, had so managed it, that the old clock in
the corner had run down, and now pointed to the hour of eleven, where
it remained stationary, like a rusty weathercock. St. Nicholas knew
this as well as old Baltus himself, and could not help being mightily
tickled at this device. He told Baltus that this being the case, with
permission of his host he would sit down by the fire and warm himself,
till it was time to set forth again, seeing he had mistaken the hour.
Baltus, who by this time began to perceive that there was but one
visiter instead of two, now rose from the table with much ado, and
approaching the stranger, besought him to take a seat among the jolly
revellers, seeing they were there assembled in honour of St. Nicholas,
and not out of any regard to the lusts of the flesh. In this he was
joined by the rest of the company, so that St. Nicholas, being a
good-natured fellow, at length suffered himself to be persuaded,
whereto he was mightily incited by the savoury fumes issuing from a
huge pitcher standing smoking in the chimney corner. So he sat down
with old Baltus, and being called on for a toast, gave them “Old
Faderland” in a bumper.
Then they had a high time of it you may be sure. Old Baltus sang a
famous song celebrating the valour of our Dutch ancestors, and their
triumph over the mighty power of Spain after a struggle of more than a
generation, in which the meads of Holland smoked, and her canals were
red with blood. Goeden Hemel! but I should like to have been there,
for I hope it would have been nothing unseemly for one of my cloth to
have joined in chorus with the excellent St. Nicholas. Then they talked
about the good old times when the son who departed from the customs of
his ancestors was considered little better than misbegotten; lamented
over the interloping of such multitudes of idle flaunting men and
women in their way to and from the springs; the increase of taverns,
the high price of everything, and the manifold backslidings of the
rising generation. Ever and anon, old Baltus would observe that sorrow
was as dry as a corn cob, and pour out a full bumper of the smoking
beverage, until at last it came to pass that honest Baltus and his
worthy companions, being not used to such late hours, fell fast a sleep
in their goodly armchairs, and snored lustily in concert. Whereupon St.
Nicholas, feeling a little waggish, after putting their wigs the hinder
part before, and placing a great China bowl upside down on the head of
old Baltus, who sat nodding like a mandarin, departed laughing ready to
split his sides. In the morning, when Baltus and his companions awoke,
and saw what a figure they cut, they laid all the trick to the door of
the stranger, and never knew to the last day of their lives who it was
that caroused with them so lustily on Newyear's morning.
Pursuing his way in high good humour, being somewhat exhilarated by
the stout carousal with old Baltus and his roistering companions, St.
Nicholas in good time came into the ancient _Colonie_, which being,
as it were, at the outskirts of Fort Orange, was inhabited by many
people not well to do in the world. He descended the chimney of an old
weatherworn house that bore evident marks of poverty, for he is not one
of those saints that hanker after palaces and turn their backs on their
friends. It is his pleasure to seek out and administer to the innocent
gratifications of those who are obliged to labour all the year round,
and can only spare time to be merry at Christmas and Newyear. He is
indeed the poor man's saint.
On entering the room, he was struck with the appearance of poverty
and desolation that reigned all around. A number of little children
of different ages, but none more than ten years old, lay huddled
close together on a straw bed, which was on the floor, their limbs
intertwined to keep themselves warm, for their covering was scant and
miserable. Yet they slept in peace, for they had quiet countenances,
and hunger seeks refuge in the oblivion of repose. In a corner of the
room stood a miserable bed, on which lay a female, whose face, as the
moonbeams fell upon it through a window without shutters, many panes
of which were stuffed with old rags to keep out the nipping air of the
winter night, bore evidence of long and painful suffering. It looked
like death rather than sleep. A little pine table, a few broken
chairs, and a dresser, whose shelves were ill supplied, constituted the
remainder of the furniture of this mansion of poverty.
As he stood contemplating the scene, his honest old heart swelled with
sorrowful compassion, saying to himself, “God bewaar ous, but this is
pitiful.” At that moment, a little child on the straw bed cried out in
a weak voice that went to the heart of the saint, “Mother, mother, give
me to eat—I am hungry.” St. Nicholas went to the child, but she was
fast asleep, and hunger had infected her very dreams. The mother did
not hear, for long-continued sorrow and suffering sleep sounder than
happiness, as the waters lie stillest when the tempest is past.
Again the little child cried out, “Mother, mother, I am freezing—give
me some more covering.” “Be quiet, Blandina,” answered a voice deep and
hoarse, yet not unkind; and St. Nicholas, looking around to see whence
it came, beheld a man sitting close in the chimney corner, though there
was no fire burning, his arms folded close around him, and his head
drooping on his bosom. He was clad like one of the children of poverty,
and his teeth chattered with cold. St. Nicholas wiped his eyes, for he
was a good-hearted saint, and coming close up to the miserable man,
said to him kindly, “How do ye, my good friend?”
“Friend,” said the other, “I have no friend but God, and he seems to
have deserted me.” As he said this, he raised his saddened eyes to the
good saint, and after looking at him a little while, as if he was not
conscious of his presence, dropped them again, even without asking who
he was, or whence he came, or what he wanted. Despair had deadened his
faculties, and nothing remained in his mind but the consciousness of
suffering.
“_Het is jammer, het is jammer_—it is a pity, it is a pity!” quoth
the kind-hearted saint, as he passed his sleeve across his eyes. “But
something must be done, and that quickly too.” So he shook the poor man
somewhat roughly by the shoulder, and cried out, “Ho! ho! what aileth
thee, son of my good old friend, honest Johannes Garrebrantze?”
This salutation seemed to rouse the poor man, who arose upon his seat,
and essaying to stand upright, fell into the arms of St. Nicholas,
who almost believed it was a lump of ice, so cold and stiff did it
seem. Now, be it known that Providence, as a reward for his benevolent
disposition, has bestowed on St. Nicholas the privilege of doing good
without measure to all who are deserving of his bounty, and that by
such means as he thinks proper to the purpose. It is a power he seldom
exerts to the uttermost, except on pressing occasions, and this he
believed one of them.
Perceiving that the poor man was wellnigh frozen to death, he called
into action the supernatural faculties which had been committed to him,
and lo! in an instant a rousing fire blazed on the hearth, towards
which the poor man, instinctively as it were, edged his chair, and
stretched out one of his bony hands, that was as stiff as an icicle.
The light flashed so brightly in the face of the little ones and their
mother, that they awoke, and seeing the cheerful blaze, arose in their
miserable clothing, which they had worn to aid in keeping them warm,
and hied as fast as they could to bask in its blessed warmth. So eager
were they, that for a while they were unconscious of the presence of a
stranger, although St. Nicholas had now assumed his proper person, that
he might not be taken for some one of those diabolical wizards who,
being always in mischief, are ashamed to show their faces among honest
people.
At length the poor man, who was called after his father Johannes
Garrebrantze, being somewhat revived by the genial warmth of the fire,
looked around, and became aware of the presence of the stranger,
which inspired him with a secret awe, for which he could not account,
insomuch that his voice trembled, though now he was not cold, when,
after some hesitation, he said,
“Stranger, thou art welcome to this poor house. I would I were better
able to offer thee the hospitalities of the season, but I will wish
thee a happy Newyear, and that is all I can bestow.” The good yffrouw,
his wife, repeated the wish, and straightway began to apologize for the
untidy state of her apartment.
“Make no apologies,” replied the excellent saint; “I come to give, not
to receive. To-night I treat, to-morrow you may return the kindness to
others.”
“I?” said Johannes Garrebrantze; “I have nothing to bestow but good
wishes, and nothing to receive but the scorn and neglect of the world.
If I had anything to give thee to eat or drink, thou shouldst have it
with all my heart. But the newyear, which brings jollity to the hearts
of others, brings nothing but hunger and despair to me and mine.”
“Thou hast seen better days, I warrant thee,” answered the saint; “for
thou speakest like a scholar of Leyden. Tell me thy story, Johannes, my
son, and we shall see whether in good time thou wilt not hold up thy
head as high as a church steeple.”
“Alas! to what purpose, since man assuredly has, and Heaven seems to
have forsaken me.”
“Hush!” cried St. Nicholas, “Heaven never forsakes the broken spirit,
or turns a deaf ear to the cries of innocent children. It is for the
wicked never to hope, the virtuous never to despair. I predict thou
shalt live to see better days.”
“I must see them soon then, for neither I, my wife, nor my children
have tasted food since twenty-four hours past.”
“What! God be with us! is there such lack of charity in the burghers of
the Colonie, that they will suffer a neighbour to starve under their
very noses? Onbegrypelik—I'll not believe it.”
“They know not my necessities.”
“No? What! hast thou no tongue to speak them?”
“I am too proud to beg.”
“And too lazy to work,” cried St. Nicholas, in a severe tone.
“Look you,” answered the other, holding up his right arm with his left,
and showing that the sinews were stiffened by rheumatism.
“Is it so, my friend? Well, but thou mightst still have bent thy spirit
to ask charity for thy starving wife and children, though, in truth,
begging is the last thing an honest man ought to stoop to. But Goeden
Hemel! here am I talking while thou and thine are perishing with
hunger.”
Saying which, St. Nicholas straightway bade the good yffrouw to bring
forth the little pine table, which she did, making divers apologies for
the want of a tablecloth; and when she had done so, he incontinently
spread out upon it such store of good things from his little cart, as
made the hungry childrens' mouths to water, and smote the hearts of
their parents with joyful thanksgivings. “Eat, drink, and be merry,”
said St. Nicholas, “for to-morrow thou shalt not die, but live.”
The heart of the good saint expanded, like as the morning-glory does
to the first rays of the sun, while he sat rubbing his hands at seeing
them eat with such a zest, as made him almost think it was worth while
to be hungry in order to enjoy such triumphant satisfaction. When they
had done, and returned their pious thanks to Heaven and the good
stranger, St. Nicholas willed the honest man to expound the causes
which had brought him to his present deplorable condition. “My own
folly,” said he; and the other sagely replied, “I thought as much.
Beshrew me, friend, if in all my experience, and I have lived long,
and seen much, I ever encountered distress and poverty that could not
be traced to its source in folly or vice. Heaven is too bountiful to
entail misery on its creatures, save through their own transgressions.
But I pray thee, go on with thy story.”
The good man then went on to relate that his father, old Johannes
Garrebrantze—
“Ah!” quoth St. Nicholas, “I knew him well. He was an honest man, and
that, in these times of all sorts of improvements, except in mind
and morals, is little less than miraculous. But I interrupt thee,
friend—proceed with thy story, once more.”
The son of Johannes again resumed his story, and related how his father
had left him a competent estate in the _Colonie_, on which he lived
in good credit, and in the enjoyment of a reasonable competency, with
his wife and children, until within a few years past, when seeing
a vast number of three-story houses, with folding doors and marble
mantelpieces rising up all around him, he began to be ashamed of his
little one-story house with the gable end to the street, and—
“Ah! Johannes,” interrupted the pale wife, “do not spare me. It was I
that in the vanity of my heart put such notions in thy head. It was I
that tempted thee.”
“It was the duyvel,” muttered St.Nicholas, “in the shape of a pretty
wife.”
Johannes gave his helpmate a look of affectionate forgiveness, and
went on to tell St. Nicholas how, finally egged on by the evil example
of his neighbours, he had at last committed sacrilege against his
household gods, and pulled down the home of his fathers, commencing a
new one on its ruins.
“Donderdag!” quoth the saint to himself; “and the bricks came from
faderland too!”
When Johannes had about half finished his new house, he discovered one
day, to his great astonishment and dismay, that all his money, which he
had been saving for his children, was gone. His strong box was empty,
and his house but half finished, although, after estimating the cost,
he had allowed one third more in order to be sure in the business.
Johannes was now at a dead stand. The idea of borrowing money and
running in debt never entered his head before, and probably would
not now, had it not been suggested to him by a neighbour, a great
speculator, who had lately built a whole street of houses, not a single
brick of which belonged to him in reality. He had borrowed the money,
mortgaged the property, and expected to grow rich by a sudden rise.
Poor Johannes may be excused for listening to the seductions of this
losel varlet, seeing he had a house half finished on his hands; but
whether so or not, he did listen and was betrayed into borrowing money
of a bank just then established in the _Colonie_ on a capital paid in
according to law—that is, not paid at all—the directors of which were
very anxious to exchange their rags for lands and houses.
Johannes finished his house in glorious style, and having opened
this new mine of wealth, furnished it still more gloriously; and as
it would have been sheer nonsense not to live gloriously in such a
glorious establishment, spent thrice his income in order to keep up
his respectability. He was going on swimmingly, when what is called a
reaction took place; which means, as far as I can understand, that the
bank directors, having been pleased to make money plenty to increase
their dividends, are pleased thereafter to make it scarce for the
same purpose. Instead of lending it in the name of the bank, it is
credibly reported they do it through certain brokers, who charge lawful
interest and unlawful commission, and thus cheat the law with a clear
conscience. But I thank Heaven devoutly that I know nothing of their
wicked mysteries, and therefore will say no more about them.
Be this as it may, Johannes was called upon all of a sudden to pay his
notes to the bank, for the reaction had commenced, and there was no
more renewals. The directors wanted all the money to lend out at three
per cent. a month. It became necessary to raise the wind, as they say
in Wall-street, and Johannes, by the advice of his good friend the
speculative genius, went with him to a certain money lender of his
acquaintance, who was reckoned a good Christian, because he always
charged most usury where there was the greatest necessity for a loan.
To a rich man he would lend at something like a reasonable interest,
but to a man in great distress for money he showed about as much mercy
as a weazel does to a chicken. He sucked their blood till there was not
a drop left in their bodies. This he did six days in the week, and on
the seventh went three times to church, to enable him to begin the next
week with a clear conscience. Beshrew such varlets, I say; they bring
religion itself into disrepute, and add the sin of hypocrisy to men to
that of insult to Heaven.
Suffice it to say, that poor Johannes Garrebrantze the younger went
down hill faster than he ever went up in his life; and inasmuch as
I scorn these details of petty roguery as unworthy of my cloth and
calling, I shall content myself with merely premising, that by a
process very common nowadays, the poor man was speedily bereft of all
the patrimony left him by his worthy father in paying commission to
the money lender. He finally became bankrupt; and inasmuch as he was
unacquainted with the mystery of getting rich by such a manœuvre, was
left without a shilling in the world. He retired from his fine house,
which was forthwith occupied by his good friend the money lender, whose
nose had been tweaked by St. Nicholas, as heretofore recorded, and took
refuge in the wretched building where he was found by that benevolent
worthy. Destitute of resources, and entirely unacquainted with the art
of living by his wits or his labours, though he tried hard both ways,
poor Johannes became gradually steeped in poverty to the very lips, and
being totally disabled by rheumatism, might, peradventure, with all his
family, have perished that very night, had not Providence mercifully
sent the good St. Nicholas to their relief.
“_Wat donderdag!_” exclaimed the saint, when he had done—”_wat
donderdag!_—was that your house down yonder, with the fine bedroom, the
wardrobes, the looking-glass as big as the moon, and the bedstead with
a cocked hat and feathers?”
“Even so,” replied the other, hanging down his head.
“_Is het mogelyk!_” And after considering a little while, the good
saint slapped his hand on the table, broke forth again—“By donderdag,
but I'll soon settle this business.”
He then began to hum an old Dutch hymn, which by its soothing and
wholesome monotony so operated upon Johannes and his family, that one
and all fell fast asleep in their chairs.
The good St. Nicholas then lighted his pipe, and seating himself by
the fire, revolved in his mind the best mode of proceeding on this
occasion. At first he determined to divest the rich money lender of all
his ill-gotten gains, and bestow them on poor Johannes and his family.
But when he considered that the losel caitiff was already sufficiently
punished in being condemned to the sordid toils of money making, and
in the privation of all those social and benevolent feelings which,
while they contribute to our own happiness, administer to that of
others; that he was for ever beset with the consuming cares of avarice,
the hope of gain, and the fear of losses; and that, rich as he was, he
suffered all the gnawing pangs of an insatiable desire for more—when he
considered all this, St. Nicholas decided to leave him to the certain
punishment of ill-gotten wealth, and the chances of losing it by an
over craving appetite for its increase, which sooner or later produces
all the consequences of reckless imprudence.
“Let the splutterkin alone,” thought St. Nicholas, “and he will become
the instrument of his own punishment.”
Then he went on to think what he should do for poor Johannes and his
little children. Though he had been severely punished for his folly,
yet did the good saint, who in his nightly holyday peregrinations had
seen more of human life and human passions than the sun ever shone
upon, very well know that sudden wealth, or sudden poverty, is a sore
trial of the heart of man, in like manner as the sudden transition
from light to darkness, or darkness to light, produces a temporary
blindness. It was true that Johannes had received a severe lesson,
but the great mass of mankind are prone to forget the chastening rod
of experience, as they do the pangs of sickness when they are past.
He therefore settled in his mind, that the return of Johannes to
competence and prosperity should be by the salutary process of his own
exertions, and that he should learn their value by the pains it cost to
attain them. “_Het is goed visschen in troebel water_,” quoth he, “for
then a man knows the value of what he catches.”
It was broad daylight before he had finished his pipe and his
cogitations, and placing his old polished delft pipe carefully in
his buttonhole, the good saint sallied forth, leaving Johannes and
his family still fast asleep in their chairs. Directly opposite the
miserable abode of Johannes there dwelt a little fat Dutchman, of
a reasonable competency, who had all his life manfully stemmed the
torrent of modern innovation. He eschewed all sorts of paper money as
an invention of people without property to get hold of those that had
it; abhorred the practice of widening streets; and despised in his
heart all public improvements except canals, a sneaking notion for
which he inherited from old faderland. He was honest as the light of
the blessed sun; and though he opened his best parlour but twice a year
to have it cleaned and put to rights, yet this I will say of him, that
the poor man who wanted a dinner was never turned away from his table.
The worthy burgher was standing at the street door, which opened in the
middle, and leaning over the lower half, so that the smoke of his pipe
ascended in the clear frosty morning in a little white column far into
the sky before it was dissipated.
St. Nicholas stopped his wagon right before his door, and cried out in
a clear hearty voice,
“Good-morning, good-morning, mynheer; and a happy Newyear to you.”
“Good-morning,” cried the hale old burgher, “and many happy Newyears
to _you_. Hast got any good fat hen turkies to sell?” for he took him
for a countryman coming in to market. St. Nicholas answered and said
that he had been on a different errand that morning; and the other
cordially invited him to alight, come in, and take a glass of hot
spiced rum, with the which it was his custom to regale all comers at
the jolly Newyear. The invitation was frankly accepted, for the worthy
St. Nicholas, though no toper, was never a member of the temperance
society. He chose to be keeper of his own conscience, and was of
opinion that a man who is obliged to sign an obligation not to drink,
will be very likely to break it the first convenient opportunity.
As they sat cozily together, by a rousing fire of wholesome and
enlivening hickory, the little plump Dutchman occasionally inveighing
stoutly against paper money, railroads, improving streets, and the
like, the compassionate saint took occasion to utter a wish that the
poor man over the way and his starving family had some of the good
things that were so rife on Newyear's day, for he had occasion to know
that they were suffering all the evils of the most abject poverty.
“The splutterkin,” exclaimed the little fat burgher—”he is as proud as
Lucifer himself. I had a suspicion of this, and sought divers occasions
to get acquainted with him, that I might have some excuse for prying
into his necessities, and take the privilege of an old neighbour to
relieve them. But _vuur en vlammen_! would you believe it—he avoided me
just as if he owed me money, and couldn't pay.”
St. Nicholas observed that if it was ever excusable for a man to be
proud, it was when he fell into a state where every one, high and low,
worthless and honourable, looked down upon him with contempt. Then he
related to him the story of poor Johannes, and taking from his pocket
a heavy purse, he offered it to the worthy old burgher, who swore he
would be dondered if he wanted any of his money.
“But hearken to me,” said the saint; “yon foolish lad is the son of an
old friend of mine, who did me many a kindness in his day, for which
I am willing to requite his posterity. Thou shalt take this purse and
bestow a small portion of it, as from thyself, as a loan from time to
time, as thou seest he deserves it by his exertions. It may happen, as
I hope it will, that in good time he will acquire again the competency
he hath lost by his own folly and inexperience; and as he began the
world a worthy, respectable citizen, I beseech thee to do this—to be
his friend, and to watch over him and his little ones, in the name of
St. Nicholas.”
The portly Burgher promised that he would, and they parted with
marvellous civility, St. Nicholas having promised to visit him again
should his life be spared. He then mounted his little wagon, and
the little Dutchman having turned his head for an instant, when he
looked again could see nothing of the saint or his equipage. “_Is
het mogelyk!_” exclaimed he, and his mind misgave him that there was
something unaccountable in the matter.
My story is already too long, peradventure, else would I describe the
astonishment of Johannes and his wife when they awoke and found the
benevolent stranger had departed without bidding them farewell. They
would have thought all that had passed was but a dream, had not the
fragments of the good things on which they regaled during the night
bore testimony to its reality. Neither will I detail how, step by step,
aided by the advice and countenance of the worthy little Dutchman, and
the judicious manner of his dispensing the bounty of St. Nicholas,
Johannes Garrebrantze, by a course of industry, economy, and integrity,
at length attained once again the station he had lost by his follies
and extravagance. Suffice it to say, that though he practised a
rational self-denial in all his outlayings, he neither became a miser,
nor did he value money except as the means of obtaining the comforts of
life, and administering to the happiness of others.
In the mean time, the money lender, not being content with the
wealth he had obtained by taking undue advantage of the distresses of
others, and becoming every day more greedy, launched out into mighty
speculations. He founded a score of towns without any houses in them;
dealt by hundreds of thousands in fancy stocks; and finally became the
victim of one of his own speculations, by in time coming to believe in
the very deceptions he had practised upon others. It is an old saying,
that the greatest rogue in the world, sooner or latter, meets with
his match, and so it happened with the money lender. He was seduced
into the purchase of a town without any houses in it, at an expense of
millions; was met by one of those reactions that play the mischief with
honest labourers, and thus finally perished in a bottomless pit of his
own digging. Finding himself sinking, he resorted to forgeries, and had
by this means raised money to such an amount, that his villany almost
approached to sublimity. His property, as the phrase is, came under the
hammer, and Johannes purchased his own house at half the price it cost
him in building.
The good St. Nicholas trembled at the new ordeal to which Johannes
had subjected himself; but finding, when he visited him, as he did
regularly every Newyear's eve, that he was cured of his foolish
vanities, and that his wife was one of the best housekeepers in all
Fort Orange, he discarded his apprehensions, and rejoiced in the
prosperity that was borne so meekly and wisely. The little fat Dutchman
lived a long time in expectation that the stranger in the one-horse
wagon would come for the payment of his purse of money; but finding
that year after year rolled away without his appearing, often said to
himself, as he sat on his stoop with a pipe in his mouth,
“I'll be dondered if I don't believe it was the good St. Nicholas.”
THE END.
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