Part 8

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

"Well, boys," he whispered, "we will go. Softly now."

"That's the greatest thing I've seen or heard since I've been in Holland!" cried Ben, enthusiastically, as soon as they reached the open air. "It's glorious!"

Ludwig and Carl laughed slyly at the English boy's _wartaal_, or gibberish; Jacob yawned; Peter gave Ben a look that made him instantly feel that he and Peter were not so very different after all, though one hailed from Holland and the other from England; and Lambert, the interpreter, responded with a brisk--

"You may well say so. I believe there are one or two organs nowadays that are said to be as fine; but for years and years this organ of St. Bavon was the grandest in the world."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ask Peter," said Ludwig, only half convinced.

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

"Hey! What?" exclaimed Jacob, startled when Peter's animated voice suddenly became silent.

"Haven't you heard me, you rascal?" was the indignant rejoinder.

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

XVII

THE MAN WITH FOUR HEADS

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

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

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

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

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

Soon afterward, while passing a cobbler's shop, Ben exclaimed:

"Hollo! Lambert, here is the name of one of your greatest men over a cobbler's stall! Boerhaave--if it were only Herman Boerhaave instead of Hendrick, it would be complete."

Lambert knit his brows reflectively, as he replied:

"Boerhaave--Boerhaave--the name is perfectly familiar; I remember, too, he was born in 1668, but the rest is all gone, as usual. There have been so many famous Hollanders, you see, it is impossible for a fellow to know them all. What was he? Did he have two heads? or was he one of your great, natural swimmers like Marco Polo?"

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

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

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

"A great _what_?" roared Lambert.

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

"Yes. He's an aanspreeker--if that is what you mean to say. But what about your friend with the four heads?"

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

"Jolly beginning!" interposed Lambert.

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

"Where? What do you mean?"

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

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

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

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

"Ha! ha! Well, I was _going_ to say--all the big men of his day sought out this great professor. Even Peter the Great when he came over to Holland from Russia to learn ship-building, attended his lectures regularly. By that time Boerhaave was professor of Medicine and Chemistry and Botany in the University of Leyden. He had grown to be very wealthy as a practicing physician; but he used to say that the poor were his best patients because God would be their pay-master. All Europe learned to love and honor him. In short, he became so famous that a certain mandarin of China addressed a letter to 'The illustrious Boerhaave, physician in Europe,' and the letter found its way to him without any difficulty."

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

"We propose to move on," said Van Holp; "there is nothing to see at this season in the Bosch--the Bosch is a noble wood, Benjamin, a grand Park where they have most magnificent trees, protected by law--Do you understand?"

"Ya!" nodded Ben, as the captain proceeded:

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

"What are the Blue Stairs, Lambert?" asked Ben.

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

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

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

The captain was in favor of going to Leyden.

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

"Leyden," they answered--and were out of Haarlem in a twinkling, admiring the lofty, tower-like windmills and pretty country-seats as they left the city behind them.

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

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

XVIII

FRIENDS IN NEED

Meantime, the other boys were listening to Peter's account of an incident which had long ago occurred[22] in a part of the city where stood an ancient castle, whose lord had tyrannized over the burghers of the town to such an extent, that they surrounded his castle, and laid siege to it. Just at the last extremity, when the haughty lord felt that he could hold out no longer, and was preparing to sell his life as dearly as possible, his lady appeared on the ramparts, and offered to surrender everything, provided she was permitted to bring out, and retain, as much of her most precious household goods as she could carry upon her back. The promise was given--and forth came the lady from the gateway bearing her husband upon her shoulders. The burghers' pledge preserved him from the fury of the troops, but left them free to wreak their vengeance upon the castle.

[Footnote 22: Sir Thomas Carr's Tour through Holland.]

"Do you _believe_ that story, Captain Peter?" asked Carl, in an incredulous tone.

"Of course, I do; it is historical. Why should I doubt it?"

"Simply because no woman could do it--and, if she could, she wouldn't. That is _my_ opinion."

"And _I_ believe there are many who _would_.--That is, to save any one they really cared for," said Ludwig.

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

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

"Heaven help her!" cried Carl, turning to gaze at the speaker; "why, Poot, three _men_ couldn't do it!"

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

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

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

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

"They balanced each other finely," said Ludwig; "he was kind and she was cross. But, Peter, before I forget it, wasn't that picture of St. Hubert and the Horse painted by Wouvermans? You remember father showed us an engraving from it last night."

"Yes, indeed; there is a story connected with that picture."

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

"Commence! Master Robert Dobbs," said the teacher, "page 242; now, sir, mind every stop."

And Robby, in a quick childish voice, roared forth at schoolroom pitch:

"LESSON 62.--THE HERO OF HAARLEM.

"Many years ago, there lived in Haarlem, one of the principal cities of Holland, a sunny-haired boy, of gentle disposition. His father was a _sluicer_, that is, a man whose business it was to open and close the sluices, or large oaken gates, that are placed at regular distances across the entrances of the canals, to regulate the amount of water that shall flow into them.

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

["Very good," said the teacher; "now, Susan."]

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

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

["Now, Henry," said the teacher, nodding to the next little reader.]

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

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

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

["Now, Jenny Dobbs," said the teacher. Jenny's eyes were glistening, but she took a long breath and commenced:]

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

"How can we know the sufferings of that long and fearful watch--what falterings of purpose, what childish terrors came over the boy as he thought of the warm little bed at home, of his parents, his brothers and sisters, then looked into the cold, dreary night!

"If he drew away that tiny finger, the angry waters, grown angrier still, would rush forth, and never stop until they had swept over the town. No, he would hold it there till daylight--if he lived! He was not very sure of living. What did this strange buzzing mean? and then the knives that seemed pricking and piercing him from head to foot? He was not certain now that he could draw his finger away, even if he wished to.

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

"'In the name of wonder, boy,' he exclaimed, 'what are you doing there?'

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

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

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

"Yes, sir!" said Jenny, quite startled.]

It was strange; but at that very moment, Ben, far over the sea, was saying to Lambert:

"The noble little fellow! I have frequently met with an account of the incident, but I never knew, till now, that it was really true."

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

"Whew!" cried Master Ben, "big talking that!"