Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates

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HANS BRINKER OR THE SILVER SKATES

BY MARY MAPES DODGE

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

Preface

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

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

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

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

--M.M.D.

A LETTER FROM HOLLAND

Amsterdam, July 30, 1873

DEAR BOYS AND GIRLS AT HOME:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours affectionately,
The Author.

Contents

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

Hans and Gretel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How can I? The string is too short."

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

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

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

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

"Oh! oh!" she cried in real pain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ha! ha! I've caught you!" cried Hans.

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

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

"It's the mother," said Hans, looking solemn in an instant.

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

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

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

Holland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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