Tales of the Chesapeake Part 20

"Gray am I, brethren, in the work, though tough to bear my part; It is these drooping little ones that sometimes wring my heart, And cheat me with the vain conceit the cleverness is mine To fill the churches of the Elk, and pa.s.s the Brandywine.

"These hairs were brown, when, full of hope, ent'ring these holy lists, Proud of my Order as a knight--the shouting Methodists-- I made the pine woods ring with hymns, with prayer the night-winds shook, And preached from a.s.sawaman Light far north as Bombay Hook.

"My nag was gray, my gig was new; fast went the sandy miles; The eldest Trustees gave me praise, the fairest sisters smiles; Still I recall how Elder Smith of Worten Heights averred.

My Apostolic Parallels the best he ever heard.

"All winter long I rode the snows, rejoicing on my way; At midnight our revival hymns rolled o'er the sobbing bay; Three Sabbath sermons, every week, should tire a man of bra.s.s-- And still our fervent members.h.i.+p must have their extra cla.s.s!

"Aggressive with the zeal of youth, in many a warm requite I terrified Immersionists, and scourged the Millerite; But larger, tenderer charities such vain debates supplant, When the dear wife, saved by my zeal, loved the Itinerant.

"No cooing dove of storms afeard, she shared my life's distress, A singing Miriam, alway, in G.o.d's poor wilderness; The wretched at her footstep smiled, the frivolous were still; A bright path marked her pilgrimage, from Blackbird to Snowhill.

"A new face in the parsonage, at church a double pride!-- Like the Madonna and her babe they filled the 'Amen-side'-- Crouched at my feet in the old gig, my boy, so fair and frank, Naswongo's darkest marshes cheered, and sluices of Choptank.

"My cloth drew close; too fruitful love my fruitless life outran; The townfolk marvelled, when we moved, at such a caravan!

I wonder not my lads grew wild, when, bright, without the door Spread the ripe, luring, wanton world--and we, within, so poor!

"For, down the silent cypress aisles came shapes even me to scout, Mocking the lean flanks of my mare, my boy's patched roundabout, And saying: 'Have these starveling boors, thy congregation, souls, That on their dull heads Heaven and thou pour forth such living coals?

"Then prayer brought hopes, half secular, like seers by Endor's witch: Beyond our barren Maryland G.o.d's folks were wise and rich; Where climbing spires and easy pews showed how the preacher thrived, And all old brethren paid their rents, and many young ones wived!

"I saw the s.h.i.+ps Henlopen pa.s.s with chaplains fat and sleek; From Bishopshead with fancy's sails I crossed the Chesapeake; In velvet pulpits of the North said my best sermons o'er-- And that on Paul to Patmos driven, drew tears in Baltimore.

"Well! well! my brethren, it is true we should not preach for pelf-- (I would my sermon on Saint Paul the Bishop heard himself!) But this crushed wife--these boys--these hairs! they cut me to the core; Is it not hard, year after year, to ride the Eastern Sh.o.r.e?

"Next year? Yes, yes, I thank you much! Then my reward may fall!

(That is a downright fair discourse on Patmos and St. Paul!) So Brother Riggs, once more my voice shall ring in the old lists, Cheer up, sick heart, who would not die among these Methodists?"

THE BIG IDIOT.

"Sister, thy boy is a big idiot--a very big idiot!" said Gerrit Van Swearingen, the Schout of New Amstel. Then the Schout struck his long official staff on the ground, and went off in a grand manner to frighten debtors.

The Widow Cloos made no reply, but dropped a couple of tears as she saw her son, Nanking, shrink away before his uncle's frown and roll his head in deprecation of such language.

"My mother," he whispered, "won't the big wild turkeys fly away with my uncle Gerrit if he calls me such dreadful names?"

"Nanking," said the widow, kissing the big idiot, "your uncle is a very great man. I don't know what is greater, unless it is an admiral, or a stadtholder, or maybe a king!"

"Yes," conceded Nanking, "he is a dreadfully great man. He puts drunken Indians in the stocks and ties mighty smugglers up to the whipping-pump. But Saint Nicholas will punish him if he calls me an idiot."

"Ah! Nanking," replied the widow, "nothing can curb your uncle--neither the valiant Captain Hinoyossa, nor the puissant director of every thing, great Beeckman, nor hardly Pietrus Stuyvesant himself."

"I know who can frighten him," exclaimed the big idiot. "Santa Claus!

He's bigger than a schout. Mother, his whip-lash can reach clear over New Amstel--isn't it so? How many deers and ponies does he drive? Will he bring me any thing this year?"

"My poor son!" said the poor mother, "we are so far from Holland and so very humble here, that Saint Nicholas may forget us this year; but G.o.d will watch over us!"

Nanking could hardly comprehend this astonis.h.i.+ng statement: that Saint Nicholas could ever forget little boys anywhere. So he went out by the river to think about it. There were three or four Swedish boys out there rolling marbles and playing at jack-stones. They did not like to play with Dutch boys, but Nanking was only a big idiot, and they did not harbor malice against him.

"_He! Zoo!_" they cried; "wilt thou play?"

"Yes, directly. But tell me, Peter Stalcop, and you, Paul Mink, do the very poorest little boys in Sweden get nothing on Christmas?"

"_Ah, Zon der tuijfel!_ without doubt," cried the boys. "Old Knecht Clobes, your Santa Claus, is a bad man. That is why he gave the Dutch our country here. And in Sweden, too, he turns people to wolves, and brothers and sisters tear each other to pieces."

"But not in Holland," exclaimed Nanking. "There he gives the strong boys skates and the weak boys Canary wine. He brought, one time, long ago, three murdered boys to life, so that they could eat goose for Christmas dinner. And three poor maidens, whose lovers would not take them because they had no marriage portions, found gold on the window-sill to get them husbands."

"_Foei! Fus!_ You're lied to, Nanking! There is no good Christmas in this land."

Nanking said they were very wicked to doubt true and good things. He believed every thing, and particularly every thing pleasant. His mother, whose house was on the river bank, looked out with a fond sadness as she heard him playing, his heart amongst the little boys, although he was so big.

"_Ach! helas!_" she said to herself, "what will become of my dear man-lamb? He is simple and fatherless, poor and confiding. Thank G.o.d, at least he is not a woman!"

The Widow Cloos had come but recently from Holland, sent out by charity at the instance of her brother, Van Swearingen, the schout or bailiff of New Amstel colony. Her son, who was almost a man in years, had been kept in the Orphan House at Amsterdam until his growth made him a misplaced object there, and his feeble intellect forbade that he should become a soldier, and die, like his father, in the Dutch battles. So the Widow Cloos brought Nanking out in the s.h.i.+p Mill, to the city of Amsterdam's own colony on the banks of the South River, which the English called the Delaware. They came in a starving time, when the crops were drenched out by rains and all the people and the soldiery of the fort were down with bilious and scarlet fever. The widow was just getting over a long attack of this illness, and her brother, the schout, regarded the innocent Nanking as the cause of her poverty.

"Thou hadst better drown him," said the hard official; "he'll eat all thy substance or give the remainder away, for he believes every thing and everybody."

"O brother!" pleaded the widow, "if he did not believe something, how sad would he be! All the children love him, and he is company for them."

It was an odd sight to see Nanking down with the boys, as big as the father of any of them, playing as gently as the littlest. He rode them pig-a-back on his broad shoulders; they liked to see him light his pipe and smoke without getting sick. He worked for his mother, carrying water and catching fish, and was the only person in New Amstel (or Newcastle) who could go out into the woods fearlessly among the Minquas Indians; for the Indians all believed that feeble-minded people were the Great Spirit's especial friends, and saw beyond the boundaries of this world into that better heaven where shad ran all the year in the celestial rivers, and the oysters walked upon the land to be eaten. Nanking believed all this, too. It was his confiding nature which made him useless for worldly business. Hobgoblins and genii, charms and saints, and whatever he had heard in earnest, he held in earnest to be true.

"Dear me!" thought Nanking, when he was done playing marbles, "can't I be of use to somebody? Perhaps if I could do something useful my uncle would not think me a big idiot. Then, besides, little Elsje Alrichs might let me be her sweetheart and carry her doll!"

Elsje was the daughter of Peter Alrichs, the late great director's son, whose father slept in the graveyard of the little log church on Sand Hook, beside Dominie Welius, the holy psalm-tune leader. Nanking believed that when the weatherc.o.c.k on the church tingled in the wind, it was Dominie Welius in the grave striking his tuning-fork to catch the key-note. Peter Alrichs inherited the well-cleared farm of his papa, and had the best estate in all New Amstel except Gerrit Van Swearingen, who was accused of getting rich by smuggling, peculating, and slave-catching. Little Elsje liked Nanking, but her father too, said he was a big idiot. So Nanking had a hard time.

"Elsje," cried Nanking one day, "don't tell anybody if I give you a secret."

"No, big sweetheart!"

"I'm going to catch a stork!"

"We don't have storks in New Netherlands, Nanking."

"That's just where I'm going to be smart," exclaimed Nanking. "Because there are no storks here I'm going to catch one. Then uncle Gerrit cannot call me a big idiot."

Elsje gave Nanking her doll to hold. He sat there as big as a soldier, and handled the doll tenderly; for he believed it to be alive as much as she did, and she was a little girl.

"In Holland," said Nanking, "there is a stork on every happy chimney.

The farmers put a wagon-wheel on the chimney-top, and along comes your stork and his family, and they build a nest on the wagon-wheel. There it is, Elsje, all twigs and gra.s.s, warm as pie, heated by the chimney-fire, and such a squawking you never heard. It keeps the devil away! The old stork sits up on one long straight leg, and with the other foot he hands the worms around to the family. I used to sit down and watch them by the hour in that other Amstel where ours gets its name."

"By the great city of Amsterdam?" asked Elsje.

"That's it. In Amstel, the suburb of Amsterdam, where you can see such beautiful s.h.i.+ps from all parts of the world. If I get a stork for our chimney may I hold your doll another day?"

"Yes, Nanking, and I'll give you a kiss."