The Holland Society of New York - Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 51 text:

. 2 5 lish a book, which betrayed such colossal ignorance of history- Dzzmmlzezkif f' he exclaimed. At least we have succeeded in startling many of our fellow+ Americans with the news that there are others. I stepped into a New England museum, an his'- torical museum, one day, in search of chronicles. The intellectual-looking curator finally referred me to a dusty upper shelf, where he said there might be a lot of old Dutch trash. Sure enough, there was a little mine there. So I told the learned curator that he was quite right. There was n't an English word in the stuff It was a lot of Dutch z'!!z'!erfa- zfmfe ! ' Ah ! we never did have many historical allusions made to us by New England writers + still, hfteen years of this Society have made a difference. Of course, on this occasion I do not wish to claim the earth for the Dutch. Your fathers, you know, never did have much of the earth given to them, to start with. They were obliged to dig a hole in the ocean and then build a dike around it before they could go ashore to their own country. Still, wherever the Dutch do touch the earth they like to stay. There they generally do stay until they choose to move. You may coax them, and they will hustle. But if you try to drivethem, you can't get a move on them. It has lately been discovered by one of the might- iest powers on earth - how hard it is to make a few Dutch move on I And now we are in the after-dinner clouds,- on the happy smoking grounds. ' Ah ! this is a more blessed smoke than that which rises rank with the smell of human blood from the battle-fields in South Africa.