The Cloister and the Hearth | Page 4

He
traded, wholesale and retail, in cloth, silk, brown holland, and, above
all, in curried leather, a material highly valued by the middling people,
because it would stand twenty years' wear, and turn an ordinary knife,
no small virtue in a jerkin of that century, in which folk were so liberal
of their steel; even at dinner a man would leave his meat awhile, and
carve you his neighbour, on a very moderate difference of opinion.
The couple were well to do, and would have been free from all earthly
care, but for nine children. When these were coming into the world, one
per annum, each was hailed with rejoicings, and the saints were
thanked, not expostulated with; and when parents and children were all
young together, the latter were looked upon as lovely little playthings
invented by Heaven for the amusement, joy, and evening solace of
people in business.
But as the olive-branches shot up, and the parents grew older, and saw
with their own eyes the fate of large families, misgivings and care

mingled with their love. They belonged to a singularly wise and
provident people: in Holland reckless parents were as rare as
disobedient children. So now when the huge loaf came in on a gigantic
trencher, looking like a fortress in its moat, and, the tour of the table
once made, seemed to have melted away, Elias and Catherine would
look at one another and say, "Who is to find bread for them all when
we are gone?"
At this observation the younger ones needed all their filial respect to
keep their little Dutch countenances; for in their opinion dinner and
supper came by nature like sunrise and sunset, and, so long as that
luminary should travel round the earth, so long as the brown loaf go
round their family circle, and set in their stomachs only to rise again in
the family oven. But the remark awakened the national thoughtfulness
of the elder boys, and being often repeated, set several of the family
thinking, some of them good thoughts, some ill thoughts, according to
the nature of the thinkers.
"Kate, the children grow so, this table will soon be too small."
"We cannot afford it, Eli," replied Catherine, answering not his words,
but his thought, after the manner of women.
Their anxiety for the future took at times a less dismal but more
mortifying turn. The free burghers had their pride as well as the nobles;
and these two could not bear that any of their blood should go down in
the burgh after their decease.
So by prudence and self-denial they managed to clothe all the little
bodies, and feed all the great mouths, and yet put by a small hoard to
meet the future; and, as it grew and grew, they felt a pleasure the miser
hoarding for himself knows not.
One day the eldest boy but one, aged nineteen, came to his mother, and,
with that outward composure which has so misled some persons as to
the real nature of this people, begged her to intercede with his father to
send him to Amsterdam, and place him with a merchant. "It is the way
of life that likes me: merchants are wealthy; I am good at numbers;

prithee, good mother, take my part in this, and I shall ever be, as I am
now, your debtor."
Catherine threw up her hands with dismay and incredulity.
"What! leave Tergou!"
"What is one street to me more than another? If I can leave the folk of
Tergou, I can surely leave the stones."
"What! quit your poor father now he is no longer young?"
"Mother, if I can leave you, I can leave"
"What! leave your poor brothers and sisters, that love you so dear?"
"There are enough in the house without me."
"What mean you, Richart? Who is more thought of than you Stay, have
I spoken sharp to you? Have I been unkind to you?"
"Never that I know of; and if you had, you should never hear of it from
me. Mother," said Richart gravely, but the tear was in his eye, "it all
lies in a word, and nothing can change my mind. There will be one
mouth less for you to feed.'
"There now, see what my tongue has done," said Catherine, and the
next moment she began to cry. For she saw her first young bird on the
edge of the nest trying his wings to fly into the world. Richart had a
calm, strong will, and she knew he never wasted a word.
It ended as nature has willed all such discourse shall end: young
Richart went to Amsterdam with a face so long and sad as it had never
been seen before, and a heart like granite.
That