Finally I am delivered. The Lord has sent one of his angels to take
me out of captivity. The Iroquois have finally become pacified by the
Dutch Governor, who gave them presents as a ransom to the amount, I
believe, of three hundred livres, which I must return to him. When
everything was straightened out I was sent to Manhattan, where the
Governor of the whole country resides. He received me kindly, gave me
a suit of clothes, and sent me across the ocean in a bark. We landed
in Falmouth in England, and from thence I crossed over to France.
“Poor man!” said Laura, when the reading was done. “I do not wonder the
frontier’s people came to hate the Indians.”
“It is worth while,” said Uncle Fritz, “when you hear people talk of
Arcadian homes and the simplicity of nature to know what those words
mean.”
The Pictorial History is generally lying on the table, or brought out
before these American readings are finished; and Tom had the third
volume open at the picture of the massacre at Schenectady, where two
snow sentinels stood at the gateway of the palisades, and made no
opposition to the French and Indians when they rushed in.
“This was long after Father Jogues, I suppose,” he said.
[Sidenote: 1689-90.]
“Oh, yes. The massacre did not happen until Leisler’s time, in the
winter of 1689-90; and, by the way, one of the most vivid of the
genuine American ballads was printed in Albany then and there about
that massacre.”
“Where do you find about it, Uncle Fritz?”
[Sidenote: 1614-1775.]
“Oh, there is no local history better provided for than that of New
York. Look there, on the lower shelf; there are twelve volumes of their
documents which you owe to Mr. Bogart’s kindness.”
The children had learned by this time not to dread a book because it
was big and had a dull name, and the various tables soon had different
groups dipping through the big volumes. Letters of priests; letters of
Indians, with their marks in place of signatures; quarrels of governors
with their people; the awful tragedy when Leisler was executed;
Captain Kidd and all his history,--unfolded themselves in the manner
in which they were written down at the time; buried for a hundred
years and more in archive-rooms, and then brought to light again. The
children read a scrap here and a scrap there with fearful violation of
chronology, but gaining just the “color” for the history which letters
written at the time give, and which nothing else gives. Nothing is
more surprising to young readers than to see how very small were the
beginnings of an American State. Through the period of the century
between Father Jogues and 1736 the whole population of the State of New
York was a mere handful, Schenectady a frontier town, and Albany an
insignificant fort.
The young people were surprised when the bell rang for tea. Hester
confessed, as she walked out with Uncle Fritz, that there had been
times when she should not have thought that she could have found half
an hour’s amusement in reading old documents. “I owe that to you, Uncle
Fritz,” she said prettily.
“Perhaps I have taught you how to skip,” he said. “That is one of the
greatest of accomplishments.”
* * * * *