cogitations, and placing his old polished delft pipe carefully in
his buttonhole, the good saint sallied forth, leaving Johannes and
his family still fast asleep in their chairs. Directly opposite the
miserable abode of Johannes there dwelt a little fat Dutchman, of
a reasonable competency, who had all his life manfully stemmed the
torrent of modern innovation. He eschewed all sorts of paper money as
an invention of people without property to get hold of those that had
it; abhorred the practice of widening streets; and despised in his
heart all public improvements except canals, a sneaking notion for
which he inherited from old faderland. He was honest as the light of
the blessed sun; and though he opened his best parlour but twice a year
to have it cleaned and put to rights, yet this I will say of him, that
the poor man who wanted a dinner was never turned away from his table.
The worthy burgher was standing at the street door, which opened in the
middle, and leaning over the lower half, so that the smoke of his pipe
ascended in the clear frosty morning in a little white column far into
the sky before it was dissipated.
St. Nicholas stopped his wagon right before his door, and cried out in
a clear hearty voice,
“Good-morning, good-morning, mynheer; and a happy Newyear to you.”
“Good-morning,” cried the hale old burgher, “and many happy Newyears
to _you_. Hast got any good fat hen turkies to sell?” for he took him
for a countryman coming in to market. St. Nicholas answered and said
that he had been on a different errand that morning; and the other
cordially invited him to alight, come in, and take a glass of hot
spiced rum, with the which it was his custom to regale all comers at
the jolly Newyear. The invitation was frankly accepted, for the worthy
St. Nicholas, though no toper, was never a member of the temperance
society. He chose to be keeper of his own conscience, and was of
opinion that a man who is obliged to sign an obligation not to drink,
will be very likely to break it the first convenient opportunity.
As they sat cozily together, by a rousing fire of wholesome and
enlivening hickory, the little plump Dutchman occasionally inveighing
stoutly against paper money, railroads, improving streets, and the
like, the compassionate saint took occasion to utter a wish that the
poor man over the way and his starving family had some of the good
things that were so rife on Newyear's day, for he had occasion to know
that they were suffering all the evils of the most abject poverty.
“The splutterkin,” exclaimed the little fat burgher—”he is as proud as
Lucifer himself. I had a suspicion of this, and sought divers occasions
to get acquainted with him, that I might have some excuse for prying
into his necessities, and take the privilege of an old neighbour to
relieve them. But _vuur en vlammen_! would you believe it—he avoided me
just as if he owed me money, and couldn't pay.”
St. Nicholas observed that if it was ever excusable for a man to be
proud, it was when he fell into a state where every one, high and low,
worthless and honourable, looked down upon him with contempt. Then he
related to him the story of poor Johannes, and taking from his pocket
a heavy purse, he offered it to the worthy old burgher, who swore he
would be dondered if he wanted any of his money.
“But hearken to me,” said the saint; “yon foolish lad is the son of an
old friend of mine, who did me many a kindness in his day, for which
I am willing to requite his posterity. Thou shalt take this purse and
bestow a small portion of it, as from thyself, as a loan from time to
time, as thou seest he deserves it by his exertions. It may happen, as
I hope it will, that in good time he will acquire again the competency
he hath lost by his own folly and inexperience; and as he began the
world a worthy, respectable citizen, I beseech thee to do this—to be
his friend, and to watch over him and his little ones, in the name of
St. Nicholas.”
The portly Burgher promised that he would, and they parted with
marvellous civility, St. Nicholas having promised to visit him again
should his life be spared. He then mounted his little wagon, and
the little Dutchman having turned his head for an instant, when he
looked again could see nothing of the saint or his equipage. “_Is
het mogelyk!_” exclaimed he, and his mind misgave him that there was
something unaccountable in the matter.
My story is already too long, peradventure, else would I describe the
astonishment of Johannes and his wife when they awoke and found the
benevolent stranger had departed without bidding them farewell. They
would have thought all that had passed was but a dream, had not the
fragments of the good things on which they regaled during the night
bore testimony to its reality. Neither will I detail how, step by step,
aided by the advice and countenance of the worthy little Dutchman, and
the judicious manner of his dispensing the bounty of St. Nicholas,
Johannes Garrebrantze, by a course of industry, economy, and integrity,
at length attained once again the station he had lost by his follies
and extravagance. Suffice it to say, that though he practised a
rational self-denial in all his outlayings, he neither became a miser,
nor did he value money except as the means of obtaining the comforts of
life, and administering to the happiness of others.
In the mean time, the money lender, not being content with the
wealth he had obtained by taking undue advantage of the distresses of
others, and becoming every day more greedy, launched out into mighty
speculations. He founded a score of towns without any houses in them;
dealt by hundreds of thousands in fancy stocks; and finally became the
victim of one of his own speculations, by in time coming to believe in
the very deceptions he had practised upon others. It is an old saying,
that the greatest rogue in the world, sooner or latter, meets with
his match, and so it happened with the money lender. He was seduced
into the purchase of a town without any houses in it, at an expense of
millions; was met by one of those reactions that play the mischief with
honest labourers, and thus finally perished in a bottomless pit of his
own digging. Finding himself sinking, he resorted to forgeries, and had
by this means raised money to such an amount, that his villany almost
approached to sublimity. His property, as the phrase is, came under the
hammer, and Johannes purchased his own house at half the price it cost
him in building.
The good St. Nicholas trembled at the new ordeal to which Johannes
had subjected himself; but finding, when he visited him, as he did
regularly every Newyear's eve, that he was cured of his foolish
vanities, and that his wife was one of the best housekeepers in all
Fort Orange, he discarded his apprehensions, and rejoiced in the
prosperity that was borne so meekly and wisely. The little fat Dutchman
lived a long time in expectation that the stranger in the one-horse
wagon would come for the payment of his purse of money; but finding
that year after year rolled away without his appearing, often said to
himself, as he sat on his stoop with a pipe in his mouth,
“I'll be dondered if I don't believe it was the good St. Nicholas.”
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