the moon, hangs yonder in heaven and illuminates my pale features so
surely will I thrust this, dagger into the heart of the Bandit, with the
Grey Beard first and before I throw myself as your consort into your
arms but why so pale Count and why do you tremble so?”
Now Jozef is interrupted by the master-tailor, a thin, little man, of
whom it is commonly said on board that he knows a thing or two more than
most people.
“Now, I know,” says he, in his piping voice.
“What d’ye know?” asks the boatswain, who has little or no opinion of
the master-tailor.
“As how the gentleman—the Count, I mean—and the other,—the Bandit with
the Grey Beard,—that both of them are one and the same man.”
“Well, you calico-spoiler—you know that, do you? Well—I know that too,
and all of us know it right enough; but you needn’t take another man’s
share in the reading for all that. Go ahead, boy!”
The master-tailor is looked at with contempt from various quarters, and
Jozef pursues his reading with a chapter describing how Count Matatskai
comes home in a bad temper.
“The Count threw himself down on a couch adorned with costly velvet,
relieve me of my riding-boots—thus he spoke to the grey-headed old
servant Gabario who, brought him a silver goblet with sparkling wine
saying, that this was his favourite wine from the great vineyard south
of the castle but, the Count made a gesture of refusal with his left
hand and said me liketh no wine Gabario avaunt and saddle—my horse!”
This was the end of the chapter, and Jozef took breath.
“It’s a capital thing,” said the boatswain, “when a man can have the
things for the ordering in that way. What comes next, Jozef?”
The boatswain is beginning to feel sleepy, and would therefore like
Jozef to tell him the end at once; but this Jozef is by no means
inclined to do,—he goes ahead valiantly, and by degrees, though he does
not observe it, his whole audience drops asleep. At last, when he has
reached the closing scene, there is no one to listen to it but the
master-tailor, who can scarcely keep his small grey eyes open.
“Just hear this, now!” says Jozef, who—though he has read the book
through twice before—is as enthusiastic over this passage as the first
time. “Now you must listen! Now the Count is sitting up alone in the
rocks, in a ... cavern, they call it, ... and now he is the Bandit with
the Grey Beard; and the other robbers are sitting in the back of the
cavern round a great big fire, and some of them are lying asleep, and
the others are roasting great pieces of meat at the fire, and they’re
drinking wine with it ... out of gold cups that they’ve stolen.... But
the Bandit with the Grey Beard— ... _he’s_ sitting all by himself, you
see,—and now Krimhelia comes in—you know—the young lady he thinks so
much of.”
And Jozef resumes his reading—how Krimhelia approaches, cautiously, with
the glittering dagger; how the Grey-Bearded Bandit, looking up, suddenly
sees her standing behind him; how Krimhelia seizes him by the beard and
drives the dagger into his heart; and how, at the same moment, the long
grey beard comes off in her hand, and she looks with horror on the
“pallid dying countenance” of Count Matatskai.
Now follows a dialogue between the dying bandit chief and the “almost
fainting” Krimhelia, who is “filled with consternation”; in the course
of which the tailor finally closes his eyes unobserved.
Now comes the closing scene; the other robbers come out from behind the
fire, Krimhelia takes to flight, and climbs to the top of a steep dark
rock on the edge of a “yawning abyss.”
As Jozef reads, he bends over his book, leans his head on his hands, and
sees the whole thing taking place before his eyes. He sees Krimhelia
standing on the top of the rock. The day is breaking in the east. The
robbers are pursuing her, and begin to climb the rock....
Jozef reads on,—at a passionately accelerated pace, and with the most
singular stops imaginable:—
“There she stood proudly—like a queen with her long, loose hair and her
shining white face standing out sharply against the red sunrise-tinted
sky with horror—she saw in the unfathomable depth at her feet the
bandits approaching. Already the foremost was stretching out his hand to
seize her and she saw, the morning-light falling on his horrible
features when suddenly, her ear was struck by a sound of men’s voices
singing beneath her in the valley she listens, it is the morning song of
her brothers, she lifts her hands skywards and looks up to the paling
moon and the stars ‘Ic-come’! she cries” (all in one word) “... and with
a HOARSE shriek she flings herself down into the abyss at the same
moment the Bandit Chief drew his last breath and the Count Matatskai was
no more THE END.”
“That’s all!” said Jozef. “That’s fine, ain’t it? ... Oh! lor! ...
they’re all asleep.”
Jozef cannot at once get over a slight feeling of indignation against an
audience, capable of dropping-off “in the middle of a bit like
that,”—but as it is not an isolated experience on his part, he soon
makes up his mind to pay no further attention to it. He takes the
lantern away, goes forward, and lies down on the deck with the
oil-stained book under his head—looking up at the moon right above him,
and beginning to see, in the air, all sorts of figures, which gradually
acquire a likeness to Count Matatskai and the “young lady he thinks so
much of.”
_A. Werumeus Buning_.
_NEWSPAPER HUMOUR._
FROM SAD EXPERIENCE.
_She_—“Do tell me, how do you know the age of a horse you want to buy?”
_He_—“Nothing easier; you just double the age the dealer gives him.”
* * * * *
_Professor_ (_at a clinical lecture_)—“This patient has been suffering
from a disease of the hip-joint, so that he still walks lame to an
appreciable extent. What would you, sir” (to one of the students), “do
in such a case?”
_Student_—“I think, in that case, I should walk lame too, sir.”
* * * * *
NATURAL HISTORY.
_Master_—“The development and improvement of race has not only shown
itself among mankind, but may clearly be observed among the lower
animals. Who can give me an example of this?”
[Illustration:
FROM SAD EXPERIENCE.
]
_Janneke Snobs_—“I, sir.”
_M._—“In what sort of animals?”
_J. S._—“Among asses, sir.”
_M._—“How so?”
_J. S_.—“Why, in Balaam’s time, asses were only just beginning to speak,
and yesterday I heard M. Snugger say that there are plenty of asses
sitting in the Chamber of Deputies.”
* * * * *
HISTORY.
_Master_—“In what battle was Gustav Adolf killed?”
_Janneke Snobs_—“In his last battle, I believe, sir.”
* * * * *
PRECAUTIONS.
Many centuries ago, the gallows stood on the banks of the Scheldt; and
once, when two thieves were to be hanged, the rope broke, as the first
was being turned off, and let him into the water. He swam across the
river, and escaped.
“Look out!” said the second to the executioner, “see that the rope does
not break with me—for _I can’t swim!_”
* * * * *
A gentleman was buying a newspaper at a kiosk, and wanted change for a
frank. “I have no change,” said the saleswoman; “you can pay me
to-morrow.”
“But supposing I am dead by to-morrow?”
“Oh, that can’t be any great loss,” she replied, innocently.
* * * * *
A servant girl, writing home to her parents, said, “I am sorry I have no
money to buy a stamp for this letter; I will put two on the next.”
_Uilenspiegel._
[Illustration:
“A GENTLEMAN WAS BUYING A PAPER AT A KIOSK.”
]
* * * * *
IN COURT.
_Judge_—“Is this your signature?”
_Witness_—“I don’t know.”
_Judge_—“Look at it carefully.”
_Witness_—“I can’t say for certain.”
_Judge_ (impatiently)—“Come, make haste, just write your name.”
_Witness_—“I’m no scholar, sir; I can’t write.”
* * * * *
ECONOMY.
_Father_—“I should never have thought that studying would have cost so
much money.”
_Student-Son_—“Yes; and if you only knew how little I have studied!”
* * * * *
Van Honsbœren, junior, one evening sat gazing at his father, when the
latter had fallen asleep sitting by the stove.
“Father,” cried the little fellow, suddenly, “you look just like a
lion!”
“A lion!” exclaimed Van Honsbœren, waking up, “why, you’ve never seen
any lions.”
“Oh yes, father! on the beach at Blankenberghe.”
“You stupid boy, those were not lions, they were donkeys.”
“Well, those are what I mean!”
* * * * *
_Snugger—“M. le Juge_, I have been fined for letting my dog go about
without a muzzle, and he certainly had one on.”
_Judge_—“The _agent de police_ says your dog had no muzzle on.”
_Snugger_—“Indeed, he had one on, sir.”
_Gendarme_—“Yes, but he was not wearing it on his head.”
_Snugger_—“The regulations do not specify _where_ a dog is to wear his
muzzle—and so, to let the beast get his breath, I tied the muzzle to his
tail.”
_Judge_—“Five francs fine. Next case!”
* * * * *
Snobs has bought a steam-engine, and was showing it to his friend
Snugger yesterday.
“How many horse-power is that machine?” asked Snugger.
“Horse-power!” exclaimed Snobs, “don’t you see it goes by steam?”
* * * * *
Nothing is more uncomfortable for a woman who has to keep a secret than
to find no one who is curious about it.
* * * * *
The human being who can pass a hoarding marked “Wet Paint,” without
putting his finger on it to feel if the paint really is wet, possesses
strength of will and self-control enough to rule a kingdom.
* * * * *
A lady having run against the freshly painted rail of a bridge, and
carried off a considerable quantity of the paint on her dress, the
bridge-keeper said to her consolingly,—
“Never mind, ma’am, they’re going to paint it again to-morrow, any way!”
_FARMER GERRIT’S VISIT TO AMSTERDAM._
Gerrit Meeuwsen and his son Gijs, living in the depths of the country,
in the Betuwe district (the old Batavian Island, between the Rhine and
the Waal), have made up their minds—after long deliberation—for an
expedition by rail to the Amsterdam kermis. As they have never left
home before, preparations are made which suggest an Arctic voyage, and
they take a solemn farewell of their friends and relations. The
railway station is safely reached, after a drive of many miles; and
Gerrit severs the last link, so to speak, by sending back Jan—the
farm-man—with the trap.
“G’morning,” said father and son, at once.
“Good-morning, friends,” replied the station clerk, who was seated at a
table doing sums.
Meeuwsen took off his great woollen gloves, hauled out his double-cased
watch, and said, “Might it be about time for the railway to come?”
“Don’t know,” answered Gijs, who thought that his father was asking the
question of him.
The clerk, a good-natured fellow, understanding that the question was
addressed to him, replied, “Oh! I suppose you mean the _train_. Yes,
that will be coming by very soon,—perhaps in thirteen, or fourteen, or
fifteen minutes. Where do you want to go?”
“To Amsterdam,” replied Meeuwsen.
“Amsterdam—third-class?” asked the clerk.
“Third-class, what’s that?” returned Gerrit.
“Three classes, you know, my good friend,” the clerk explained; “first,
second, and third. The first is the dearest, the second middling, and
the third the cheapest.”
“Then the third won’t do for us, nor the second neither,” said Gerrit.
“I always sit in the first seat at church in our village, for I be
churchwarden.”[16]
“First-class?” asked the clerk, in surprise, “but—do you know——”
“Never you mind; I want first-class, do you hear?” said Gerrit.
“Well, it’s all the same to me,” said the clerk, rising. He went to the
place where he kept the tickets, stamped two, and received the rich
Betuwers money.
“Gracious! there’s the train!” cried the clerk, whose calculation of
fifteen minutes had been rather too liberal. “Will you come out,
please?”
Gerrit and Gijs, the latter carrying the carpet-bag, rushed out on to
the platform, followed by the clerk. The approaching train seemed to the
travellers to grow longer the more they looked at it, and, when it
stopped, both father and son involuntarily took a step backwards.
Neither Gerrit nor Gijs knew exactly what happened to them next; but
when they got back all their senses,—for the wind was blowing freshly in
their faces,—they saw themselves in a carriage containing, besides
themselves, two other passengers, and which allowed free passage to the
wind on all sides.
“Bad weather for the money,” grumbled Gerrit.
“Why! come and sit over here,” cried one of their fellow-travellers,
apparently a Jew, who was sitting on the opposite side of the carriage,
with his back to the engine. “Sit here, on the first seat; you will be
frozen to death over there.”
Gerrit looked at his son, and then both stumbled along the shaking
carriage to the other end, and occupied the end seats.
“That’s a difference!” said Gijs, whose skin felt like that of a plucked
chicken.
“Well, this does shake!” said Meeuwsen. “No!—that third-class is enough
to kill one!”
Nathan, who was reading a book, which, as Gerrit could see, seemed to
begin at the end and go backwards, did not speak again. The second
travelling-companion had turned up the collar of his thick overcoat and
was snoring; and our two gentlemen from Betuwe, having nothing to say to
each other, were silent, and thought—what, no one ever will know.
After a few minutes’ run, a conductor appeared—whence, neither Gerrit
nor Gijs could understand—and asked them, “Where for, gentlemen?”
“_Gentlemen!_” exclaimed Gerrit, with fine scorn, “_that_ won’t go down
with us!”
“Farmers, then!” said the conductor, “where for?”
Meeuwsen thought the fellow had no manners, and said, “I and my son for
Amsterdam.”
“Show your tickets, please,” said the conductor.
Meeuwsen began to search for them.... “I’d put them away so carefully,”
he remarked, while turning out all his pockets.
“Well, never mind,” resumed the conductor (he was very cold, and wanted
to get back to his warm corner in the closed compartment), “you can show
me them presently.”
“Very good,” replied Gerrit, who began to think the man was not so bad
after all.
The conductor disappeared again, in the same mysterious fashion, and
Gerrit suddenly remembered that he had put away the tickets inside his
watch-case.
At every station, when the whistle of the engine was heard, Gijs was
seized with consternation, thinking that a child or some other living
creature had been run over. Every time the train stopped, the sons of
Batavia prepared to alight, and each time they were politely stopped by
Nathan, who told them they might just make their minds easy, for they
had not got there yet. Gijs thereupon came to the conclusion that the
journey would not be over so soon as the schoolmaster had led them to
suppose.
At length, after they had left the last of the intermediate stations
behind, the mysterious conductor appeared once more, and asked for the
tickets; and Gerrit, who had kept them carefully in his hand, under his
woollen glove, produced them, and gave them up.
“First-class!” said the conductor. “Why, man, you’ve certainly had the
best for your money!”
“Hi?” said Meeuwsen, who could not understand what the fellow meant.
“Stupid bumpkins!” muttered the conductor in an undertone, happily
inaudible to the Meeuwsens, and left the carriage with a loud
“Amsterdam, gentlemen!” The train now stopped for good. Every one got
out, and there was such a row that Gerrit and his son could not
understand what was going on, and stood staring about them quite dazed.
People, carriages, cabs, omnibuses, trunks, drivers with brandished
whips, crying, “This way, sir!—Hotel this!—Hotel that!—just off!” There
was such a swarming and confusion that our travellers only regained
their full consciousness when they found themselves sitting in an
omnibus, packed, knee to knee, like herrings in a barrel,—and, probably,
dreaming—at least, so they thought.
“Where to, sir?” asked the conductor of the omnibus, in a green coat
trimmed with silver lace, of the person sitting next the door.
“The Dam,” was the answer. “Botermarkt,” said another passenger. “Rokin,
No. 11,” said another; and another followed with “The Mint.”
“Sir?” said the inquisitive man, addressing Gijs.
“I?” asked Gijs, staring wildly; “to the Fair, isn’t it, father?”
All the passengers laughed, except three or four who were in a hurry to
get to the Exchange.
“Be’st mad, I think, boy,” said Gerrit, grinning. “No, mate,” he went
on, addressing the conductor, “to a lodging.”
“Which hotel?” was then the question. “First, second, third, fourth,
fifth class? Rondeel, Doelen, Munt—or do you want to go to the Nes?”[17]
Whether Gerrit was thinking of the third-class carriage in which he had
been sitting with Gijs, and contrasting it with the imaginary
first-class where he found a place by the side of Nathan, we do not
know; but it is certain that he shivered at the idea of a fifth-class,
and had his answer ready at once—
“First-class, man! First-class!”
“_Vieux Doelen!_” cried the conductor, with a smile and a furtive wink
at the passenger next the door.
The omnibus stopped, and Gerrit and Gijs were beckoned to come out. How
they ever got through the double row of knees is quite incomprehensible;
and twice did the heels of Gijs’ heavy boots come unpleasantly in
contact with corns, whose proprietors, therefore, unkindly addressed him
as “Clumsy lout!” and “Dumb ass!”
“How much is it?” asked Gerrit.
The conductor gave a look round, and then said, under his breath—
“Only ten stivers[18] each, sir. I can’t ask you for more.”
Meeuwsen gave him a florin, whereupon he asked whether the gentleman
couldn’t spare him a trifle for himself!
This question was answered by the good-natured farmer thrusting a
_kwartje_[19] into his hand; and the unscrupulous rascal drove away,
laughing in his sleeve.
Gerrit, and Gijs with the carpet-bag on his back, stared for a long time
at the fine house, with the gilt letters on the front; and at length
ventured to go up the steps, though they could not make up their minds
to venture in.
“What do you want?” politely asked a handsome young gentleman, in a
snow-white waistcoat and a beautiful black jacket, who came out of the
broad hall and walked up to them.
“Lodgings,” answered Gerrit.
“For yourself?” asked the young gentleman, who, seen at close quarters,
seemed older than his jacket would have led one to suppose.
“I and my son Gijs,” said Gerrit.
“You?” again asked the young gentleman.
“Is that so hard to understand?” asked the farmer. “Are there no
lodgings here? Can we get them, or can’t we?”
The young gentleman walked away, and stopped to speak to another young
gentleman like unto himself, who met him in the corridor. Soon after two
more arrived, one of them with a napkin over his arm, and all the four
began to laugh immoderately; so that Gerrit began to be tired of
waiting, and, approaching the group, said, with some violence, “Now,
what is it to be? Are we to get rooms, or are we not?” The young
gentlemen continued to giggle, but suddenly stopped, and scattered with
surprising rapidity, for a dignified elderly person entered the
vestibule, and asked what was the matter here. Whereupon Gerrit
expounded to him that he had asked, in a straightforward and downright
way, for lodgings; that he did not know what the young gentlemen were up
to; that he had come with his son to attend the fair; that he had no
mind to be what-you-may-call-ummed and made a fool of by those young
gentlemen; and that he asked, once more, Could he, or could he not?
The respectable gentleman took a good look at Gerrit and Gijs—the latter
was still outside the door with the carpet-bag—for some moments; but the
open honest face, and generally prosperous appearance of the farmer,
reassured him as to the probability of their being good customers. He
then laid his forefinger against his nose, and called out to one of the
young gentlemen,—
“No. 71 and 72, Karel. _Allons!_”
Karel came. Gerrit beckoned Gijs to come in. Gijs also came.
“Take the gentleman’s luggage,” said the proprietor of the hotel to
Karel, pointing to the carpet-bag, which Gijs still carried over his
shoulder.
“Oh, no! thank you,” said Gijs, as the young gentleman Karel went about
to relieve him of his load. Karel, however, did not leave go. The
proprietor was present; and, in spite of Gijs’ asseverations that he was
far too kind, he seized the bag and flew up the broad staircase like a
jumping rabbit.
“If you will follow, gentlemen,” said the proprietor, “the _garçon_ will
show you your rooms.” Gerrit, putting up, for the sake of peace, with
the title of gentleman, followed the flying _garçon_, and Gijs followed
his father.
“Where are we going to?” cried the stout farmer, to whom climbing of
stairs was an unaccustomed exercise.
“To No. 71 and 72,” said the _garçon_.
“I don’t care what number it is—number thousand, if you like—but I
didn’t come here to climb up a tower!”
“We shall be there directly,” said Karel, still flying on ahead.
“Go on, then!” said Gerrit, taking courage; and on they went again, up
stairs and more stairs—there was no end to it.
“Are we not there yet?” sighed Meeuwsen, when Gijs had counted the
forty-fifth flight of steps, and they had come to an arched doorway.
“This way round!” cried Karel, and flew on, still higher.
“No! that’s too much; I give it up!” cried Gerrit, holding fast to the
banisters. “It’s enough to drive a man crazy! I’ll go no farther.”
“Only a few more,” said Karel persuasively. At last, when Gijs had
counted sixty-three, the two, panting and gasping, reached their
goal—Nos. 71 and 72.
“_Ici_,” said Karel, throwing open both doors almost at the same moment.
“_Ici_ or no _ici_” muttered the farmer, “what I say is that no decent
man can be expected to do it!”
“This is your room,” said Karel, pointing to No. 72, as he saw that Gijs
was about to follow his father into No. 71.
“I?” ejaculated Gijs.
“_S’il vous plaît_” said the waiter, and flinging the carpet-bag into
No. 71, he left the rooms, stood still in the passage between the two
apartments, and looking at father and son by turns, went on, “Any more
orders? Will the gentlemen dine at the _table d’hôte_, at half-past
four?”
Gijs understood not a single word of this; and Gerrit, who likewise did
not grasp the subtleties of the situation, answered shortly, “No,” being
mortally afraid of having to do any more climbing.
Karel having had enough of this exalted society, uttered no further
questions or remarks, slammed both doors, reached the ground floor by
sliding down the banisters, and left the father and son, each in his own
room, to their respective meditations.
The well-furnished rooms were only divided from one another by a thin
wooden partition, and their windows afforded a delightful view, to wit,
a red-tiled roof, from which arose a tall black chimney.
Gijs looked round, like a cat in a strange warehouse, and did not think
Amsterdam so very beautiful after all.
“Boy! where are you?” shouted Gerrit. “What are we to do now? Just come
here!”
“Can I do that, father?” roared Gijs, in a voice that could easily have
been heard in the street.
“Of course!” cried Gerrit.
Gijs went on tiptoe to his door, and, speeding as though death were at
his heels, out of No. 72 and into No. 71.
“Look here, boy!” said Gerrit, when his son was safely inside, “here we
sit, and I’m so hungry that I can’t see straight.”
“So am I,” asseverated Gijs.
“Then you ought to call,” said his father, “and we might order
something.”
Gijs muttered something about “so strange,” and “if father were to do it
himself,”—but, like a dutiful son, he went to the stairs, and
shouted—very much as he was accustomed at home to call the calves to
their food—“_Huup! huup! huup!_”
No one came. At last a door opened, and an old gentleman in hat and
greatcoat came out, and passed Gijs.
“Oh!” said Gijs, his shyness giving way before his own hunger and his
father’s orders, “would you be so kind as to order something to eat for
us!”
“Pull the bell, you young donkey!” was the polite reply. The donkey
departed without a word, and, after some searching, Father Meeuwsen
found a rope hanging in No. 71, at which he pulled,—and lo! they heard a
bell ring. A minute later Karel was again standing before them.
“You must bring us something to eat,” said the farmer, who now began to
understand that the young man was a waiter.
“_Déjeuner à la fourchette?_” asked Karel.