The Silver Skates

  The Silver Skates

  Mary Mapes Dodge

  Illustrated by Peter Bailey

  ALMA CLASSICS

  alma classics

  an imprint of

  alma books ltd

  3 Castle Yard

  Richmond

  Surrey TW10 6TF

  United Kingdom

  www.almaclassics.com

  The Silver Skates first published as Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates: A Story of Life in Holland in 1865

  This edition first published by Alma Classics in 2018

  Cover and Text Illustrations © Peter Bailey, 2018

  Extra Material © Alma Books Ltd, 2018

  Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

  isbn: 978-1-84749-720-8

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.

  Contents

  The Silver Skates

  Notes

  Extra Material for Young Readers

  The Writer

  The Book

  The Characters

  Other Unforgettable Siblings in Children’s Literature

  Test Yourself

  Answers

  Scores

  Glossary

  Hans Brinker

  or

  The Silver Skates

  Chapter 1

  Hans and Gretel

  On a bright December morning long ago, two thinly clad children were kneeling upon the bank of a frozen canal in Holland.

  The sun had not yet appeared, but the grey sky was parted near the horizon, and its edges shone crimson with the coming day. Most of the good Hollanders were enjoying a placid morning nap – even Mynheer van Stoppelnoze, that worthy old Dutchman, was still slumbering “in beautiful repose”.

  Now and then some peasant woman, poising a well-filled basket upon her head, came skimming over the glassy surface of the canal, or a lusty boy, skating to his day’s work in the town, cast a good-natured grimace towards the shivering pair as he flew along.

  Meanwhile, with many a vigorous puff and pull, the brother and sister, for such they were, seemed to be fastening something upon their feet – not skates, certainly, but clumsy pieces of wood narrowed and smoothed at their lower edge, and pierced with holes, through which were threaded strings of rawhide.

  These queer-looking affairs had been made by the boy, Hans. His mother was a poor peasant woman – too poor even to think of such a thing as buying skates for her little ones. Rough as these were, they had afforded the children many a happy hour upon the ice; and now, as with cold, red fingers our young Hollanders tugged at the strings, their solemn faces bending closely over their knees, no vision of impossible iron runners came to dull the satisfaction glowing within.

  In a moment the boy arose, and with a pompous swing of the arms and a careless “Come on, Gretel”, glided easily across the canal.

  “Ah, Hans,” called his sister plaintively, “this foot is not well yet. The strings hurt me on last market day, and now I cannot bear them tied in the same place.”

  “Tie them higher up, then,” answered Hans, as without looking at her he performed a wonderful cat’s-cradle step on the ice.

  “How can I? The string is too short.”

  Giving vent to a good-natured Dutch whistle – the English of which was that girls were troublesome creatures – he steered towards her.

  “You are foolish to wear such shoes, Gretel, when you have a stout leather pair. Your clogs would be better than these.”

  “Why, Hans! Do you forget? Father threw my beautiful new shoes in the fire. Before I knew what he had done, they were all curled up in the midst of the burning peat. I can skate with these, but not with my wooden ones. Be careful now…”

  Hans had taken a string from his pocket. Humming a tune as he knelt beside her, he proceeded to fasten Gretel’s skate with all the force of his strong young arm.

  “Oh! Oh!” she cried in real pain.

  With an impatient jerk, Hans unwound the string. He would have cast it upon the ground in true big-brother style had he not just then spied a tear trickling down his sister’s cheek.

  “I’ll fix it – never fear,” he said with sudden tenderness, “but we must be quick: Mother will need us soon.”

  Then he glanced enquiringly about him – first at the ground, next at some bare willow branches above his head and finally at the sky, now gorgeous with streaks of blue, crimson and gold.

  Finding nothing in any of these localities to meet his need, his eye suddenly brightened as, with the air of a fellow who knew what he was about, he took off his cap, and removing the tattered lining, adjusted it in a smooth pad over the top of Gretel’s worn-out shoe.

  “Now,” he cried triumphantly, at the same time arranging the strings as briskly as his benumbed fingers would allow, “can you bear some pulling?”

  Gretel drew up her lips as if to say “Hurt away”, but made no further response.

  In another moment they were laughing together as, hand in hand they flew along the canal, never thinking whether the ice would bear or not, for in Holland ice is generally an all-winter affair. It settles itself upon the water in a determined kind of way, and so far from growing thin and uncertain every time the sun is a little severe upon it, it gathers its forces day by day, and flashes defiance to every beam.

  Presently, “squeak! squeak!” sounded something beneath Hans’s feet. Next his strokes grew shorter, ending oft-times with a jerk, and finally he lay sprawling upon the ice, kicking against the air with many a fantastic flourish.

  “Ha! Ha!” laughed Gretel. “That was a fine tumble!” But a tender heart was beating under her coarse blue jacket, and, even as she laughed, she came with a graceful sweep close to her prostrate brother.

  “Are you hurt, Hans? Oh, you are laughing! Catch me now!” And she darted away, shivering no longer, but with cheeks all aglow and eyes sparkling with fun.

  Hans sprang to his feet and started in brisk pursuit, but it was no easy thing to catch Gretel. Before she had travelled very far, her skates too began to squeak.

  Believing that discretion was the better part of valour, she turned suddenly and skated into her pursuer’s arms.

  “Ha! Ha! I’ve caught you!” cried Hans.

  “Ha! Ha! I caught you,” she retorted, struggling to free herself.

  Just then a clear, quick voice was heard calling: “Hans! Gretel!”

  “It’s Mother,” said Hans, looking grave in an instant.

  By this time the canal was gilt with sunlight. The pure morning air was very delightful, and skaters were gradually increasing in numbers. It was hard to obey the summons, but Gretel and Hans were good children: without a thought of yielding to the temptation to linger, they pulled off their skates, leaving half the knots still tied. Hans, with his great square shoulders and bushy yellow hair, towered high above his blue-eyed little sister as they trudged homewards. He was fifteen years old, and Gretel was only twelve. He was a solid, hearty-looking boy, with honest eyes and a brow that seemed to bear a sign, “Goodness Within” – just as the little Dutch summer house wears a motto over its portal. Gretel was lithe and quick – her eyes had a dancing light in them, and while you looked at her cheek, the colour paled and deepene
d, just as it does upon a bed of pink and white blossoms when the wind is blowing.

  As soon as the children turned from the canal, they could see their parents’ cottage. Their mother’s tall form, arrayed in jacket and petticoat and close-fitting cap, stood, like a picture, in the crooked frame of the doorway. Had the cottage been a mile away, it would still have seemed near. In that flat country every object stands out plainly in the distance – the chickens show as distinctly as the windmills. Indeed, were it not for the dykes and the high banks of the canals, one could stand almost anywhere in middle Holland without seeing a mound or a ridge between the eye and the “jumping-off place”.

  None had better cause to know the nature of these same dykes than Dame Brinker and the panting youngsters now running at her call. But before stating why, let me ask you to take a rocking-chair trip with me to that far country, where you may see, perhaps for the first time, some curious things that Hans and Gretel saw every day.

  Chapter 2

  Holland

  Holland is one of the queerest countries under the sun. It should be called Odd-land or Contrary-land, for in nearly everything it is different from the other parts of the world. In the first place, a large portion of the country is lower than the level of the sea. Great dykes or bulwarks have been erected, at a heavy cost of money and labour, to keep the ocean where it belongs. On certain parts of the coast it sometimes leans with all its weight against the land, and it is as much as the poor country can do to stand the pressure. Sometimes the dykes give way, or spring a leak, and the most disastrous results ensue. They are high and wide, and the tops of some of them are covered with buildings and trees. They have even fine public roads upon them, from which horses may look down upon wayside cottages. Often the keels of floating ships are higher than the roofs of the dwellings. The stork clattering to her young on the house peak may feel that her nest is lifted far out of danger, but the croaking frog in neighbouring bulrushes is nearer the stars than she. Water bugs dart backwards and forwards above the heads of the chimney swallows, and willow trees seem drooping with shame because they cannot reach as high as the reeds nearby.

  Ditches, canals, ponds, rivers and lakes are everywhere to be seen. High, but not dry, they shine in the sunlight, catching nearly all the bustle and the business, quite scorning the tame fields stretching damply beside them. One is tempted to ask: “Which is Holland – the shores or the water?” The very verdure that should be confined to the land has made a mistake and settled upon the fishponds. In fact, the entire country is a kind of saturated sponge, or, as the English poet Butler called it:

  A land that rides at anchor, and is moor’d,

  In which they do not live, but go aboard.*

  Persons are born, live and die, and even have their gardens on canal boats. Farmhouses, with roofs like great slouched hats pulled over their eyes, stand on wooden legs with a tucked-up sort of air, as if to say, “We intend to keep dry if we can.” Even the horses wear a wide stool on each hoof to lift them out of the mire. In short, the landscape everywhere suggests a paradise for ducks. It is a glorious country in summer for barefooted girls and boys. Such wading! Such mimic ship sailing! Such rowing, fishing and swimming! Only think of a chain of puddles where one can launch chip boats all day long, and never make a return trip! But enough. A full recital would set all my readers rushing in a body towards the Zuiderzee.*

  Dutch cities seem at first sight to be a bewildering jungle of houses, bridges, churches and ships, sprouting into masts, steeples and trees. In some cities vessels are hitched, like horses, to their owners’ doorposts, and receive their freight from the upper windows. Mothers scream to Lodewyk and Kassy not to swing on the garden gate for fear they may be drowned! Water roads are more frequent there than common roads and railways – water fences, in the form of lazy green ditches, enclose pleasure ground, farm and garden.

  Sometimes fine green hedges are seen, but wooden fences such as abound in America are rarely met with in Holland. As for stone fences, a Dutchman would lift his hands with astonishment at the very idea. There is no stone there, excepting those great masses of rock that have been brought from other lands to strengthen and protect the coast. All the small stones or pebbles, if there ever were any, seem to be imprisoned in pavements or quite melted away. Boys with strong, quick arms may grow from pinafores to full beards without ever finding one to start the water rings or set the rabbits flying. The water roads are nothing less than canals intersecting the country in every direction. These are of all sizes – from the great North Holland Ship Canal,* which is the wonder of the world, to those which a boy can leap. Water omnibuses, called trekschuiten, constantly ply up and down these roads for the conveyance of passengers, and water drays, called pakschuyten, are used for carrying fuel and merchandise. Instead of green country lanes, green canals stretch from field to barn and from barn to garden, and the farms – or polders, as they are termed – are merely great lakes pumped dry. Some of the busiest streets are water, while many of the country roads are paved with brick. The city boats, with their rounded sterns, gilt prows and gaily painted sides, are unlike any others under the sun, and a Dutch wagon, with its funny little crooked pole, is a perfect mystery of mysteries.

  “One thing is clear,” cries Master Brightside, “the inhabitants need never be thirsty.” But no, Odd-land is true to itself still. Notwithstanding the sea pushing to get in, and the lakes struggling to get out, and the overflowing canals, rivers and ditches, in many districts there is no water fit to swallow – our poor Hollanders must go dry, or drink wine and beer, or send far into the inland to Utrecht and other favoured localities for that precious fluid, older than Adam yet young as the morning dew. Sometimes, indeed, the inhabitants can swallow a shower, when they are provided with any means of catching it, but generally they are like the albatross-haunted sailors in Coleridge’s famous poem of The Ancient Mariner. They see:

  Water, water everywhere

  Nor any drop to drink!*

  Great flapping windmills all over the country make it look as if flocks of huge seabirds were just settling upon it. Everywhere one sees the funniest trees, bobbed into fantastical shapes, with their trunks painted a dazzling white, yellow or red. Horses are often yoked three abreast. Men, women and children go clattering about in wooden shoes with loose heels; peasant girls who cannot get beaux for love hire them for money to escort them to the fair; and husbands and wives lovingly harness themselves side by side on the bank of the canal and drag their pakschuyts to market.

  Another peculiar feature of Holland is the dune, or sand hill. These are numerous along certain portions of the coast. Before they were sown with coarse reed-grass and other plants to hold them down, they used to send great storms of sand over the inland. So, to add to the oddities, farmers sometimes dig down under the surface to find their soil, and on windy days dry showers (of sand) often fall upon fields that have grown wet under a week of sunshine.

  In short, almost the only familiar thing we can meet with in Holland is a harvest song which is quite popular there, though no linguist could translate it. Even then we must shut our eyes and listen only to the tune, which I leave you to guess.

  Yanker didee dudel down

  Didee dudel lawnter;

  Yankee viver, voover, vown,

  Botermelk und Tawnter!

  On the other hand, many of the oddities of Holland serve only to prove the thrift and perseverance of the people. There is not a richer or more carefully tilled garden spot in the whole world than this leaky, springy little country. There is not a graver, more heroic race than its quiet, passive-looking inhabitants. Few nations have equalled it in important discoveries and inventions, none has excelled it in commerce, navigation, learning and science – or set as noble examples in the promotion of education and public charities – and none in proportion to its extent has expended more money and labour upon public works.

  Holland has its shining annals o
f noble and illustrious men and women, its grand, historic records of patience, resistance and victory, its religious freedom, its enlightened enterprise, its art, its music and its literature. It has truly been called “the battlefield of Europe”* – as truly may we consider it the asylum of the world, for the oppressed of every nation have there found shelter and encouragement. If we Americans, who, after all, are homoeopathic preparations of Holland stock, can laugh at the Dutch, and call them human beavers, and hint that their country may float off any day at high tide, we can also feel proud, and say they have proved themselves heroes, and that their country will not float off while there is a Dutchman left to grapple it.

  There are said to be at least ninety-nine hundred large windmills in Holland, with sails ranging from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet long. They are employed in sawing timber, beating hemp, grinding and many other kinds of work, but their principal use is for pumping water from the lowlands into the canals, and for guarding against the inland freshets that so often deluge the country. Their yearly cost is said to be nearly ten millions of dollars. The large ones are of great power. Their huge, circular tower, rising sometimes from the midst of factory buildings, is surmounted with a smaller one tapering into a cap-like roof. This upper tower is encircled at its base with a balcony, high above which juts the axis, turned by its four prodigious, ladder-backed sails.

  Many of the windmills are primitive affairs, seeming sadly in need of Yankee “improvements”, but some of the new ones are admirable. They are so constructed that, by some ingenious contrivance, they present their fans, or wings, to the wind in precisely the right direction to work with the requisite power. In other words, the miller may take a nap and feel quite sure that his mill will study the wind, and make the most of it, until he wakens. Should there be but a slight current of air, every sail will spread itself to catch the faintest breath, but if a heavy “blow” should come, they will shrink at its touch, like great mimosa leaves, and only give it half a chance to move them.