Hollander

“ He is the fire-side friend, the assiduous companion of the infirm or sick; over his book the faces of betrothed lovers first approach each other; his verses are the first to be learned by the child, and the last to be pronounced by the grandfather. No poet was ever more beloved. Every Hollander smiles at the sound of his name, and no foreigner has been in Holland without learning to pronounce it with sympathy and respect. ”

“ Amidst the political storms which have agitated Holland for so many years, more fatal to its prosperity than those of the ocean, in which it almost appears to float, education has never been neglected: to bestow upon his children decent and useful instruction, has ever formed the anxious care of the Hollander: he feels that whilst he trains their minds to habits of investigation and industry, he secures to them, under any form of government, the sources of support and advancement. ”

“ I am glad to answer to the toast, "The Hollander as an American." The Hollander was a good American, because the Hollander was fitted to be a good citizen. There are two branches of government which must be kept on a high plane, if any nation is to be great. A nation must have laws that are honestly and fearlessly administered, and a nation must be ready, in time of need, to fight [applause] , and we men of Dutch descent have here to-night these gentlemen of the same blood as ourselves who represent New York so worthily on the bench, and a Major-General of the Army of the United States. ”

“ Never relaxing his vigilance for a moment in placing the brigantine advantageously in her berth, the burly Hollander nevertheless had an eye open for other things. A cloud passed over his shiny face as the stern touched; he stepped swiftly to the rail and peered over; two natives stood by, and he sent them hurrying forward with a Low Malay expletive that made them jump in fright. Then he peered over the side again, his face cleared, and he returned to his post at the stern fair-lead, shouting to his men to carry along the sternfasts. ”

“ The Young Pole had by this time recovered sufficiently to get upon his hands and knees behind the Zulu; who was hurriedly but calmly propelling himself in the direction of the cherished cigarette-holder, which had rolled under the remains of the stove. Bill The Hollander made for his enemy, raising perpendicularly ten feet in air the unrecognisably dented summit of the pipe which his colossal fists easily encompassed, the muscles in his treelike arms rolling beneath the chemise like balloons. ”

“ Germany would then "own" Holland. But would a single German citizen be the richer for the ownership? The Hollander, from having been the citizen of a small and insignificant State, would become the citizen of a very great one. Would the individual Hollander be any the richer or any the better? ”

“ I was awakened by a roar, a human roar, a roar such as only a Hollander can make when a Hollander is honestly angry. As I rose from the domain of the subconscious, the idea that the roar belonged to Bill The Hollander became conviction. Bill The Hollander, alias America Lakes, slept next to The Young Pole (by whom I refer to that young stupid-looking farmer with that peaches-and-cream complexion and those black puttees who had formed the rear rank, with the aid of The Zulu Himself, upon the arrival of Babysnatcher, Bill, Box, Zulu, and Young Pole aforesaid) . ”

“ No object of ambition, no source of professional wealth or distinction, remained to which a Hollander could aspire. None could voluntarily enter the army or navy, to fight for the worst enemy of Holland. The clergy were not provided with a decent competency. The ancient laws of the country, so dear to its pride and its prejudices, were replaced by the Code Napoleon; so that old practitioners had to recommence their studies, and young men were disgusted with the drudgery of learning a system which was universally pronounced unfit for a commercial country. ”

“ The Dutchman is vastly ceremonious, and is perhaps exactly what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are the better bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature: upon a head of lank hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat laced with black ribbon ”

“ I have not the honour to be known to his Highness, but, I assure you, that no man in this kingdom wishes him better, nor is more his friend than myself, nor loves the honest plain-dealing people more than I do, for such I ever found the common Hollander to be in his calling, be it great or small. ”

“ The Hollander who thus emigrates is probably a man of no family, whereas the old Colonist can go back with his pedigree at least for two centuries and who thinks very much of his ancestors. The Hollander is educated and is said to be pedantic and priggish before those who speak his own language. And in the matter of language these new Dutchmen or Hollanders complain much of the bad Dutch they hear in the Colony and give great offence by such complaints. ”

“ Bill the Hollander, whom we had grown to like, whereas at first we were inclined to fear him, Bill the Hollander who washed some towels and handkerchiefs and what-nots for us and turned them a bright pink, Bill the Hollander who had tried so hard to teach The Young Pole the lesson which he could only learn from The Fighting Sheeney, left us about a week after la commission. ”

“ The Hollander is a very conservative individual, and therefore some curious customs still prevail among the peasant and working classes in the Netherlands, especially in the Eastern provinces, for there the people are most primitive, and there it is that we find many queer old rhymes, apparently without any sense in them, but which must have had their origin in forgotten national or domestic events. ”

“ When New Amsterdam had but a few hundred souls, among those few hundred souls no less than eighteen different race-stocks were represented, and almost as many creeds as there were race-stocks, and the great contribution that the Hollander gave to the American people was, as your President has so ably said, the inestimable lesson of complete civil and religious liberty. ”

“ The amor patriæ of the Swiss is proverbial—that of the Dutchman is quite as strong, though not so well known.
“The Hollander (says Mr. Chambers,) is bred up from his infancy to have the highest ideas of his “Vaderland”—of her people—her warriors—her wealth—her power. He is taught to consider this Vaderland as standing highest in the rank of nations—that every thing belonging to her is best. He is an admirer, without being a benefactor of his country—a patriot without public spirit—contented and self-satisfied with his country and every thing belonging thereto.” ”

“ We also need to teach the lesson, that the Hollander taught, of not refusing to do the small things because the day of large things had not yet come or was in the past; of not waiting until the chance may come to distinguish ourselves in arms, and meanwhile neglecting the plain, prosaic duties of citizenship which call upon us every hour, every day of our lives. ”

“ Holland, in Rooms 113-116, shows an art so different in its characteristics from that of Sweden that she might be at the other end of the earth. Where the Swedish artists show boldness, sometimes almost to the point of crudeness, the Dutch are intent on some degree of finish. Modernity of color is apparent, and while there are few strokes that indicate timidity, there are fine touches of the poetic in which the Hollander's heart shows its love of home and gardens. ”

“ I made a flying leap at the structure and gained it in safety, just as there dashed by me at full speed—a Hollander of some six summers, bound to market with a basket on his arm!
14“S-Gravenhage,” as the Dutchman calls his capital, was a city teeming with interest; but Holland was one of those countries which I purposed to “do” in orthodox tourist fashion and, after a few short hours in the royal borough, I sought out the highway to Leiden. ”

“ To a comparatively small country like Holland the use of Latin as an international language of scholarshipLatin Prose. was an even more obvious convenience than to larger countries. The most distinguished Hollander of the Renaissance, Erasmus, is not thought of as a Dutch author, and the same is true, in a somewhat less degree, of several notable Dutchmen of the seventeenth century, distinguished not only by their learning but by their contributions to the belles lettres of humanism, such as Daniel Heinsius, Isaac Vossius, and Hugo Grotius. ”

“ Hardly any Hollander remains a bachelor, unless by accident or necessity; and as soon as he arrives at maturity he seeks a wife, and is anxious to be surrounded by a family. In the new relation he has an additional stimulus to the acquisition of wealth ”

“ Everywhere in the little terrestrial triangle of this newest of republics there was the activity of men who had just escaped destruction by the narrowest of margins. They had faith in their own destiny. Any one who can go through an open rebellion against the mightiest of monarchs and come out successfully deserves the commendation of the Almighty. The Hollanders had succeeded. Their harbors, the lungs of the country, were free once more, and could breathe the fresh air of the open sea and of commercial prosperity. ”

“ They and their husbands were devoted to one another but the Indian cannot be really happy amid European surroundings, and the Hollander can never accustom himself to the Indian life, so there is always an impassable gulf between husband and wife.
I let him finish quietly, before I brought my own ideas to the light of day; "Mijnheer Van Kol, if I should go to Holland, my intention is to be educated for a profession, that of teaching preferably, and when I come back I plan to open an institute for the daughters of native chiefs. It is to study that I wish to go there." ”

“ A Hollander makes a very strong American when he is caught young. On shipboard I made the acquaintance of a young man about 25 years old who had been in America nine years, and was now going to his birthplace, [90] The Hague, on business for the Chicago firm with which he is connected. I met him in The Hague this week. He wore a western cowboy hat, had a small American flag in his button-hole, and wore no vest. The stories he was telling about the United States to his Dutch friends showed that he would have made a success as a real-estate man if he had settled in western Kansas. ”

“ Gentlemen, there seems to be an impression that the Holland Society, because it does not have a Club-house—and it may have a Club-house, that remains for you to decide; and because it does not have a great many other things, has no reason for its existence. But, gentlemen, there is one sufficient reason for the existence of the Hollanders in a Society. We have eight hundred and forty members, and each one of us has a function—to teach our neighboring Yankees just exactly what we are, whence we came, and where we mean to go. ”

“ Only, a few weeks ago I heard that in their contest for liberty with the cruel Spaniards, the Hollanders had cut these same dykes, and let in the salt sea on their grand farms and beautiful towns. Any one who has ever lived in Holland will understand what must have been their zeal for liberty to make them willing to let so much dirt into their houses. I hope with all my heart they may succeed, for if any people on earth have the right to their own country it is the Dutch.
"When shall we be at Rotterdam?" asked my uncle. ”

“ The Hollanders built their government upon the hearthstone, believing it to be the earthly rock of ages to a nation that would build wisely for the future. And while it is true that they regarded commerce as the life-blood of the material existence of a people, they nevertheless found their inspiration for multifarious duties in the genial sunshine of the family circle. ”

“ We have many friends among the Hollanders whom we love dearly, even more than we do friends of our own race. They have taken the trouble to try and understand us, and they have won our love. We shall never forget that we have to thank the Hollanders for the awakening of our minds, for our civilization. ”

“ The Hollanders resisted him, defeated him, and gave the first precedent for civil and religious liberty.
Their success was the stimulant to similar efforts in other countries. These efforts were not always successful; sometimes, indeed, they were defeated, and governments were apparently all the stronger by reason of the failure in the attempt to control them. But the example of the Dutch was never forgotten, and the prosperity of free Holland was always a stimulant to those other races which struggled for freedom. ”

“ The common people did not then distinguish between us and the Hollanders, calling both of us English, because the Hollanders had usurped our name on first coming here for trade, in which they did us much wrong, as we used often to hear the people in the streets railing against the English, when they actually meant the Hollanders; so that, fearing some of our men might be stabbed instead of them, we endeavoured to fall upon some plan to make ourselves be distinguished from them. ”

“ They are a most filthy race, and will feed upon any thing, however foul. When the Hollanders kill a beast, these people get the guts, and having squeezed out the excrements, without washing or scraping, they lay them upon the coals, and eat them before they are well heated through. If even a slave of the Hollanders wish to have one of their women, he has only to give her husband a piece of tobacco. ”

“ Gerard was in the shop. His eldest and youngest sons were abroad. Catherine and her little crippled daughter had long been anxious about Gerard, and now they were gone a little way down the road, to see if by good luck he might be visible in the distance; and Giles was alone in the sitting-room, which I will sketch, furniture and dwarf included.
The Hollanders were always an original and leading people. At different epochs they invented printing (wooden type) , oil-painting, liberty, banking, gardening, &c.; above all, years before my tale, they invented cleanliness. ”