shall ring in the old lists,
Cheer up, sick heart, who would not die among these Methodists?"

THE BIG IDIOT.

"Sister, thy boy is a big idiot--a very big idiot!" said Gerrit Van
Swearingen, the Schout of New Amstel. Then the Schout struck his long
official staff on the ground, and went off in a grand manner to
frighten debtors.

The Widow Cloos made no reply, but dropped a couple of tears as she
saw her son, Nanking, shrink away before his uncle's frown and roll
his head in deprecation of such language.

"My mother," he whispered, "won't the big wild turkeys fly away with
my uncle Gerrit if he calls me such dreadful names?"

"Nanking," said the widow, kissing the big idiot, "your uncle is a
very great man. I don't know what is greater, unless it is an admiral,
or a stadtholder, or maybe a king!"

"Yes," conceded Nanking, "he is a dreadfully great man. He puts
drunken Indians in the stocks and ties mighty smugglers up to the
whipping-pump. But Saint Nicholas will punish him if he calls me an
idiot."

"Ah! Nanking," replied the widow, "nothing can curb your
uncle--neither the valiant Captain Hinoyossa, nor the puissant
director of every thing, great Beeckman, nor hardly Pietrus Stuyvesant
himself."

"I know who can frighten him," exclaimed the big idiot. "Santa Claus!
He's bigger than a schout. Mother, his whip-lash can reach clear over
New Amstel--isn't it so? How many deers and ponies does he drive? Will
he bring me any thing this year?"

"My poor son!" said the poor mother, "we are so far from Holland and
so very humble here, that Saint Nicholas may forget us this year; but
God will watch over us!"

Nanking could hardly comprehend this astonishing statement: that Saint
Nicholas could ever forget little boys anywhere. So he went out by the
river to think about it. There were three or four Swedish boys out
there rolling marbles and playing at jack-stones. They did not like to
play with Dutch boys, but Nanking was only a big idiot, and they did
not harbor malice against him.

"_He! Zoo!_" they cried; "wilt thou play?"

"Yes, directly. But tell me, Peter Stalcop, and you, Paul Mink, do the
very poorest little boys in Sweden get nothing on Christmas?"

"_Ah, Zon der tuijfel!_ without doubt," cried the boys. "Old Knecht
Clobes, your Santa Claus, is a bad man. That is why he gave the Dutch
our country here. And in Sweden, too, he turns people to wolves, and
brothers and sisters tear each other t