Rembrandt and Six, paid a fitting tribute to the great burgomaster,
as a "lover of science, art, and virtue."

XII

PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN

The story is told of a little child who, upon being introduced to a
kind-faced lady, looked up brightly into her eyes with the question,
"Whose mother are you?" When we look into the wrinkled old face of
this picture, the same sort of a question springs to mind, and we
involuntarily ask, "Whose grandmother are you?" We are sure that
children and grandchildren have leaned upon that capacious lap. The
name of the subject is not known, though the same face appears many
times in Rembrandt's works. But there are many people whose names we
can quote, of whom we know much less than of this old woman.

The story of her life is written in the picture. Those clasped hands,
large and knotted, have done much hard work. They have ministered to
the needs of two generations. They have dandled the baby on her knee,
and supported the little toddler taking his first steps. They have
tended the child and wrought for the youth. They have built the fire
on the hearth and swept out the house; they have kneaded the bread and
filled the kettle; they have spun and woven, and sewed and mended.
They have not even shrunk from the coarser labors of dooryard and
field, the care of the cattle, the planting and harvesting. But labor
has done nothing to coarsen the innate refinement of the soul which
looks out of the fine old face.

She is resting now. The children and grandchildren have grown up to
take care of themselves and their grandmother also. She has time to
sit down in the twilight of life, just as she used to sit down at the
close of each day's work, to think over what has happened. She has a
large comfortable chair, and she is neatly dressed, as befits an old
woman whose life work is done. A white kerchief is folded across her
bosom, a shawl is wrapped about her shoulders, and a hood droops over
her forehead. Her thoughts are far away from her present surroundings;
something sad occupies them. She dreams of the past and perhaps also
of the future. Sorrow as well as work has had a large share in her
life, but she has borne it all with patient resignation. She is not
one to complain, and does not mean to trouble others with her sadness.
But left all alone with her musings, a look of yearning comes into her
eyes as for something beautiful and much loved, lost long ago.

Some painters have