St. Nicholas, An Illustrated Magazine, Vol. 22

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Excerpt from St. Nicholas, An Illustrated Magazine, Vol. 22: For Young Folks Melaatij lived with her grandmother in a little thatched cottage on the edge of the village of 'sGravendeel, in Holland. The cottage was built of yellow and black bricks set in curious figures, and there was a low door so cut in the middle that, while the lower part was closed, the upper part might be opened. It was painted green, and was quite overgrown with hop-vines. Beside the door was a long wooden bench, and on this bench might be seen several huge cans of brass, shining like gold in the sun. When it is said that there were two square windows, and a huge chimney about which the swallows flew, there is little to add. Inside, the floor was made of bright, red tiles, and just opposite the door was the hearth, with the fireplace, huge and set with blue tiles, and over the fire of peat hung a large iron pot on a crane, and from the pot, which had a shiny brass rim, came a most appetizing sputtering and bubbling sound. On one side of the room, and almost filling it, was a large mahogany double-decked bed, built into the wall, like a closet, with doors which were to be closed tightly to keep out the draughts at night - such a queer bed, with bright tulips painted in staring colors all over it. Arranged in a line on the wall were a number of old Delft plates and pitchers and mugs, and these, with the huge chest of linen, constituted the household treasures. The houses of 'sGravendeel, after the fashion of most Dutch villages, were all built after one model, their gable ends facing the road which followed the dijke along the canal. And at either end of the village was a huge windmill, painted black and white, with long arms, on which were wide sails of tanned canvas, looking like brown velvet against the sky. Except on market days, few people came through 'sGravendeel, and rarely was any noise heard, save the screaming of the geese, or the rumble of the two mills. The road along the dijke led from the neighboring village of Deel-op-den-Dyke to Dort, but, as I say, except on market days, people very seldom wanted to go to Dort, and the people of Dort seemed never to think of Deel-op-den-Dyke. So, save the waving arms of the two windmills, and an occasional sight of one of the miller's men, all dusty white, setting the sails in the direction of the wind, there was little stirring in the village. With the first beams of the sun, the thrifty peasants betake them to the fields, and they work their small plots of land to such purpose that the whole country, as seen from the high windows of the mills, resembles a huge patchwork of different tones of green. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.