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 to pieces.”

“But not in Holland,” exclaimed Nanking.  “There he gives the strong boys skates and the weak boys Canary wine.  He brought, one time, long ago, three murdered boys to life, so that they could eat goose for Christmas dinner.  And three poor maidens, whose lovers would not take them because they had no marriage portions, found gold on the window-sill to get them husbands.”

“Foei!  Fus! You’re lied to, Nanking!  There is no good Christmas in this land.”