Stories of the Pilgrims

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ... A PERPLEXING PROBLEM WHEN they first came to Holland, everything seemed strange to the English children. The gay-colored houses with their floors of blue tile, their queer little fireplaces, and their steep roofs, were very different from the homes they had left in England. They had never seen wooden shoes such as the Dutch children wore. The dikes to keep out the sea, the giant windmills, and the canals all seemed odd. Strangest of all was the language. They thought they could never learn it. But after they had lived in Holland a few years these things did not seem so strange. The little English children began to like the Dutch dress and ways. They liked the canal streets, the whirling windmills, and the Dutch cottages. They liked the pretty, bright dresses and gold cap-buttons which the Dutch girls wore, and wished to dress like them. They sometimes coaxed their mothers to wear pretty lace caps and fine earrings such as their neighbors wore. "It is not right for you to care so much about pretty clothes," said their parents. "Plain caps and dresses are more suitable for Pilgrims." These children soon learned the language of Holland, and liked it almost as well as their native one. Indeed, some of them liked it better, and often spoke Dutch at home instead of English. It was now eleven years since the Pilgrims had come to Holland. In this time many babies had been born in their new homes. When these little ones began to talk, their parents taught them to speak English, but when they were old enough to play out of doors, they heard Dutch all about them, and when they went to school they heard nothing but that language. Soon the little ones were speaking better Dutch than English. This was a real sorrow to the Pilgrim fathers and mothers,...