Mary Mapes Dodge
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates
Children’s Classics
e-artnow, 2020
Contact: [email protected]
EAN: 4064066057923
Table of Contents
Introducing Jacob Poot and His Cousin
The Festival of Saint Nicholas
What the Boys Saw and Did in Amsterdam
Big Manias and Little Oddities
Mynheer Kleef and His Bill of Fare
The Red Lion Becomes Dangerous
The Merchant Prince and the Sister-Princess
Mysterious Disappearance of Thomas Higgs
To my father
James J. Mapes
this book is dedicated
in gratitude and love
Preface
This little work aims to combine the instructive features of a book of travels with the interest of a domestic tale. Throughout its pages the descriptions of Dutch localities, customs, and general characteristics have been given with scrupulous care. Many of its incidents are drawn from life, and the story of Raff Brinker is founded strictly upon fact.
While acknowledging my obligations to many well-known writers on Dutch history, literature, and art, I turn with especial gratitude to those kind Holland friends who, with generous zeal, have taken many a backward glance at their country for my sake, seeing it as it looked twenty years ago, when the Brinker home stood unnoticed in sunlight and shadow.
Should this simple narrative serve to give my young readers a just idea of Holland and its resources, or present true pictures of its inhabitants and their every-day life, or free them from certain current prejudices concerning that noble and enterprising people, the leading desire in writing it will have been satisfied.
Should it cause even one heart to feel a deeper trust in God’s goodness and love, or aid any in weaving a life, wherein, through knots and entanglements, the golden thread