USA > New York > Kings County > Flatbush > The social history of Flatbush : and manners and customs of the Dutch settlers in Kings county > Part 25
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A neighbor of ours related to us her experience in this mat- ter. She had secreted a number of gold coins in one of those round, ball-shaped pincushions which the Dutch matrons some- times wore suspended by a ribbon at their side. A party of English soldiers, on entering the room, noticed this novelty (as it was to them) in the good lady's dress. One of them playfully, although not very politely, cut the ribbon with his sword, and the whole party had a boisterous game of ball with the pin- cushion. Once or twice it bounced in the ashes of the broad, open fireplace, from which it was snatched up and tossed again from hand to hand. To show any anxiety would have betrayed the value of the property, so that the owner was obliged to con- tinue her work unmoved, although, had they torn the cushion in their rough play, she would have lost all the money she had saved when the war broke out.
Not only was our property insecure, but our homes were liable at any time to be invaded, and seclusion was almost im- possible ; there were at various times soldiers billeted upon us arbitrarily without our consent, and often without compensa- tion. A Waldeck regiment, commanded by Colonel De Horn, was quartered upon our village in this manner, as were also
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some soldiers who had fought in Canada through the French war, and afterward a Saxon regiment. In addition to this, the quiet of our homes was invaded by companies of soldiers march- ing from place to place. I remember one evening that we were all, even sick Father, turned out of the house by a small com- pany of soldiers who took possession. Fortunately, they soon received marching orders, and they left as suddenly as they came.
The American prisoners had our warmest sympathy. They were on parole, and were not guarded strictly; they could go about where they close. When the French fleet under Count D'Estaing was expected, these prisoners went daily to see the vessels from the hill.
I took no pains to disguise my sympathy for the American prisoners and my warm interest in the cause of freedom. My sister sometimes begged me not to express my opinions so open- ly in the presence of the British, and Mother checked me often, telling me that I was acting unwisely. On one occasion a line of artillery wagons was passing. The foremost driver, to avoid a muddy portion of road, turned his horses upon the side- walk in front of our house. I was determined that the second should not do the same; I rushed out to frighten the horses, and succeeded so well that they overturned the wagon. I was obliged to retreat precipitately, and Mother had to meet the storm I had raised. An old German doctor, who was a frequent visitor at our house, laughed immoderately at my heroic attack upon the artillery and my subsequent discomfiture. I can see him now as he stood giving a description of the whole scene to a tall Hessian officer. He turned to me, exclaiming between the paroxysms of laughter :
" Oh, vat a heroine vas our leetle Femmetia! She attack dese big artillery-mon! She attack him wis a gun? Oh, no! wis a broomsteek ! eh, Fem ? a broomsteek!"
Then he broke out afresh, and the contagion extended to the tall Hessian, whose name was so impressed upon me by the very vividness of the whole scene that I can recall it to this day, un- pronounceable as it is. When the old doctor saw me blushing
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deeply, mortified as I was at his description, his kind heart misgave him, for I was a great pet of his, and, patting me affec- tionately on the head, he said :
" Navair mind ; she's our brave leetle lady, Captain Bumb- bochk, and een moije vrouw, eh ? "
The old doctor was very fond of a joke, and I knew that he was telling Father the story over again soon after, for I heard his voice in Father's room, and he was laughing as loudly as before.
We were, as I have said, subjected to constant exactions, from which we had no means of redress. On one occasion, as old Cæsar was plowing, in the almost hopeless endeavor to cultivate our vegetable garden, a soldier came up and demanded the horses for the British service. Cæsar, always true to us, promptly and indignantly refused to take them from the plow. Little Cato, who was an interested spectator, ran to the house to inform Mother of the predatory design of the redcoat. Fa- ther overheard the child's account. He had a high fever, and had been ill in bed for some time. Under the excitement of anger and fever united, he rose and dressed himself. Taking his heavy cane, he went to the field, and with the aid of Cæsar he administered such correction to the soldier that he sought safety in flight. Strange to say, the exertion cured Father of the fever. He broke out in a profuse perspiration, and, although he was much exhausted, he had no fever afterward, and was able to sit up in his arm-chair for the rest of the day.
Large sums of money were loaned by the inhabitants of Kings County for the advancement of the American cause. The agent for collecting this money was intrusted by Governor Clinton with blank notes signed by himself. These blanks the agent filled out with the sum given. The greatest secrecy was neces- sary in collecting this money, as it was attended with imminent danger to all concerned. Through her thrift, economy, and in- dustry, Mother was enabled to appropriate five hundred pounds to this object. This she gave in small sums at a time, and on one occasion, as she was counting out the money into the hands of the agent, she saw, on looking up, a British officer enter the
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door-yard. For the Major to escape from the house was impos- sible, and had he been seen his life would have been forfeited.
" Femmetia," said my mother, " hurry out to meet that offi- cer. Don't let him come in this room as you value your life."
" Talk as fast as you can, Fem, and be as entertaining as possible," said the Major, looking anxiously toward the ap- proaching figure.
"Let my sister come with me," said I, rather timid at ac- cepting so great responsibility.
"No! no!" said my mother imperatively. "Too much depends on it. Don't fail us now, child ! "
She looked sternly at me, and I felt she was right, for the consciousness of danger had already brought the color to my sister's face ; it must depend upon me alone to divert any sus- picion, should such be aroused, on the part of the Englishman.
I hurried out of the room as they rapidly gathered up the coin they had been counting, and Mother went to look for a hiding-place for the Major, who was an old friend of ours. I could hear the doors opened and closed ; I could hear a word in Dutch now and then; happily, our visitor could not understand it ; but I did my best to look unconscious, and I believe I suc- ceeded. I had been in the habit of expressing my opinions pretty freely, and, if I chatted on this occasion more rapidly than usual, the officer probably thought that I was in good spirits, and would be rather more entertaining company than if he went in the next room to look for my father and mother. He staid what appeared to me an unreasonably long time, and left without a suspicion of who was under the same roof with himself, and of the treason being enacted almost within his reach.
Never before nor since have I had such weighty reasons for striving to attract attention to myself, and this was the only time during the war that Mother ever expressed gratification that I had succeeded in entertaining an English officer.
LEGENDS. ~
[The Dutch word for legend is " Een verzierde vertelling," or "gebloemd vertelling." As told to children, in contradis- 25
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tinction to the real or probable, such legendary lore and ghost stories were called " sprookjes." Flatbush, like every old town, has its legends. They grow as do the mosses on old houses or the lichens on tombstones, the gradual and undisturbed accu- mulations of time. We regret that more of these were not pre- served; of some we have only the tattered fragments, too scanty and too much frayed to piece together. There are two legends which have been preserved, fortunately for us, as they were caught in the meshes of the printer before they escaped the memories of those who held them, and those we here offer.]
THE LEGEND OF POPE'S LANE.
Once upon a time-the true legendary date-there lived among us a sable son of Africa, who possessed, like most of his race, an intense love of music and wondrous skill upon the vio- lin. He was familiarly known as Pope's Joe, from his employ- er, who also gave his name to the narrow lane in which he lived, which led from Flatbush to the ancient settlement of Gowanus.
It was on a sultry summer night that our modern Orpheus went forth to win his Ethiopian Eurydice from the Cerberus of daily toil ; but, owing to the oppressive heat, he seated himself by the wayside, not far from his master's gate, to rest, and drawing forth his violin began to beguile his time with his be- loved instrument. Southward a great bank of cloud piled up in masses had gathered to itself with miserly avidity all the gold of sunset; then, as the twilight had stolen its treasure, it grew black and glowered darkly on the panting earth below. Flashes of heat-lightning shimmered along the horizon ; more and more oppressive seemed the heated air. All was silent save our mu- sician ; he, all unconscious of cloud or heat, was spellbound by his own music, as if his instrument had been the very master- piece of Stradivarius.
Suddenly, with thunderous sound and vivid flash, there stood before him a wild demon form. Before, he played from love of the melody he evoked ; now he dared not pause, for his Satanic Majesty imperiously motioned him to play, and then began to dance in the wildest measure to which a musician was ever
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called to furnish music. The witches who lured Macbeth to destruction, the weird creatures who meet in conclave on the Harz Mountains, were tame in movement compared with the wondrous agility of this specter. Its motions were as if the heat-lightning played and flashed, and then, instead of going out into sudden darkness, continued to entwine and braid itself and twist its vivid length into fiery contortions; now gliding in vivid convolutions, like wheels in a pyrotechnic display, and anon dropping its lithe limbs into kaleidoscopic variety of attitude and position. The wearied arm of the musician dared not fal- ter ; longer and longer he played, more and more rapid grew the movements of the dance, until a false note produced a sud- den discord that jarred upon the temper of the fiend. In angry passion, he stamped his foot upon a stone and disappeared in a blinding flash.
The clear sun was shining upon the multitudinous raindrops on every bush and blade when the musician opened his eyes. The birds were singing their morning songs, and the sky was as blue as if no cloud had ever dimmed its serene height.
There were those who had vainly striven to compete with the skill of this performer on the violin, and, when he related to his wondering listeners the story of his marvelous adventure, they attempted to impugn his veracity. In sheer envy they suggested that his ability needed the endorsement of such Sa- tanic approval. They even meanly hinted that he might have imbibed something from old Master's cellar-perhaps it was apple-jack, or it may have been metheglin, a strong and heady drink much thought of in those times, and apt to produce dia- bolic appearances to the infatuated mortal who had contracted a love for the insidious beverage.
Vain endeavor to rob the hero of that one laurel with which he sought to crown himself! Idle attempt to explain away the supernatural ! Nature had made herself his ally ; the very stone upon the highway has testified to his story and perpetuated the record !
The imprint of the cloven foot of the evil one was stamped upon the stone before he vanished out of sight. There it re-
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mained long after the old musician had passed away, and he and his violin had become mute together.
Is it not well that the haunted spot has become part of Green- wood, and the stone-the foundation-stone of the legend-has been lost amid the somber, ghostly shadows of that city of the dead ?
We should not have ventured to point out the imprint of that cloven foot to the incredulity of this age. The hammer of science might have rapped too heavily upon our legend, and broken into the secret that for so many years it held up to the undoubting faith of a past generation.
THE DOMINE'S RIDE-A LEGEND OF THE OLD ROAD.
In the year 1746 the distance between Flatbush and Brook- lyn seemed greater than at present. The one town was not any more thickly settled than the other, and they were divided by long intervals of forest, broad farms, and a stony ridge of hills. Where now the cars roll by every few minutes, offering easy access from the shady village road to the busy streets of the city, then only from time to time a solitary wagon lumbered on along the sandy highway, or a horseman, with perhaps some Dutch vrouw on the pillion behind him, plodded wearily over the intervening hill. The house in which Mr. John Lefferts now resides was the last in the village, and marked the limits of Steenraap, as this portion of Flatbush was called in distinction from Dorp, which was more central. From this spot to what is now the very heart of Brooklyn, only here and there a lonely farmhouse, separated by tracts of woodland, cheered the soli- tude.
The Domine, accustomed to city life in Amsterdam, was in the habit of beguiling his spare time by friendly visits among the settlers at Brooklyn. Upon one of these occasions he be- came deeply involved in a discussion on the newly organized Cætus, an assembly of ministers and elders subordinate to the Classis of Holland, then just established, being the first judica- tory higher than a consistory in the Dutch Church in America. He had himself been appointed by the Classis of Amsterdam as
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bearer of dispatches on this subject; "the appointment indi- cating," as Carlyle says of Sterling, " a man expected to do the best on the occasion." It was, therefore, natural that he should enter into the subject with a zeal which made him forgetful of the flight of time, and the solemn Dutch clock in the corner raised both astonished hands to warn him that midnight ap- proached ere he was recalled to the fact of the long, lonely ride before him. Hastily lighting his pipe, and bidding Mynheer his host good night, he rode out through the wide barnyard gate, which old Cato swung open for him, into the darkness beyond.
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It was a moonless, cloudy night. The road was darkened by the over-reaching trees that seemed to nod to each other mysteriously overhead, and to whisper some secret across lis path at the suggestion of the evening breeze. Through the nar- row opening cut by the road he could see the faint line of sky, but it gave no light down through this rift of the forest. As he approached the clearing of a settler, he could see the farmhouse outlined in the shadow, with, perhaps, a solitary candle lighted in an upper chamber by an anxious mother for a restless child. Then the fireflies seemed to beckon him off again into the un- certain darkness, and as he passed on the woods closed around him, and the night seemed darker than before. The hill crossed, he must descend where the road led through a low and marshy district. An uncanny spot was this which now lay before him ! Old legends place evil spirits and ghosts in such shadowy cor- ners. Even to this day a damper air strikes the traveler as he turns down to this hollow ; a darker shadow rests upon the road here, and a mistiness and dampness from the ponds beyond make the place miasmatic and unhealthy.
As he approached this spot the Domine tightened the reins and strove to encourage his steed into some gait quicker than the usual pace of a ministerial horse. He thrust his pipe in his pocket, and, patting the neck of the animal, in grateful ac- knowledgment it started off into a brisk trot. A pleasant breeze springing up at the same time, induced the traveler to hope that this haunted region might prove even an agreeable change from
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the stony hilltop. Suddenly he was startled by a faint light which seemed to follow him at close and equal rate. Vainly he looked around; no object was perceptible. A vigorous appli- cation of the whip roused the horse to increase his speed, but no diminution of the light proved that he had gone beyond its source.
Away went the horse under application of whip and spur, but with increased rapidity the noiseless pursuer seemed to fol- low. The puzzled Domine looked over his shoulder, but the darkness of the road revealed no cause for the strange phenom- enon. The trees glided swiftly by ; the little round-topped hill, like an inverted bowl, was soon passed; the limits of this haunt- ed region seemed near, and yet brighter and brighter grew the light, and warmer and warmer its breath. The woods that un- til now had almost closed above his head began to disappear; familiar trees here and there stood out in bold relief, and the distant crowing of a cock announced close proximity to the vil- lage. Presently he had left the swampy hollow behind, but still in pursuit as swift, with its hot breath close behind him, the phantom followed. Vainly the Domine applied the whip: the swiftest pace of the tired animal could not increase the dis- tance between the pursuer and the pursued.
The saints and monks of early date who record with evident gusto their battlings with supernatural visitors, and even with the foul fiend himself, were not taken at the same disadvantage as our hero. What cause for boasting had St. Jerome, St. Fran- cis, or St. Simon, who met the adversary in fair field and had only to say an Ave Maria, a Paternoster, or to make the sign of the cross, and their grim opponent was utterly annihilated ? Such a stock of spiritual weapons was utterly unavailable to one of the good Domine's faith. He would have refused to equip himself thus from the armory of Rome; carnal weapons he had none, and he had professed utter disbelief in the whole battalion of ghosts, spirits, phantoms, and fiends which were marshaled in fearful array in the superstitious credulity of the age. It was therefore a malicious as well as an ungenerous on- slaught upon him, this pursuit in the darkness. It was not a
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chivalrous phantom that, instead of a bold face-to-face attack, would come upon him unawares and follow him unseen. The culpable neglect of all ghostly etiquette, moreover, was inex- cusable in his indefatigable pursuer. Had not the ghost-haunted hollow been left behind, and yet the phantom not been exor- cised ? Had not the cock crowed, but the ghost had turned deaf ear to the warning?
Now he reaches the village; house after house flies by him unnoticed, for he knows that home is near. Utterly exhausted, he no longer urges on his weary steed; he is unequal to any further effort, and the horse, by his own instinct, turns in at the open gate and stops at the back stoop of the low-eaved house, where the negro boy Tom, finding his excuse in the late- ness of the hour, has lost, in the oblivion of sleep, all conscious- ness that be was stationed there to await his master's return.
The candle of the Juffrouw reveals the fact that the volu- minous garments then so generally worn had suffered severely from contact with fire. The half-extinguished pipe thrust hastily in his pocket might account for the result; but let us scorn such a subterfuge from incredulity. It is well known that ghosts are opposed to knowledge as deadly to their very exist- ence; and as the old Domine was a very learned man, we see good reason why they should be particularly exasperated against him. We therefore take a bold stand, and agree with those who at the time did not hesitate to assert as their belief that the Domine was pursued with vindictive zeal by a fiery phantom from the Clove in the Hollow.
THE END.
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BOSTON UNIVERSITY
1 1719 01572 1568
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