“I am delighted with this book. Thank you, Father,” she said, touching the top one with her chin. “I shall read it all day long.” “Aye, sweetheart,” said mynheer, “you cannot do better. There is no one like Father Cats. If my daughter learns his ‘Moral Emblems’ by heart, the mother and I may keep silent. The work you have there is the Emblems--his best work. You will find it enriched with rare engravings from Van de Venne.” Considering that the back of the book was turned away, mynheer certainly showed a surprising familiarity with an unopened volume, presented by Saint Nicholas. It was strange, too, that the saint should have found certain things made by the elder children and had actually placed them upon the table, labeled with parents’ and grandparents’ names. But all were too much absorbed in happiness to notice slight inconsistencies. Hilda saw, on her father’s face, the rapt expression he always wore when he spoke of Jakob Cats, so he put her armful of books upon the table and resigned herself to listen. “Old Father Cats, my child, was a great poet, not a writer of plays like the Englishman, Shakespeare, who lived in his time. I have read them in the German and very good they are--very, very good--but not like Father Cats. Cats sees no daggers in the air; he has no white women falling in love with dusky Moors; no young fools sighing to be a lady’s glove; no crazy princes mistaking respectable old gentlemen for rats. No, no. He writes only sense. It is great wisdom in little bundles, a bundle for every day of your life. You can guide a state with Cats’s poems, and you can put a little baby to sleep with his pretty songs. He was one of the greatest men of Holland. When I take you to The Hague, I will show you the Kloosterkerk where he lies buried. THERE was a man for you to study, my sons! He was good through and through. What did he say? “O Lord, let me obtain this from Thee To live with patience, and to die with pleasure! *{O Heere! laat my daat van uwen hand verwerven, Te leven met gedult, en met vermaak te sterven.} “Did patience mean folding his hands? No, he was a lawyer, statesman, ambassador, farmer, philosopher, historian, and poet. He was keeper of the Great Seal of Holland! He was a--Bah! there is too much noise here, I cannot talk.” And mynheer, looking with great astonishment into the bowl of his meerschaum, for it had gone out, nodded to his vrouw and left the apartment in great haste.