"9 THE LAND OF PLUCK

quaintness. The Casenbrotspel, or Bread and Cheese war,
was not funny when it came to blight the last ten years of
the fifteenth century, though its name sounds trivial now.
And the Gueux, or “ Beggars,” who, nearly a century later,
come forth on the bloodstained page, were something
more than beggars, as King Philip and the wicked Duke
of Alva found to their cost.

Ah, those Gueux! Watch for them when you read
Dutch history. They will soon appear, with their wallets
and wooden bowls, their doublets of ashen gray,

 

brave,
reckless, desperate men, whose deeds struck terror over
land and sea. When once they come in sight, turn as you
may, you will meet them; you will hear their wild cry,
“Long live the Beggars!” ringing amid the blaze and
carnage of many a terrible day. There are princes and
nobles among them. They will grow bolder and fiercer,
more reckless and desperate, until their country’s perse-
cutor, Philip of Spain, has withdrawn the last man of all
his butchering hosts from their soil; until the Duke of
Alva, one of the blackest characters in all history, has
cowered before the wrath of Holland!

Ah! iy light-hearted boys and girls, if there were not
lessons to be learned from these things, it would be well
to blot them from human memory. But would it be well
to forget the heroism, the majestic patience, the trust in
God, that shine forth resplendent from these darkest pages
of Dutch history? Can we afford to lose such examples
of human grandeur under suffering as come to us from the
beleaguered cities of Naarden, Haarlem, and Leyden ?
When you learn their stories, if you do not know them