or, The Silver Skates 69

among his cousin’s friends. Though most of them had studied
English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak
either; and he made very funny blunders when he tried to
converse in Dutch. He had learned that vrovw means “ wife e
and ja, “yes;” and spoorweg, “ railway ;” kanaals, “ canals ;”
stoomboot, “ steamboat ;” ophaalbruggen, “ drawbridges ;”’ buiten
plasten, “ country-seats ;”’

>?

mynheer, ‘+ mister ; tweegevegt,
“duel,” or “two-fights;” oper, “ copper ;” zadel, “ saddle :”
but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long
list of phrases he had learned in his “ Dutch Dialogues.” ‘The
topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the
boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in “ Ollendorff”
to ask in faultless German, “ Have you seen my grandmother’s
red cow?” and, when he reached Germany, discovered that
he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben
found that his book Dutch did not avail him as much as he had
hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a
Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and
Eve spoke Dutch; and he smiled a knowing smile when his
Uncle Poot assured him that Dutch “had great likeness mit
Zinglish ; but it vash much petter languish, much petter.”

However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech.
Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well; and,
when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben’s
benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin
could now and then put in aja, or a nod, in quite a familiar
way.

The project was a grand one, and there was-to be a fine
opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holi-
day of the Festival of St. Nicholas, four extra days were to be
allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse.