or, The Silver Skates 139

baby’s whistle. Well, sir, for size, the church is higher than
Westminster Abbey, to begin with; and,as you say, the organ
makes a tremendous show, even then. Father told me, last
night, that it is one hundred and eight feet high, fifty feet broad,
and has over five thousand pipes: it has sixty-four stops, if you
know what they are (/ don’t), and three key-boards.”

“Good for you!” said Ben. ‘ You have a fine memory.
My head is a perfect colander for figures: they slip through as
fast as they ’re poured in. But other facts, and historical events,
stay behind: that ’s some consolation.”

“© There we differ,” returned Van Mounen. “1’m great on
names and figures; but history, take it altogether, seems to me
to be the most hopeless kind of a jumble.”

Meantime Carl and Ludwig were having a discussion con-
cerning some square, wooden monuments they had observed in
the interior of the church. Ludwig declared that each bore
the name of the person buried beneath; and Carl insisted that
they had no names, but only the heraldic arms of the deceased,
painted on a black ground, with the date of the death in gilt
letters.

“T ought to know,” said Carl; “ for I walked across to the
east side to look for the cannon-ball which mother told me was
embedded there. It was fired into the church, in the year fifteen
hundred and something, by those rascally Spaniards, while the
services were going on. There it was in the wall, sure enough ;
and, while I was walking back, I noticed the monuments. I tell
you they haven’t a sign of a name upon them.”

“© Ask Peter,” said Ludwig, only half convinced.

“ Carl is right,” replied Peter, who, though conversing with
Jacob, had overheard their dispute. ‘ Well, Jacob, as I was
saying, Handel, the great composer, chanced to visit Haarlem,