226 Hans Brinker

morning he examined the top coverlet with care; for he
wished to send home a description of it in his next letter. It
was a Japanese spread, marvellous in texture, as well as in
its variety of brilliant coloring, and worth, as Ben afterward
learned, not less than three hundred dollars.

The floor was of polished wooden mosaic, nearly covered
with a rich carpet, bordered with thick black fringe. Another
room displayed a margin of satin-wood around the carpet.
Hung with tapestry, its walls of crimson silk were topped
with a gilded cornice, which shot down gleams of light far
into the polished floor. ;

Over the doorway of the room in which Jacob and Ben
slept was a bronze stork, who, with outstretched neck, held a
lamp to light the guests into the apartment. Between the
two narrow beds of carved white-wood and ebony stood
the household treasure of the Van Gends,—a_ massive
oaken chair, upon which the Prince of Orange had once sat
during a council-meeting. Opposite stood a quaintly-carved
clothes-press, waxed and polished to the utmost, and
filled with precious stores of linen; beside it a table hold-
ing a large Bible, whose great golden clasps looked poor
compared with its solid, ribbed binding, made to outlast six
generations.

‘There was a ship-model on the mantel-shelf; and over it
hung an old portrait of Peter the Great, who, you know, once
gave the dockyard cats of Holland a fine chance to look at a
king, which is one of the special prerogatives of cats. Peter,
though Czar of Russia, was not too proud to work as
a common shipwright in the dockyards of Zaandam and
Amsterdam, that he might be able to introduce among his
countrymen Dutch improvements in shipbuilding. It was