Rembrandt Harmens worked in his father's mill, but never strained his back. He was healthy, needlessly healthy, and was as smart as his brothers and sisters, but no smarter, and no better looking. He was exceedingly self-contained, and would sit and dream at his desk in the grammar-school, looking out straight in front of him—just at nothing.
The master tried flogging, and the next day found a picture of himself on the blackboard, his face portrayed as anything but lovely. Young Rembrandt was sent home to fetch his father. The father came.
"Look at that!" said the irate teacher; "see what your son did; look at that!"
Mynheer Harmen sat down and looked at the picture in his deliberate Dutch way, and after about fifteen minutes said, "Well, it does look like you!"
Then he explained to the schoolmaster that the lad was sent to school because he would not do much around the mill but draw pictures in the dust, and it was hoped that the schoolmaster could teach him something.
The schoolmaster decided that it was a hopeless case, and the miller went home to report to the boy's mother.
Now, whenever a Dutchman is confronted by a problem too big to solve, or a task too unpleasant for him to undertake, he shows his good sense by turning it over to his wife. "You are his mother, anyway," said Harmen van Ryn, reproachfully.
The mother simply waived the taunt and asked, "Do you tell me the schoolmaster says he will not do anything but draw pictures?"
"Not a tap will he do but make pictures—he can not multiply two by one."
"Well," said the mother, "if he will not do anything but draw pictures, I think we'd better let him draw pictures."