[1] The full story may be read in the “History of Hudson County,” where my friend, Rev. R. Andersen, of the Danish church in Brooklyn, an indefatigable delver, unearthed this chip of the old block.
[2] Fanö and Manö are the two islands just outside the Old Town.
[3] About one hundred dollars.
[4] The Madam—Patched before and behind.
[5] The old building was a hospital for centuries after the Reformation drove out the monks, and for a season served as an insane asylum. We children used to steal up to the tarred board fence that enclosed its grounds and, gluing our eyes to a knot hole, shudder deliciously at the sight of the poor wretches. It was eventually turned into an Old Ladies Home, and the name of the “Cloister” was restored to it.
[6] The Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement, New York.
[7] The reader who is not afraid of dyspepsia by suggestion may consider the following Christmas bill of fare which obtained among the peasants east of the Old Town: On a large trencher a layer of pork and ribs, on top of that a nest of fat sausages, in which sat a roast duck.
[8] An unromantic variation of this was the belief that the farmer who left his plough out on Christmas would get a drubbing from his wife within a twelvemonth. I hope whoever held to that got what he richly deserved.
[9] The Church of Our Lady was its official title.
[10] My father’s friend, Pastor Fejlberg, who, as a village parson just outside the Old Town, lived the life of the country folk and recorded it with sympathetic understanding, is my authority. I remember him telling a story which only last winter one of his old “boys” recalled to me in California. It was of the village tailor, who, coming home in the small hours of the morning, the worse for many deep potations of the strong mead at the inn, was beset by a ghost that would not let him go. In vain did he try to shake it off at cross-road after cross-road. They all ran like this ✗, and had no power over the children of darkness. The spectre still pursued him, shrieking in ghoulish glee over his failure. Not until he came to two roads that crossed at right angles, forming a true ✚, did he beat it off. There it could not pass, and he got home safe; let us hope, sobered also.