The heart of the good saint expanded, like as the morning-glory does to the first rays of the sun, while he sat rubbing his hands at seeing them eat with such a zest, as made him almost think it was worth while to be hungry in order to enjoy such triumphant satisfaction. When they had done, and returned their pious thanks to Heaven and the good stranger, St. Nicholas willed the honest man to expound the causes which had brought him to his present deplorable condition. “My own folly,” said he; and the other sagely replied, “I thought as much. Beshrew me, friend, if in all my experience, and I have lived long, and seen much, I ever encountered distress and poverty that could not be traced to its source in folly or vice. Heaven is too bountiful to entail misery on its creatures, save through their own transgressions. But I pray thee, go on with thy story.”
The good man then went on to relate that his father, old Johannes Garrebrantze—
“Ah!” quoth St. Nicholas, “I knew him well. He was an honest man, and that, in these times of all sorts of improvements, except in mind and morals, is little less than miraculous. But I interrupt thee, friend—proceed with thy story, once more.”
The son of Johannes again resumed his story, and related how his father had left him a competent estate in the _Colonie_, on which he lived in good credit, and in the enjoyment of a reasonable competency, with his wife and children, until within a few years past, when seeing a vast number of three-story houses, with folding doors and marble mantelpieces rising up all around him, he began to be ashamed of his little one-story house with the gable end to the street, and—
“Ah! Johannes,” interrupted the pale wife, “do not spare me. It was I that in the vanity of my heart put such notions in thy head. It was I that tempted thee.”
“It was the duyvel,” muttered St.Nicholas, “in the shape of a pretty wife.”
Johannes gave his helpmate a look of affectionate forgiveness, and went on to tell St. Nicholas how, finally egged on by the evil example of his neighbours, he had at last committed sacrilege against his household gods, and pulled down the home of his fathers, commencing a new one on its ruins.
“Donderdag!” quoth the saint to himself; “and the bricks came from faderland too!”
When Johannes had about half finished his new house, he discovered one day, to his great astonishment and dismay, that all his money, which he had been saving for his children, was gone. His strong box was empty, and his house but half finished, although, after estimating the cost, he had allowed one third more in order to be sure in the business.
Johannes was now at a dead stand. The idea of borrowing money and running in debt never entered his head before, and probably would not now, had it not been suggested to him by a neighbour, a great speculator, who had lately built a whole street of houses, not a single brick of which belonged to him in reality. He had borrowed the money, mortgaged the property, and expected to grow rich by a sudden rise. Poor Johannes may be excused for listening to the seductions of this losel varlet, seeing he had a house half finished on his hands; but whether so or not, he did listen and was betrayed into borrowing money of a bank just then established in the _Colonie_ on a capital paid in according to law—that is, not paid at all—the directors of which were very anxious to exchange their rags for lands and houses.