“Well, I don’t imagine that the girls will care to get themselves up like those old Dutch vrouws, as they were so terribly stolid and uninteresting.”
“Oh, Helen,” exclaimed Nathalie sitting suddenly up in the hammock, “those Dutch vrouws were anything but uninteresting. Nita and I have read all about them in a book Mrs. Van Vorst bought for us in New York, it has just been published and is very interesting. As a matter of fact, the women who settled New York were the most efficient, the most industrious, and the most capable of any of the early pioneer women of that period.”
“I did not know that,” said Helen, raising her eyebrows; “I thought they were just stolid Dutch peasant women with little ability to do anything but knit, tend the cows, and so on.”
“A great many people seem to have that idea,” returned her friend, “but the Dutch housewives were not mere stoical drudges. Holland at that time, you know, was the only country that gave as good an education to her girls as to her boys. They were not only educated to fill responsible positions, but to have a love for literature as well as for painting, music, and the arts. So these Dutch peasants, as you call them, were better educated, better protected by the laws of the colony, and held more important positions than any of their Southern or Northern sisters.
“It is claimed,” she went on, warming to her subject, “that the Dutch housewife was the manufacturer of the day, producing under her own roof nearly all the necessities for the family use. Besides being proficient in the art of cooking, she made perfumes from the flowers in her garden, planted, gathered, dried, and brewed the hops. She culled simples and herbs for medicine, thus becoming the physician of the household. She taught her maids to card and weave wool for clothes; she spun the fine thread of the flax, grown in her yard, for the linen, knit the socks, oh, I could not begin to tell you her many industries!
“But besides all that,” continued the girl, “the goede vrouws had such good sense and judgment, and such a fine eye for commercial values that they not only owned real estate, but ofttimes carried on their own business. The burgomasters of the town paid great deference to the Dutch women’s shrewdness, judgment, and independence, so that they exerted no little influence in the state affairs of New Amsterdam.”
“Well, I never!” laughed Helen teasingly. “If you haven’t become a regular schoolma’am since you have been teaching the princess. Pray, how much am I to pay you per word?”
Nathalie laughed merrily. “Yes, isn’t it funny? I started reading about the Pioneer women to get Nita interested in something that would be instructive as well as entertaining. And lo, she has not only become absorbed in anything that pertains to the pioneers, but in many other historical subjects as well. As for me, why, I have learned a great deal, too, and that is how, when Mrs. Van Vorst said she would like to entertain the Pioneers in return for amusing Nita by the drill and the fagot party, we decided to have a Kraeg.”
“How will the girls know what characters they are to take, what they did, and so on?”
“Oh, Mrs. Morrow and I arranged all that. Notices were sent—you’ll get yours—telling the girls that all information would be furnished by Annetje Jans—that’s I—gratis. I will arrange with each girl as to her character and so on. Oh, there’s Grace! I’ll warrant you she has her notice and is in a hurry for news. But, Helen, here is the book that tells all about these Dutch women. I wish you would take it and look it over, for I know I shall need lots of help.”