The Chief Cause Of Anxiety To Honest Wolfert, However, Was The Growing
Prosperity Of The City.
The expenses of living doubled and trebled; but
he could not double and treble the magnitude of his cabbages;
And the
number of competitors prevented the increase of price; thus, therefore,
while every one around him grew richer, Wolfert grew poorer, and he
could not, for the life of him, perceive how the evil was to be
remedied.
This growing care which increased from day to day, had its gradual
effect upon our worthy burgher; insomuch, that it at length implanted
two or three wrinkles on his brow; things unknown before in the family
of the Webbers; and it seemed to pinch up the corners of his cocked hat
into an expression of anxiety, totally opposite to the tranquil,
broad-brimmed, low-crowned beavers of his illustrious progenitors.
Perhaps even this would not have materially disturbed the serenity of
his mind had he had only himself and his wife to care for; but there
was his daughter gradually growing to maturity; and all the world knows
when daughters begin to ripen no fruit or flower requires so much
looking after. I have no talent at describing female charms, else fain
would I depict the progress of this little Dutch beauty. How her blue
eyes grew deeper and deeper, and her cherry lips redder and redder; and
how she ripened and ripened, and rounded and rounded in the opening
breath of sixteen summers, until, in her seventeenth spring, she seemed
ready to burst out of her bodice like a half-blown rose-bud.
Ah, well-a-day! could I but show her as she was then, tricked out on a
Sunday morning in the hereditary finery of the old Dutch clothes-press,
of which her mother had confided to her the key. The wedding dress of
her grandmother, modernized for use, with sundry ornaments, handed down
as heirlooms in the family. Her pale brown hair smoothed with
buttermilk in flat waving lines on each side of her fair forehead. The
chain of yellow virgin gold, that encircled her neck; the little cross,
that just rested at the entrance of a soft valley of happiness, as if
it would sanctify the place. The - but pooh! - it is not for an old man
like me to be prosing about female beauty: suffice it to say, Amy had
attained her seventeenth year. Long since had her sampler exhibited
hearts in couples desperately transfixed with arrows, and true lovers'
knots worked in deep blue silk; and it was evident she began to
languish for some more interesting occupation than the rearing of
sunflowers or pickling of cucumbers.
At this critical period of female existence, when the heart within a
damsel's bosom, like its emblem, the miniature which hangs without, is
apt to be engrossed by a single image, a new visitor began to make his
appearance under the roof of Wolfert Webber. This was Dirk Waldron, the
only son of a poor widow, but who could boast of more fathers than any
lad in the province; for his mother had had four husbands, and this
only child, so that though born in her last wedlock, he might fairly
claim to be the tardy fruit of a long course of cultivation.
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