as early as Van Alphen,[1] who, in his poems given us to read as children, starts with the first line about those “sweet young creatures.” What the deuce could move that old gentleman to pass himself off as a worshipper of my little sister Gertrude, who had sore eyes, or of my brother Gerard, who was always fiddling with his nose? And yet he says he “sang those little poems urged by love.” I often thought as a child, “My good man, I should like to meet you, and if you should refuse me the marbles I should ask you for, or else my full name in pastry letters—I am called Batavus—I should take you to be a liar.” But I have never seen Van Alphen. He was dead already, I believe, when he told us that my father was my best friend—I preferred Paulie Winser, who lived next to us in the Batavier-street—and that “my little dog” was so “grateful.” We did not keep dogs, because they are so dirty.
Nothing but lies! And so the course of education goes on. The new little sister has come from the greengrocer in a large cabbage. All the Dutch are brave and generous. The Romans were glad that the Batavians allowed them to live. The Bey of Tunis used to get colic when he heard the flutter of the Dutch flag. The Duke of Alva was a monster. The low tide of 1672 lasted a little longer than usual, for the sole purpose of protecting Holland. Lies! Holland remained Holland for the simple reason that our old people looked after their business, and because they had the true Faith. That is the point!
And a little later again there are still further lies. A girl is an angel. He that first discovered this, never had any sisters. Love is bliss. One takes flight, with some object or other, to the ends of the earth. The earth has no ends, and also that love is nonsense. No one can say that I do not live decently with my wife—she is a daughter of Last & Co., coffee-brokers—no one can say anything about our marriage. I am a member of “Artis.”[2] She has a
