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.  This son of four fathers united the merits and the vigor of his sires.  If he had not a great family before him, he seemed likely to have a great one after him; for you had only to look at the fresh gamesome youth, to see that he was formed to be the founder of a mighty race.

This youngster gradually became an intimate visitor of the family.  He talked little, but he sat long.  He filled the father’s pipe when it was empty, gathered up the mother’s knitting-needle, or ball of worsted when it fell to the ground; stroked the sleek coat of the tortoise-shell cat, and replenished the teapot for the daughter from the bright copper kettle that sung before the fire.  All these quiet little offices may seem of trifling import, but when true love is translated into Low Dutch, it is in this way that it eloquently expresses itself.  They were not lost upon the Webber family.  The winning youngster found marvellous favor in the eyes of the mother; the tortoise-shell cat, albeit the most staid and demure of her kind, gave indubitable signs of approbation of his visits, the tea-kettle seemed to sing out a cheering note of welcome at his approach, and if the sly glances of the daughter might be rightly read, as she sat bridling and dimpling, and sewing by her mother’s side, she was not a wit behind Dame Webber, or grimalkin, or the tea-kettle in good-will.