The leaves were scribbled over with the name of John,--"John," in a
cramped, childish hand. His father's book, no doubt, and the writing a
bit of boyish mischief. Outside now, in the street, the boys were
pelting each other with snowballs, just as this John had done in the
clay-paths. But for nearly two hundred years his bones had been crumbled
into lime and his flesh gone back into grass and roots. Yet here he was,
a boy still; here was the old pamphlet and the scrawl in yellowing ink,
with the smell about it still.
_Printed by Rainier Janssen_, 1698. I turned over the leaves, expecting
to find a sermon preached before Andros, "for the conversion of
Sadducees," or some "Report of the Condition of the Principalities of
New Netherland, or New Sweden, for the Use of the Lord's High
Proprietors thereof" (for of such precious dead dust this library is
full); but I found, instead, wrapped in weighty sentences and backed by
the gravest and most ponderous testimony, the story of a baby, "a
Sucking Child six Months old." It was like a live seed in the hand of a
mummy. The story of a baby and a boy and an aged man, in "the devouring
Waves of the Sea; and also among the cruel devouring Jaws of inhuman
Canibals." There were, it is true, other divers persons in the company,
by one of whom the book is written.
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