with their own eyes the fate of large families, misgivings and care
mingled with their love. They belonged to a singularly wise and
provident people: in Holland reckless parents were as rare as
disobedient children. So now when the huge loaf came in on a gigantic
trencher, looking like a fortress in its moat, and, the tour of the
table once made, seemed to have melted away, Elias and Catherine would
look at one another and say, "Who is to find bread for them all when we
are gone?"

At this observation the younger ones needed all their filial respect to
keep their little Dutch countenances; for in their opinion dinner and
supper came by nature like sunrise and sunset, and, so long as that
luminary should travel round the earth, so long as the brown loaf go
round their family circle, and set in their stomachs only to rise again
in the family oven. But the remark awakened the national thoughtfulness
of the elder boys, and being often repeated, set several of the family
thinking, some of them good thoughts, some ill thoughts, according to
the nature of the thinkers.

"Kate, the children grow so, this table will soon be too small."

"We cannot afford it, Eli," replied Catherine, answering not his words,
but his thought, after the manner of women.

Their anxiety for the future took at times a less dismal but more
mortifying turn. The free burghers had their pride as well as the
nobles; and these two could not bear that any of their blood should go
down in the burgh after their decease.

So by prudence and self-denial they managed to clothe all the little