Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 February 1886 — “HOOVENSAAGENBAAMZOOVEN.” [ARTICLE]

“HOOVENSAAGENBAAMZOOVEN.”

Exciting Experiences in Anisterd »n qC Some Americans Who Wanted to Find a Motel. We dispossessed ourselves of She oppressive touters and struck out of the station, across a wide square anck v up a thoroughfare that was traversed its entire length by a broad canal. On and on we went, up , one street and down another, all exactly alike, with queer old gabled buildings climbing story on story into the air on either side, and the loud-smelling canjjl always permeating the center. I think we must have traversed something like eleven miles of these streets and crossed 900 bridges before tlie disagreeable sensation of being lost forced itself completely upon our attention. We were lost in the interminable mazes of Amsterdash. “WTiat are yon going to do?” I gloomily wondered, when he had exhaustively discussed our helpless situation. “Try one more shop,” the judge desperately suggested. “There may be some one in this wilderness of baifling incomprehensibility who knows one word- of language appertaining unto Christian people. Try this one.” It was a shop devoted to the selling of boots and shoes. We mounted a little flight of steps and went inside. A woman issued from some recess in the rear. She took position behind the little counter and smiled. “Madam,” tlie judge began in a courtly phrase, “we are two well-mean-ing Republicans, lost, irrevocably lost, in a big, big city. W 7 e haven’t had anything to eat for eleven hours. If your sympathies stir with one responsive thrill, we beg of you to exercise that hospitality which I am told exists even among the savage nations, and show us the way to a hotel.” There was eloqueuee'enough here, you would think, to move the stoniest heart. The woman smiled once more, at though she understood it all, and reached down a pair of boots with soles like the bottom of a canal boat. “Oh, woman, woman!” groaned the judge, “I do not want your merchandise. We seek a home—a hotel;—a—” “Let me try it,” I interrupted. The judge sat down on his valise and wiped his heated brow. “Marm,” I began, speaking in some of the nicest German ever heard outside of an advanced class, “Marm, know sie where is ein hotel ?” The shop woman looked at me in a pained manner, put down tlie boots with a faltering air, and shot into the back room. “I knew you’d get into trouble with your Gprman language, ” the judge remarked, severely. “I told yon all you’d better be careful how you fooled around a thing you didn’t understand. The woman thinks you have insulted her, and has gone for the old man, who, I have a gloomy presentiment, is very muscular, and fraught with boots similar to the pair just offered us. ” There was something awful in these suggestions. We nervously picked up our grips and got out on tlie street, which no sooner had we reached than the-woman was flying after us, waring her arms wildly in the air and screaming in a loud and strident voice. Slie was followed by a pale young man,with a weak and sandy-colpred beard. “Hoovensaagenbaainzooven,” tlie woman ejaculated, strongly accenting the ninth syllable of tfig word, “and accompanying it with an emphatic gesture in the direction of the pale young man. “Perhaps it is, ” the judge acknowledged in a candid tone, “far be it from me to deny it; but,” he added, looking < at,Jlie woman reproachfully, “I don’t tliink any lady who calls herself a lady would say so.” The shop-woman stamped her foot impatiently and said something to the pale young man. Meantime tlie crowd had swelled to enormous proportions, and Dutch women and men of every conceivable size were, pushing, and jostling us, and (we thought) getting ready to throw us into the canal. Then the pale young man spoke in German and asked ns wliat we —wanted. —The shop-woman liad brought him along as an interpreter. I told the pale young man that we wanted a hotel—that was all. It was a simple desire, we thought. There was nothing in it whatever, that we could detect, that warranted a mob. If he had a hotel anywhere about him, I said, and had no use for it, we should be very happy to hear from liim by return mail. I delivered this address in such German as occurred to me, and when I got stuck I dropped into English by way oi getting along with more speed and smoothness. When I was done the pale young man scratched his weak and sandy-colored whiskers in a hesitating fashion and shook his head uncertainly. “Vas is der matter?” Reader, did you ever have anybody yon didn’t know die and leave you $200,006? If not, you cannot enter into the emotions that these few English-spoken aroused in our breasts. The author was a sailor-looking man in a bine jacket and with gold rings in his ears. He told lis he was a pilot, a Dutchman ■with a knowledge of ,the English tongue. We "told him in the language of Roderick Dhu that we hungered for rest and a guide and food and fire. He told us he would be to ns everything but the rest and food and fire. We.told him to heave ahead and yo-heave-ho and a rum below and we would see that justice was done. So he bore ns out of the still chattering "and gesticulating throng, which every minute had, been waxing greater, and in the process of time we found ourselves within v 'the sheltering walls of the Pay Bas HoteL ■ —Eockland Courier-Gazette.