Page:Augusta Seaman--Jacqueline of the carrier pigeons.djvu/20

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INTRODUCTION

lars, which paid off our starving Continentals. Principal and interest, repaid in 1808, amounting to fourteen millions, were used to develop six thousand square miles of Western New York, when New Amsterdam (later called Buffalo) was laid out, and whence came two of our presidents, Fillmore and Cleveland.

A most delightful romance is this of Mrs. Seaman. True to facts and exact in coloring, it is all the better for being the straightforward narrative of a real boy and a genuine girl. Gysbert Cornellisen’s cooking pot, once smoking with savory Spanish stew or hodge-podge, is still to be seen in the Stedelyk (city) Museum, which every American ought to visit when in Leyden. It is in the old Laken Hal (or cloth Hall). From the turreted battlements of Hengist Hill (Den Burg) we may still look out over the country. If in Leyden on October 3, one will see Thanksgiving Day celebrated, as I know it was, most gaily, in 1909, in a most delight-