NEW YEAR'S EVE

If the snow had come down again or the weather been colder, or wetter,
or other than it was....

If one of the three men had been more thirsty, or the other more
insistent....

If it had been any other day of the year, or any other hour of any other
day....

If the three philosophers had taken their walk abroad in any other
portion of the city of Haarlem....

If....

Nay! but there's no end to the Ifs which I might adduce in order to
prove to you beyond a doubt that but for an extraordinary conglomeration
of minor circumstances, the events which I am about to relate neither
would nor could ever have taken place.

For indeed you must admit that had the snow come down again or the
weather been colder, or wetter, the three philosophers would mayhap all
have felt that priceless thirst and desire for comfort which the
interior of a well-administered tavern doth so marvellously assuage. And
had it been any other day of the year or any other hour of that same
last day of the year 1623, those three philosophers would never have
thought of wiling away the penultimate hour of the dying year by hanging
round the Grootemarkt in order to see the respectable mynheer burghers
and the mevrouws their wives, filing into the cathedral in a sober and
orderly procession, with large silver-clasped Bibles under their arms,
and that air of satisfied unctuousness upon their faces which is best
suited to the solemn occasion of watch-night service, and the desire to
put oneself right with Heaven before commencing a New Year of commercial
and industrial activity.

And had those three philosophers not felt any desire to watch this same
orderly procession they would probably have taken their walk abroad in
another portion of the city from whence....

But now I am anticipating.

Events crowded in so thickly and so fast, during the last hour of the
departing year, and the first of the newly-born one, that it were best
mayhap to proceed with their relation in the order in which they
occurred.

For look you, the links of a mighty chain had their origin on the steps
of the Stadhuis, for it is at the foot of these that three men were
standing precisely at the moment when the bell of the cathedral struck
the penultimate hour of the last day of the year 1623.

Mynheer van der Meer, Burgomaster of Haarlem, was coming down those same
steps in the company of Mynheer van Zilcken, Mynheer Beresteyn and other
worthy gentlemen,