ed America, but we Scotchmen have got the idea somehow that Scotland
was leavening if not salting Holland for a hundred years before that
exodus to these shores took place. [Laughter.]

General Morgan, on one occasion, in discussing the fighting qualities of
the soldiers of different nations, came to the conclusion that in many
respects they were about the same, with one notable exception. "After
all," he said, "for the possession of the ideal quality of the soldier,
for the grand essential, give me the Dutchman--he starves well."
[Laughter.] And, no doubt, when provisions are scarce, no man can afford
to starve better than he, for the simple reason that when provisions are
plentiful no man can manage to eat better. [Laughter.]

I feel like mentioning as the first quality of the Dutch Domine to-night
the possession of a good digestion. I myself have fared so well on Dutch
fare for these last two or three years that I feel I could almost claim
to be a Dutchman, very much as a man once claimed to be a native of a
certain parish in Scotland. He was being examined by counsel. Counsel
asked him, "Were you born here?" "Maistly, your honor," was the reply.
"What do you mean by 'maistly'? Did you come here when you were a
child?" "Na, I didna' cam here when I was a chiel," he replied. "Then
what do you mean by 'maistly,' if you have not lived here most of your
life?" counsel asked. "Weel, when I cam here I weighed eighty pun, and
now I weigh three hundred, so that I maun be maistly a native."
[Laughter.] So, perhaps, that "maistly" may be the claim to be a
Dutchman which some of us may make, if we go on.

The sentiment to which I have been asked to respond is one which I doubt
not will strike a responsive chord in the memories of most of you
Hollanders here to-night. Across the vanished years will come back the
picture of the old Dutch village, nestling in some sheltered nook behind
the Hudson, and there in the old-fashioned pulpit arises the quaint,
once well-loved face and form of the Domine, with big, dome-shaped head,
full mouth and nose, marked with lines of humor, the fringe of white
whiskers, and underneath, around the throat, the voluminous folds of the
white choker, a kind of a combination of a swaddling-band and a
winding-sheet, suggestive of birth or death, as the occasion demanded.
[Laughter.] So he appeared an almost essential feature in the landscape,
as year in and out he ministered in unassuming faithfulness to