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Updated: June 20, 2025
"Why," said Jan Hooglant, "why, Patem, the Heer Governor will have us rated soundly over the ears for daring such a thing; and we will all catch more of it when we get home. Demand of the Heer Governor indeed! Why, boy, you must be crazy!" But Patem was not crazy.
They, therefore, concluded that the Heer Governor had proclaimed a thanksgiving because, as young Patem Onderdonk declared, "he had gotten well rid of Dominie Curtius and would have no more schoolmasters in the colony." "And so, lads," cried the exuberant young Knickerbocker, "let us wisely celebrate the Thanksgiving.
Do not you know that the Heer Governor is at royal odds with Dominie Curtius because the skinflint old dominie will not pay the taxes due the town? Why, lad, the Heer Governor will back us up!" "And why will he not pay the taxes, Patem?" asked Jan Hooglant, the tanner's son.
And when that day came the young fellows who then saw the defeat and disappointment of the Heer Governor Stuyvesant were not so certain that Patem Onderdonk was wrong when he claimed that it was all a just and righteous judgment on the Heer Governor for his refusal of the boys' request for no school, and for his treatment of them on that sad Thanksgiving Day when he so harshly rebuked their display of gratitude and lost forever his chance to partake of Patem's Salmagundi.
His reign as master of the Latin School of New Amsterdam had not been a successful one, and his dispute with the town officers as to his payment of taxes had so angered him that, as Patem declared, "he seemed moved to avenge himself upon the town's children."
"But I say, Patem," queried young Teuny Vanderbreets, who was always ready to second any of Patem's plans, "how can we come it over the dominie as you would have us?" "So then, Teuny," cried Patem, in his highest key of contempt, "did your wits blow away with your hat out of Heer Snediker's nut tree yesterday?
Horn books, and every possible missile that the boys had at hand, went flying at the master's head, and the young rebels, led on by Patem and Teuny, charged down upon the unprepared dominie, rescued trembling little Antje from his clutch, and then one and all rushed pell-mell from the school with shouts of triumph and derision.
Protests and appeals, explanations and arguments, were of no avail. When the Heer Governor Stuyvesant said a thing, he meant it, and it was useless for any one to hope for a change. The unpopular Dominie Curtius must go and go he did. But, as he left, the delegation of boys, headed by young Patem Onderdonk, came into the fort and sought to interview the Heer Governor.
The lengthy prayers and lengthier sermon of good Dominie Megapolensis in the Fort Church were over and the Thanksgiving dinners were very nearly ready when up to the Heer Governor's house came a half-dozen boys, with Patem Onderdonk at their head bearing a neatly covered dish.
There was a universal groan of disappointment and disgust, and then Patem said philosophically: "Well, lads, what's done is done and what is to be will be. Let us eat the salmagundi anyhow and cry, 'Confusion to Dominie Luyck." And they did eat it, then and there, for indigestion had no terror to those lads of hardy stomachs.
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