All his golden stories of Kidd, however, and of the booty
he had buried, were obstinately rivaled by the tales of Peechy
Prauw, who, rather than suffer his Dutch progenitors to be eclipsed
by a foreign freebooter, enriched every field and shore in the
neighborhood with the hidden wealth of Peter Stuyvesant and his
contemporaries.
Not a word of this conversation was lost upon Wolfert Webber. He
returned pensively home, full of magnificent ideas. The soil of
his native island seemed to be turned into gold dust, and every
field to teem with treasure. His head almost reeled at the thought
how often he must have heedlessly rambled over places where
countless sums lay, scarcely covered by the turf beneath his feet.
His mind was in an uproar with this whirl of new ideas. As he came
in sight of the venerable mansion of his forefathers, and the
little realm where the Webbers had so long and so contentedly
flourished, his gorge rose at the narrowness of his destiny.
"Unlucky Wolfert!" exclaimed he; "others can go to bed and dream
themselves into whole mines of wealth; they have but to seize a
spade in the morning, and turn up doubloons[1] like potatoes; but
thou must dream of hardships, and rise to poverty, must dig thy
field from year's end to year's end, and yet raise nothing but
cabbages!"
[1] Spanish gold coins, equivalent to $15.
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