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I can speak but briefly of their manners and customs. At first they were those of Holland. Many of these customs still survive among them, and some are too good to be allowed ever to perish. Family life among them is pure and noble. lts basis is the Christian religion, and its aim Christian character. Every home is a church and a school, each in miniature. The old-time family board was an elaborate event, not because of the things to eat, but because of the things that were said. A prayer preceded every meal and a bible reading and a longer prayer followed-three times a day, in winter or in harvest time. And it was all sincere. There is no make-believe in anything that belongs to these people. And if they were strict in religion, they were equally strict in morals. Honest with themselves, they are also honest with other men. Debts among them are sacred, and the public conscience is as active as the private conscience. Municipal and other public affairs are as carefully administered as is private business. As to strong drink they are temperate, many families to the verge of prohibition. Excessive drinking is among them almost wholly unknown and neither are they steady drinkers. Their social beverage is wine-not beer-and the wine is generally home-made. While in Albany, Mr. Scholte recorded the fact that he was lodged in a hostelry where liquors were not served, and in the same pamphlet he records that among the sorrows that befell the colonists while at Keokuk were a death and a burial--and a case of drunkenness, which caused so much shame and humiliation to all "that the Christian organization no more recognizes him as a member of it." In their social life they are hospitable and sincere. In every well regulated family from nine to ten in the morning is coffee-time and from four to five in the afternoon tea-time, and to these pleasant hours of social leisure friends are always welcome and strangers within their gates always invited.
Here the curtain must be dropped on what Marshall Talbot, that strange genius who gave to Iowa art at least a local habitation and a name, called the most picturesque settlement in lowa or in the West. Times and conditions have been changing. Much of the original coloring has been effaced. This bit of Holland I have tried to describe has been merging into America. But Rembrandt come to earth again might still repaint some of his great faces in Pella.
I have burdened this sketch with few names and fewer dates. I have tried to concern myself with principles, not persons; with purposes, not with years. It was a saying of Carlyle that history is but biography. Taine struck nearer the true philosophy of events when he maintained that great men are only indicators. Great events are but accumulated inheritances, lighted by some sudden fire of the heart.
When these nineteenth century pilgrims came to Pella, this midland region was still a riotous barbarism. They built their homes in the wilderness, and their farms they carved out of the raw prairies. They prayed and-went to work. Among them industry and thrift have been brother and sister, husband and wife, walking hand in hand and smiling on abundance. What they suffered, and what all the settlers of the West suffered, will never be told. The development of the West has been the theme of orators and the dream of poets. It has perplexed historians and bewildered philosophers. In this great contest between man and nature it was "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." No gospel of love here freed men from the hardness of the Mosaic law. The ancient conquerors coming to a river crowded their vanguards into it and made bridges of human bodies. In this manner civilization crossed these great prairies. The sweat--the tears