Gonda; or the Martyrs of Zaandam [pp. 452-462]

GONDA.
ed all this misery (for his eldest son had
died some months before). I was not
so sanguine of his probable repentance
as to believe he would welcome his
grandson with open arms-the son of
that Bessie Cotter whose fatal beauty
had wakened the first and last difference
between father and son. I did not like
to write a long explanatory letter, for I
did not wish to put myself more prominently forward in the painful business
than was absolutely necessary to fulfill
my promise to the dying woman; and in
truth my feelings toward the old man
were not the kindest. At length, having
no wish to spare his feelings, I thought
the simplest way to communicate his
son's and daughter-in-law's death would
be to have the tombstone photographed.
On this idea I acted, and dispatched a
copy to Mr. O'Donnell, merely penciling in the corner: "For particulars, apply to Dr. G, San Francisco."
His letter came by the earliest possible mail. Itwas brief, but to me conveyed
a world of meaning. I could detect the
crushed pride striving to hide itself in
every line. I could recognize the bitter
repentance for an irrevocable past surging up to the surface here and there,
spite of the strong will that struggled to
keep it down. The note in itself was
simple. It merely thanked me, and inquired into the particulars of "my poor
boy's death; " asking also if he had left
issue.
My heart smote me as I read the
broken-spirited words of the old man,
stricken by his own pride, and I wished
that I had communicated the news more
kindly. However, all this was done now,
and all I had in my power was to write
him a long explanatory letter, softening
down the details of his son's death as
much as possible, and consoling him by
the mention of his grandson Tommy,
who, I took it upon myself to state, was
as like his father as could be; an assertion which, as I had never seen Tom
O'Donnell, senior, the reader will admit
to have been a pretty bold one. However, I drew my data from the fact that
the boy was not like his mother, and
eventually it proved that I had guessed
"indifferent well."
Tommy O'Donnell is at home with
his grandfather now, and, when I pay a
long-promised visit to Ireland, I have
received a cordial invitation to make
the mansion of O'Donnell my home.
GONDA;
OR, THE MARTYRS OF ZAANDAM.
HAT I am going to write is his tory. It is given without coloring and sensational drapery. It is the
faithful record of a time when religious
controversies too often became bloody.
Those times have passed. Whatever
may be our religious belief, we look upon those days as barbarous. Such they
were, perhaps. Yet, there was a zeal
then existing which now seems dead.
Truth now seems to be of no particular
importance; Mammon has become the
ruler. In appearance, this one of the
powers of evil has got the supremacy.
He has linked Christian, Jew, and Gentile in harmonious union. "Love one
another" has, indeed, become the rule;
but not for the sake of Christ. No, for
the sake of Mammon.
It was in the beginning of the sixteenth century. The discovery of the
New World had given a new stir to commercial enterprise. In Venice, in Gen
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