Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates

Summary

On a cold December morning in Holland, fifteen-year-old Hans Brinker and his twelve-year-old sister Gretel skate on the canal near the village of Broek on wooden runners Hans has carved himself. Their family is very poor. Ten years earlier their father, Raff Brinker, a brave worker on the dikes, fell while fighting a flood and struck his head; he recovered from the fever but not from the injury, and now sits dull and confused, not knowing his own wife and children, and sometimes becomes dangerous. On the night before his fall he gave his wife Meitje a silver watch to keep until he asked for it, and the family's savings of a thousand guilders vanished the same day. Dame Brinker refuses to sell the watch, however hungry they become. A grand skating race is announced for the twentieth of December, Mevrouw van Gleck's birthday, with a pair of silver skates as the prize. The kind rich girl Hilda van Gleck gives Hans money and orders a carved wooden chain from him, and the peasant girl Annie Bouman befriends him. On his way to buy real skates, Hans meets the famous and gruff surgeon Dr. Boekman and offers him the money to examine his father. Much of the book then follows a group of boys led by Peter van Holp, with Jacob Poot and his English cousin Ben Dobbs, on a skating journey from Broek through Amsterdam, Haarlem and Leyden to The Hague, seeing churches, paintings, windmills and museums. Along the way Hans returns Peter's lost purse, Peter catches a robber at their inn in Leyden, and Ben hears the story of the little boy who held his finger in a leaking dike all night to save Haarlem. When Raff grows worse, Dr. Boekman operates to relieve pressure on his brain. Raff wakes knowing his family and thinking only a night has passed. He remembers burying the money by a willow tree; after a vain search, Hans finds the pot by the stump of the old tree, which had been cut down. Raff also remembers that the watch was given him by a frightened young man who believed he had killed someone and fled Holland. The initials on it prove the youth to be Laurens, Dr. Boekman's lost son, who had mistakenly prepared a poison but never administered it. At the race Gretel wins the girls' silver skates; Hans gives his own strap to Peter, who wins the boys' prize. The maker's name on Gretel's skate case, Thomas Higgs of Birmingham, leads to Laurens, who returns to his father. Dr. Boekman offers to train Hans as a surgeon, and the last chapter tells how he grows up to be the famous Dr. Brinker and marries Annie. The book was published in New York by James O'Kane in 1865.

Top Lessons

• Putting others first

  Hans offers his skate money to Dr. Boekman for his father's sake, later lets Annie sell his new skates to help the family, and in the race gives his strap to Peter. Each time he chooses someone else's good over his own wish. Dodge shows that this kind of giving is not weakness: it wins Hans the trust of Peter and of Dr. Boekman.

• Faithfulness in hard times

  For ten years Dame Brinker cares for a husband who does not know her and refuses to sell the watch he trusted to her, even when the family is near starvation. Her faithfulness is rewarded when Raff wakes and the watch brings Dr. Boekman his son. Keeping a promise can matter long after it seems to make sense.

• Rich and poor

  Rychie and Carl look down on Gretel as a goose girl, while Hilda and Peter treat the Brinkers as friends. At the race, Gretel's win shows that worth does not depend on money. The Conclusion tells what became of the proud and the kind.

• A whole country holding back the sea

  Dodge describes how Holland lives below the level of the sea, protected by dikes that need constant watching. Raff was hurt defending a dike, and the story of the boy of Haarlem shows a child giving everything to stop a leak. Lambert says the boy stands for the spirit of the whole country.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The novel's plot rests on a head injury and its surgical cure. Raff Brinker falls on the dikes, has a fever, and is left for ten years with a dulled mind, childlike behaviour, outbursts of violence and, near the crisis, constant pressing of his hands to his head; Dr. Boekman diagnoses pressure on the brain and operates in the cottage, with an assistant, an earthen basin of water and a case of instruments, after recalling a colleague's removal of a dark sac under the skull in a similar case. The book does not name the procedure; a reader of the period would recognize trephining, and a modern reader may think of a chronic subdural collection, but that is a retrospective guess. Raff's awakening with his memory stopped at the day of the accident, asking about the baby and calling his fifteen-year-old son little Hans, is vividly drawn. The book also shows informed consent of a sort: the surgeon explains to Hans that the operation may kill, and the mother decides. Dr. Boekman's son flees after mistakenly preparing a deadly poison for a patient, a dispensing error caught before it was given. Dame Brinker's years of nursing, Dr. Boekman's warning against noise and food after surgery, and his prescription of peace and cheerfulness are period details of home care. Hans's vocation, and his answer that surgery calls for a reverence for God's work, give the book a lasting appeal to future physicians.

• Chapter 5, Shadows in the Home

  Dame Brinker tells how Raff was brought home from the flooded dike with his head bruised and cut, and how the fever passed but the dullness grew.

• Chapter 14, Hans

  Hans tells Peter how his father held his mother to the fire and afterward slept in a fever with his hands pressed to his head.

• Chapter 32, The Crisis

  Dr. Boekman discusses the case with his assistant Vollenhoven, explains the risk to Hans, obtains the mother's consent and begins the operation.

• Chapter 34, The Awakening

  Raff wakes believing he is still on the dike in the flood, recognizes his wife, and asks after the baby.

• Chapter 43, A Discovery

  Dr. Boekman explains that his son prepared the wrong medicine, a deadly poison, which was never given.

• Chapter 47, Broad Sunshine

  Hans praises surgery as the grandest thing on earth and Dr. Boekman offers to train him as his successor.