The Prescott daily news., 1908-08-29
The Yankee Pass.
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 IL was at a period soon after the close of the Revolutionary war that Aaron Whitney, Yankee peddler passed through the Mohawk valley on his way to Albany. The day was Sun day, and there was a law among the Dutchmen of those parts that no one should travel on that day. Moreover there was as much antipathy between Dutchmen and Yankees as there is be- tween cats and mice. How the Dutch ever left Holland to make homes in a new country beyond the sea no his- torian has ever explained. for when a Dutchman was once settled anywhere he never moved. Not so the Yankee. He would take up piece of land, i'm prove it, sell it and go somewhere else.
 Mein Gott," exclaimed one of the deacons of the Dutch church, "see that Yankee travelling on the Lords day! Was ever such blasphemy? Let us take him before Justice Van der Donk, who will doubtless mete out his pun fshment."
 So they took Aaron before the jus tice. He was sitting under an apple tree near his house, with a glass of schnapps beside him and a long clay pipe in his mouth. This is not men, toned as an unusual position for the great man, for all the long day he sat in no other. As Aaron was taken be- fore him the peddler saw pair of blue eyes looking at him from a win dow In the house. There was some thing in the young girl who owned them to attract him, and there was that in the peddler's spry step and twinkllng eye to catch her fancy.
 What you travel Sunday forT' ask ed Van der Donk, taking his pipe out of his mouth and looking sternly at the peddler.
 I'm goin' to Albany and from there down east. have sold my wares and want to get home."
 "H'm." said the Dutchman, you stay here till tomorrow. don't want you to bring the wrath of the Lord down on us"
 The peddler threw off his pack, mak- ing virtue of necessity. At least that was the appearance of 1t. Really he was quite willing to remain over awhile that he might look upon the fair face of the justices daughter Katrina who had looked upon him out of her blue eyes. And the girl was equally desirous of seeing more of the engag ing peddler. Why 1t is no man has ever told us, but peddlers are proverbi- ally fascinating to women. Perhaps i, Is the same audacity that enables them to sell their wares. At any rate, the peddler. leaving his pack for security went off to the other end of the apple orchard and waited for the girl to come to him, never for moment doubting that she would do so.
 And she did. She had been long de sirous of pouring out her dissatisfac- ton at the life she led to some person In whom she had confidence. and she felt sure that she could confide in the Yankee. She told him that her father compelled her to do all the work, while he smoked and drank schnapps; that she had a thousand dollars In a bank at Albany left her by her mother for which her father was trustee and that he would not let her have it. The ped dler told her that she needed a hus- band to work for her, and she would find this much easier and pleasanter than working for some one else.
 Now, the justice, thinking the peddler in a hurry to go on, when the shades of night came down intimated that for consideration he would pass him. The Yankee declared that Sunday end ed at sunset. The Dutchman secuted such theology. maintaining that it last ed till sunrise the next day. The Yan. kee finally consented to pay. The jus tice, who either could not write or was too fat or too lazy to write or could not write in English as well as in Dutch, told the Yankee to write pass Aaron took up the quill and wrote in an illegible hand on a bit of paper