Page 24 - March On! God will Provide by Brother Aubert

4 e, vocATroN PRoBLEI\{
is a charming spot. Brick houses, all very much alike,
line both sides of a nalTow, brick-paved road. Here and
there a thatched roof juts up in a sea of shiny red tiles.
The hedges are clipped to a nicety, the hayricks in the
barnyards have every wisp of hay in place, wooden
shoes in perfect alignment sit drying on some window
sills.
Half way down the village on the right is the squatty,
one-story school house, conspicuous in its Dutch prac-
ticality, a coat of kalsomine. At the end of the village,
on the left, just before the road disappears into the
shadows cast by over-hanging trees stands the Church
of Our Lady, weather-beaten and looking very old with
accumulated moss showing in the masonry and on every
window sill. Built in mid-nineteenth century this church
replaces one destroyed by fire, probably a "barn-church,"
the type which the Calvinists permitted somerimes.
Such is Elshout today, and more than likely such it
was in a general rvay when Theodore Ryken was
James
born tlrere on August 30, 1797, the teast of St. Rose of
Lima.
The immediate Ryken genealogy presents no diffi-
culties. In the register of the parish church one finds
this entry: "On August 30, 1797, Theodore James, legiti-
mate son of Anthony Ryken and Maria Anna Beels, was
born and baptized. Wilhelmina Ryken acted for Cosmas
l)amian Beels and Elizabeth Ryken.*
There was no emergency. Baptism on the day of
birth was the custom. Neither was there anything un-
usual in having Aunt Wilhelmina act as proxy for Cos-
mas Beels, the grandfather, and Elizabeth Ryken, the
grandmother. Wilhelmina was the wife of Adrian,
* The Dutch spelling is "Rijken."