Hans’s appeal to Dr. Boekman

Hans Brinker’s appeal to Dr. Boekman turns a private family crisis into a decisive act of hope: rather than spend his small store of money on skates, Hans offers it toward medical help for his father, Raff Brinker. The appeal succeeds, but its promise is tested when Raff’s condition worsens and Hans must seek the doctor’s intervention sooner than planned.

The choice behind the appeal

As Hans prepares to leave home, his mother urges him to buy skates. He is longing for them, but his attention keeps returning to the strange figure crouched by the hearth: his father, who is alive yet unable to think or speak meaningfully. Hans asks whether the money he has saved might bring a doctor from Amsterdam to see him. Dame Brinker answers from painful experience: she has already spent guilders on medical help, and Raff did not wake. She believes nothing more can be done and tells Hans to go buy the skates.

Hans leaves with a heavy heart. The choice is not between indifference and love, but between a longed-for pleasure and a slim possibility of helping his father. While skating toward Amsterdam over the frozen IJ, he sees Dr. Boekman, a celebrated physician and surgeon whose engraved likeness he recognizes from shop windows. The doctor’s severe appearance makes him an intimidating stranger, not an obvious ally. Yet Hans’s conscience tells him that buying skates while he might use the money to seek help would be wrong. That inward prompting turns the encounter into a request he must risk making.

Hans asks for help

Hans calls out to the doctor and approaches him despite his fear. Dr. Boekman initially mistakes the interruption for a plea for charity and says he does not give money to beggars. Hans answers with dignity, producing his small amount of silver to show that he is not begging. He wants to consult the doctor about his father, whom he describes as physically well but mentally absent since falling on the dikes.

The appeal is both practical and personal. Hans explains that the money is not enough to pay for the visit, but promises to earn more and offers to work for the doctor all his life if Raff can be cured. His account is incoherent with distress; he wipes away tears as he speaks. The movement in the scene is from the doctor’s guarded refusal to attention and then compassion. Dr. Boekman puts a hand on Hans’s shoulder, declines the money, and agrees that they will see Raff, while warning that the case seems hopeless.

The doctor asks how long Raff has been in this state. Hans answers that it has lasted ten years. He identifies the family’s home as a poor, broken-down hut a mile south of Broek, near the canal, known to local children as the idiot’s cottage. The specific duration and location give the doctor what he needs to find the family, while the stigmatizing local name shows how Raff’s condition has marked the household in the surrounding community.

A promise with a delay

Dr. Boekman cannot come at once. He tells Hans that he is leaving for Leiden and expects to return in a week; Hans may then expect him at the cottage. The promise gives Hans a reason to hope, but the delay means that the family must wait while Raff remains as he is. The doctor’s judgment is guarded: he calls the case bad and hopeless, yet still undertakes the visit because Hans has moved him.

The encounter also briefly exposes a private grief in the doctor. As he skates away, he thinks that Hans’s eyes resemble those of his own son, Laurens, and darkens again at the memory. This does not alter his commitment to visit, but it places his response to Hans beside a sorrow of his own. The boy’s request has reached a man who appears forbidding and unsociable, and the doctor’s kindness emerges not as a public display of generosity but as a decision to go to a poor family he has no obligation to serve.

The crisis makes the request urgent

The promised week becomes too long after Raff attacks Dame Brinker at the hearth. Later, as Hans travels with Peter van Holp, he explains what happened: Dame Brinker was kneeling to blow the peat fire, a small pleasure Raff liked to watch. Raff sprang on her and held her close to the flames, laughing as she struggled. Hans ran in from the canal, tried to pull his father away, and then struck him with a stool when he could not free his mother. Raff pushed him aside. Dame Brinker’s gown caught fire, but she was not burned; only part of her clothing was damaged.

The family’s response makes the scene more than an account of danger. Gretel Brinker fetched a porringer of food that Raff liked and set it on the floor; he left Dame Brinker and crawled toward it like a child. Afterward, Dame Brinker stayed up to tend him through a high fever. She said that he had often pressed his hands to his head, as if in pain. Hans struggles to tell Peter van Holp what occurred and recalls that he cannot remember clearly what followed the attack. His account insists that Raff, if himself, would not harm even a kitten. The violence is presented as part of his illness, not as a simple expression of his character, while the fire and Hans’s desperate intervention make the danger to the family immediate.

Peter carries the appeal forward

Hans tells Peter van Holp that he is going to Leiden to see Dr. Boekman because he cannot wait at home while Raff may be dying. Peter is surprised: the doctor is famous, difficult to reach, and known as stern. Hans counters that the doctor’s manner conceals a kind heart. He believes Dr. Boekman will come if Peter tells him what has changed.

Peter offers to make the journey and speak to the doctor himself, sparing Hans the choice between pursuing help and leaving his mother for longer. Hans welcomes the offer because the distance is not what troubles him; leaving Dame Brinker alone does. When Peter offers him guilders as a gift, Hans refuses them resolutely. His appeal therefore remains distinct from a request for charity: he has already offered what he could, and the help he needs is a doctor’s presence. The episode extends the original encounter into a second effort, now prompted by the hearthside attack. Its stakes have shifted from the possibility of treatment to the urgent need to reach Raff before his worsening condition brings further harm.