University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER I.

Grievous and very much to be commiserated
is the task of the feeling historian,
who writes the history of his native
land. If it fall to his lot to be the sad
recorder of calamity or crime, the mournful
page is watered with his tears—nor
can he recall the most prosperous and
blissful era, without a melancholy sigh at
the reflection that it has passed away for
ever! I know not whether it be owing
to an immoderate love for the simplicity
of former times, or to that certain tenderness
of heart incident to all sentimental
historians; but I candidly confess that I
cannot look back on the happier days of
our city, which I now describe, without a
deep dejection of the spirits. With faltering
hand do I withdraw the curtain of
oblivion that veils the modest merits of
our ancestors, and as their figures rise to
my mental vision, humble myself before
the mighty shades.

Such are my feelings when I revisit
the family mansion of the Knickerhockers,
and spend a lonely hour in the chamber
where hang the portraits of my forefathers,
shrouded in dust, like the forms
they represent. With pious reverence do
I gaze on the countenances of those renowned
burghers, who have preceded me
in the steady march of existence—whose
sober and temperate blood now meanders
through my veins, flowing slower and
slower in its feeble conduits, until its current
shall soon be stopped for ever!

These, say I to myself, are but frail
memorials of the mighty men who flourished
in the days of the patriarchs; but
who, alas! have long since mouldered in
that tomb, towards which my steps are
insensibly and irresistibly hastening! As
I pace the darkened chamber and lose
myself in melancholy musings, the shadowy
images around me almost seem to
steal once more into existence—their
countenances to assume the animation of
life—their eyes to pursue me in every
movement! Carried away by the delusions
of fancy, I almost imagine myself
surrounded by the shades of the departed,
and holding sweet converse with the worthies
of antiquity! Ah, hapless Diedrich!
born in a degenerate age, abandoned to
the buffetings of fortune—a stranger and
a weary pilgrim in thy native land—blest
with no weeping wife, nor family of
helpless children; but doomed to wander
neglected through those crowded streets,
and elbowed by foreign upstarts from
those fair abodes, where once thine ancestors
held sovereign empire!

Let me not, however, lose the historian
in the man, nor suffer the doting recollections
of age to overcome me, while dwelling
with fond garrulity on the virtuous
days of the patriarchs—on those sweet
days of simplicity and case, which never
more will dawn on the lovely island of
Mannahata!

The renowned Wouter (or Walter)
Van Twiller was descended from a long
line of Dutch burgomasters, who had successively
dozed away their lives, and
grown fat upon the bench of magistracy
in Rotterdam, and who had comported
themselves with such singular wisdom
and propriety that they were never either
heard or talked of—which, next to being
universally applauded, should be the object
of ambition of all sage magistrates
and rulers.

His surname of Twiller is said to be a
corruption of the original Twijfter, which
in English means Doubter; a name admirably
descriptive of his deliberate habits.
For though he was a man shut up within
himself like an oyster, and of such a
profoundly reflective turn, that be scarcely
ever spoke except in monosyllables, yet
did he never make up his mind on any
doubtful point. This was clearly accounted
for by his adhere