University of Virginia Library

SECTION I.—Concluded.

—Crabbe.

Though now the apartment had become thinned of its
guests, and in proportion to the former number who had
througed it, deserted, yet there still lingered about the
tables, which now were only defaced with the scattered
remnants of their late luxurious loads, emptied jars that
had foamed with rich beer from Wappinger's Creek,
flasks half drained smoked out pipes, with the ashes in
heaps at their sides, and seas of liquor that had been spilled
by the revellers; a few persons, some of whom actively
engaged in wrangling on some disputed topic, while
others dozing on their seats from want of better employment,
or sleeping o'er the dull prosing of some endless,
long-winded, talking Hollander, who had taken under his
especial care the safety of the whole universe, and who
decided on the propriety of every political movement
of moment that had been lately made in Europe as well
as the Nieuw Nederlandts, were heedless of the weariness
of their hosts, and appeared to make no preparation
for quitting their seats, although every body around them
was on the move for speedy departure. Characters of
this description are to be found in every situation of society;
men, forgetful of the cheer extended them, who
bear down, and fairly wear out hospitality, imposing on
decency and good manners, and who may be fairly classed
under that denomination of personages whom the house-wives
describe as wearing at a visit their `sitting breeches.

The very type of this long anchored species, were two
individuals, who had taken their places, probably for the
sake of observing those who withdrew from the room,
on a long settle that stood a few paces from the door:
the one of these was a man of such towering stature, that
when he stood, even with an inclination of the head, the
crown of his beaver came unsociably in contact with the
low and smoky ceiling of the apartment; while the other
was a clear reverse of figure to his companion, being one
of those short-necked, pudding-headed, double-bodied
fellows, who have not an inch of limb to spare, and whose
flesh is comfortably rolled round them like the warm
fleece round the unshorn sheep; the taller was a broad,
leathern faced looking character, with a swearing stare,
and a nose that predominated over the rest of his features
in the shape of a punch ladle, and bearing at the
extremity a deep copper tinge; his hair was of an iron
grey colour, and his appearance bespoke him a man of
some consequence, and indeed he was no less a personage
than schepin Jacobus Kip, Roymeester, and candidate
for the place of der heer officier, while the little man, who
sat beside him, an almost silent listener, was a Dutch
apothecary and doctor of medicine, bred at the schools
of Hoorn, where he became, as his comfortable person
bespoke, a proficient in the delicious study of fat beef,
good butter, and `groene kaas;' he was called Hans
Kierstede, and truly he was a most appropriate companion
for schepin Kip; for he had on that evening, as was
his custom at all good opportunities, given his predominant
propensity of eating its full range and sway, and he was
at its close situated somewhat as the monstrous constrictor
of the East, who after his bloody banquet, stretches
himself out in the shade, listless and incapable of action;
and much so it fared with honest Hans, who being what
is commonly termed brimful of the feast, and stuffed like
a tick with good fare, was in an excellent mood of patient
hearing, while his associate, who was one who had from
his station, a fair opportunity of an extensive acquaintance,
both among the groodt und klien Burgerrecht von
Nieuw Yorck, and was withal greatly given to the uncharitable
propensity of reflecting on the characters and
actions of his neighbours with ungodly virulence when
once set out, between the arduous discussion of a half
emptied pipe, took the whole conversation to himself,
uninterrupted by his half dozing hearer, except when,
after some long and minute scrutiny of all about him, in
an interval of wakefulness, occasioned by the violent gestures
and utterance of Mienheer Kip, there was enforced
on his sight the rapid demolition of the viands that had
been prepared for the company, and the scraps that now
remained in their places; then, as roused by such destruction,
the doughty Kierstede edged in some proper culinary
stricture, and forgetful of his own avidity at their
consumption, he deprecated the fashion of the cookery
that had been used, and sometimes where he praised, (for
some few of the dishes he admitted were commendable,
though not more than to pass,) he added a lugubrious lamentation,
that from want of appetite and weakness of
digestion, he had not been enabled to do justice to that
which had been set before him. From where these worthies
sat, all who departed from the room were conspicuous
to their observation, and it will not be wondered at,
that the remarks of schepin Kip on his fellow burghers
partook largely of his spleenful and cynical disposition.

“Mien goodt mans, Hans Kierstede,” quoth the schepin,
familiarly clapping his hand on his neighbour's thigh,
and puffing his pipe through one corner of his mouth,
while he directed the apothecary's attention to a little
man with a bald head and a hitch in his gait, who was
bowing and scraping, and wriggling and smiling, and holding,
with all the apparent warmth of friendship and of an
attached heart, the hand of the Lieutenant Governor, as
he paid him his obeisance at departure, while Leisler
seemed to reciprocate his kindness, as conscious of his
worth and faithfulness—“Mien goodt man, Hans Kierstede,”
said Jacobus Kip in low Dutch, to the doctor of
medicine, (though his words are here translated for the
benefit of the reader;) “I tell you this, my friend, and I
promise you the truth when you listen to what I tell you:
you see that man with his bow and his smile, his ready

hand and bending head, like a Chinese mandarin; you
know him as you would know a bad stuyver, my friend
Hans; then I tell you this, he is as big a rogue as you will
see with your eyes between Nieuw Amsterdam and Dort,
from which my grandfather came I tell you this, he will
cut his own mother's throat for a bad dotkin—what do
you say to that, my man, Hans Kierstede?”

“Dat vas a vat kapoen, a ver vine pird,” muttered
the auditor, who with thoughts intent on a more generous
subject, had heard but little of the invective of his
querulous companion; “tish drue,” said Hans, “dat
pird wash tesberate pad tressed; dey do dings betters at
Hoorns.”

“My mans, Hans Kierstede,” continued schepin Kip,
unconscious in his warmth, to the lack of the apothecary's
attention to his discourse, “I tell you this, Dirk Von
Rikketie is a great knave; he that trusts to him may venture
on the ice in the Overslaugh in spring weather;
see how he bows and grins, as if his back was as crooked
as the Y; you think from his looks he is the friend of
Leisler; for all that, you see, I tell you this, Hans Kierstede,
he is no more the friend of Leisler than he is that
of Claus Bayard; he is his own friend alone—one man is
up on the ladder, the other is at the foot; Dirk contrives
to keep place with all—this morning he followed Orloffe
and Claus; the evening comes, he is with Leisler, and
to-morrow if Bayard stands where Leisler now stands, I
tell you this, Dirk bows and grins to Claus, as at all times
he had been his stoutest follower—see there, he limps
away with himself,” pursued Mienheer Kip, as the person
whose merits he had descanted on disappeared from
the apartment, “so the devil limps. I wonder whether
with all his bad deeds, his sycophancy and hypocrisy, if
Dirk sleeps like an honest man—his head is bald and venerable;
but what think you of his heart, Hans Kierstede?”

“Dat gans—mien zeil! Burgomaster Brezier eat dat
gans, Ik had nien a morzhel do but mit mien deeth,” responded
Kierstede, “but twash padly kooked doo; Mienheer
Kip, I vill deach you der ding, you kan dell beople's

py de way dey tress der gans, niet te nien, der gans if
stewed closh mit zourgrout, would nien pe zo pad zdill;
dey kooks gans at Hoorn in dat vashion, Mienheer
Kips.”

Mienheer Jacobus impatiently shrugged up his shoulder
at the abrupt and untimely remarks of the little doctor
of medicine, and he drew a long whiff from his pipe
at the unrelenting stupidity of his companion, and for the
moment determined to waste on his dull ear no farther
words; but he was not able to hold good his resolution,
as there sailed past him to the door, in all the pomp of
importance, a huge, lusty, black-browed man, upon whose
arm hung, in amorous fondness, a plain little Dutch woman,
her small grey eyes simpering from under her crimped
Flemish cap upon her massy protector.

“Mien man, Hans Kierstede,” broke forth the schepin,
as he beheld the fond couple move by him, “you
see that man with his wife, who is just gone through the
door;—'tis Doctor Kindermeester, that has married the
rich widow of our old burgher—what a strut and splutter
he makes! but he is all strut and splutter, puff and blaze,
while his great carcass and brains are hollow and empty—
plenty of room in his skull for the wind he sends forth—
I tell you my friend, he looks like an ox, and his brains
are like an ox's brains. By my trow, heavy and dull
enough; though, Hans Kierstede, he deserves credit for
his ingenuity, when he imposed on the Burgomasters at
Leyden, and sold them for a vast quantity of guilders, a
stinking cabbage patch, advising the besotted purchasers
to make it a public physic garden, like the Felix Meretis.
Ho! ha!” and the schepin chuckled as he spoke, “what
think you, Hans Kierstede? he purposed to read lectures!
well, I'll tell you then, he pockets the pay and the lectures
remain in the books from whence he steals all his lectures;
for, Hans, it is convenient for such men who want
minds to steal it from the works of others; and while he
dissipated a fortune got by such fraud, the stink weed
and the pudding stone are the most flourishing plants that
adorn his famous physic garden; and that is not all let me
tell you, my man, Hans Kierstede, this great bladder of

a fellow, would have had the burgomasters believe him a
very Boerhaave; but let me tell you the truth, my friends
den Hogen Mogenheid of Vaderlandt, are not such fools;
and when they doubted doctor Kindermeester's pretensions,
he kicked and huffed in a great dudgeon; and now
out of pure spite, and mortification, he hath come to the
Nieuw Nederlandts to set up a school of medicine that
will make the professors in the low countries die with
envy and spleen, and this, my man Hans, he promises to
do without a guilder from the stadt. Let me tell you my
friend, it is very well for men when they have no credit
with their high mightinesses, having once imposed on
them like this doctor Kindermeester, to say they do not
want a guilder to assist their vain projects from the public
pocket—the truth is, let the offer be made, or let there
be a chance of getting something from the stadt, and then
see whether these boasters would not snap at it as greedily
as a hungry cur would at a kitchen bone—I tell you
the truth, Hans Kierstede, this fat doctor of medicine is
all vapour and conceit: he pokes his nose in the first
places to make the credulous burghers believe him a
great man; but I tell you my man Hans, it can do an ass
no good to pass for a lion, for the more he moves the
more you see his tail; and the truth is as to Doctor Kindermeester,
that of one half he meddles in he knows as
little as the salmon fish that bounces in the Maes—”

“Zalmon, schepin Kip? mien hertz!” said doctor Hans
Kierstede, rubbing his eyes as if just awakened, and having
only heard the last words addressed to him: “Zalmon!
dish ish as vone vine vish ven dey kooks him as
you sall zee zerved on a burgomaster's tinner dable—
mien hertz, how dey kooks him mit budder and kreens at
Hoorn—Got! mien moud vaders at der dought op him
tressed mit Zauce—mien zeil, dat Hoorns de blace mit
der kokwinkels, Mienheer Kip.”

Mienheer Kip turned in evident vexation from his companion,
and petulantly for a while employed himself in
silence to the finishing of his pipe, as he could not but
perceive from the little apothecary's manner, that he had
scarcely understood a word with which he had honoured

him, and until startled by the mention of an eatable, had
fairly been nodding in a short dose; but however offended
he was for the moment with his chuckle-pated listener,
such temptation to invade the reluctant taciturnity of the
schepin was not to be withstood, as presented itself in the
dress, assumed airs of importance, and well known characters
of the guests who passed him, as they flitted from
the apartment like shadows by a glass, which reflected
their form and shape, nor concealed a deformity; but in
truth it is but justice to the memory of the schepin (who,
by the by, lies buried in the churchyard of Garden-street
Church, not far from burgomaster Peachy Prauw
Van Zandt,) to state that with a small allowance to his
splenetic temper, which in later years had been increased
by the Vroedschap's rejecting all his plans for public improvement,
as they were so disinterested and economical
that they would not, if put in operation, have yielded a
farthing by way of speculation or contract to any dignified
burgomasters, whether he was a tailor or a dirt
contractor, that in his description of such as fell under
his perview, he did not greatly exaggerate the fact; and
therefore it can be judged from those attributed by
schepin Jacobus Kip to their forbears, what virtues the
descendants of the honest, staunch, and thrifty burghers
of Nieuw Amsterdam in der Nieuw Nederlandts, have
inherited and improved on; and although mankind, it may
be asserted, progresses slowly in most matters of civilization
in many parts of this habitable world, the province of
New-York is certainly not one of them; for the quick intellect
of the Yankee, and the steady bottom of the Dutchman,
being well grafted together, have produced a stock
whose fruitfulness in all arts, (fas et nefas,) may bid defiance
for comparison to the whole globe. Vain were it
to give an accurate outline of the multifarious remarks on
the many rich subjects of sarcasm that flowed from the
lips of the worthy schepin, and were unheard by the dull
hearing (or rather when he was listening and awake, passed
in one ear and went out of the other) of the excellent
doctor of medicine, his companion, by whose evidence the
assailed never could have convicted Mienheer Kip of slander;
(for truth in slander and libel, by some learned civilians,
and most particularly Dirk Von Rikketie, when it
affected men in power, and of course his friends, was
reckoned inadmissable and very criminal, and always received
from his immaculate judgment, severe animadversion,
and a committal to the Rasphuis;) for doctor Hans
Kierstede was a veritable and patient being, who never
in his whole life contrived to remember a word of the
shortest story he ever heard, and his memory was never
burthened beyond a recipe for cookery of some kind or the
other, and that he conned for weeks, as a student doth his
exercise; he was indeed a creature that took the world
easy, and lived for nothing but eating Group after
group moved on in their departure, and but few slipped
away unobserved by the keen eye and sharp tongue
of the honest Mienheer, who was seldom in his strictures
known to be more lenient to an ass though covered
with gold, than had he but worn a shabby packsaddle;
for he was a sad enemy of those who, swollen with
new gotten wealth, assume airs of grandeur and consequence,
and forgetful of their own origin, would be
thought of a race superior to their fellow burghers, the
very matter of their pride showing their ignorance,—because,
who that boasted sense, would suppose that either
high living, drinking, or dressing; can elevate one piece
of worthless clay beyond another, or make the blood and
body of the grandson of a footman and washerwoman better
than his ancestors.—No; there is much in the Italian
proverb when applied to the fair and gorgeous garments,
and the boasted family of so vain a coxcomb: that a
white glove often covers a dirty hand; certainly it ought
to be apparent to such pieces of pampered insignificance,
that Providence, when it modelled the form of the veriest
vagrant that begs along the public streets, took as much
pride and care as in the making of a prince. Mienheer
Kip, in his survey, did by no means spare this sort of
gentry; for their conceit and impudence was a thing of
singular mirth to him—and he chuckled heartily at his
own conception as a young burgher and his new married
bride sallied past him, with an excess of airs and
affectation; scarce deigning in their haughtiness of
pride to recognise, even by a nod, the honest schepin,
who had smoked many a pipe and drank many a pot of
beer with their father, who had been an honest Dutch
cooper, and got himself a comfortable fortune, which
was all his children seemed to have inherited from him;
for no sooner did they possess his money than they
endeavoured to shut from remembrance the means
whereby he acquired it, and could not bear the sight of a
hoop or a stave; while, to impose on others and make it
believed their descent was beyond reality, having heard
such were the fashions in the old countries they got an
ingenious painter to compose a coat of arms, but such a
one it was as would have puzzled a herald to have read:
it was surmounted by a cap, purporting to be a ducal coronet,
and many other rare and magnificent devices, of
which the bearers were extremely proud, and which, when
recognised by schepin Kip on sundry corners of their apparel,
he marvelled first greatly thereat; for the painter,
being a native born Nieuw Nederlander, and having never
seen the coronet of a duke, had thereon exercised his fancy
and shaped it rather clumsily, so that the ready eye of
Mienheer Kip at first took it to be no other than the representation
of half a butter firkin (such as the honest cooper
used to fashion for the goed vrouws of Goshen) after it had
been sawed in twain, as was often the custom of the saving
citizens of Nieuw Amsterdam, and which hath been even
handed down to these days, the separate halves making
two excellent tubs; but on the schepin's taking a more certain
sight, (and he laughed hugely at the idea) he in his
own mind determined the coronet was no other than a
representation of old Schermerhorne's of Schenectadie,
(with whom the cooper's family had become related by
intermarriage,) red worsted nightcap, which the Dutchman
(for he was dogwhipper, as is related somewhere before
in this veritable historie, to his native town,) used to
clap on his head when his beaver was mislaid, when he
rushed out of his homestead in pursuit of some noisy cur,
the terror of boys and dogs. At the same time there occurred
from the incident to the memory of schepin Kip,
his having been terrible put out to understand the meaning
of a shield with a bar or cheveron, that Mienheer
Walton, the rich barber, had placed over his street door in
the large new house he had just erected; and the thought
struck the schepin forcibly, that it was an act of great
humility in the barber, who, although he had become an
immense rich man, would not forget his original mean
occupation, but wished to remind the world of what he
had been and how he had made his money; for the ingenious
Kip construed the shield into a representation of a
barber's basin, flattened by the unskilfulness of the
carver, and the cheveron into an open razor. And indeed
the schepin was an admirer of humility in all persons, and
it is not suprising that his very bowels rose within him in
bitterness at the many airs of mock greatness that passed
under his observation; but he was most particularly angered,
and that almost beyond control, when he was rather
rudely and bearishly rubbed against, (as if he had been a
nobody,) and his pipe nearly knocked from him in passing,
by a little, stout, squab built personage, so vastly distended
with his own magnitude as scarce to be able to see any
one except his own all-important figure, and at the same
time taking room to make a most significant gesticulation
and shrug, as he closed one eye and with a manner
the most portentous, ejaculated to a lean, trembling
looking man at his elbow, the words `you know,' which
seemed to make the poor fellow shrink into himself with
terror; without ceremony, as if it had not been in the
way, this worthy trod on the foot of schepin Kip, till it
made him wince again with the weight, and then moved
out of the room without apologizing by a word to the
poor burgher, who could not speak for the pain inflicted
so ruthlessly on him, but kept shaking up and down the
aching limb, now putting it on the floor, then raising it up,
all the while groaning, and moaning, and twisting, and
drawing up with many ludicrous and lugubrious contortions
his long features, while tears of agony rolled down his
stout visage.

“Confound the usurer—tuyvil! dirty dousand dams!
oh my corns! he's broke my toe”—growled, with the

very tone of a wounded mastiff, the injured schepin, interlarding
every broken sentence with the flourishes of a
dozen High Dutch oaths, that made all around stare at
him; “Myn Got! his foot's like a horse's; no wonder,
he was bred in a stable—tuyvel und dunder! he's crushed
the worst corn I had. One would have believed he never
handled corn in the crib of the stable where he
first began the world, he has so little mercy on mine—
Oh my corns! oh my toe!”

“Mien hertz! dish is nien der zeazen vor korns;
dough dey are goot poiled mit vleesh;” quoth Hans Kierstede,
wakening from a long nap in surprise, and not at first
perceiving the wry faces of schepin Kip, which, however,
when he beheld, he added in a tone of pity and condolence:
“Mienheer Kip, mien hertz! vats de madders
mit u?”

It may well be supposed when the schepin had, by long
and tender assiduities, somewhat lulled the biting sharpness
of his pain, that he launched out rather virulently
against the cause of his anguish, and ran the burgher
most violently down behind his back, and called him by
many hard names, and related at every twinge of his toe,
some tough story concerning the way he had attained
great wealth, from being at first an ostler in the stables of a
burgher of Ostend; and how, even out of the sweepings of
his master's stables, he had made money; and that from
only looking at the back of the Dutch bible instead of the inside,
when he said his prayers, he had now the assurance
to assert it was no harm to take as many per cent for
loans that he had made, under good security, to the necessitous
as he pleased, and therefore the dominie was
never able to persuade him to obey the law of Holland as
to interest, because he did not think it allowed sufficient
profit; so that his interest very soon, in most cases, was as
great as the principal he first advanced. But in the midst
of his invectives against this cause of his torture, the worthy
schepin could not but laugh to himself, as nearly
to forget his hurt, at the recollection of the burgher's
being once finely tricked in his own way, by a sharp

witted Yankee, who sold him a horse; and the schepin
considered it a prime, first rate, capital joke, that he who
had skinned so many in his time, should have been at
last caught by the false skin of an animal he was bred up
with. “His hand,” said Mienheer Kip, “must certainly
have been out with the curry-comb, or it could not have
been possible, my mans, Hans Kierstede, to have so
nicely shut his eyes with the blinds.”

Mienheer Kip continued his censures on others of the
guests at great length, after the pain of his toe had fairly
departed, and he considered himself so fully revenged on
the uncivil inflictor of the injury, as to turn his attention
to those who followed him from the apartment on their
way homewards.

“My mans, Hans Kierstede,” said Mienheer, and his
very words are used, there not being the same necessity
to make them good English as induced me before to render
them as far as ability allowed, for the edification of
the reader; “my mans, Hans Kierstede,” quoth he, in a
broken Low Dutch, half English and half Hollandt, “and
der Ik dells u ish oud Jan Van Schraper Vander Blasbull,
der Schilder, der bainder mensch—dat bainds his
mensch's hoeds vlad like der dimber dat is gut vor
poards at Zwoll in der Vaderlandt, and dere Ik dells u
is der groodt vendu meester dat was a bakkerjongen—
his kopt is as high as der Koning—Ik dells u—der
mensch has dravelled, und mit der zites dat he's zeen, his
kopt has raiszed lik pread ven tish lighdt as a veader—
der liddel bubble dat has noding in it altyg zwims on der
dop op der rivier—Ik dells u dis, Hans Kierstede.”

“Ja!” replied his hearer, “dat brandewynt is goot
vor niets—Mienheer Jakopus Kip, u shoud daste der
brandewynt at Hoorn; mien hertz, dats brandewynt—
Mienheer, Ik dakes und drinks do your brosberity mit
mine brosberity.”

“Dank you, mien mans, Hans Kierstede,” returned
the schepin, “I dells u dis—mien ogten! dere goes Gelyn
Verplancke and Stopher Hoagland, and Bay Croe Svelt—
mien ogten! dere de tap toe peads, and we sall be shud

in der kates; Ik had nien a dought dat id vas zo ladte,
mien mans, Hans Kierstede—tis dime wy gets on—Ik sall
lend u mien arms drou Bridge-straadt—zo leds gaan mit
der resdt von dem.”

And as he spoke, having knocked the ashes from his
pipe, followed by his associate, he hastened with mighty
strides towards the door, which they had scarcely attained
ere their further progress was arrested by a crowd of
persons whose entrance in the apartment by the outlet
which they were seeking, opposed and prevented their
leaving it. The drum, whose sound had invaded the
quiet flowings of Mienheer Kip's remarks, and which he
had supposed was the usual warning for retirement to all
honest and peaceable citizens, had, however, on this
evening been beaten for entirely another purpose—it was
an alarm, and in a few minutes was followed by the hoarse
and heavy clangor of the city bells, whose doleful tongues
pealed forth in notes of terror to the awakened and startled
burghers of Nieuw Amsterdam—who in the memory of
man had heard the like but twice before, once while stout
old Stuyvesant prepared for the approach of his conqueror,
Colonel Nichols, and lastly when the news came that the
dastard Manning had surrendered to Evertse and Benkes,
and that their fleet was coming down the Narrows with
all sail set for the city of the Manahadoes. As the sound
continued, its dread voice swept over the deep and massy
heap of crowded buildings, and invading the close and
heavy defiles that composed the darksome streets, burst
on the ear of the slumbering inhabitants. The tardy Nederlander
turned on his couch, and shook his wearied
limbs, and rubbed his eyes, and stared about him astonished
as the noise struck his ear; the wary trafficker,
whose storehouses were filled with merchandise, leaped
from his couch in a moment—and the light rest of the
lover was driven from eyes where it scarce had lingered.
An instant past the city had appeared like some serpent
coiled harmless in his dusky ring, stirless as though his
fangs were palsied in death,—the brief space of time is
fled, his repose hath been disturbed, his barbed tongue
darts fire, and his very skin glitters in his anger,—so,

through every corner of the late midnight which had
slept upon the city, lights break and flash vividly, as stars
shooting in the firmament, from casement to casement
they flare; and heads yet in their nightgear were thrust
from the half opened door and unclosed window forth
into the streets, and voice after voice hailed those who
came within reach of the cry, but who, scarce attending
to the call, passed onwards—eager yet fearful to inquire
the rise of the disturbance.

Soon all were in motion; those who had been hurrying
home belated, joined the throng, and those who had but
so lately quitted the scene of revelry at the fort, and who
were wandering off on their separate ways, turned back
their steps, seeking as they went, at their neighbours and
those whom they met, the sudden cause which all alike
were hastening to learn: and, although the truth was to
them unknown, there were not wanting veracious wiseacres,
as is usual at such times, who started a hundred wild
and groundless suggestions, which, however palpably preposterous
and remote from the slightest foundation, were
satisfactorily sworn to by their authors, and lacked no
small number of believers. Some cried that the Indians,
having fired Beverwyck and Schenectady, had come down
the river, massacreing, burning, and scalping men, women,
and children; sparing neither the head of the aged, nor
the feeble bodies of the helpless infant and its tender
mother—that they had landed at Vredendaal, and were
now at Golden Hill, ready to rush upon the strengthless
palisades of the city. Some had seen them frightfully
painted and armed—others had been deafened with their
savage war whoops. Some had another tale of terror,
which they anxiously sought to force on the credence of
their ready hearers: that the ancient foemen, the French,
had a fleet riding at Naijarlij; that Nottens island was in
their possession; that they had erected batteries, which
were ready at a word to sweep the whole town to ashes;
that unless the council, which was understood to be convened
for the purpose, instantly surrendered, that the
flames of their dwellings would light the march of the unrelenting
and ruthless enemy, and that all would indiscriminately

be given to the slaughtering knife—while
others yet more timid, trembled at the monster they themselves
conjured, reported that the danger that threatened
was even nearer at hand—it was within their own homes—
there was, they told an insurrection among the negroes,
who had set the city on fire at several different quarters,
and were running about like devils, cutting the throats of
all they found; and that although the flames spread terrifically
that on account of the vast quantities of smoke,
the light of the ascending blaze was obscured from the
eyes of those who looked in the directions pointed out as
the places where the destructive element was raging—and
lastly, there were not a few who whispered about, serious
in tone and visage, that the time was arrived foretold
by the ill-treated Yokup Van Veltzlear, who had a few
years previous, pretending to be divinely inspired, made a
terrible hue and cry in the streets, crying on the bridge
and before the houses of the Hon. Stenwyck and John
Lawrence, “wo, wo to the crowne of pride and the drunkearts
of Ephreim! Two woes past and the third coming,
except you repent, repent—repent, as the kingdome of
God is at hand;” and for which solemn prophecy, he
had been most unceremoniously and soundly flogged by
the common hangman, Anthonie De, who being a proper
long-limbed, close-fisted, New-England man, always took
good care to let every body who came under his thumb
by means of the law, know him so well as to steer clear
of his fingers thereafter; and after said flagellation,
Yokup was kicked out of the colony by order of the reprobate
Dutch Governor who then reigned, and who, it
was said, never repented, except over a brandy bottle
when it was emptied of its contents—all this persecution
it was now remembered that Yokup had endured patiently
and meekly; proving perfectly the old saw, that a prophet
is never respected in his own country. Stirred by
these several rumours, the free-hearted patriot, who
had heretofore, at every public opportunity, offered his
fortune and his life to the service and protection of his
native land, began to wish in spite of himself, that his
property was in a safe place, and took more than one serious
thought of how in the confusion he might convey
away his person unharmed. The gallant leader of the
enrolled citizens, who the day before had manfully swaggered
and strutted at the head of his followers, and courageously
flourished his thirsty steel, anxious for its trial
on the carcasses of any who dared front him, now was
seized, most unfortunately for the display of his valor, by
an unaccountable weakness in the knees and eyesight;
the latter being brought to so poor a state that he was
unable to find the deadly weapons of his defence
—so, feeling unfit for duty, yet troubled for the welfare
of the city, while departing therefrom for the benefit
of country air, he sent word to the next in command,
who, however, (for one misfortune never comes
alone) was not to be heard of, for being a tailor, (it is the
fashion for tailors to be great military characters) he had,
in the phrase of his trade, taken with his goose and thimble
long stiches, and was snugly buttoned in his cellar pantry
—while the pompous Burgomaster on the other hand, was
started to such activity, that he actually ran to the Council
Chamber, determined that no time should be lost ere he
gave his vote that the commander of the foe (if such was
arrived) should be received with all due honours;
that a Committee should be deputed to wait on him with
a congratulatory address, and escort him to a public dinner,
to which, nevertheless, orders were specially to be
given that none but the private friends of the members
of the corporation should be invited—a maxim since
come to universal adoption, the public being taxed and
their name used to fatten a whole herd of aldermen and
their families, while they themselves, the public, who
pay for these feasts, have not the eating of a mouthful,
being literally situated like a man who gives a splendid
dinner or merry making in his own house, yet is obliged
by his guests to remain without doors during the entertainment;
or if, as it had been otherwise stated by the
rumour, that the town was already on fire, the burgomaster
resolved, that efficient measures should be
taken to turn the tide of the flame, if it chanced to come
in the direction of his property, to that of certain neighhours
who resided in an adjoining street, for although
these persons were respectable and industrious enough,
yet they were too peaceable in public matters to be good
citizens, scarcely having been known to give their suffrage
at an election for members of the Council, or if they
had, the votes had been against the burgomaster in question,
therefore, they were assuredly dangerous to society, and
the sooner they were denounced and got rid of the better—and
then withal, the boastful recreant, who hourly
had jeered virtue among his abandoned fellows, and had
cried out that he recked not, cared not for the amends
an ill spent life demanded, who reviled God and man in
his boldness, whose thoughts of after life were drowned
in the enjoyment of the present, who mocked at honesty
and despised innocence, with whom religion had been a
jest and honour a blasphemy to pleasure, who founded his
tenets on the saying of the King of Israel, “as the tree
falleth, so it lieth—who knoweth the soul of the man
goeth upwards, or the soul of the beast that goeth downwards?”
he too began to feel an irksome load within his
breast; his philosophy was weakened, and in vain he
strived to rally it to his aid; he would have hid, but he
knew not where. However, when these inquirers commingled
with those who had thronged before them at the
moat that encircled the fort, they found the gates closed,
the drawbridge raised, the sarazine dropped, and sentinels
posted on the walls, who most uncourteously seemed
to deny both ingress and egress, and to the anxious seeking
of the numerous questioners, were unwilling, or what
appeared equally probable, were unable to return any satisfactory
answers. The noise still continued: the hollow
beat of the alarm drum at intervals, and the increased
and unceasing tollings of the bell, sent their deep and
mournful notes in the night air, that had before wafted its
currents as peaceful as an infant slumbering on the bosom
of its careful and tender nurse; the sounds rolled along
the mountainous and rocky banks of the sterile shores of
Weehawken, which trembled with the echo; the forest
animal, who slept in the mazes of the woods that lined
the declivities of Hobouk, leapt from his lair, awakened
as by the startling shout of the pursuing huntsman, and as
the long reverberations floated to the heights of Breukelin,
those who dwelt in its sound looked abroad, and while
the moonlight, with its fickle beam gleamed for an instant
and broke through the cold clouds and fell on the bleak
earth beneath, like the changeful smile of beauty, that
seeks a face it loves, yet doubts to gaze upon, and rendered
visible the black shadow of the stirring and distant city
as they cast their eyes in wonderment towards it and
hearkened to the echoes which seemed like the roaring
of afar off thunder.

And now the reader, if he has any curiosity thereto,
arising from the effect which has been here described,
or otherwise, on examining the section which immediately
adjoins this, which is now fast concluding, will not remain
long in doubt concerning the cause of all this dire distress,
and in much less period of time than the crowd who had
collected therefor received the same information.