University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
An Irruption of Boiled Lobsters.

It was many days before Catalina again saw
master Sybrandt, who, sooth to say, shrunk from the
usual consequences of a good deed, as skittishly as
some worthies do from those of a bad one. Catalina
said to the woman within her, “He is giving
himself airs—he thinks I will send for him again—
but he'll be very much mistaken this time—I hate
such proud stupid people!” and she looked in the
glass, and was right pleased at what she saw there.
The reader must guess what it was, for I never betray
a lady's secrets. When Sybrandt at last overcame
his old enemy, and ventured into what to him
was worse than the jaws of a hungry lion, Catalina,
affronted at his long absence, under these particular
circumstances, which seemed to indicate that he
considered the saving of her life a matter of no
sort of consequence, treated him with considerable
disdain. Sybrandt, who could digest twenty
folios of metaphysics easier than comprehend the
mind of a woman, and who never dreamed that his
absence or presence was noticed by any human
being in the shape of a young female, became only
the more proud, shy, embarrassed, and stupid at this
reception. He thought to a certainty his cousin despised
him, and he was one of those that never
court favour where they expect contempt. Thus

they continued to misunderstand each other, and
thus, it was probable, would they continue to the end
of their lives.

Not long after the adventure of the island, an incident
occurred which occasioned a great sensation,
not only in the city of Albany, but for many miles
around. This was the arrival of a regiment of
British troops from New-York, in consequence of
expected hostilities between France and England,
whose wretched rivalry generally involved the four
quarters of the globe in war and bloodshed. A large
portion of the officers of this regiment were gay
young men without families, and the belles and mothers
of the belles in and about Albany, saw in the
new comers a mark on which to exercise the influence
of the charms of the one and the arts of the
other. One of the most mortifying results of the
colonial state is, that it invariably generates on the
part of the colonists a habit if not a feeling of inferiority,
and on the part of the parent state a haughty
arrogant disregard of propriety and decorum when
among them. The men of the United Colonies, with
the exception of perhaps those of Virginia and
South Carolina, did not, in the days of which we
are speaking, assert that proud equality which they
are now authorized to maintain wheresoever they
go; and the women, especially those who aspired to
the bon-ton—with sorrow and mortification we record
it—by the eagerness with which they sought,
and the unconcealed vanity with which they received
the attentions of gentlemen from the old country,
contributed most materially to the depression of
their own countrymen as well as the exaltation of
foreign adventurers. Nothing indeed contributes so
much to the relative dignity and virtue of the two

sexes, as the estimation in which they hold each
other. Where women are neglected by their countrymen,
or where men are neglected by their countrywomen,
in their admiration for strangers, the result
will probably be the degradation of both in the eyes
of each other and the estimation of those whose attentions
they court. This silly habit of admiring
foreign fashions, foreign countries, and foreigners,
became so deeply implanted in the minds of the
good provincials of the “Old Thirteen,” that it still
retains its influence in some degree, as may be perceived
in the docility with which we are accustomed
to give the preference to moderate talent in a stranger,
over shining merit in a native; and to bow to
the decisions of ignorant pretenders, the sole weight
of whose opinions is derived from their passage
across the ocean. Like wine which has made a
voyage to China, opinions are held to be improved
by a similar adventure; and folly becomes venerable
when we can trace it to the reverend errors of declining
age across the water. Hospitality ennobles
a nation only when it springs from nobler motives
than the silly vanity of entertaining people of more
consequence than ourselves.

The colonel of the newly arrived regiment had
attained that period of life when vanity and ambition
take the place of love. He was gallant
and well born; he tacked honourable to his name,
and that alone was sufficient to consecrate him
in the eyes of the provincial ladies. He belonged
to that race of beaux which has long been
extinct as a species, although we now and then see
some vestiges in the remains of an old wreck of a
soldier, whose wit and vivacity have survived his
very self, and still sparkle from the mere force of

long habit. His name was Sydenham; he was
somewhat of a coxcomb, and his exterior was prepossessing,
especially in a red coat and epaulettes.
His courage was undoubted; his principles not at
all doubtful, for he held the point of honour to consist
in meeting the consequences of his actions, good
or bad, without flinching. He did not want for a reasonable
degree of scholarship, and was not ignorant
of books; but his greatest acquisition consisted in a
consummate knowledge of the world, a manner which
enabled him to be particularly pleasing whenever he
chose, and a pliability of principles which made it
singularly easy for him to choose the path most
agreeable for the time being. The rest of the officers
were nearly all alike, as much so as so many boiled
lobsters. They all wore red coats, and all thought
themselves of a different species from the honest
burghers, whose wine they condescended to drink,
and whose wives and daughters they favoured with
their attentions in proportion as the liquor was good,
and the ladies handsome.

The mansion-house of the Vancours had ever been
open to the footsteps of all respectable strangers,
and especially to the military men who frequently
sojourned there on their passage from New-York to
the frontier posts and back again. They came and
went as they pleased, and were received and entertained
with an easy hospitality, of which we see some
remains still lingering in the Southern States, and
making head against the silent inroads of heartless
and selfish ostentation. Independently of the hospitality
of the house, the situation of the elder Vancour
as a public man, together with his extensive acquaintance
with the interests of the colony, and his
singular influence over the Indians, naturally made

his house the resort of the principal officers of the
government, with whom his opinions always had
great weight.

Be this as it may, we soon find the colonel and
his officers as it were domesticated at the old mansion-house,
riding the colonel's horses, feasting on his
excellent fare, drinking his old wine, pronouncing him
a decent sort of an old curmudgeon, and never quizzing
the good gentleman but at their messes. Colonel
Sydenham singled out Catalina, quo ad hoc, as the
object of his devoirs; and the others found rural
deities among the daughters of the Van Ambrughs,
the Van Outerstoups, the Volekmaars, and the Vervalens
of the neighbourhood, who could talk English
with their eyes, if not with their tongues. It was
not then the fashion to pay any other than the most
respectful attentions to married dames; and if it had
been, there was something in the appearance, manners,
and character of the good Madam Vancour, a
staid and sober dignity and quiet self-possession, that
gained even the respect of folly and impudence combined.
One of the young officers of the regiment
was complaining one day that he could not find any
body to fall in love with. “Why don't you make
love to Madam Vancour?” said another, jestingly.
“Madam Vancour!” replied he; “I should as soon
think of throwing a glass of wine in the face of the
king!”

The arrival and sojourning of these gay sparks
created a mighty sensation in that part of the country,
and in a little time produced great innovations in
the simple habits of the people. Independently of
the general laxity of morals which is so often the
natural consequence of the roving, uncertain life of a
soldier, and his freedom from the restraints of home,

there is always attached to every considerable body
of troops a train of vicious and worthless people of
both sexes. Corruption follows in the rear of arms;
and it is pretty certain that nothing makes more fearful
inroads upon the moral virtues of the people than the
association for any length of time with disciplined
troops. One would suppose that the proverbial uncertainty
of a soldier's life would generate habits of sobriety,
reflection, and decorum; but so far from this, it
is sufficiently evident that it produces quite a contrary
effect. There is no period in which we see such
careless, high-wrought, and high-seasoned conviviality
as in an army the night preceding a battle, in which
every man is to peril his life to the uttermost.

The rural deities of the shades, and the lazy river-gods,
who slept in quiet in their crystal basins, save
when the breaking up of the ice in spring or the swelling
of the river in the pelting storm disturbed their repose,
were anon astounded at the frolicksome racket
of these new comers. Heretofore not a dog dared
bark after eight o'clock in their quiet retreats, except
as a signal that the wild man or the wild beast was
coming. But now, “preserve us!” as the good
Dominie Stettinius exclaimed with lifted hands,—
“half the night was spent—yea, even to nine and
ten o'clock—in dancings and jinketings.” The cows
stood lowing in the sober twilight, in expectation of
the dilatory milkmaid, who was peradventure adorning
herself, as the victim was erst dressed in flowers,
to be sacrificed to some gross heathen divinity, whose
attributes were lust and sensuality. The sober Dutch
lads, who whilom considered the dissipation of a
Christmas sleighride the summit of delight, now
were wont to steal at midnight from the dormitory
where the watchful cares of the good father had seen

them “quietly inurned,” to waste their time and
health, and morals, and spend their money in revels,
that the sun saw and blushed at when he rose above
the golden tops of the eastern hills. The quiet intrenchments
behind which our Dutch ancestors in
other quarters so strongly and obstinately maintained
their manners and habits, almost down to the present
time, were gradually sapped or stormed, and the good
Dominie Stettinius stood aghast to behold the backsliding
propensities of the youths and maidens of his
hitherto obedient, docile flock.

He forthwith took arms to oppose this mighty invasion
of his hitherto peaceful domain—we mean
such arms alone as comported with his age, his
habits, and his sacred function. Casting aside the
chastened zeal with which he had hitherto maintained
and enforced obedience among his quiet, simple
hearers, he arrayed himself in the mighty words of
reprehension, threatening, and denunciation; learned,
eloquent, and virtuous, he poured forth the stores of
his intellect and the enthusiasm of his soul in strains
of doric and affecting simplicity, that would have
done honour to the primitive reformers. But, alas!
what can the tongues of angels do, when example,
temptation, and opportunity knock at the threshold of
the human heart, peep in at the windows, and whisper
their seductions through the very keyholes? Some,
doubtless,—and especially the more aged people,
whose passions reposed upon the memory of the
past,—were checked by the pious eloquence of the
good dominie in their downhill career; but the
young, the thoughtless, and the madcap boys and
girls, many, very many of them long lived to rue the
day that saw the regiment of red-coats pitch its white,
innocent-looking tents among the rich meadows of
the matchless Hudson.