USA > New York > New York City > A history of New-York : from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty > Part 10
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always at hand to watch over its safety-but as to electing a lean, meddling candidate to the office, as has now and then been done, I would as lief put a grayhound to watch the house, or a race-horse to drag an ox wagon.
The burgomasters then, as I have already mention ed, were wisely chosen by weight, and the schephens. or assistant aldermen, were appointed to attend upon them, and help them eat ; but the latter, in the course of time, when they had been fed and fattened into sufficient bulk of body and drowsiness of brain, be- came very eligible candidates for the burgomasters' chairs, having fairly eaten themselves into office, as a mouse eats his way into a comfortable lodgement in a goodly, blue-nosed, skimmed-milk, New-England cheese.
Nothing could equal the profound deliberations that took place between the renowned Wouter, and these his worthy compeers, unless it be the sage di- vans of some of our modern corporations. They would sit for hours smoking and dozing over public affairs, without speaking a word to interrupt that perfect stillness, so necessary to deep reflection. Un- der the sober sway of Wouter Van Twiller, and these his worthy coadjutors, the infant settlement waxed vigorous apace, gradually emerging from the swamps and forests, and exhibiting that mingled appearance of town and country, customary in new cities, and which at this day may be witnessed in the city of Washington-that immense metropolis, which makes so glorious an appearance on paper.
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It was a pleasing sight, in those times, to behold the honest burgher, like a patriarch of yore, seated on the bench at the door of his whitewashed house, under the shade of some gigantic sycamore or over- hanging willow. Here would he smoke his pipe of a sultry afternoon, enjoying the soft southern breeze, and listening with silent gratulation to the clucking of his hens, the cackling of his geese, and the sonorous grunting of his swine ; that combination of farm-yard melody, which may truly be said to have a silver sound, inasmuch as it conveys a certain assurance of profitable marketing.
The modern spectator, who wanders through the streets of this populous city, can scarcely form an idea of the different appearance they presented in the primitive days of the Doubter. The busy hum of multitudes, the shouts of revelry, the rumbling equipages of fashion, the rattling of accursed carts, and all the spirit-grieving sounds of brawling com- merce, were unknown in the settlement of New-Am- sterdam. The grass grew quietly in the highways- the bleating sheep and frolicsome calves sported about the verdant ridge, where now the Broadway loungers take their morning stroll-the cunning fox or ravenous wolf skulked in the woods, where now are to be seen the dens of Gomez and his righteous fraternity of money-brokers-and flocks of vociferous geese cackled about the fields, where now the great Tammany wigwam and the patriotic tavern of Mart- ling echo with the wranglings of the mob.
In these good times did a true and enviable equality
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of rank and property prevail, equally removed from the arrogance of wealth, and the servility and heart- burnings of repining poverty-and what in my mind is still more conducive to tranquillity and harmony among friends, a happy equality of intellect was like- wise to be seen. The minds of the good burghers of New-Amsterdam seemed all to have been cast in one mould, and to be those honest, blunt minds, which, like certain manufactures, are made' by the gross, and considered as exceedingly good for common use.
Thus it happens that your true dull minds are generally preferred for public employ, and especially promoted to city honours ; your keen intellects, like razors, being considered too sharp for common ser- vice. I know that it is common to rail at the unequal distribution of riches, as the great source of jealousies, broils, and heart-breakings ; whereas, for my part, I verily believe it is the sad inequality of intellect that prevails, that embroils communities more than any thing else ; and I have remarked that your knowing people, who are so much wiser than any body else, are eternally keeping society in a ferment. Happily for New-Amsterdam, nothing of the kind was known within its walls-the very words of learning, educa- tion, taste, and talents, were unheard of-a bright genius was an animal unknown, and a blue-stocking lady would have been regarded with as much won- der as a horned frog or a fiery dragon. No man in fact seemed to know more than his neighbour, nor any man to know more than an honest man ought to know, who has nobody's business to mind but his
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own ; the parson and the council clerk were the only men that could read in the community, and the sage Van Twiller always signed his name with a cross.
Thrice happy and ever to be envied little burgh ! existing in all the security of harmless insignificance -unnoticed and unenvied by the world, without ambition, without vain glory, without riches, without learning, and all their train of carking cares-and as of yore, in the better days of man, the deities were wont to visit him on earth and bless his rural habita- tions, so we are told, in the sylvan days of New-Am- sterdam, the good St. Nicholas would often make his appearance in his beloved city, of a holyday after- noon, riding jollily among the tree-tops, or over the roofs of the houses, now and then drawing forth magnificent presents from his breeches pockets, and dropping them down the chimneys of his favourites. Whereas in these degenerate days of iron and brass, he never shows us the light of his countenance, nor ever visits us, save one night in the year; when he rattles down the chimneys of the descendants of the patriarchs, confining his presents merely to the chil- dren, in token of the degeneracy of the parents.
Such are the comfortable and thriving effects of a fat government. The province of the New-Nether- lands, destitute of wealth, possessed a sweet tran- quillity that wealth could never purchase. There were neither public commotions, nor private quar- rels ; neither parties, nor sects, nor schisms ; neither persecutions, nor trials, nor punishments ; nor were there counsellors, attorneys, catch-poles, or hangmen. *
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Every man attended to what little business he was lucky enough to have, or neglected it if he pleased, without asking the opinion of his neighbour. In those days, nobody meddled with concerns above his com- prehension, nor thrust his nose into other people' affairs ; nor neglected to correct his own conduct and reform his own character, in his zeal to pull to pieces the characters of others-but in a word, every respectable citizen eat when he was not hungry, drank when he was not thirsty, and went regularly to bed when the sun set, and the fowls went to roost, whether he were sleepy or not ; all which tended so remarkably to the population of the settlement, that I am told every dutiful wife throughout New-Amster- dam made a point of enriching her husband with at least one child a year, and very often a brace-this superabundance of good things clearly constituting the true luxury of life, according to the favourite Dutch maxim, that "more than enough constitutes a feast." Every thing, therefore, went on exactly as it should do; and in the usual words employed by historians to express the welfare of a country, "the profoundest tranquillity and repose reigned through- out the province."
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CHAPTER III.
How the town of New-Amsterdam arose out of mud, and came to be marvellously polished and polite- together with a picture of the manners of our great-great-grandfathers.
MANIFOLD are the tastes and dispositions of the enlightened literati, who turn over the pages of his- tory. Some there be, whose hearts are brimful of the yest of courage, and whose bosoms do work, and swell, and foam, with untried valour, like a barrel of new cider, or a train-band captain, fresh from under the hands of his tailor. This doughty class of readers can be satisfied with nothing but bloody battles, and horrible encounters ; they must be continually storm- ing forts, sacking cities, springing mines, marching up to the muzzles of cannon, charging bayonet through every page, and revelling in gunpowder and car- nage. Others, who are of a less martial, but equally ardent imagination, and who, withal, are a little given to the marvellous, will dwell with wonderous satisfaction on descriptions of prodigies, unheard-of events, hairbreadth escapes, hardy adventures, and all those astonishing narrations that just amble along the boundary line of possibility. A third class, who, not to speak slightly of them, are of a lighter turn, and skim over the records of past times, as they do over the edifying pages of a novel, merely for relaxation and innocent amusement, do singularly delight in
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treasons, executions, Sabine rapes, Tarquin outrages, conflagrations, murders, and all the other catalogue of hideous crimes, that, like cayenne in cookery, do give a pungency and flavour to the dull detail of his- tory-while a fourth class, of more philosophic habits, do diligently pore over the musty chronicles of time, to investigate the operations of the human kind, and watch the gradual changes in men and manners, ef- fected by the progress of knowledge, the vicissitudes of events, or the influence of situation. ยท
If the three first classes find but little wherewithal to solace themselves in the tranquil reign of Wouter Van Twiller, I entreat them to exert their patience for a while, and bear with the tedious picture of happiness, prosperity, and peace, which my duty as a faithful historian obliges me to draw; and I promise them that as soon as I can possibly light upon any thing horrible, uncommon, or impossible, it shall go hard but I will make it afford them entertainment. This being premised, I turn with great complacency to the fourth class of my readers, who are men, or, if possible, women, after my own heart ; grave, phi- losophical, and investigating ; fond of analyzing char- acters, of taking a start from first causes, and so hunt- ing a nation down, through all the mazes of innova- tion and improvement. Such will naturally be anx- ious to witness the first developement of the newly- hatched colony, and the primitive manners and cus- toms prevalent among its inhabitants, during the hal- cyon reign of Van Twiller, or the Doubter.
I will not grieve their patience, however, by de
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scribing minutely the increase and improvement of New-Amsterdam. Their own imaginations will doubt- Jess present to them the good burghers, like so many pains-taking and persevering beavers, slowly and surely pursuing their labours-they will behold the prosperous tranformation from the rude log hut to the stately Dutch mansion, with brick front, glazed windows, and tiled roof -- from the tangled thicket to the luxuriant cabbage garden ; and from the skulking Indian to the ponderous burgomaster. In a word, they will picture to themselves the steady, silent, and undeviating march to prosperity, incident to a city destitute of pride or ambition, cherished by a fat government, and whose citizens do nothing in a hurry.
The sage council, as has been mentioned in a pre- ceding chapter, not being able to determine upon any plan for the building of their city-the cows, in a laudable fit of patriotism, took it under their pecu- liar charge, and as they went to and from pasture, established paths through the bushes, on each side of which the good folks built their houses ; which is one cause of the rambling and picturesque turns and labyrinths, which distinguish certain streets of New- York at this very day.
The houses of the higher class were generally con- structed of wood, excepting the gable end, which was of small black and yellow Dutch bricks, and always faced on the street, as our ancestors, like their de- scendants, were very much given to outward show, and were noted for putting the best leg foremost.
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The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors and small windows on every floor; the date of its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front ; and on the top of the roof was perched a fierce little weathercock, to let the family into the important secret, which way the wind blew These, like the weathercocks on the tops of our steeples, pointed so many different ways, that every man could have a wind to his mind ;- the most staunch and loyal citizens, however, always went according to the weathercock on the top of the governor's house, which was certainly the most cor- rect, as he had a trusty servant employed every morn- ing to climb up and set it to the right quarter.
In those good days of simplicity and sunshine, a passion for cleanliness was the leading principle in domestic economy, and the universal test of an able housewife-a character which formed the utmost ambition of our unenlightened grandmothers. The front door was never opened except on marriages, funerals, new-years' days, the festival of St. Nicholas, or some such great occasion. It was ornamented with a gorgeous brass knocker, curiously wrought, sometimes in the device of a dog, and sometimes of a lion's head, and was daily burnished with such re- ligious zeal, that it was oft-times worn out by the very precautions taken for its preservation. The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops and brooms and scrub- bing-brushes ; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceed-
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ingly to be dabbling in water-insomuch that a his- torian of the day gravely tells us, that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers like unto a duck ; and some of them, he had little doubt, could the matter be examined into, would be found to have the tails of mermaids-but this I look upon to be a mere sport of fancy, or what is worse, a wilful mis representation.
The grand parlour was the sanctum sanctorum, where the passion for cleaning was indulged without control. In this sacred apartment no one was per- mitted to enter, excepting the mistress and her con- fidential maid, who visited it once a week, for the purpose of giving it a thorough cleaning, and putting things to rights-always taking the precaution of leaving their shoes at the door, and entering devoutly on their stocking-feet. After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it with fine white sand, which was cu- riously stroked into angles, and curves, and rhom- boids, with a broom-after washing the windows, rubbing and polishing the furniture, and putting a new bunch of evergreens in the fire-place-the window-shutters were again closed to keep out the flies, and the room carefully locked up until the revo- lution of time brought round the weekly cleaning day.
As to the family, they always entered in at the gate, and most generally lived in the kitchen. To have seen a numerous household assembled around the fire, one would have imagined that he was trans- ported back to those happy days of primeval sim- plicity, which float before our imaginations like golden VOL. I. P
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visions. The fire-places were of a truly patriarchal magnitude, where the whole family, old and young, master and servant, black and white, nay, even the very cat and dog, enjoyed a community of privilege, and had each a right to a corner. Here the old burgher would sit in perfect silence, puffing his pipe looking in the fire with half-shut eyes, and thinking of nothing for hours together; the goede vrouw on the opposite side would employ herself diligently in spinning yarn, or knitting stockings. The young folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breath- less attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth for a long winter afternoon a string of incredible stories about New-England witches-grisly ghosts, horses without heads-and hairbreadth escapes and bloody encounters among the Indians.
In those happy days a well-regulated family always rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed at sun-down. Dinner was invariably a private meal, and the fat old burghers showed incontestible symp- toms of disapprobation and uneasiness at being sur- prised by a visit from a neighbour on such occasions But though our worthy ancestors were thus singu larly averse to giving dinners, yet they kept up the social bands of intimacy by occasional banquetings, called tea-parties.
These fashionable parties were generally confined to the higher classes, or noblesse, that is to say, such as kept their own cows, and drove their own wagons.
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The company commonly assembled at three o'clock, and went away about six, unless it was in winter time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. The tea- table was crowned with a huge earthen dish, well stored with slices of fat pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming in gravy. The company be- ing seated around the genial board, and each furnish- ed with a fork, evinced their dexterity in lanching at the fattest pieces in this mighty dish-in much the same manner as sailors harpoon porpoises at sea, or our Indians spear salmon in the lakes. Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears ; but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks-a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, excepting in genu- ine Dutch families.
The tea was served out of a majestic delft teapot; ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shep- herds and shepherdesses tending pigs-with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in re- plenishing this pot from a huge copper tea-kettle, which would have made the pigmy macaronies of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup-and the company alternately nib- . bled and sipped with great decorum, until an im-
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provement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea-table, by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth-an ingenious expedient which is still kept up by some families in Albany; but which prevails without exception in Communipaw, Bergen, Flatbush, and all our uncon- taminated Dutch villages.
At these primitive tea-parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coqueting-no gambling of old ladies, nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones-no self-satis- fied struttings of wealthy gentlemen, with their brains in their pockets-nor amusing conceits, and monkey divertisements, of smart young gentlemen with no brains at all. On the contrary, the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own woollen stockings; nor ever opened their lips, excepting to say, yaw Mynher, or yah yah Vrouw, to any question that was asked them ; behaving, in all things, like decent, well-edu- cated damsels. As to the gentlemen, each of them tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in con- templation of the blue and white tiles with which the fire-places were decorated ; wherein sundry pas- sages of scripture were piously portrayed-Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah ap- peared most manfully bouncing out of the whale, like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.
The parties broke up without noise and without
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confusion. They were carried home by their own carriages, that is to say, by the vehicles Nature had provided them, excepting such of the wealthy as could afford to keep a wagon. The gentlemen gal- lantly attended their fair ones to their respective abodes, and took leave of them with a hearty smack at the door; which, as it was an established piece of etiquette, done in perfect simplicity and honesty of heart, occasioned no scandal at that time, nor should it at the present-if our great-grandfathers approved of the custom, it would argue a great want of reverence in their descendants to say a word against it.
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CHAPTER IV.
Containing further particulars of the Golden Age, and what constituted a fine Lady and Gentleman in the days of Walter the Doubter.
IN this dulcet period of my history, when the beau- teous island of Manna-hata presented a scene, the very counterpart of those glowing pictures drawn of the golden reign of Saturn, there was, as I have be- fore observed, a happy ignorance, an honest simplicity, prevalent among its inhabitants, which, were I even able to depict, would be but little understood by the degenerate age for which I am doomed to write. Even the female sex, those arch innovators upon the tranquillity, the honesty, and gray-beard customs of society, seemed for a while to conduct themselves with incredible sobriety and comeliness.
Their hair, untortured by the abominations of art, was scrupulously pomatumed back from their fore- heads with a candle, and covered with a little cap ot quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their heads. Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey were striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes-though I must confess these gallant garments were rather short, scarce reaching below the knee; but then they made up in the number, which generally equalled that of the gentlemen's small-clothes; and what is still more praiseworthy, they were all of their own manu-
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facture-of which circumstance, as may well be sup- posed, they were not a little vain.
These were the honest days, in which every wo- man staid at home, read the Bible, and wore pockets -ay, and that too of a goodly size, fashioned with patchwork into many curious devices, and ostenta- tiously worn on the outside. These, in fact, were convenient receptacles, where all good housewives carefully stored away such things as they wished to have at hand ; by which means they often came to be incredibly crammed-and I remember there was a story current when I was a boy, that the lady of Wouter Van Twiller once had occasion to empty her right pocket in search of a wooden ladle, and the utensil was discovered lying among some rubbish in one corner-but we must not give too much faith to all these stories ; the anecdotes of those remote pe- riods being very subject to exaggeration.
Besides these notable pockets, they likewise wore scissors and pincushions suspended from their girdles by red ribands, or, among the more opulent and showy classes, by brass, and even silver chains, in- dubitable tokens of thrifty housewives and industrious spinsters. I cannot say much in vindication of the shortness of the petticoats ; it doubtless was intror duced for the purpose of giving the stockings a chance to be seen, which were generally of blue worsted, with magnificent red clocks-or perhaps to display a well-turned ankle, and a neat, though serviceable, foot, set off by a high-heeled leathern shoe, with a large and splendid silver buckle. Thus we find that
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the gentle sex in all ages have shown the same dis- position to infringe a little upon the laws of decorum, in order to betray a lurking beauty, or gratify an in- nocent love of finery.
From the sketch here given, it will be seen that our good grandmothers differed considerably in their Ideas of a fine figure from their scantily-dressed de- scendants of the present day. A fine lady, in those times, waddled under more clothes, even on a fair summer's day, than would have clad the whole bevy of a modern ball-room. Nor were they the less ad- mired by the gentlemen in consequence thereof. On the contrary, the greatness of a lover's passion seem- ed to increase in proportion to the magnitude of its object-and a voluminous damsel, arrayed in a dozen of petticoats, was declared by a Low Dutch sonnet- teer of the province to be radiant as a sunflower, and luxuriant as a full-blown cabbage. Certain it is, that in those days, the heart of a lover could not con- tain more than one lady at a time ; whereas the heart of a modern gallant has often room enough to ac- commodate half-a-dozen. ,The reason of which I con- clude to be, that either the hearts of the gentlemen have grown larger, or the persons of the ladies small- er -- this, however, is a question for physiologists to determine.
But there was a secret charm in these petticoats, which no doubt entered into the consideration of the prudent gallants. The wardrobe of a lady was in those days her only fortune ; and she who had a good stock of petticoats and stockings, was as absolutely
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