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Barbérie, are a subject for the Governor in Council, said the Patroon of
Kinder-hook, stiffly.
 Nor was it thus treated. The Viscount spoke me fair, and, had he not pushed
the matter beyond discretion, we might have come to happier conclusions.
 I am glad that there was some restraint in the discourse.
 The man certainly exceeded reason, for he led the conference into
personalities that no prudent man could relish. Still he said it was possible
that the Coquette might yet be ordered for service among the islands!
It has been said, that Oloff Van Staats was a fair personable young man of
vast stature, and with much of the air of a gentleman of his country; for,
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though a British subject, he was rather a Hollander in feelings, habits, and
opinions. He colored at the allusion to the presence of his known rival,
though his companion was at a loss to discover whether pride or vexation was
at the bottom of his emotion.
 If Captain Ludlow prefer a cruise in the Indies, to duty on this coast, I
hope he may obtain his wish, was the cautious answer.
 Your liberal man enjoys a sounding name, and an empty coffer, observed the
Alderman, drily.  To me it seems that a petition to the admiral to send so
meritorious an officer on service where he may distinguish himself, should
deserve his thanks. The free-booters are playing the devil s game with the
sugar trade, and even the French are getting troublesome, further south.
 He has certainly the reputation of an active cruiser.
 Blixum and philosophy! If you wish to succeed with Alida, Patroon, you must
put more briskness into the adventure. The girl has a cross of the Frenchman
in her temper, and none of your deliberations and taciturnities will gain the
day. This visit to the Lust in Rust is Cupid s own handywork, and I hope to
see you both return to town as amicable as the Stadholder and the States
General, after a sharp struggle for the year s subsidy has been settled by a
compromise.
 The success of this suit is the affair nearest my -- The young man paused
as if surprised at his own communicativeness; and, taking advantage of the
haste in which his toilette had been made, he thrust a hand into his vest,
covering with its broad palm a portion of the human frame which poets do not
describe as the seat of the passions.
 If you mean stomach, Sir, you will not have reason to be disappointed,
retorted the Alderman, a little more severely than was usual with one so
cautious.  The heiress of Myndert Van Beverout will not be a penniless bride,
and Monsieur Barbérie did not close the books of life without taking good care
of the balance-sheet--but yonder are those devils of ferrymen quitting the
wharf without us! Scamper ahead, Brutus, and tell them to wait the legal
minute. The rogues are never exact; sometimes starting before I am ready, and
sometimes keeping me waiting in the sun, as if I were no better than a dried
dunfish. Punctuality is the soul of business, and one of my habits does not
like to be ahead, nor behind his time.
In this manner the worthy burgher, who would have been glad to regulate the
movements of others, on all occasions, a good deal by his own, vented his
complaints, while he and his companion hurried on to overtake the slow-moving
boat in which they were to embark. A brief description of the scene will not
be without interest, to a generation that may be termed modern in reference to
the time of which we write.
A deep narrow creek penetrated the island, at this point, for the distance of
a quarter of a mile. Each of its banks had a row of buildings, as the houses
line a canal in the cities of Holland. As the natural course of the inlet was
necessarily respected, the street had taken a curvature not unlike that of a
new moon. The houses were ultra-Dutch, being low, angular, fastidiously neat,
and all erected with their gables to the street. Each had its ugly and
inconvenient entrance, termed a stoop, its vane or weather-cock, its
dormer-windows, and its graduated battlement-walls. Near the apex of one of
the latter, a little iron crane projected into the street. A small boat, of
the same metal, swung from its end,--a sign that the building to which it was
appended was the ferry-house.
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An inherent love of artificial and confined navigation had probably induced
the burghers to select this spot, as the place whence so many craft departed
from the town; since, it is certain, that the two rivers could have furnished
divers points more favorable for such an object, inasmuch as they possess the
advantage of wide and unobstructed channels.
Fifty blacks were already in the street, dipping their brooms into the creek,
and flourishing water over the side-walks, and on the fronts of the low
edifices. This light but daily duty was relieved by clamorous collisions of
wit, and by shouts of merriment, in which the whole street would join, as with
one joyous and reckless movement of the spirit.
The language of this light-hearted and noisy race was Dutch, already
corrupted by English idioms, and occasionally by English words;--a system of
change that has probably given rise to an opinion, among some of the
descendants of the earlier colonists, that the latter tongue is merely a
patois of the former. This opinion, which so much resembles that certain
well-read English scholars entertain of the plagiarisms of the continental
writers, when they first begin to dip into their works, is not strictly true;
since the language of England has probably bestowed as much on the dialect of
which we speak, as it has ever received from the purer sources of the school
of Holland. Here and there, a grave burgher, still in his night-cap, might be
seen with a head thrust out of an upper window, listening to these barbarisms
of speech, and taking note of all the merry jibes, that flew from mouth to
mouth with an indomitable gravity, that no levity of those beneath could
undermine.
As the movement of the ferry-boat was necessarily slow, the Alderman and his
companion were enabled to step into it, before the fasts were thrown aboard.
The periagua, as the craft was called, partook of a European and an American
character. It possessed the length, narrowness, and clean bow, of the canoe,
from which its name was derived, with the flat bottom and lee-boards of a boat
constructed for the shallow waters of the Low Countries. Twenty years ago,
vessels of this description abounded in our rivers; and even now, their two
long and unsupported masts, and high narrow-headed sails, are daily seen
bending like reeds to the breeze, and dancing lightly over the billows of the
bay. There is a variety of the class, of a size and pretension altogether [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]