HE WAS INTERRUPTED BY WANDLE SCHOONHOVEN

of few words; he was likewise a mortal enemy to multiplying writings or being disturbed at his breakfast. Having listened attentively to the statement of Wandle Schoonhoven, giving an occasional grunt as he shoveled a spoonful of Indian pudding into his mouth, either as a sign that he relished the dish or comprehended the story, he called unto him his constable, and, pulling out of his breeches pocket a huge jack-knife, dispatched it after the defendant as a summons, accompanied by his tobacco-box as a warrant.

This summary process was as effectual in those simple days as was the seal ring of the great Haroun Alraschid among the true believers. The two parties being confronted before him, each produced a book of accounts written in a language and character that would have puzzled any but a High Dutch commentator or a learned decipherer of Egyptian obelisks. The sage Wouter took them one after the other, and, having poised them in his hands and attentively counted over the number of leaves, fell straightway into a very great doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a word; at length, laying his finger beside his nose and shutting his eyes for a moment with the air of a man who had just caught a subtle idea by the tail, he slowly took his pipe from his mouth, puffed forth a column of tobacco-smoke, and with marvelous gravity and solemnity pronounced-that, having carefully counted over the leaves and weighed the books, it was found that one was just as thick and as heavy as the other; therefore it was the final opinion of the court that the accounts were equally balanced; therefore Wandle should give Barent a receipt, and Barent should give Wandle a receipt; and the constable should pay the

costs.

This decision, being straightway made known, diffused general joy throughout New Amsterdam, for the people immediately perceived that they had a very wise and equitable magistrate to rule over them. But its happiest effect was that not another lawsuit took place throughout the

whole of his administration, and the office of constable fell into such decay that there was not one of those losel scouts known in the province for many years.

HOW THE COLONISTS LIVED IN THE DAYS OF WALTER THE DOUBTER

SHE houses of the higher class were D generally constructed 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 descendants, were very much given to outward show, and were noted for putting the best leg foremost. 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 stanch and loyal citizens, however, always went according to the weathercock on the top of the governor's house, which was certainly the most correct, as he had a trusty servant employed every morning 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 prin

Vol. IX.-18.

ciple in domestic economy and the universal tes. 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 Year's days, the festival of Saint 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 religious zeal that it was ofttimes 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 scrubbing brushes; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water, insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers like unto a duck; but this I look upon to be a mere sport of fancy, or, what is worse, a willful misrepresentation.

The grand parlor was the sanctum-sanctorum where the passion for cleaning was indulged without control. In this sacred apartment no one was permitted to enter excepting the mistress and her confidential 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 in their stocking feet. After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it with fine white sand, which was curiously stroked

into angles, and curves, and rhomboids with a broom-after washing the windows, rubbing and polishing the furniture, and putting a new bunch of evergreens in the fireplace-the window shutters were again closed to keep out the flies, and the room carefully locked up until the revolution 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 round the fire one would have imagined that he was transported back to those happy days of primeval simplicity which float before our imaginations like golden visions. The fireplaces 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 dogenjoyed 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 breathless 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 hair-breadth escapes and bloody encounters among the Indians.