pped in an old pair of buckskins, was
familiarly dubbed Hardenbroeck; that is to say, Tough Breeches.

Ten Broeck completed this junto of adventurers. It is a singular but
ludicrous fact--which, were I not scrupulous in recording the whole
truth, I should almost be tempted to pass over in silence as
incompatible with the gravity and dignity of history--that this worthy
gentleman should likewise have been nicknamed from what in modern times
is considered the most ignoble part of the dress; but in truth the
small-clothes seem to have been a very dignified garment in the eyes of
our venerated ancestors.

The name of Ten Broeck, or, as it was sometimes spelled, Tin Broeck, has
been indifferently translated into Ten Breeches and Tin Breeches.
Certain elegant and ingenious writers on the subject declare in favor of
_Tin_, or rather _Thin_, Breeches; whence they infer that the original
bearer of it was a poor but merry rogue, whose galligaskins were none of
the soundest, and who, peradventure, may have been the author of that
truly philosophical stanza:

"Then why should we quarrel for riches,
Or any such glittering toys?
A light heart and _thin pair of breeches_
Will go through the world, my brave boys!"

The more accurate commentators, however, declare in favor of the other
reading, and affirm that the worthy in question was a burly, bulbous
man, who, in sheer ostentation of his venerable progenitors, was the
first to introduce into the settlement the ancient Dutch fashion of ten
pair of breeches.

Such was the trio of coadjutors chosen by Oloffe the Dreamer, to
accompany him in this voyage into unknown realms; as to the names of his
crews, they have not been handed down by history.

And now the rosy blush of morn began to mantle in the east, and soon the
rising sun, emerging from amid golden and purple clouds, shed his
blithesome rays on the tin weathercocks of Communipaw. It was that
delicious season of the year when Nature, breaking from the chilling
thralldom of old winter, like a blooming damsel from the tyranny of a
sordid old father, threw herself, blushing with ten thousand charms,
into the arms of youthful spring. Every tufted copse and blooming grove
resounded with the notes of hymeneal love. The very insects, as they
sipped the dew that gemmed the tender grass of meadows, joined in the
joyous epithalamium, the virgin bud timidly put forth its blushes, "the
voice of the turtle was heard