nce, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits and very averse
to the idle labor of walking. His legs were short, but sturdy in
proportion to the weight they had to sustain, so that when erect he had
not a little the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids. His face, that
infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by
any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with
what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the
midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his
full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went
into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like
a spitzenberg apple.

In his council he presided with great state and solemnity. He sat in a
huge chair of solid oak, hewn in the celebrated forest of The Hague,
fabricated by an experienced timmerman of Amsterdam, and curiously
carved about the arms and feet into exact imitations of gigantic eagle's
claws. Instead of a scepter he swayed a long Turkish pipe, wrought with
jasmine and amber, which had been presented to a stadtholder of Holland
at the conclusion of a treaty with one of the petty Barbary powers. In
this stately chair would he sit and this magnificent pipe would he
smoke, shaking his right knee with a constant motion, and fixing his eye
for hours upon a little print of Amsterdam which hung in a black frame
against the opposite wall of the council-chamber. Nay, it has even been
said that when any deliberation of extraordinary length and intricacy
was on the carpet the renowned Wouter would shut his eyes for full two
hours at a time, that he might not be disturbed by external objects; and
at such times the internal commotion of his mind was evinced by certain
regular guttural sounds, which his admirers declared were merely the
noise of conflict made by his contending doubts and opinions.

[Illustration: HE WAS INTERRUPTED BY WANDLE SCHOONHOVEN]

The very outset of the career of this excellent magistrate was
distinguished by an example of legal acumen that gave flattering
presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had
been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his
breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish filled with milk and Indian
pudding, he was interrupted by the appearance of Wandle Schoonhoven, a
very important old burgher of New Amsterdam, who complained bitterly of
on