is appearance answered to his name. He was a brisk,
wiry, waspish little old gentleman; such a one as may now and then be
seen stumping about our city in a broad-skirted coat with huge buttons,
a cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as high as his
chin. His face was broad but his features were sharp, his cheeks were
scorched into a dusky red by two fiery little gray eyes; his nose
turned up, and the corners of his mouth turned down, pretty much like
the muzzle of an irritable pug-dog.

[Illustration: WILLIAM THE TESTY]

I have heard it observed by a profound adept in human physiology that if
a woman waxes fat with the progress of years, her tenure of life is
somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old she lives
forever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who grew
tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through
the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his soul, which
burnt like a vehement rushlight in his bosom, inciting him to incessant
broils and bickerings.

Wilhelmus Kieft was a great legislator on a small scale, and had a
microscopic eye in public affairs. He had been greatly annoyed by the
factious meetings of the good people of New Amsterdam, but, observing
that on these occasions the pipe was ever in their mouth, he began to
think that the pipe was at the bottom of the affair, and that there was
some mysterious affinity between politics and tobacco smoke. Determined
to strike at the root of the evil, he began, forthwith, to rail at
tobacco as a noxious, nauseous weed, filthy in all its uses; and as to
smoking, he denounced it as a heavy tax upon the public pocket, a vast
consumer of time, a great encourager of idleness, and a deadly bane to
the prosperity and morals of the people. Finally, he issued an edict
prohibiting the smoking of tobacco throughout the New Netherlands.
Ill-fated Kieft! Had he lived in the present age and attempted to check
the unbounded license of the press, he could not have struck more sorely
upon the sensibilities of the million. The pipe, in fact, was the great
organ of reflection and deliberation of the New Netherlander. It was his
constant companion and solace: was he gay, he smoked; was he sad, he
smoked; his pipe was never out of his mouth; it was a part of his
physiognomy; without it his best friends would not know him. Take away
his pipe? You might as well take away his nose!

[Illustrat